Comments on: Interesting IMVU stats

By: Second Life - Forum, Community, Portal - Aw: Interessante IMVU Statistiken und Fakten - Forum fuer Second Life

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:18:30 +0000

[...] Gefunden auf Raph Koster�s Blog: * 100,000 registrierte Developer (zehntausende aktiv) * �ber 20,000,000 registrierte User (keine Uniques) * �ber 1,700,000 virtuelle Produkte sind im IMVU Marktplatz gelistet * gerade einmal 2000 sind vom Betreiber IMVU inc. selbst * 1,200,000 dieser G�ter sind full 3D * jeden Tag kommen 3,000 neue Items dazu * IMVU erwirtschaftet monatlich $1,000,000 durch den Handel dieser virtuellen G�ter auf der Plattform * $1,000,000 erwirtschaftet der Top Developer durch IMVU im Jahr, viele weitere mehrere $100,000 * 60% der IMVU User sind weiblich, 40% m�nnlich * 40% der IMVU User wohnen au�erhalb der USA Link & Quelle: http://www.raphkoster.com/2008/06/24/interesting-imvu-stats/ [...]

By: Raph

Raph — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:13:15 +0000

Oops… Dan, I zapped your second comment by accident when clearing out spam. Sorry!

By: Dan

Dan — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 02:57:50 +0000

Cary Rosenzwig states in response to a user’s comment on another website that the developers are not paid by IMVU. Instead they can sell the credits they earn to other users at a price determined by those two parties. Perhaps Krissy can elaborate further.

By: Jessica Mulligan

Jessica Mulligan — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 06:47:30 +0000

Thanks, Diana and Krissy, for the explanations. In the interview Raph cites, though, IMVU CEO Cary Rosenzweig states that they DON’T take a cut of item sales, i.e. the transfer of credits from the buyer to the seller. I must be simply misunderstanding what he was saying, I’m sure, so I’d appreciate some more enlightenment,

And what is the average split on the credits between IMVU and the developer?

By: Krissy

Krissy — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:44:50 +0000

Hi there, well as stated above, the credits are split up between IMVU and the developer. I am a developer on that site, and I know first hand that IMVU is a great place to expand your creativity, and even make a living off the profits gained as I do This site means alot to a large and diverse range of people in so many ways.

By: Diana

Diana — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 01:36:49 +0000

When you but credits from IMVU it costs $1 for 1000 credits. When you buy something from the catalog the credits split up in a few different ways depending on the item but IMVU gets a cut and so does the developer and anyone else that may have developed and worked on the item in between.
Now when someone who earns credits from sales of IMVU items sells the credits for real money 1. they do not sell them to IMVU, IMVU does not buy them back and 2. they never get $1 per 1000 credits. Its more like $1 for 2000 credits. They user gets a better deal from credit resellers but all credits start from IMVU to begin with.

By: Jessica Mulligan

Jessica Mulligan — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 12:49:09 +0000

What I don’t yet have is a clear picture of how they make $1 million per month. IMVU states they make 90% of their revenue on credit sales, but they give back the great bulk of those to 3rd party developers when users buy virtual items. Developers do pay a one-time 500 credit fee to submit an item, but that amounts to only around $1 million total revenue since the 2004 Beta launch.

Am I missing the obvious here? If a user pays $5 for 5,000 credits and then buys a 3rd party developer item for 5,000 credits, and the developer gets to cash that in for $5 USD, where does IMVU make money with credits?

By: Brian Gilman

Brian Gilman — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:49:01 +0000

I think that the stats show that this kind of model may have the potential to be viable in the future, but going by what they’ve presented, I would be surprised if they are breaking even.

Going on the assumption that 20% of the registered users are active, that leaves us with 4,000,000 users. 1 million dollars per month of revenue, split between the active users, gives us an average of 25 cents spent per user. Not very impressive.

Unless they are running an insanely efficient operation, I don’t think they are seeing black. It’s worth noting that the word “profit” wasn’t mentioned once in relation to their company in the interview.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out in the future however.

By: Michael Chui

Michael Chui — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 01:05:09 +0000

For example, I see 9 million people online in my Skype application every day, but who knows how many people are concurrently active.

It would depend, as always, on what you mean by “active” and why you’re tracking it. =P

By: Laura

Laura — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:31:37 +0000

This is great to see… free client + micro transactions is a great business model to get your product out there, let people try it, and encourage the people who like it to actually pay you money. Taking it a step further and letting other people create the content which is making you profit? Now that’s a stroke of sheer genius…