Chinese site QQ generated an estimated $500m in profits from avatars and virtual goods in 2008

"In China, a number of services rely on avatars and virtual goods. The most successful is QQ
(Tencent, 1998), which recorded an estimated 1 billion USD in sales and 500 million USD in
profits in 2008, making it the leading avatarbased service by users, revenues and profit
worldwide."
Source: From Virtual Worlds to The 3D Web report by PlusEightStar, March 2009
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