Originally Posted by Cristiano

While it may seem crazy because no one has really tried it before successfully, there has to be other business models besides either make stuff to sell or expecting donations to keep up an income - both are wildly unpredictable. The market in SL fluctuates and often times you go from making a lot one month to a fraction of that the next month, even for top retailers. Expecting donations or tips is something you also certainly can't rely on- donations are spotty, and people don't have an expectation of tipping for service the way they do in RL, even though they should tip.

Many people also thought that the web could never support sites that charged money to access, but some have content valuable enough to sustain that model. Nothing in SL has proven that valuable, I suppose. Rezzable's stuff is some of the highest quality I've seen, and I think is worth paying a small amount to explore, but thereis such a pushback against that idea that I'm not sure anyone can make that model fly - so instead we just more malls.