Though Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn are indeed social, though they insist that the people who use the sites be social and not commercial, you can see clear evidence in all of the sites that there's a whole lot of marketing going on, and that the sites' owners are certainly making lots and lots of money on the periphery.
Of course, their first marketing activity is lead generation. They make anyone who wants to become a member sign up and provide at least their names and email addresses. In some instances, members give the sites the right to market to them directly, or perhaps to share their information with third parties to do the marketing for them. Though you don't receive many marketing messages from these services presently, read the privacy policies, you may be interested in what you find.
But that's not presently where the money is coming from. All of the sites run ads, with My Space being the most blatant advertiser. They hit you right in the face on the login page in a big way. There's a huge banner at the top of the page and a smaller one at the bottom. LinkedIn is more subtle but runs banner ads at the bottom of each page and an ad in the sidebar. Facebook doesn't run commercial ads on its front page, but it does collect revenue from pay-per-click ads posted by Facebook members and outside advertisers. All of the social networking sites make money. And the combined value is in the billions.
So, when Web 2.0 purists point out that the social media sites are not for commercial purposes, remind them that the services make money themselves. Otherwise, how could they possibly afford to do business? They have to pay for domain, hosting, technicians, and so on and it all happens behind the scenes. But those and other business expenses have to be paid. Even Facebook that only offers pay-per-click ads was predicted to pull in $230 million in 2009 by eMarketer. Staggering statistics?
Not really. Given the popularity of the social networking sites, that amount is bound to increase over time. Want to learn to use advertising online to create your own empire? Start right with the ListBuilding Club. We start your personal business with lead generation and a system that works. Learn to become as successful as you want to be, even compete with the social networking conglomerate, if that's your game. We can teach you how. Visit listbuilding.com and become a member today.
