Right now, most successful internet marketers are involved at some level, with social networking. The emphasis here is on the word ‘networking’. These sites are not platforms for you to blatantly promote your product or opportunity. The general idea is to interact with others, getting to know them, exchanging ideas and knowledge and then eventually being in a position to share information about your business with them.

Every day new social networking sites are being created. However, right now the most popular are Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. A new up-and-coming site is BetterNetworker. The people behind this site are Mike Dillard and Perry Belcher. It is my prediction that by this time next year, BetterNetworker will be receiving a very large piece of the social networking pie.

TWITTER — This is a free social networking and micro-blogging service. It allows it’s users to send and read other users updates. These are called ‘tweets’. They are only in text form and you are limited to 140 characters in length per post. This can challenge your copywriting skills. You can connect Twitter and Facebook to enable you to post your ‘tweets’ on your Facebook page also.

FACEBOOK — It is also a free website that is privately owned and operated by Facebook Inc. Within Facebook you can join networks that are organized by city, workplace, school or region, to connect and interact with others. You can add ‘friends’ and send them messages. You can also upload pictures and short video. Facebook attracted 132.1 million unique visitors in June, 2008.

MY SPACE — This is another free site with an interactive network of friends, blogs, groups, personal profiles, video, photos and music. It is international, as are the other social networking sites mentioned here. Back in June of 2006, MySpace was the most popular networking site in the U.S. It was taken over in popularity by Facebook in April, 2008. It still attracts, however, approximately 230,000 new users per day.

BETTERNETWORKER — The latest social networking site that appears to be headed for major success was created by Mike Dillard. His partner in this endeavour is Perry Belcher. These are two very successful internet marketing gurus. Their site is dedicated to providing great content amongst its users. To date, I have been very impressed with the quality of the posts on BetterNetworker. They also police their site to ensure that spammers are identified and thrown out.

A word of caution when it comes to using these sites…..many useless hours can be spent reading through posts, blogs, watching videos etc. Some people think that it is a quick fix to adding hundreds of people to your mailing list and it definitely is not. However, if done right it can produce great results. A good friend of mine has developed a very large following on Twitter and recently he sent a ‘tweet’ about a new opportunity. His followers went to the recommended site and a week or so later my friend had earned in excess of $40,000.00 in affiliate commissions. This was his reward for building a large group of followers who trusted, respected and liked him.

A great percentage of the top producers involved in internet marketing can be found on these social networking sites. One would have to assume that if they are willing to put their time into these sites, then they have to be lucrative in the end. If this is done properly, then it can definitely reap very rich rewards.