The price of virtual love

Instead of spending last summer hanging out with friends and playing computer games, 17-year-old high school student Duo Na earned up to 300,000 yuan ($48,862) through her own online shop. So what does Duo's shop sell? "Love" and "companionship."

According to Duo, her shop provides the services of virtual boyfriends and girlfriends. Customers can pay 20 yuan ($3.26) to chat to a virtual partner for a day using WeChat, phone calls or QQ.

"I saw the business opportunity in a novel named My boyfriend in the Phone," said Duo, who read the novel and thought it would be profitable to sell the service of a virtual relationship.

Duo is not alone in providing such services, and is just one of many providers that gained popularity over the summer through the online shopping website taobao.com. If one were to put "virtual lover" into the website's search tab, more than 4,000 results would show up.

"At the peak time during August, we almost had up to 200 deals per day," said Duo, who has conducted 1,216 sales in the last 30 days, second only to a Shanghai-based shop who conducted 1,984 deals.

To meet the demand, Duo has now enlarged her number of employees from 60 to more than 200, which include both girlfriends and boyfriends. Duo explains that her employees, who get paid half for each deal, take it as a part-time job to make some pocket money and also to have a little fun.

Luo Ran (pseudonym), 21, recently became an employee and a virtual boyfriend in one of these dating shops. Luo, a handsome young bartender whose daily routine consists of mixing cocktails and greeting guests, decided a part-time job in a virtual relationship could make some extra money.

"It's fun, and it's not a job everyone can do. You must be good-looking [for the online icon photo] and have a sweet voice," said Luo.

The online shop Luo works at makes 20 to 50 deals per day now. Since a hired virtual lover can only chat with one customer at a time to ensure service quality, Luo said it is hard to make big money out of the part-time job.

The opportunities to advance these virtual relationship services seem endless. Some shops provide services from high-achieving students who help the customers, mostly younger students, with their homework and give advice regarding their studies. And some other shops now advertise their services of "game accompaniment" for sale. Through this service, girls with sweet voices and gaming skills can play online games with customers.

These online gaming girls charge 20 to 35 yuan per hour for their services. In the customer comment zone, one anonymous customer wrote with excitement: "They (the virtual girlfriends accompanying him in playing games) are perfect. I have a girlfriend, but she always gets angry when I start to play LOL (League of Legends). Now I pay for girls to play with me and it is better than being with my real girlfriend."

However, not all customers are satisfied with the service, believing the concept needs to develop more if it is going to stay popular. Tian Zhu, 29, doctoral student in mechanical engineering, said that it would be better if the virtual lovers were well-educated.

"I tried the service with a mindset of being open to the experience but ended up having nothing to say with my virtual girlfriend, who was just 18 and hadn't entered university yet," said Tian. "The service is only for young people with a lot of free time."

Tian explains that more employees should be well-educated, so they could relate to older customers and have more in common with them. Despite being unhappy with the experience, he believes the service has a future.

"I think white collar workers in their late 20s who are under pressure with a busy life need these relationships the most," said Tian. "Especially single ones like me."