Massively multiplayer online (MMO) games are popular. More popular than you may think, and not all players are acne-ridden, pale teens in their parents’ basements. Many have real jobs and disposable income.  Take Mr. T , for example.

Many MMO players find their favorite game to be very engrossing and a great alternative to real life. In the game, their character can be all-powerful and have the best equipment (everything from clothing and costumes to magical, flying mounts) while the player’s real life is comprised of a mundane job and a subway commute. Regardless of the game, a player must commit a lot of time (hundreds of hours in some cases) to have the best of everything in-game. However, not everyone has that amount of time, although they still want to enjoy the game.

That’s where MMO games can be profitable . The most popular MMO game in America is World of Warcraft . Hence, World of Warcraft is the center of the MMO economy. Like the "real" economy, the MMO economy is based on the trade of goods and services for money, with the difference that the goods exist only within the games. Also like the real economy, the rarest and most difficult to attain in-game goods garner the highest prices. In MMO games, "rare" and "difficult to attain" translate directly into time: The more time a player puts into the game, the more likely they are to be able to possess such goods.

You probably do not have the time or interest in logging in to an MMO game and racking up hours and hours just to get some rare doodad to try to sell to more serious gamers. That is where the service side of the MMO game economy comes into play. Create a game account, hire a service provider to spend the time increasing the value of the game account by making the character represented by the account powerful and wealthy, then sell the account for real money to someone who is interested in the game but not the time required to gain in-game power and wealth.