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.