Is Social Networking Good For You and Your Internet Business?

Social networks are here to stay. They are unrehearsed, not moderated and
edgy. But can you make money at social network sites?

Actually, monetizing traffic from these sites is surprisingly easy. Each
social site has a defined topic of interest. You can find a list of some of
the current sites and their topics at
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites.

The most popular and well-known site is MySpace. This is a network with a
general topic list. You'll find people talking about anything from
marketing to dogs to marriage and golf. And you'll find people who have
very little training who are easily earning $25.00 to $100.00 a day.

Social networks are rivaling Google for the highest number of hits per day.
The traffic is targeted. When users register they input information like
age, city, gender, and children. When they build their profiles they can
include college information, education, favorite music, books or movies.
There is a section for people to describe themselves and who they'd like to
meet. Has the user arrived to meet friends or a date?

Interestingly these terms are also searchable. If you want to find every
man who enjoys heavy metal and rides Harley Davidson motorcycles you can do
it in a matter of seconds.
And, after you have found all the people who have the same interests, you
have the tools to interact and network with them. This gives you the
opportunity to send them to your newest, find affiliate sites or tell them
about your own web business.

Be careful though. You should never be seen or perceived as a spammer.
This is a unique, highly communicative community. If you intentionally or
unintentionally send bulletins or communications without high quality
information it won't be long before everyone in your interest group drops
you as a friend.

Instead build a list of like-minded people. Find out what is troubling them
or the problems they experience. Help them to solve their problems. Good
marketing starts with the desire to help others. You reap what you sow. By
giving people answers to their problems they will reciprocate. It's just
human nature to try to repay a kind deed.

The money is in the list or so the story has gone for many years both online
and offline. The real question is how many on the list before you can make
money? The new wave in Internet Marketing now stresses not just the number
on the list but the quality of the leads. In the social network sites it's
also about your relationship with your friends. You'll make quite a bit
more money from a targeted list of 500 friends than 10,000 randomly selected
people.

If the objective is a tightly selected group of people how can you optimize
your time and energies? Instead of developing one large list consider
several medium lists with different targeted niches. Since your messages
will contain high quality information about their topic of interest you will
have a better response rate or conversion rate. You will be a real person
and not just a name on a list.

Making and adding friends to your list couldn't be easier.
There are actually several ways to get this done initially.
MySpace has a search function to find people interested in your niche. You
then send them a friend request. Once you find several targeted people
search through their friends since they probably have people in their list
who have similar interests.

You can post high quality comments on other people's profiles with a note
about your page. Include a comment that people can find more information on
your social network blog and by becoming your friend. You can also become
active in the forums and groups. Becoming an active participant who
delivers quality content will attract new friends to your page.

You can build partnerships and relationships with people who already have a
large list of targeted people. They have done the work and a recommendation
from someone they know is a powerful technique.

You may like them, you may hate them or you may know nothing about them but
social networking sites are here to stay. They are fertile ground for any
astute marketer who is interested in helping people and making friends.

Jo Han Mok is a #1 bestselling author and frequent featured speaker at
Internet Marketing bootcamps and conferences.
Visit his website for a simple step-by-step plan to profit online in 21 days
or less!
http://www.SuperFastProfit.com