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Linden's business model is to make money from what amount to virtual property taxes.

Players pay $9.95 to enter the world and need never pay another penny if they choose. But if they want to build a house or open their own shop, they need to buy space and pay fees.

On the lowest level of ownership, for instance, a user can purchase 512 square meters of virtual real estate for $9.95 monthly. Prices increase from there, up to a $1,000 initial fee and $200 monthly rent for a 16-acre virtual island.

The privately held company doesn't release financial details, and some experts say its business model has yet to prove viable, including Julian Dibbell, an expert on virtual worlds and author of the book "My Tiny Life," which examines the phenomenon of online role-playing.

Miah Peterson earns about $100 a month selling items as Nada Epoch.

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Second Life is an inevitable step beyond the usual online games in two important ways, Dibbell says.

It "actively encourages a real-world economy exchange rate," he says, "and they gave all intellectual property rights to online content to the users."

Who in their right mind would spend thousands of dollars on virtual real estate?

"It is an expensive hobby to be involved with," admits Katykiwi Moonflower. She owns an island, a kind of treasure-laden lovers' paradise called Gypsy Moon.

In real life, Moonflower is a successful Washington lawyer, and she says she takes an interest in the legal issues of virtual property and virtual vice that arise in Second Life. She's married, 43, with no children, and her husband, an engineer, travels often.

At least that's what she says during a conversation held within the game. She won't reveal her real name, and as with much of what's said in Second Life, there's really no way to confirm her statements.

Perhaps the most treasured possession in Second Life isn't money. It's an intangible: anonymity.

Midwest Dayton, director of the Christian group building the church by the lake, will reveal only limited real-life information about himself. For the record, he says he's a 50-something married father of three who teaches at a university in Oklahoma. "Temptation is temptation. Hearts are hearts. People call this a game, but there are real fingers on those keyboards," he says, virtual Bible in hand, standing before the small gathering of like-minded men whose stated goal is to spread the word of God in Second Life. "These are real souls that can still be reached."

Since their first meeting, the nondenominational virtual congregation has grown to about 15 members and has bought land in Second Life and built a large glass cathedral.

Anonymity serves a different purpose for the character known as Wilde Cunningham, an avatar operated by nine people from Philadelphia who have physical disabilities and use wheelchairs. Their real-life caseworker, known as Lilone Sandgrain in Second Life, says she provided them with an account and they raised enough donations in the online world to buy a more powerful computer. They gather and make group decisions about where to go and what to say.

"In here, people don't see us and recoil because of our appearance," Cunningham says. "We don't have to repeat ourselves 100 times to be understood. In here, everyone is on equal footing."

Even in a virtual world, customer service is a pain in the backside. Take it from Munchflower Zaius.

"I'm in customer service hell again,'' says the self-employed designer, patiently explaining for the thousandth time via instant message to a newbie customer how to take a shirt out of a box.

Zaius, who also won't give her real name, designs a popular line of edgy skins — essentially full-body tattoos — and goth clothes. She's a tattoo-emblazoned, much-pierced flamboyant, a magnet for admirers, friends and freaks, and among the most successful of Second Life's entrepreneurs.

In her real life, she says, she's a 27-year-old mother of two young kids from Oregon who works online from home. She has no tattoos. Making and selling stuff in Second Life is her real job. Zaius says she makes upwards of $175 a day selling to other users at a dozen shops around Second Life.

Linden Lab says its most savvy users do, indeed, earn up to $4,000 a month buying and selling in Second Life. During a speculative real estate boom last summer, some users cleared up to $6,000.

Most games discourage such profit-making. But Second Life embraces real-life market forces. Items are sold for the in-world currency, Lindens, abbreviated as $L, which have a cash equivalent at various online currency exchanges. For instance, a rocked-out, tattoo-covered sex god skin can sell for upwards of $L3000, or about $15 in U.S. currency. People can't buy them fast enough.

"Once a currency has currency anywhere, it's a real currency," Dibbell explains. "Linden dollars have an exchange rate with U.S. dollars, and it's no less legitimate than the exchange rate for the Turkish lyra or the Indian rupee or whatever."

Zaius has created a whole line of skins, from snow-white, red-lipped, rose-with-thorns goth skins, anatomically detailed, to elemental elf skins to sexy tattooed tan-lined skins and all shades between. More than half the people in Second Life are wearing skins Zaius designed.

"Don't ever make Second Life your real-life job," she warns, citing the stress and fast pace of her online life, "or else you'll have to find an escape from your escape."

• Continued