It is no surprise that social networks are some of the most frequently visited websites on the internet. This also means that the majority of internet users all end up in these central locations, and is great if you are looking to make money. Here are three ways you can make money via social networks:

1. Advertising. Whether on FaceBook, MySpace or whatever (except Twitter), you can make money from advertising. Whether you want to handle advertising for another company, and charge them a fee, or you want to advertise your own services, this is a great way to make money online. FaceBook ads are especially targeted, because they know a lot about their users and target down the demographic to exactly what you are looking for.
2. Developing Apps. Apps are the new craze on social networks. If you are app developer, there are many ways you can make money. One way to do this is to develop apps and place advertising on the app. Whether from Google AdSense or from private advertising, you can make a lot of money from Apps. You can also get your app sponsored if you find the right company, and they can pay you to develop the apps.
3. Lastly, you can sell items on sites like FaceBook. Use FaceBook marketplace to find some junk and sell it. This is the quickest and easiest way to make money using a social network: selling stuff.

If you get creative, there are countless ways to make money using a social network. All you have to keep in mind is to spread the word and get the information out to as many people possible. The more traffic, the more money!

FaceBook groups are one of the most popular features on FaceBook. It allows an administrator (or few administrators) to gather up all interested people and place them into one common page where they can view the page, look at pictures, communicate with each other and get updates about the group. FaceBook groups have several uses, whether it is for business or for a personal reason. Here are three reasons to use FaceBook groups:

1. You want to promote yourself. If you are an artist, FaceBook groups are great for promoting your cause. For instance, a musician can post up information about his/her upcoming events, album information, song demos, and pictures. They also allow members to communicate with each other, creating a stronger following.
2. Businesses can use FaceBook groups to promote a product. You can post up information about your product, pictures, demonstration, reviews, etc. By putting together users of the product, you can start support threads where users help each other. This will create stronger branding and promote your product, resulting in more money for your company.
3. If you are part of a non-profit organization, it is great to put together events and fundraisers. You get together everyone who supports your cause, and they can talk to each other and you can communicate with them. It will help you get ideas of what to do next, how to make more money, and encourage group members to donate more money to your cause.

FaceBook groups are especially great for getting to know your customers. You basically gather up all of your target market in one group, and you can research other behaviors, such as what else they are interested in, who else, where they’re from, etc.

FaceBook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube are definitely the top dogs when it comes to social networks, but it didn’t start there. There are hundreds of social networks on the internet. Some are very broad, like hi5 and Orkut, while others are very specific like Model Mayhem. Here are 3 social networks you should definitely know about:

1. hi5. hi5 is just like MySpace and FaceBook. It is catered towards teenagers and young adults and is very user friendly and safe. hi5 has been around just as long as MySpace has been around, and has millions of members. It is great for networking amongst friends and colleagues.
2. SoundClick. SoundClick is for musicians and you can upload and sell your music. It’s great for musicians who are trying to make their buzz bigger by allowing fans to hear all of their music. There is no upload limit, so you can just upload as many songs as you wish. It’s also a great place for listeners to find new music. SoundClick has charts, broken down to every niche genre, so you can find all the new music you want to.
3. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social network catered to business professionals for networking. This is great for entrepreneurs and professionals who are looking for like-minded people to conduct business with. Whether you want to start a business, want consultation, or want to find a trading partner, LinkedIn is definitely the site you should be on if you are in business.

There are so many social networks popping up everyday. Ning.com allows users to create their own social networks on topics which they choose. Odds are that if you have an idea of a social network you would like to join, there is one available out there. A simple Google search should help you find it!

One of the great things about social networks is the friendliness it has towards artists. Soundclick and MySpace were the first to really be artist-friendly, but FaceBook tagged along afterwards. As artists, promotion is key. To gain fans, you must make sure that your work is out there and easily accessible. Social networks made it easy for artists to put their stuff out there to the public, and fans were able to pass it on to other fans, creating a chain reaction.

The first social network you should sign up as an artist for is MySpace. Whether you are an actor, musician, comedian, fashion designer, or whatever, MySpace is the first social network to sign up for. You can create your profile, put your portfolio/demo/reel up and start befriending like-minded people. This will help you network and get your name out there.

The second social network to sign up for is twitter. Once you are on twitter, you can start following people you admire, as well as start gaining followers. On twitter you can make announcements and get to know your fans better through micro-blogging. It is important that in this day you start a twitter account.

Lastly, make a FaceBook fan page. A FaceBook fan page will help you gather all your fans and act as a portfolio of your work. Your fans can see each other, befriend each other, and make your buzz bigger. It also helps you get to know your fans better and in the long run will help you with marketing.

Frequently update all of your social network profiles and stay active in the community. Engage in discussions with your fans and get to know them, this will help you make your buzz bigger and create loyal fans.

Make sure that on each social network profile, you provide a link to your other profiles. This will help you gain friends in all of your profiles and help you make your buzz bigger.

YouTube is one of the top 5 most frequently visited websites on the internet (along with MySpace and FaceBook, respectively). One of the great things about YouTube is that it’s visual, but it is also a social network. You can comment, make friends, instant message each other, etc. YouTube implements more and more features of a social network all the time. It is also a great tool for promotion. You can promote almost anything on YouTube and make it entertaining at the same time. Here are some tips for promoting using YouTube:

• If you run a business, you can make a video of your products on YouTube. You can demonstrate how to use the product, you can create advertisements for the product, put testimonials up, etc. All of these videos are visual and are easier to hold the attention of a potential customer than a written ad.
• If you are an artist, you can demonstrate your work on YouTube. For example: if you are a musician, you can put a music video up. If you are a comedian, you can put segments of you act on YouTube. If you are a painter, you can get creative and create a video of yourself painting a picture on YouTube.
• YouTube is also great for corporate activities among your employees. Instead of having to train employees individually, you can put private videos on YouTube and train your employees. Also, you can put meetings up, any notices, anything visual.

YouTube is powerful and entertaining. Humans employ more than one of their senses when watching YouTube videos, they watch and listen at the same time. Comment on related videos with a link back to your videos, or do “video replies”.

Blogging can be great for some extra money. I still get around $300-$500 a month off of my blog, which I work on 30 minutes twice a week! To monetize your blog, there are a few things you will need to do to maximize the revenue you will make. Here are a few tips I can give you:

• Use Google AdSense! AdSense is great for easy money. People click and you get paid, as easy as that! Google automatically puts up ads that are relative to the content on your website.
• Use WordPress on your own host and buy a .com domain! This will make your website look a lot more professional, plus, you have no limits on how much you want to monetize your blog.
• Register for Clickbank and find some products that are relative to the content on your blog and would appeal to your target demographic.
• Connect with similar blogs, leave comments and encourage them to leave comments on your blog. This will encourage discussions, resulting in more traffic, and more money for you.
• Once your traffic is high and steady, approach companies that sell products in your target demographic. Tell them you are willing to offer private ad space. This is the most lucrative method of making money on your blog.
• Offer companies reviews of their products for a fee. This is an easy couple hundred dollars you can make.
• Sign up for Amazon Associates and place relative products on your blog’s sidebar, and within posts.
• Sign up for Aweber or GetResponse and build a mailing list. Mailing lists look great to private advertisers and provide you with another potential source of revenue.

Blogging is fun. I am a blogger, so trust me, it’s fun! People blog for a variety of reasons; some do it to promote a product, some do it to promote themselves, some do it for the love of writing, some do it to make money. There are a million reasons to blog, all you got to do is find yours! I personally blog for two reasons; because I enjoy it, and because I want to promote myself as a writer. When I started blogging, I used some free platforms, but eventually moved on to buying my own host and server and began to use another platform. Here are three popular blogging platforms:

1. Blogger. Blogger is popular because Google made it popular. This free service is great for the aspiring blogger who wants to start building a fan base without risking anything. Blogger provides you with a subdomain (yourname.blogger.com) and a bunch of different templates to customize your blog. You can add a couple of ad revenue sources if you want to make money, but essentially, it’s for bloggers who are just starting.
2. MySpace. MySpace is great to blog on: it’s easy to network with a community and you can post a whole bunch of stuff on your page! Although MySpace is associated with artists, it is also great for the aspiring writer looking to network.
3. WordPress. WordPress is my weapon of choice. Whether you choose the free version, or download the source code and put it on your host, it is one of the most powerful and easiest to use blogging platforms available. This site is actually running off of WordPress and it’s not even a blog, put it that way! WordPress has a ton of plug ins available, and I personally recommend downloading the source code, putting it on your own host and buying a domain to use it to its maximum potential.

These are just three blogging platforms available, there are literally hundreds out there. So, look around, choose a platform, and start blogging!

MySpace is awesome, and was awesome even before Tila Tequila made it famous! It is really catered to the individual more than the company. I’ve had a MySpace account since 2005, and was addicted. Then FaceBook and all these other social networks came along, so I started spreading my time out across these networks and found that MySpace had a lot of strengths in many areas. Here are 4 reasons to use MySpace:

1. If you are any type of artist, MySpace is for you! You can put samples of your work on your MySpace page and you can connect with countless like-minded individuals!
2. You are a company looking for some inexpensive talent. If you need a musician do make you a jingle, or a aspiring filmmaker to film you a commercial, MySpace is the place to be! You can find tons of artists and look through them to pick and choose which one you want to go with.
3. You are a company who wants to promote a product. MySpace Groups can help you create a product page full of information, and invite people to that group.
4. You are a blogger looking to network easily. You can post your blogs on MySpace and connect with friends. This will make your blogs very interactive and the community will be able to take part in them. Also, with MySpace bulletin boards, it is easy to blast information to all your friends. Think of Twitter, but with longer messages!

MySpace is especially useful for the artists, but is also useful for companies. Connect with people via MySpace!

Using Twitter for your business is a very effective method of promotions, organization and sales. The idea of Twitter is so simple, a couple sentences blasted out to numerous followers. This technique helps you make announcements and broadcast them to your employees, partners and customers. Here are 5 ways to use twitter for your business:

1. Promote your upcoming products, reviews, promotions and any other information to your followers.
2. Post information about projects for your employees so that everyone can be up to date with what is going on in the workplace. This is especially effective if you have many employees who work from mobile offices, as they can check the twitter page every now and then to get an update on what is going on.
3. Auction products via twitter. Get customers to reply to you with their bids and whatnot. This will help everyone stay in the loop.
4. Use twitter for customer service. Allow customers to tweet you with their questions, and you can reply via twitter. Eventually this can turn into a Frequently Asked Questions column.
5. Build relationships with your clients, partners and employees. By using twitter, you are being more personal with these people and can build a good relationship. Your customers will feel like they know you and will stay in contact with you more. In turn, this will make it easier to promote and pitch products, resulting in more revenue for your business.

These are just a few ideas on how to use twitter to promote your business. For more information, check out the Social Media Fire eBook!

FaceBook recently beat out MySpace for the most popular social network. With hundreds of millions of people on FaceBook, it is very easy to network. On my FaceBook account, I have over 400 friends, many of whom I grew up with, went to high school and college with, and family I didn’t even know I have. I am part of my company’s network, and am connected with all the other employees who work with me.

FaceBook is very useful for networking and promotion. One of the key tools to promoting is the FaceBook groups and Fan Page features. Another useful feature in FaceBook is the paid-advertising. FaceBook collects a lot of detailed information about its users, making the advertising extremely targeted.

Here is a breakdown of the three different methods you can use FaceBook for:

• Groups: Groups are great for putting together a lot of active people. This is good for businesses looking to gather all of its employees in one collective group so that everyone can bounce ideas off of each other and be updated about the company. It allows for a lot of collaboration and contribution between members.
• Fan Pages: These are for companies literally looking for fans. If you have a lot of customers who want updates on products and more information about your products, this is what you are looking for. Put together a fan page and spread the word!
• Advertising: FaceBook advertising is great for targeted marketing. You can specify the age, location, gender, interests, and much more all within FaceBook advertising! This is for the marketers who are looking to sell, because it gets pretty expensive at times.