Bryan Ellis comments on Virtual Real Estate Investing
A relatively new concept in the online world is “Virtual Real Estate Investing“. There are many variations on what this term means, encompassing everything from using the internet to aid in real estate investing efforts to participating in online games such as SecondLife.
To get the facts, I sought out the man generally considered to be the father of virtual real estate investing: Bryan Ellis of BryanEllis.com.
When I began using the term virtual real estate investing in the late 1990s, I did so because I saw clear parallels between the strategies used for profiting from physical real estate and those that would create income in the online world, said Ellis.
One example of the parallels between virtual and physical real estate Bryan Ellis cites is the similarity between the monetization of domain names versus physical property. “These types of assets - websites and physical real estate - can be monetized in very similar ways like buy lo/sell high, leasing/rental and advertising opportunities” he says.
The similarities really are obvious. After all, if you own a valuable piece of real estate, it’s “valuable” because other people are interested in that specific piece of property. Likewise, if you own a desirable domain name, others will find value in it because it serves their purposes. So it doesn’t matter if you own physical real estate or virtual real estate - you’ll likely use similar strategies to turn them into money in your pocket.
In our next installment of this series on virtual real estate investing, Bryan Ellis will share the internet analogies to the physical concept of real estate development.