PlaySpan: 31 Percent Of Users Sell Virtual Goods

In-game currency is the most popular virtual item that players buy and sell from one another, says new data from market research firm VGMarket and monetization platform PlaySpan. The two companies looked at 2,425 PlaySpan customers and found two out of three sellers have sold in-game currency to another player over the last year -- and earned an average of $22 for their transactions. According to the companies' data, virtual goods sales are more common on social networks, where one out of two users has sold something on a social network game over the past year, earning an average of $50. In free-to-play online games, one out of four users have made a sale over the past year. But the median earning of sellers in free-to-play titles is nearly double that of social network gamers at $98, according to VGMarket and PlaySpan's research. Of the total number of respondents, 31 percent said they'd sold digital goods before, and 39 of the remainder said they were either interested or very interested in giving it a try. PlaySpan and VGMarket says that by demographic, 89 percent of the sellers were male with the average age of 21 and an annual income of $30,000. VGMarket president Michael Gluck noted, "It’s not only the type of item and genre that are deserving of consideration, but the demographic characteristics of sellers and annual dollar amount they are able to generate can provide publishers valuable information about what makes most sense in terms of selecting a business model."