Following on from yesterday I am going to discuss promoting your work through social networking sites and making some extra money through referrals. Sites such as Myspace and Facebook have grown exponentially and are now a resource that cannot be ignored. Anything that gives you a visible presence on the web is valuable.
These sites are exactly as described. They give you the opportunity to establish a network with like-minded people. Your profile is your shop window and your chance to advertise. In most cases you are able to embed HTML codes and link to your own sites. Take advantage.
If you are publishing with Helium and/or Associated Content, link to your work. Helium also has a valuable referral reward system which pays you 5% of the earnings of anyone you refer. Use the social network's search facilities to look for amateur writers, communicate with them and refer them. It's very effective and easy to do.
There are many such networks all with unique opportunities to take advantage of. I joined an online dating community and went to the trouble of answering 500 questions. Why? Because it made me a featured user and gets my journal entries displayed on the homepage. Links are possible on journal pages and with 3-10,000 users online at any time it's great exposure.
The site which is really capturing my interest at the moment is Yuwie. A relatively new social network, it actually PAYS its users to utilise the site. It is totally free and is essentially the same as any other network but it gives back a portion of advertising revenue to reward its members. It is based on page views. Every time you view a profile, even your own, or add content or send a message it counts. Whenever someone views your profile or pics it also counts. This is exactly what you would do with Facebook only this one allows you to earn while your doing it.
Yuwie also pay you for referrals up to 10% and through 10 levels. I have been playing around with it and although it's a little heavy on the ads, I can see no other catch. Apart from the fact they pay you there is no significant difference to the other networks. It has approaching 500,000 members and is growing rapidly. I watched the membership grow by 2000 today. I strongly urge anyone to take advantage.
You can use the link below to check it out. As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.
paid social networking, marketing, publishing, referrals
Sunday, 20 January 2008
Utilising Social Networks
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3 comments:
Will give it a look. Thanks for the heads up!
Re: Yuwie. The problem with the business model is the nature of advertising on the Internet. If you google the research on who clicks on ads, it is usually the same people who believe that they've won sweepstakes because the junk mail is pretty and shiny. Yuwie's going to have to indulge in that kind of advertising to make this work.
Furthermore, the trick to keeping costs down so that one can share revenue and still make a healthy profit involves cutting support and technical staff. We all know how buggy and problematic Myspace can be, and Myspace certainly does not share revenue. Does Yuwie really have something feasible going?
I'm not saying Yuwie can't work. But I am really, really skeptical of this sort of thing, because making a niche for oneself in anything online is so, so competitive. I think efforts are best focused on creating a web presence which reflects one's higher aspirations, i.e. start working towards the job one wants, by demonstrating what one knows and publicly working to know more.
But I'm nutty, so take everything I said with a grain of salt. I mean, I really believe that by writing a few things I can make people more informed, aware of better questions, and eager to learn more. So.
I love this site, I have been with them for a while but only recently became active a few months back because I wasn't sure about the site. When I finally realized that it was worth giving it a shot, I started making money and getting referrals. Now that I have enough referrals, I only have to be active a few days out of the week and still earn as much as I did when it was just me and a few referrals.
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