The Wonderful World of Webkinz Farming

Designed for children age 6-13, Webkinz are stuffed toys that come with a secret code which allows the child to enter them onto a website and have a fully-functional cyber pet that lives in Webkinz World and wants nothing more than to interact with the child. It is a perfect environment for teaching children how to use a computer, especially one with a windows feel in a flash environment, learn the value of money as they need to earn kinzcash before being able to buy clothes, food, furniture and toys for their pets, and interact safely with all other members of Webkinz World. While I said the site is designed for children, honestly only 38% of the people I know on it fall within the above age range. Regardless, the site does do an excellent job of keeping people safe by not showing any full names (even though all names are supposed to be made up) and allowing chatting between people to be done only by a list of preset statements and questions- no typing your own messages allowed. Sometimes I think they went a little bit in the wrong direction in some areas (customer service is also done by a drop down menu of preset questions). My biggest beef with them is money. The most common way of earning money in Webkinz is by playing games. Seriously- who wants their kid thinking they can go to the arcade for a few hours and come back loaded with extra cash?
I didn't want to set a bad example for my Webkinz pets (I have 10), so I set up a new system for earning money. We farm. The site has made it possible to plant your own vegetable garden and harvest from it. You can plant pumpkins, watermelons, carrots, cabbage, corn, strawberries, and tomatoes. Each vegetable needs to be checked for weeds (if not done within a few days the weeds will kill your plant) and watered (if not done you will get 20-25% more weeds in the garden) daily until you can harvest in 7-12 days.
Most people have a small patch, but deciding to earn my money the hard way, I bought 6 outdoor yards and completely filled them with vegetables of different varieties giving me a total of 619 individual plots of vegetables which we harvest daily and sell. I've been working on this project for about a month now and have learned a lot about the Webkinz way of farming. Here are some facts I learned the hard way.
The vegetable seeds cost different amounts and each type of vegetable grows at a different rate of speed, yields a different amount (or range of possible amounts) at each harvest, sells for a different price, and will satisfy the hunger of your pet to a different degree if fed to them. Based on the above criteria, the crops are in order from best to worst value are: strawberry, corn, carrot, watermelon, cabbage, pumpkin, and tomato. In fact, the tomatoes are such a bad deal that I ripped all of mine up to replace with strawberries. To give you an estimate of the difference, a single plot of strawberries will, in the average month, produce $63 in saleable goods where a single plot of tomatoes will, in the same time, produce $30 in saleable goods. It may seem like it isn't worth it to spend the time to care for the vegetables but in this past month I've earned an average of $930.11 per day in my vegetable sales for a total of $17,672 to date (keep in mind I had to wait over a week for my first harvest and I'm taking my average counting only from my harvest days, not all days from planting). On the other hand, I still haven't begun earning a profit as it cost me $37,155 to buy the land, the original seeds, and the new seeds to replace my tomato plants. Twenty-one more days like this and I will be debt-free. It will then be pure profit, Baby. Pure profit! I have been supplementing my income by sending one of the pets to the employment office each day where they can earn $100-$250 up to twice a day if I time it right.
I guess the moral of this blog entry is: Some people have too much time on their hands, and others have WAY too much time on their hands. As you're reading the random ramblings of a stranger, who are you to judge?