MySpace; you've surely heard of it. Most of you probably have an account that you use to keep in contact with friends. Others may only know of it as "that place the predators hang-out", but if that's all you know about MySpace you're really missing the BIG picture. MySpace is the largest online social networking portal on the internet with 61+ million registered users and over 50 million unique visitors per month, and the site is STILL growing. MySpace is currently the second largest destination, by page views, on the entire internet. The MySpace visitor demographics are nearly an equal split between men and women and the primary age of the site visitor is between 16 and 34. There are 1.4 million registered bands on MySpace and the site reaches more men than ESPN.com. All that, and you still won't have to talk to more than 5 people to find someone who says "I hate MySpace". That's fine. Let them dismiss it, while you and I take advantage of one of the largest opportunities in internet marketing you may ever to come across.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
It is important for you to understand that it is against the MySpace "Terms of Service" to do any marketing on their site with the intention of profiting, but that does not mean you may not market "something". Look on almost any profile and you will find people promoting something. They're promoting themselves, their bands, and some blatantly selling items on their profiles, some with affiliate links and some more discreetly. Everyone is essentially marketing something. Your interpretations of these rules will be your guide to what is "black hat", "white hat" or that gray area in between. So let's get started already! Let's look at the squeaky side of MySpace marketing. if there ever was one.
Get started Now!
There are millions and millions of registered users on MySpace. Everyone has a profile. So make yourself one (or a new one). And since you're wearing your "white hat" you can do your best to tell everyone who you are while not telling everyone anything personal. You are never going to put your real name, number address, etc. on MySpace. Don't even use a real email address. It's not required to register or verify an account. If you feel you must, create free email account with yahoo, google, or msn to use with MySpace - again using no real personal information.
If you've been poking around MySpace you're probably wondering why everyone's profile looks cool and unique and yours looks so blah! Well trick it out! You can go to any one of the thousands of sites that give away free codes, graphics and stuff for your profile page. Search Google for MySpace Layout and you'll see what I mean. Go ahead and make your profile "yours". This is what social networks are - a chance to tell the world who you are and what you're about in a one page profile. Add music, images, videos, voice recordings, text, blogs, just about anything you can imagine. If you do happen to go on to become a full fledged marketer, there are many more tools, resources and such below.
By now you're probably getting impatient and wondering how the heck you make money doing this. Relax, we're getting there. Ok, so you've got a profile and let's make up a topic for the sake of our example. Let's say you're totally into Xbox 360 and playing games. You wouldn't be alone right? In fact if you go to Google and search for the term "MySpace Xbox" you'll get over 3.5 million results. Now what? Well you can start visiting the profiles one at a time, and you can click the "Add Friend" button on each one. It sends a request to the user to add you as a friend. If they accept, you become "friends". Then you do it another few thousand times and you've got a list of friends interested in the same thing as you. you can call this a "niche." It works well, but it takes time. We'll come back to this in a minute, but let me tell you about a few things to save you a ton of time.
Friend "bots" or "adder bots" as they're known are robot programs or "bots" that will go out and send these friend requests for you, hundreds at a time. There are many out there and they all have their ups and downs. I use two different programs: You can find and grab copies by visiting my website. Several complete videos demonstrating in detail how to use some of the advanced features of these programs are included in the member's areas.
Another quick way to get friends for free is to visit and join a "train". This is a place where you join up to let others know you're trying to get a lot of friends in a hurry, and you know they want the same thing. Now this type of friend adding is completely un-targeted, but you can build a friends list of thousands in a week this way. A few good train locations are listed on my website.
Ok, back to your niche. So you add a few thousand (or more) friends that are into Xbox 360. One of the keys is to remember, this is a "social" network. So socialize! Comment on your new found friends sites, visit their websites, read their Blogs, join their groups. Across the top of every MySpace page is the top navigation bar. On that bar you'll see "Groups". Click on it, and then search Xbox. Guess how many "groups" there are on MySpace for Xbox? 3100! The largest Xbox related group has over 31,000 members, second largest nearly 20,000, then 16k, 11k, 10k..you get the idea. Literally hundreds of thousands of users that have joined a group devoted to Xbox. Some are general "Gamers" some are "Xbox Live" junkies. But all are into your niche. Join some groups. This is another great way to find friends interested in your niche.
Now if you just start "spamming the PS3 out of everyone" in your group, you're going to get banned and likely deleted from MySpace in a hurry. And there are a few ways to deal with that. Depending on which hat you've decided to wear. Remember the "black hat". well you can have 50 profiles, all Xbox related and just continue to market and get deleted, market and get deleted, all the while making money. Or you can be more subtle about it and stay more within the rules al while wearing a pretty clean and attractive white hat :o).
In this scenario you'd be wearing the "gray hat" which is somewhere in between "white hat" (methods that don't really break the rules) and "black hat" (methods that outwardly violate rules, terms, or conditions for the sole purpose of individual gain). So you have al these friends. You're chatting with them, slowly gaining credibility, knowledge, and maybe posting in your blogs, you send a message to your buddies saying "hey, I found this great cheat code site - check it out!"
Go to Google and do a search for "Xbox Affiliate" and you'll get the idea. There are hundreds of Xbox related affiliate programs. Cheat codes, hardware, software, accessories, etc. All you do is sign up as an affiliate and send you MySpace friends interested in Xbox some affiliate links to products they might enjoy. Anytime one of them makes a purchase you get an affiliate commission. That's money in the bank. You're still in that "gray area" here because you're marketing for profit and remember it's against the MySpace TOS, but let's be creative. Let's make a small site related to Xbox; Maybe an Xbox blog of your own or an Xbox game review site.
You invite your buddies day after day to your site, and on your site you can market whatever you want. There's not really much objection to mentioning your own website to your friends if you do it tastefuly and aren't over-aggressive because after al, your website could be your hobby or interest, and hobbies and interests are things that are perfect to talk about on your MySpace profile. You can have Google Adsense advertisements on your website, affiliate links, build a mailing list. and you're driving free targeted traffic there using MySpace!
Ok, let's take a step back and review what we've gone over real quick.
Make a profile or make a bunch of profiles.
Be specific and target a niche, or be general and add tons of untargeted friends.
Use a bot to speed up the process.
Pick which ?hat' to wear and get started.
Use profile searches, groups and advanced search techniques to target your desired friends.
Decide how aggressively or passively to market.
Use affiliate programs to generate revenue.
Drive traffic out of MySpace to your site.
Use Adsense, affiliate marketing, pay per lead ads, & more to generate revenue.
All that and we're just getting started! We've really only discussed one niche I picked out of the air - Xbox.
Most people think that MySpace is a huge untargeted market, but that's just because they don't know how to use the tools available to narrow it down and find targeted leads. How about one of the most popular tactics, marketing on MySpace for a local band. MySpace is widely known for its wide assortment of bands that use it to promote their craft. This is an opportunity for you - even if you're not in a band! How? Let's go back to the MySpace toolbar at the top of the page. Back to Browse. Now look at the bottom of the top section of the Basic tab. See the postal code section and the miles of box? Put in your zip code and 50 miles in the miles of box. Up above in the between ages box, select 21 as the young and 50 as the old. Also select Both under "Browse For:" and then click update.
This will return all the men and women that are over 21 that are within 50 miles of your zip code. Get to work on building your friends list. Let's pretend you market yourself to bands in your area as a promoter. For the price of $100 you'll build them a list of people on MySpace within 50 miles of their hometown (or wherever their gig is). Then for a recurring fee you'll send out comments, messages, bulletins and event invites to "their list" at a given schedule for "x" amount of time before an event. Poof you're a promoter. With some training, you would have no problem whatsoever promoting bands on MySpace.
Speaking of making more money from MySpace, but not "on" MySpace, here is another tactic you can make a profile, add friends using a bot and trains. Get to say 10,000 friends (in a few weeks) and sell that account on eBay for $100 or more. Make 100 accounts with 1000 friends and sell them for $10 each. are you getting the idea yet? Making MySpace accounts and adding friends is a cinch once you've got the knowledge.
Perhaps your specialty is graphic or web design? You can offer your services customizing other people's profiles on MySpace for a small fee. Even if graphics & web design is not your specialty after learning how to do it, you'll be able to make the coolest MySpace profiles for your clients quickly, easily, thoroughly, & efficiently. Turn yourself into a MySpace money making machine!
These are just a few of the many ways you can monetize your MySpace efforts. I'm going to bullet-point a few more without going into detail about them. But the point is, there is such a tremendous opportunity here.
I can't teach you everything you need to know in this brief about MySpace marketing, but hopefully I've peaked your curiosity and got your creative juices flowing. If you visit the sites I have provided, and use the tools and resources you can find tons of step by step training videos, profile editing tools, and a very active member's only forum where every single tactic we've discussed (and about 40 more) are outlined, detailed, demonstrated and discussed.
The MySpace marketing platform is changing daily so don't wait! Get in on it now!
Check out MoneyInCollege.com for more info.
My name is Jason Stilwell, a business and marketing student in the beautiful State of Michigan. I started MoneyInCollege.com with the sole purpose of showing students worldwide simple, fun and effective ways of making extra money in college and to connect you with others who share in this interest. I am not here to pitch hype at you, I'm here to show you how to make the money you need to live a better college life.