The popularity of social networking websites like Facebook and YouTube have exploded in recent years. In fact, it is estimated that Facebook currently has a membership base of 25 million in North America alone. Web-based businesses are sitting up and taking notice. Online marketing via social networks has increased the profiles of many web-based businesses.

The sheer numbers of members on many of these sites are the primary reason that businesses are choosing them as part of their internet marketing strategies. The concept is similar to advertising on television: the more popular a show, the more viewers that can be reached with ads. The difference between the two types of advertising, however, is more advantageous to internet marketing.

Television advertisers pay a flat-rate based upon the popularity of the shows or times during which it airs. For instance, daytime ads may be cheaper than prime time advertising. Advertisers pay the same rate, even if 300,000 viewers leave the room during the commercial and never actually see it. Social network online marketing advertisers generally pay only when their ads are actually viewed (pay-per-click or PPC). This ensures that the ads are viewed by users genuinely interested in the product or service. This typically leads to increased website traffic and better quality hits.

Besides being cost effective, advertising on social websites have other advantages:

* Targeted advertising. Rather than trying to entice the masses of computer users and garnering few quality hits, targeted advertising reaches a specific audience. Squidoo, another social networking website, may be a prime example of this. Squidoo allows members to build a single hosted web-page on whatever topic is the user's passion. Subsequently, advertiser's ads appear on pages which are related to their product or service. This reaches users likely to be interested in their offers. Websites which sell products related to outdoor extreme sports may be matched to pages on mountain biking or rock climbing. Ads on these pages will garner more hits than if they appeared on pages about cooking or parenting.

* More opportunities for free advertising. Some social networking sites discourage users from building pages specifically for advertising purposes. However, many of them allow for the posting and sharing of links and videos which can be beneficial for advertising. Getting your URL posted around the Internet helps search engines find your site and index it more quickly. Hyperlinks to your page from other web pages also boost page rank. All of these things help Internet users find your site easily.

YouTube has become a cheap way to advertise. And while it's still by and large a good place to find amateur video, it has also become a place for businesses to post video ads.

Smaller web-based businesses have come to rely heavily on these types of internet marketing strategies to increase online traffic. They are fairly affordable, and even profitable, if they produce the intended results. It may take 2-3 months to make an accurate analysis of how well one or more of these strategies are working. It can be time-consuming to get started and monitor results, but it shouldn't take long to gauge the effectiveness of a particular method of internet marketing.