Is Affiliate Marketing Safe For Social Networks?

Social networks, like YouTube, MySpace, and Flicker have taken the internet by storm.

One of the greatest challenges for most individuals and businesses is how to harness the enormous amount of traffic these sites are receiving and monetize it, either by growing their business through lead collection, or promoting either their own products, or affiliate products where they receive a commission.

Because of the social nature of the networking sites, the user community tends to frown upon promotion methods and many of the social network sites have included restrictions prohibiting promotion on their member pages.

However, there is one social network that is growing in popularity with business and individual internet marketers. This site is Squidoo.com, a simple concept similar to a blog, originated by author and speaker Seth Godin.

Squidoo is unique among social networks because it actually encourages members to use the site to promote products. Additionally, Mr. Godin actually recommends members to create multiple pages, called lenses, to promote anything they want.

Members of Squidoo have the option of either earning a revenue share of the revenue generated by their lens or they can donate the revenue to a charity of their choice.

Besides earning revenue through the ads shown by the Squidoo network, some members have also used some advanced html to include their own advertisements and subscription offers.

Copywriter Tiffany Dow started out on Squidoo.com just promoting her writing services. She is now considered one of the leading authorities on how to use this service to promote your services and affiliate products.

Tiffany had this to say about marketing on social networks:

“In a nutshell, Web 2.0 is centered around socialization on the ‘net, but as you probably already know, the biggest social giant site to date (MySpace), bans the practice of marketing, leaving entrepreneurs scrambling to play hide and seek with their customers without the risk of getting banned.

I started using a website called Squidoo to promote my writing services but once I realized how powerful it was, I started using it to market my own products and affiliate items - with amazing results that turned me into the Internet’s residential expert on Squidoo by accident!”

Tiffany has documented her success in a popular ebook called “Social Networking on Squidoo”. As a result of the 30 day challenge, an updated ebook is being developed, documenting the techniques used within the challenge.

Whether you are an individual, or a small business, Squidoo.com is a very powerful resource to promote your business. The ebook Tiffany created provides a blueprint to a successful promotion on Squidoo.
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Kevin Davis has been marketing online for 3 years. For more information about Kevin, the services his company provides, recommended products and more, visit his blog at kevinhdavis.com.

Currently, Kevin is the leader in Tiffany Dow’s Squidoo 30 Day Challenge. You can check out his Squidoo lens at squidoo.com/internet-marketing-strategy. (February 4, 2007)

Good Night,
Kevin