How to Make Money With Social Media Sites

Another source of revenue

By dipping your toe into the concept of how to monetize social media sites, you are delving into a relatively new yet expanding network of advertising that can reap monetary benefits for its users. When we talk about monetizing, we are referring to the idea that one can use their own social media network, such as Twitter and Facebook, as sources of extra revenue.

This is different than building a network of friends or followers and promoting an idea, product, or service that you are attempting to sell. When we are talking about how to monetize social media sites, we mean using the network you have built to post advertisements for other venues, businesses, or individuals. It is the idea of putting that impressive network to serious advantage for your own bottom line.

While still relatively new, there are more instances of people learning how to monetize social media sites, especially celebrities. For instance, Bob Villa charges nearly $2,500 for sponsored 'Tweets.' This means that a business or individual can post an ad in the form of a tweet through Bob Villa's Twitter account. This amount of money can seem incredibly steep for a brief, 140 character advertisement, but considering the number of followers (or subscribers) he has in his Twitter family, the sponsor knows precisely how many people will receive their message.

Balancing act

When you begin to learn how to monetize social media sites, you begin to realize that there needs to be a balance established in order to both maintain your current list of friends or followers and at the same time make it worthwhile for a business or individual to want to advertise through your network. It should be readily apparent that you shouldn't expect to gain any serious interest in advertising on a network that is new and has few followers.

One thing that many people don't appreciate is spam. Spam is the term initially coined (from the Monty Python movies) to define mass email campaigns. These are those emails that fill up your inbox that have nothing to do with anything you asked to subscribe to. Spam now includes the concept of posting incessant advertisements on these social media sties through status updates or Twitter posts.

It can be tempting, of course, to want to soak up as much ad revenue as possible once you have built that precious network, but if it is overdone, you will see the number of followers begin to diminish as people grow weary of being inundated with too many ads.

Advertisers, of course, want their name or product in front of the buying audience as often as possible, so there needs to be a balance between promotion and information your users find useful.

Choosing the right advertisers

One thing that is so important when deciding how to monetize social media sites is determining what products or services to promote. For instance, Bob Villa wouldn't expect too many of his followers to be interested in feminine products. Not only would this be a waste of valuable resources for the advertiser, but it will confuse and oftentimes irritate his followers who will tend to be predominantly males whose interest is in home improvement.

If you set up a social media site to target people looking to make money from home, then a majority of your followers may be stay-at-home moms who might be interested in products that will make their life easier. More likely, though, your best source of revenue to monetize your social media sites would have to do with other options to make extra income from home.

When you begin to investigate how to monetize social media sites, ideas will begin to develop. Look to big name celebrities as a guide for what can be done and how to best approach it. Think about the people whom you follow and how you react when you are inundated with post upon post upon post by that one individual talking about the same thing. Then you will know why it's critical to step back, take a moment, and then proceed with some measure of balance.

Learning how to monetize social media sites is another source in a list of powerful tools available for the ambitious entrepreneur who wants to put his or her financial independence fully within their control.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3920046