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Today I found an interesting email in my inbox, the subject line reads:

Britney Spears + YouTube = $311.50 In 14 Days‏

Perfect subject line given the venture I just began. Inside the email there was a link to a report about how this guy made an impressive $311.50 in just two weeks.
This strategy is so simple that his report is only two pages long!

This is the simple concept behind it:

• Download a popular video using vixy.net (Britney Spears: Give Me More)
• Add a watermark that reads something like : GET THIS FREE TONE: VISIT WWW.RINGTONE-BLA-BLA.COM
• Have that domain redirect to an affiliate offer, in this case maxbounty or jamster.
• Add a link in the description box. Include the "http://" to make the link active.
• Tag the hell out of it to get more views, more traffic and more money!

Easy!
However, this video was taken down due to copyright laws after 14 days. He won't loose money though.

I can't help but imagine that Joe Tierney could've made a lot more money had he uploaded the video to several video sites using the technology of tubemogul.com. Tubemogul takes your video and uploads it to 13 other video hosting sites.This would have broadened Joe's reach and could've potentially made him a lot more money! Obviously, Youtube is king and the concept would make far more money through Youtube than any other video website simply because it's the leader.

In future posts, I will give a tutorial on how to upload one video to thirteen sites in 5 minutes!

I think this is a perfect example of how you can make money from social networking sites like Myspace, Youtube, etc. Once I give this a go, I will post my results here. You can read Joe Tierney's full report here or visit his website here!

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Covering Ground...

Emails:

Today I set up my email accounts and my zenbe email account. Now all my email configuration and correspondence is in the one place. I strongly recommend zenbe.com. As well as redirecting your mail, you can keep calenders and to do lists, etc.

Decisions:

I also decided on three social networking sites I will market on. I wrote about them in a previous post, (read it here) I have left the fourth social networking site to you, you decide by voting in the poll on the sidebar! The reason I have decided to do this is because it's just to difficult to decide. There are so many sites! So I narrowed the options down to xanga, habbo, netlog and livejournal. Please Vote!

Research Continues:

I came across a few articles about affiliate marketing on myspace but I have decided it's a stupid idea. Direct affiliate marketing is against the rules of myspace and can have you permanently deleted. My method includes sending myspace users to my niche site and then have affiliate links there. Direct affiliate marketing on myspace could be dangerous.

I read a few articles about facebook marketing, nothing really different in the concept, just carried out in a different location and a slightly smaller population. I think the competition on facebook is less competitive than myspace, it seems that anyone who was or is doing this on myspace is starting to do it on facebook.

Seed Planted:
I took a step back and looked at my plan and realized that setting up four accounts on each of myspace, bebo and facebook at this early stage could be too much. I am going to take this slowly and one step at a time. Its always good to stand back and take another look at your plan. So today I setup three profiles; one on myspace, one on bebo and another on facebook. I gathered some content like pictures, videos etc to add to them. I haven't added the content because I was pushed for time today!


Ning:
I first came across ning a couple of months ago and thought it was quite confusing. Today I decided to take a closer look at it and see what it can do. For those of you who don't know what ning is, it's a social networking site within a social networking site. The user can create a network dedicated to anything he/she likes and build a community about it. You can add forums, blogs, videos, photos. I am going to test this on my niche and see how it performs. Will keep you posted!


Tomorrow:

• Customize my newly established myspace, bebo and facebook profiles.
• Add some generic content, photos, videos, etc...
• Customize pages to look unique.
• Add ten friends on each profile and investigate FriendBlaster Pro.
  

If you're becoming interested in myspace marketing please subscribe or follow me on twitter!

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In this post I'm going to discuss the social networking websites I have decided to target and why.

In deciding which sites to use I looked at:

• Members and traffic
• Usability
• Accessibility- How easy is it to market and promote on these sites
• Customizability and design- How can I customize and modify my page for more effective marketing?
• Competition- Who else is marketing and profiting from these sites?

As I stated in my Getting Started Post, I will be using Myspace and Bebo and another two. Here are my decisions and why. I used this wikipedia article , that listed all the social networking sites and their stats. I Recommend you have a look. Also, I have excluded youtube from my list because I will be looking at that in a different way. That doesn't mean I have forgotten it!

1) Myspace:

Market leader with 245,000,000 profiles, myspace spans a global

demography that is simply impossible to ignore.

On top of that the profiles, although they are ugly, are very customizable, which in return makes it easier to promote my bridge sites. The use of broadcast messages are vital to the myspace marketing concept.

Competition: The amount of marketers on myspace is unknown, but clearly myspace is the most targeted website by marketers because of the vast amount of members, making the competition tough.

Plan: Create Four profiles, each profile will have a different marketing approach, i.e. promotion method, content type, relationship etc. Hopefully, this will determine what approach works best for any other ventures that may arise if this one proves successful. Also I must take a look at groups and develop one.

2) Bebo:

Predominately european based, bebo has in excess of 40,000,000 active users. Having briefly used some social networking sites, I think that bebo is the best in terms of design, function and enjoyment. However, the commenting system works differently to myspace, html is forbidden making it harder to market through comments. That said the group profiles that can be created often attract hundreds of thousands of members. Many of the groups that have vast amount of members are never capitalized on, this is one of the reasons I believe that the competition on bebo maybe be irrelevant or non-existent.

Plan: Create three profiles and two groups. The groups will fall under my niche and serve as a stepping stone to my bridge sites. As with my myspace plan , each profile I setup will follow a different approach and promotion route to determine the best one.

3) Facebook

124,000,000 million profiles strong, large amount of students, which suites my niche and I hate it. But it's simply to huge to ignore.

I am sure I will get used to it and maybe it will prove to be the most effective site to promote on. An aspect that does appeal to me is the facebook flyer program which I will discuss in later posts.

Plan: Create two profiles, add friends, basic content and promote my bridge sites. This plan will become more clear with facebook once I begin with it.

4) You decide.

Choosing these sites was quite difficult. Every social networking site covers some sort of area that another doesn't. So I have decided to let you decide. I have added a poll in the sidebar and I would love if you voted to help me decide. The poll will close in a month. I have broken the options down to 4; Xanga, habbo, netlog and livejournal.

Please leave a comment on this post stating which one of those 4 you think is the best and why.

Remember this is just the beginning. Eventually I will drop sites and add more depending on results.

Interested in myspace marketing? Subscribe or follow me on twitter

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A productive day of research!




Explanation
After re-reading my posts from yesterday I realised that it isn't clear to the reader what I plan to do.
So here is a simple explanation:

1. Create myspace, bebo etc accounts.
2. Add lots of Friends.
3. Send them to your site(s). For simplicity reasons we'll call these bridge sites.
   
4. Monetize your bridge site(s) with affiliates and advertising.

It's a three step process that converts the traffic of myspace into profitable traffic by directing that traffic through the bridge site.

Maybe that appears too simple, but that is the basic concept behind it.

Youtube
Yesterday, I also realised that I forgot youtube and although it may not be a social networking site like myspace, it is still one of the largest user based websites. I decided that I will also have youtube accounts as a form of promotion.

So today I set-up up a you tube account. I will add basic videos and tag the hell out of them to see if I can send some of the traffic to my bridge site(s)

CrackTheMySpaceCode.com
I haven't properly investigated this website because it still seems to be in development. However, the concept behind it is quite confusing. They seem to be selling some sort of product but it is unclear what they are actually selling. I will post updates once it makes more sense to me. Something that isn't black and white from the beginning is normally not a good thing.

Interesting Articles Read:
DoshDosh: 10 ways to make money with myspace
CNN: Making Friends-and money-on myspace
wikihow: How to make money using Myspace
EzineArticles: Make Money on Myspace
Yaro Starak Podcast: Interview with Myspace marketing expert Steve Iser
Check out Steve iser's blog here

Video Research:
I watched a few videos on youtube but many of them are flashing images of dollars, linking to spammy, trashy websites. Here is the best video I found today...


Tomorrow

• Create Email accounts and direct them to a master account (zenbe)
• Create 4 accounts on Bebo and myspace.
• Decide on two other social networking sites to target.
  

Leave your comments or suggestions! Also you can follow me on twitter.

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As with most projects a brief period of planning and research is required to lay a strong foundation for the subsequent venture...




I have assigned my self three days of research in which I will further explore:

• My niche and how to monetize it.
• Social networking sites that I should target.
• Other people's venture into monetizing social networking.
• Look at software that can speed up the process of adding friends, etc...

E-mail correspondence
I will create five email accounts. Four for the various social networking sites (gmail) and one with a site called zenbe which allows me to direct all of my emails to the one place. This should increase my productivity and allow me to save time. Effectively having four emails in one.
If that sounds like too much work, you could use a mail client provided by your web host but I find them quite ineffective to be honest...

Profiles
I will then create three accounts on four social networking sites. I have not yet decided which sites I will use. However, I am certain that I will be using Myspace and Bebo. Myspace is clearly the market leader with 230 million profiles. I have chosen bebo because It is a common social networking site in Europe with over 20 million active profiles. I will be writing a post on what sites I chose and why later on.

The profiles will be pretty simple and I will add some basic content before I start connecting with friends as to avoid appearing fake or spam like.

Sites:
The sites to which I direct traffic to will be planned out. I will write content that will appear on these sites, create pages and look at how to monetize them etc. I will aim to have these prepared one week after I open the myspace profiles etc...

Daily Updates:
If making money through social networking and myspace marketing is something that appeals to you then stay tuned! I will be posting frequent updates on my experiences!

Your Views:
I want to hear your views and suggestions! So leave me a comment or Follow me on twitter

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My Mission:

The goal here is to funnel social networking/media traffic to other websites in order to make money, either through contextual advertising or affiliate marketing.

Read it again.


How?
The process involves creating several profiles on several social networking sites, adding friends, adding generic content and turning the traffic from these profiles into profitable traffic by pointing them in the direction of my site(s).

Each profile will follow a different route to determine which method or approach works best. A process similar to trial and error, in order to identify the formula that proves most profitable.

The sites to which I will direct the traffic will be developed with similar content that falls under one niche. These sites will differ in the way they are monetized to determine what works out more profitable. I will not release any details that may compromise my research and skew the results.

As well as creating my own sites I will use the likes of blogger, freewebs, weebly etc....
Eventually, I aim to drop some of these sites to determine the most profitable ones and focus on them.


I would love to hear your views and experiences with monetizing social networking. Leave me a comment and a link to your blog if you have one. You can follow me on twitter to stay tuned!

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Hello and welcome to my journey into making money from the forever popular social networking sites!

I am student in Europe who has realised that the internet is a gateway to many money making prospects. However, taking the first step is the tricky part of any money making venture.
I have been researching many methods of making money on-line. I have tried some half heartedly and failed. I looked at affiliate marketing amongst many other methods of making money online and realised that to really succeed you must really commit.

With this blog I will be discussing social networking sites as a form of money making. Myspace and many other social networking site have many millions of users all under one roof. My aims with this experiment is to learn how to monetize these ever growing sites and hopefully earn some money.

If you have any experiences with making money from social networking site please leave me a comment with your questions or suggestions......Or Why not Follow me on Twitter!

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