Despite the controversy about predators lurking on social networking sites, these sites are setting a new trend when it comes to making money online. One such site leading the pack is Yuwie. Similar to the others like MySpace, Facebook, FriendsWin, hi5, and Xianz, to name a few, Yuwie has the distinction of being the only one to pay its members for what they normally do for free on the other sites.

In less than a month after I joined, I made a whopping $0.13, not much by any standards, but it was $0.13 more than I had when I began. And I've never seen a site grow its membership so rapidly! In that same period of time, my friend list multiplied daily to the point I had accumulated over 100 friends. At the time I'm writing this article, mid-November, about two months later, I now have well over 1,200 friends.

What's making Yuwie lead the pack like it is? It's a smart marketing strategy known as revenue-sharing. See, rather than investing their profits into massive advertising, the management of Yuwie prefers to share it with their members who are actually doing the hands-on, floor-walking, floor-pounding, door-knocking marketing activities that bring in new members. Consequently, these activities help to build a super-sturdy, super-active social networking site that advertisers would kill for. Imagine this: The more members interact with each other, the more advertising opportunities there are for advertisers. Thus, with increased social networking activities come increased advertisers. This is where the profit rates expand and the increased sharing rates go to the members.

So, what makes a Yuwie member's site successful (translation: the one that brings the most friends to it and keeps them fully interacting with each other)? Here are some of the ways successful members have increased their friendship rates:

* The first thing they do is to make their profile (page) worthy of viewing. They immediately put up a picture of themselves, their kids, their dogs, their cats, or anything because as the saying goes, "A picture is worth a thousand words." And prospective friends tend to become friends with those who have pictures.

* Next they obtain a layout that is aesthetically appealing. They search for what they like and what looks appealing to their prospects. Then they add pictures, videos, guestbooks, or anything they wish to keep their page fresh, interactive, and family-friendly. For protection and privacy, they do not put anything personal on their page. They take safety and privacy into serious consideration. They think "Safety First!".

* They accept all friend requests and they add as many friends as they possibly can. They know that the more friends they have, the more page views they’ll get.

* They are permanent students. They look for opportunities to learn from the pros. They look for online prospects who have lots of friends and join them.

* They join groups, called clubs. They look at their friends' profiles to see what clubs they have joined and which ones might be of interest to them.

* They always reply to comments and messages from their friends and prospects. They practice what they preach because they know when people take the time to give them page views by leaving comments and/or messages, they always return the favor and comment or message them back.

* They keep in touch with their downline, their recruits (known as referrals). They know that a big part of being successful with Yuwie is in being a leader and in training their referrals so that they know what to do to make money. They know that when their recruits make money, they make money. Because they also know that inactive referrals don’t make anyone money, they focus a major portion of their time training their referrals. If they don't have the time to training adequately, they ask a reliable and trusted friend to help get them started.

* They post blogs and create clubs to generate more page views. They constantly look for great ways to send people to their page, get more friend requests, and increase your page views.

* Finally, they spend another major portion of their time recruiting, recruiting, recruiting! This is probably the most important thing they would say they do.

So, what a combination! Yuwie has the busiest, most-member interactive social networking site! Advertisers get large numbers of prospects to whom they can show their goods and services. Yuwie has a high-quality, hyper-active social networking site to offer its advertisers. And members make tons of new friends from all over the world and, most importantly, they get paid! A triple win situation if ever I saw one! If you're serious about being a part of this new money-making trend, www.yuwie.com/ is the place to be.

© MMVII, Etienne A. Gibbs, MSW,