Glend Article

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 8: The Real Facebook ‘Eldorado’

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

So far, we’ve looked in detail at most of the new advertising initiatives that Facebook has recently introduced such as Social Ads, Pages and Beacon, and concluded that, at least at this moment, there is probably not a great deal of money being made.

There is one aspect of Facebook, however, where there certainly is money being made, and quite large amounts of it too.

This is in the area of creating what are known as ‘applications’ for Facebook.

These are best described as additional third party software programs or modules that can be added to you Facebook profile or home pages to add functionality or simplify matters.

So, when we were looking at making your Online Store page as attractive as possible, it was suggested that you should add video and picture applications as one step towards doing so.

Applications for Facebook have been around for quite some time now, and with the recent creation of the F8 platform, application development h.... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | No Comments »

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 7: ‘Pages’ & ‘Beacon’

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

Pages

Going right back to the first screen of creating our ‘Social Ads’, you may recall that you were presented with the option of sending a visitor to pages of a website that is outside of Facebook or creating a new ‘Page’ on the site.

Creating such a ‘Page’ is a free service that allows you to create a one page mini-site about your business. It is essentially a full one page advert for your business.

When you first visit this ‘Pages’ page, you will immediately see that there are three drop down menu boxes at the top of the page.

The first of these boxes is for listing a ‘real word’ business on a local basis, so the drop down shows all of the different types of business that you can list (Automotive, Banking, Café, Grocery etc).

The next drop down lists businesses by product or service.

One of the categories listed in this second ‘drop down’ is ‘Online Store’ which I suggest that most smart interne.... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | 1 Comment »

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 6: Social Ads

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

The Social Graph

During the roll out of what Facebook call their ‘F8 platform’ in November 2007, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested that the changes represented a completely new way of advertising online through the introduction of ‘Social Ads’.

This, he suggested, was because the new advertising service would include advertisers in the community ’social graph’ in a way that traditional advertising did not.

For example, look at the very simple diagram showing the relationship of four Facebook community members:

I am in one Facebook group with Mr. B, and another, different, group with Mr. D. The nature of the Facebook community means, therefore, that all of their information will be freely passed to me, and, similarly, my information will be passed back to both of them.

Mr. B. also receives similar .... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | 4 Comments »

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 5: Recent Facebook Changes

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

Introduction

As we have already established, until only one year ago, Facebook was still a relatively exclusive closed community, one that was principally focused on college and high school students, particularly in the USA.

Over the course of the past year, Facebook has therefore been making some very dramatic changes to the way that it operates. Some of the changes have been popular whilst others have been less so, but the one thing that is beyond question is that all of the changes have substantively altered the way that the Facebook community works.

Several of the changes that Facebook have introduced have been unpopular with existing community members, and have consequently brought the ownership of the website into conflict with many of the more outspoken community members (of whom there are quite a significant number!)

What this has demonstrated is the fact that many Facebook members are very protective about their community, and do not like to .... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | 2 Comments »

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 4: An Initial Facebook Overview

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

 Introduction

If you are used to opening up the home page of MySpace, then you will in all probability find the first page of Facebook somewhat plain, perhaps even a little bland.  

However, you can clearly see from the screenshot above that the first thing the site encourages you to do is to ‘Find Friends’ (the emphasis being on ‘finding’ people you already know).  

Should you choose to follow this link, you will quickly discover that it tak.... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | 2 Comments »

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 3: Comparing Facebook with MySpace

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

Despite all of these facts and figures, however, MySpace is still by far the most popular social networking site, and that is a situation that seems unlikely to change in the near future.

Now, all of the major community sites do emphasize that the main function is to provide a means for people from all over the world to network with one another.

It would therefore be fair to suggest that most of these sites have (as far as it is possible) tried to discourage and prevent people from viewing them as commercially orientated sites.

In other words, sites like MySpace and Facebook do not want their communities used by members promoting their products or services to other members. Despite the fact that it is owned by the Fox Corporation, even MySpace is no exception to this rule, and has gone to some lengths to prevent the site becoming a huge online auction or bazaar by another name.

Nevertheless, many smart online marketers and internet entrepreneurs have managed.... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | 1 Comment »

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 2: Facebook – From Then To Now

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

Facebook was originally founded in early 2004 by a group of ex-Harvard university students as a service that was initially restricted to students of their own university.

From there, Facebook rapidly expanded their services into most of the Ivy League universities in the USA, and thereafter it went to a larger scale in the USA, spreading to most universities and eventually down into high schools as well.

Next, the site went international by moving into Canada, Australia and the UK so that it was (in its final ‘guise’ as an educational service) open to anyone who had a university or college e-mail address (e.g .edu, .ac.uk etc).

In late 2006, Facebook finally took the decision to move away from these educational grassroots and became a truly open service that anybody, anywhere in the world could register with and participate in (a move which prompted significant protests from the existing Facebook user base!).

Despite this move away from their traditional.... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | 1 Comment »

Making Money With Facebook - Chapter 1: Introduction

Sunday, August 24th, 2008

There can be little doubt that the nature of the internet has changed significantly over the last two or three years.

Nor can anyone seriously question the fact that one of the most obvious changes has been the rapid and exciting growth of the ‘interactivity’ of websites on a truly global scale.

With this proliferation of new websites and blogs claiming to be Web 2.0 friendly, and the stunning growth in the popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, it is becoming increasingly clear that people all over the world are using the internet as a principal means of communication in ever increasing numbers.

Not surprisingly, therefore, businesses both big and small have also begun to recognize and understand the potential of such websites and networks for expanding their customer bases.
For example, whereas perhaps only a year or eighteen months ago, most large corporate websites were purely informational, many are now being adapted to .... Read More

Posted in Work At Home | No Comments »