In the past couple of years social networks have made a huge splash in the internet arena. More people than ever are using services such as MySpace, Blogger, or Facebook. With the rise of the social internet the question has been asked? How can I make money and benefit from this surge? Facebook has risen to the occasion! There are a few simple steps you can take to capitalize and begin bringing in the extra dough you need!
First of all take a look at Facebook’s Marketplace. Marketplace is very similar to Craigslist and it allows you to post your odds and ends for sale. As sort of a virtual garage sale, Marketplace lets you put classified ads up to market you unwanted junk! Originally it was easier to find the marketplace but now Facebook has sort of hidden it. To get to the Marketplace simply go to http://facebook.com/marketplace. From there you can list your items and browse for more stuff you probably don’t need!
One great feature of Facebook Marketplace is the more friends you have the more people will see what you have to sell! Marketplace lists your items right on your profile so anyone looking at your latest mugshot will see your slightly new ceramic cats! If you are anything like some of us with hundreds of friends this can become a very lucrative enterprise for you! Start listing and bring in those bucks!
There are a few different applications that you can use to make your Marketplace selling even easier. Let’s take a look at some of them and consider their pros and cons:
CafePress :
CafePress, though not exclusively a Facebook application, is a great tool to design and create items to sell. Say you have a cool logo or saying that you think people might want to buy. By using CafePress you can create t-shirts, mouse pads, baseball caps, coffee mugs, even underwear with your design! The sky is virtually the limit on the number of things you can create and imprint. CafePress will allow you to set your own price and will subtract their cost and send you the rest! So for example if you wanted to sell your latest and greatest designer t-shirt for $29.99 and assuming that CafePress charged $10.00 to create the shirt you would profit the rest! That’s $19.99 profit for each one you sell. Pretty sweet deal if you ask me!
FlameTunes:
Are you a small band or even a band with a following and would like to sell your music? Even if you are a composer of ringtones and want to market your tones then FlameTunes might be the perfect application for you! With FlameTunes you upload your music, set your price, and rake in the dough! It is sort of an iTunes for Facebook.
Lemonade:
When you were a kid did you have your own lemonade stand? Many of us did, and even if you didn’t then you can have one now! The Lemonade application is based off its parent site Lemonade.com and allows you to select whatever products you want for your store and sell them at a profit. It is really easy to setup and will start making you money right away!

eBay:
Of course there is always the old standby eBay. They have taken advantage of the Facebook craze and developed their own application to sell your eBay merchandise straight from your Facebook profile. I don’t think I need to go into to details about how eBay works as most (if not all) of you have used eBay at some time or another. List your items on eBay and get your Facebook friends to bid!

All of these applications depend highly upon one thing-friends! The more friends you have on Facebook the higher your chances of selling your stuff. With millions of people who regularly visit Facebook your chances of getting hundreds of friends is very easy! Join a few groups that you are interested in and start adding people in those groups to your friends list. Before you know it you could have 500 or 1,000 friends who see you profile on a regular basis and might be interested in buying your stuff! Get started!