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Great Facebook applications to help you make money online

admin — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:23:26 +0000

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!

Generate Traffic to Your Site from Facebook

admin — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 10:59:17 +0000

Let’s admit it. Social web sites are here to stay and they generate tremendous amounts of visitors each day. You as a much smaller website would LOVE to have just a smidge of that traffic coming to you. You’re not asking for millions of visits (although millions would be WUNDERBAR!), you would like a few thousand or maybe even just a few hundred. How can you generate enough interest to get people coming to you? Good question! Let’s analyze a few possible strategies and see where they might lead (hopefully to money!).
Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Friendster, Technorati, and the many other social sites generate tons of traffic. There are some effective strategies that you can begin employing NOW to get them visitors on those sites to your site. This might mean new subscribers and page impressions that you can then turn around and sell to advertisers. Or it might also mean that people purchase your product or service. That can’t be a bad thing!
Let’s take a look specifically at Facebook which happens to be one of the hottest social sites on the internet today. If you have a blog on your site (and you should!) you can take advantage of some free tools to syndicate your blog posts to your profile. Anytime someone sees you profile they will see your blog posts and often times will click through to your site. Depending on the software that runs your blog you will have to use a different tool:
• Wordpress – One of the most used blogging tools is Wordpress and there fortunately is a Facebook application that links directly to your Wordpress site. You’ll need to download the plugin to your own web site to interface directly. It is called Wordbook (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordbook/). Once copied to your plugins folder and activated you’ll click a link that takes you to Facebook. The application on Facebook will give you a code to identify your personal blog which you’ll enter into the plugin. Once this is done your site and Facebook will now communicate! Now whenever anybody sees your profile they’ll also see you “mini-feed”. Notice that the plugin only works with future blog posts and not ones that have already been posted. One limitation is that you can only add one blog. Make sure to add friends and socialize with these friends so they will see your blog posts. Otherwise you’ll sit in obscurity!
• If you use Blogger it is very simple to set up your mini-feed. Just go to the Facebook applications page (http://www.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=13253871830&ref=s) and add the application. Click into settings and provide your blogger login details and voila! You now have added your Blogger blog to your profile!
• TypePad – TypePad has also gotten into the Facebook game with an application of its own! (http://www.new.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=13253871830&ref=s) This, like the application for blogger, will interface directly with your TypePad account and add feeds to your profile. The nice thing about this tool, called Blog It, is you can post and share your content across multiple platforms with only one click! Whether you blog using TypePad, Vox, Movable Type, LiveJournal, Blogger, Tumblr, WordPress.com or WordPress.org, or micro-blog using Twitter, Pownce or your Facebook status, now you can update everything via one easy-to-create post on Facebook. Plus, when you post using Blog It, you can ensure all your friends and contacts know about your post regardless of where they follow you on the web.
The key to all of these tools is that unless you put a little work into being sociable they really won’t help you much. You need to do some of the legwork and get to know people. You don’t have to be drinking buddies with the hundreds of people you might add as friends on Facebook, but you should at least join some groups or causes to become known. My own Facebook account has over three hundred friends and I know personally about ten of them. I came to know them through various groups that I joined and causes on Facebook that I support. You will never earn a single cent or generate a single visitor to your site unless you are willing to do some extra work. The upside is, however, that once you start you might actually enjoy it. The more sociable you become the better your results! Let’s get to know each other!

How to Benefit from Social Media Marketing

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:23:09 +0000

Before we can even discuss the benefits of social media marketing we first need to understand just what the heck it is! These days terms such as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and SMM (Social Media Marketing) are being thrown around and just about nobody knows just exactly what they are. This article won’t get into the whole SEO debate but we will take a look at SMM. SMM in a nutshell is using social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, or Blogger to sell your product or to promote your cause! SMM is less of direct advertising in the form of ads and more in the direction of conversational/word of mouth advertising. If you ask traditional marketers about the importance of effectiveness of SMM you will get the old line that it is unproven or untested. SMM does require some effort and if you don’t understand the pros and cons of SMM before using it you could be disappointed.

There are a few essential things you need to do in order to make SMM work for you:

Let your customers do the work – In an older context it was very important for the seller to communicate with the buyer and “sell” the buyer on the benefits of your product. Many hours could easily be wasted trying to convince potential buyers that your product was the best thing since sliced bread. This is no longer the accepted paradigm. Any successful internet marketer will tell you the most effective strategy is to get your existing customers talking to your prospective customers. I can tell you just how effective this is myself. I have several clients who are my biggest evangelists and bring me more business than I can ever find for myself. Just the other day I was at a meeting of local business owners and when the subject of my business came up (not mine specifically) one of my current customers said very vehemently that if they wanted things done right to come to me. I was a little embarrassed by this since the service I had performed wasn’t that substantial but the end result was I gained five new customers. These were customers that I had to do absolutely nothing to get! By doing a good job on your service or product your customers will promote you better than you can! Conversely if you do a bad job you will lose even more prospective customers because bad news spreads faster and further than good news.
Get people talking – Getting people to start talking isn’t all that difficult. Just suggesting a topic to someone can get a whole conversation going. Try it when you get a chance. It is quite simple to do! The hard part is directing that conversation toward your product or cause. This requires a bit more thought but can be done if you are willing to make the investment. So-called content marketing is using relationships to get your message across. Content marketing uses tools that are already around to people who are interested in hearing from you. By using opt-in services such as blogs, podcasts, videos and vlogs you can broadcast your message to thousands of potential customers. The key is the relationship. Make yourself known on these sites and let people become acquainted with you. Then when they need a product that you sell you are the first person they think of.
Discuss your product in a human voice – this might sound odd but it is very important! The best salespeople in the world are ones that can relate to you in a personal way. They have a story to tell and it draws you in, makes you curious, and makes you more eager to buy. You are asking someone to buy your service or product so be human with them! Good writing skills are important here as you want people to relate to you. Some might call this the snake-oil tactic of selling but it does in fact work! Your customer will respond to an amazing and authentic story faster than one that is filled with simple information. Soothe your potential clients ears!

There is no doubt that SMM requires some effort to actually be effective but it can be very effective if you are willing to invest the time necessary. Think back to some of the things you bought. Did you buy the product that simply listed its specs and was written in a very formal style? Or did you select the product that spoke straight to you? It is more likely you chose the latter, and your customers will too!

Facebook connect – Increase traffic by using the new Facebook API

admin — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:10:09 +0000

Facebook connect is another revolution the web 2.0 applications. With Facebook connect you can use your own Facebook profile ,friends and any other information in any third party website that implement the new Facebook API .Facebook connect is considered as a step towards the automation of users profile management through out the web. Now you can easily login to any website and import your Facebook profile information and privacy skipping the long and irritating registration process.

For third party websites Facebook connect is an opportunity to receive all the Facebook traffic generated just by one registered user. Imagine a Facebook user who will register at third party website with a list of 10 friends. Now the third party website has new 10 potential customers coming his way and the cycle goes on. Also these websites will be able to use Facebook features. Brilliant idea Facebook has innovated which will make Facebook indispensable for everyone using the web.

Here are just a few of the coming features of Facebook Connect:

Trusted Authentication
Users will be able to connect their Facebook account with any partner website using a trusted authentication method. Whether at login, or anywhere else a developer would like to add social context, the user will be able to authenticate and connect their account in a trusted environment. The user will have total control of the permissions granted.

Real Identity
Facebook users represent themselves with their real names and real identities. With Facebook Connect, users can bring their real identity information with them wherever they go on the Web, including: basic profile information, profile picture, name, friends, photos, events, groups, and more.

Friends Access
Users count on Facebook to stay connected to their friends and family. With Facebook Connect, users can take their friends with them wherever they go on the Web. Developers will be able to add rich social context to their websites. Developers will even be able to dynamically show which of their Facebook friends already have accounts on their sites.

Dynamic Privacy
As a user moves around the open Web, their privacy settings will follow, ensuring those users’ information and privacy rules are always up-to-date. For example, if a user changes their profile picture, or removes a friend connection, this will be automatically updated in the external website.

Facebook connect will be available for users within the next several weeks. Start enjoying surfing the web taking all your buddies with you everywhere you go.