Although getting an account in a social networking website is something on many people’s minds around the world nowadays, it does not necessarily mean that there is one universal site which handles them all. It really depends on where you look, and who you ask. Friendster is known to be a big player in social networking in Asian regions, while MySpace is clearly dominating the United States as of present.

And then there’s Hi5, another online social networking service which has a strong following of its own. Hi5 was developed and ultimately founded by entrepreneur Ramu Yalamanchi, a graduate of Computer Science in the University of Illinois. It is known to be the leading social networking website in such places as Columbia, Cyprus, El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Thailand, and Tunisia.

People from these countries actually view and access the site so much that it is a constant player in the top 25 most visited websites on the Internet. There are an estimated 50 million people who are members of this social networking site. It is known as the premier online social networking service for Spanish-speaking internet surfers around the world.

Compared to other social networking sites, the features of Hi5 can be described as simple but exhaustive. It has all the basic needs for people who wish to truly personalize their profiles. Hi5 members can go out of their way to ensure that their profiles are truly descriptive of their personalities in all aspects.

For instance, people who wish to add some of their own ideas in visual appeal on their profiles have the freedom of including html code into them for videos or cursor effects. Hi5 members can also post photos and leave comments on other photos as well. Some even go to the extent of integrating audio tracks onto their profiles to give it its own unique identity. This, combined with the additional features such as the ability to keep a journal or scrapbook, makes hi5 a first choice for many who wish to truly adorn their profiles with who they really are.

Though the network of Hi5 already covers so many people, there are some instances wherein searching is required for some people to be reached or contacted. People who wish to connect with old friends and acquaintances can also join Hi5 to find them, using its own search utility.

Once a potential contact is found, a surfer can go ahead and send the person a message. Hi5 gives the user more options when it comes to getting a person’s attention as well. A visitor can leave a comment on a certain member’s profile, or they can give him or her ‘fives’. These are more profound means of communicating with one another in Hi5, which are usually bent on appreciation – categories such as ‘cute’ and ‘best friend’ are examples of ‘fives.

Though the rest of the world has its own preferred social networking websites, there are still many countries which prefer getting an account in Hi5. Its use as a social networking website is more appreciated in some regions.

Facebook was developed by Mark Zuckerberg, originally serving as a social networking service exclusively for students of Harvard College. Two months after its launch on February 2004, students who belonged to other Ivy League schools were also granted access to the site. The popularity of this site eventually led to other universities being added to Facebook. People with university email addresses (or, email addresses with domains such as .edu) from around the world ultimately were granted access to Facebook.

Everyone was eventually treated to the opportunity of joining Facebook two and a half years after it was originally launched. Facebook was made available to anyone in a particular age range and with an email address during September 2006. Now, people who wish to join Facebook can do so by joining affiliate networks representing schools, workplaces, or even countries. Apparently people have recognized the potential of Facebook, as it jumped from being the 60th to the 7th most visited website on the Internet between 2006 and 2007.

By definition, a facebook is actually the term used for a certain college’s publication which is distributed at the start of a school year. This publication can include pictures and profiles of individual students, to serve as guides for each one to know each other more.

Facebook users can actually do more than just view other members. Apart from the usual fare in social networking websites such as messaging, Facebook also has a bulletin board of sorts (‘The Wall’) for viewers to leave messages on a user’s profile for everyone in the network to see. Recently Facebook has given its members the ability to include attachments on their messages on The Wall.

That isn’t all that Facebook users can do to keep relations healthy online. Virtual ‘Gifts’ are also available for users to purchase and send to other users, usually with a message attached. The design of Facebook made certain ‘gifts’ available only during particular times and with limited amounts, adding more value to the transactions made between friends.

The Facebook Platform was also introduced just this year, with the purpose of enabling members to create applications which can be integrated with other Facebook features. Developers appreciate the Facebook Platform because it gives them another approach in personalizing their own profiles while making the same gimmick available for other members to use. These applications can enable members to feature their favorite contacts on their profiles, among other creative purposes.

In the spirit of fun, Facebook users also have the opportunity to ‘poke’ each other. This feature was introduced by developers without any actual aims in mind. A majority of Facebook users ‘poke’ other members to gain their attention or just to say hello, however there have been many reported interpretations to this particular action which are just as creative.

The unique innovations that Facebook has introduced to the online social networking service field are apparently very creative. This is a definite factor which contributes to the growing success of the site.

These services aid the person in the sense that it assists them in communicating with other people. They can also help a person in expressing his or her thoughts through other mediums such as music and video or even a combination of both. They can assist a person in introducing an idea to the group, and not to one individual in particular.

Nowadays a social network service is actually defined by a combination of the methods mentioned above, among other procedures. People are joining such social network services more now than ever to connect with relatives and friends online. In these particular types of social networking services, a user would have a typical page all for him wherein he describes himself through prose, or even through songs and videos.

The services known as MySpace, Friendster, and Facebook are obviously being given more attention now than ever before. More and more people join these social networking services on a daily basis. With the growing popularity of such websites, the means and options that are available to their members grow more and more. Features and upgrades are made often to ensure that people know more about what’s the latest in the social network.

How did it all start? The concepts which are used by countless people today were known to have their origins way back. Authors and early analysts have seen the potentials of seeing how people can connect with each other through networked computers. Electronic links between computers and even the concept of the internet was thought by some to be the primer for the purpose of communication between social networks.

Usenet discussion services and BBS (Bulletin Board Services) were used by the earlier explorers of the internet to communicate with each other regarding common social interests. Social networks were not significantly recognized by the general public during these times. As the internet was visited and frequented by more and more people during the mid-90’s, many people have been introduced to a less technical and more appealing social networking services.

Classmates.com is one example of an early social networking service which ushered the way for what many understand as social networking services today. This social network service was created and introduced some time during the year 1995, by a man named Randy Conrads. His goal for this site was to assist everyone who was surfing the internet in finding people whom they have known during previous times. The title of the site has its own implications, but many people have appreciated the introduction of this service to link up with former classmates in all levels. There are currently 40 million people who are linked to classmates.com.

Other sites followed, including SixDegrees.com, and epinions.com. As people connected their households and have access to the internet, these sites and others that followed were more and more frequented. People were given more options in design and content to express themselves. Eventually other sites, MySpace in particular, made significant waves through a good number of people, even celebrities.

With its lucrative past and its capabilities, social networking services can actually grow more and more with each day, each with their own unique twists and features.

However, with the fast-paced world we have today, many are unable to make it to their Friday night poker clubs, or their Sunday congregations. For this reason, a good amount of people have resorted to turning to virtual communities to keep in touch with fellow enthusiasts and similar people with common beliefs and ideas.

A virtual community is literally a group of people that gathers in an online environment for the purpose of discussing common ideas, among other purposes. The ‘online environment’ usually represents a meeting place or a forum in real life.

Means of communication is a vital aspect to the survival of a virtual community. Oftentimes members of a virtual community would engage in conversations through online conferences via chat rooms or newsgroups. There is a variance in how fast communication happens in a virtual community. This is based significantly on the means of communication. In other words, a conversation is definitely real-time in a web chat conference, while waiting for a reply on a web forum depends on whether a member is online to do so.

This all seems like a good payoff for many to consider joining a virtual community to save time, but there are a few areas of concern.

The first observation is apparent. There are many risks involved in joining and participating in a virtual community. People can always pose as fellow enthusiasts, only to take advantage of the whole group in a big number of ways. Identity thieves can take out information from other members of the community. Stalkers can simply pose as people who wish to join a certain distinguished virtual community for all the wrong reasons.

Another downside is if someone gets more attention online than in the real world. This can develop into an addiction to the “life” of the virtual community he or she is in. People who engage in virtual communities more than in real life, may be missing out so many lessons in actual physical communities.

Engaging in a virtual community is not necessarily the same as speaking to a group face to face the first time. Many people who have joined virtual communities in the hopes of meeting other people have left disappointed, as the communication methods are not as personal as desired. People usually find themselves as part of a mailing list which is not necessarily directed towards them individually.

The main point here is, one should consider all the benefits and potential drawbacks to joining a virtual community. It may save you time, and it may be more convenient for you, but you should always remember that if there is the chance to communicate with someone else in person, it should be taken first.

The point is we are all different. However, as a person grows older, he or she will find out how we are all the same too. There are many attitudes and emotions that bring people together.

People with the same interests have organizations. People with the same health concerns come together to strengthen each other. People of the same religion gather in congregations. Take all of these groups together, and you have some very distinct examples of what social networks are.

By definition, a social network is an entity comprising of people or groups of people whose goals, ideals, interests, or aims are common. These groups with some thing in common are known individually as nodes, and they are gathered into one social network. Nodes can be gathered and grouped into a certain social network due to one or more binding factors.

The point of a node existing in a social network is due to the fact that it shares with the idea which created the actual social network in the first place. However, this does not necessarily mean that every node is equally related to each other. The factors surrounding the variance in the degree of relations between nodes are many. It really depends on the actual reasons behind what makes a specific social network.

Seniority can be one factor which makes a node more related to another one. There’s also level of competence in certain social networks involving hobbies and similar skills. The resources which a node possesses can also define how it is related to other nodes in the network.

All of these terms in this particular article may seem quite complicated to some people, however if you really think about it, all of us are included in social networks whether we like it or not. People are born into family social networks. They are raised and educated in school social networks. Eventually they meet people who will comprise their friends in a social network.

The growing interest and study in this particular field has ushered in an equally growing public interest regarding social networking. There are actual social networks which are created online more now than ever. People all over the world are capable of bridging gaps through joining sites introduced by the innovators of such online social networking services such as Friendster, MySpace, hi5, and the like.

The promotion of such social networking services has made more and more people go beyond who they really are. People are now more interested in who they are in relation to where they think they should belong in a social network.

When first creating your forum, if you want to boost start it with posts, your best option is to have a posting contest, but don’t advertise it just on your forum, remember your forum is still new. Try going on various other webmaster forums like Digital Point, Site Point, Name Pros, and etc. These forums usually have quality posters who post for money or enter competitions to win the grand prize.

Set a realistic date, the usual contest length is 1 month, if you set a finishing date too far away, no one will enter, or people will just start posting near the end of the contest.

Have other prizes, like for second and third place, best quality poster, and etc.

After you get a lot of members in the forum, whether they are real or paid or joined for the previous contest, create a referral contest on your forum (it helps to post it on other forums like previously mentioned) so the person with the most referrals will win and also have second and third prizes. The contest should last 1 month and you make sure that no one uses their IP to create more members.

If you have finally reached success and your forum is popular with members and a steady amount of posts, you can have some fun contests like arcade contest, photo contest, create a logo contest, and etc. Sometimes forums will do this to get more members to join at a young age but it is unusual.

When creating a contest, make sure you post what form of payment method you will use, for cash prizes the majority of people like PayPal, however some people will accept: bank wire, Western Union, MoneyBookers, E-Gold, and various other smaller e-currencies.

Referring back to the referral contest, you should make sure you have referral turned on for the registration method so people can say who referred them and they should have to make X amount of posts, usually 10 or 15 posts, to be considered an official referral.

Contests are used a lot instead of paid posters because they are usually the cheaper method. If you award a total of $200 in prizes for a 1 month contest and get 4, 000 posts, which are equal to 5 cents per post, which is really cheap content as forum posters go for up to 30 cents a post.

Contests are usually just a secondary form of advertising to help get a few extra posts on your forum, but paid posters are the best way to go so try not to exclude that method from how you create your forum, but don’t pay people per post as well if they are participating in the posting contest.

However, not all forums are right for contests, just look at your forum type and decide if it is right or not. Webmaster forums are great for it but a forum about exotic pets may not be so great.

Are you a successful affiliate marketer? That is the question many
people ask. With so many websites with content filled to tell us what to do
and so many review sites, weeding through the good and the bad you
would think it’s easy as pie.
With so much knowledge and content available why do so many fail and
struggle and the starting blocks.

Well instead of talking about how to succeed I will talk about some of
the things not to do as a affiliate marketer and if your not doing them
you sure and a whole lot better chance at succeeding.

Sit back and give it a shot

Odds are slim to none but hey so is the lottery and people still play
and win. You mite be lucky with your first campaign and strike it rich
and laugh all the way to the beach in your new convertible. So there
maybe a chance you through up that first website and you have the next
best thing to hit the net since My-space.

Do not promote a product that you do not believe in.

People can tell when your lying, when your story lines sound false, and
when your sales pitch is old and tired. Besides would you visit and
revisit a site with no quality content and expect to break out your check
book and purchase a product with no real reason to buy the product
because it feel like a rip off from the moment you seen it.

One major rule of thumb in affiliate marketing is never promote a
product that you have officially never used or tested before it would be
absolutely crazy. I mean you wouldn’t want to learn how to shoot a gun
from some who just learned 2 minutes before you did correct ?

Don’t Give up

This is the grand daddy of them all. Never give up if you have a dream
and internet marketing interest you in any way never give up. You will
gain the knowledge and end up where you would want to be. So many new
enthusiast to affiliate marking lose a little money have no success
early and call it quits. When there is so much that you could have done to
better your campaigns, such as alter up your content , change the
marketing strategy, adjust your sales pitch.

Does all of this sound like a lot of hard work ? Sure , it is but just
like with any thing Rome wasn’t built overnight and great things take
time but if your willing to invest the you can reap the rewards of
internet marketing for many years to come and earn a full time living.

Use Blogs To Work Your Way Up

Here is a way to work your way up the ranks, Make some decent profit
and invest no money at all. Once you are up and running spend a average
of 15-25 minutes of your time and call that a day. Does this sound like
easy work? If you have spent any time online then you have probably
heard of web blogs or blogs. Blogs are diaries on a certain topic or a
specific niche. Some people post daily, weekly, monthly, and for those who
take it seriously have at least one quality post a day. It seems as if
every one you turn to has a blog and is updating there’s by the minute
from every thing to there personal life to what they had to eat last
night and giving the chicken from KFC a critical review.
What this says that there is a huge audience and many people that will
follow, with fresh content to keep a visitor intrigued you could work
this to your best advantage.
Know how can you use a blog to make money ?
Well search engines love blogs as they have a lot of visitors fresh
updated content and can build a ton of backlinks. Blogs are simple and
technical free to set up, they can be up and running in a mater of minutes
and you could be well on your way. Websites such as blogger.com offer
a free account to get started and allow you to host any many blogs as
you would like with them. From there you can become a affiliate and
start to promote affiliate products as well as your own. Which is where you
start to make the real money.

Once you have you blog up and running and have a selected topic chosen
you will need at least 15 articles on that related topic. If you are
not a big writer you can outsource at such sites like elance.com or get
freelancer.com these sites will allow you to find writer who can write
unique articles related to your blog.
One of the great things about a blog unlike a website is for every post
this poses as a new page to the search engines and once you realize
this and work it to your advantage you will be reaping the rewards to
come.
With this said and using this formula can have your site ranked high
with search engines with no real know how or internet marking skills. You
can do all of this today with no start up cost and say a few months
down the line could be selling blog post and text links to make a decent
income. Take these steps and place them into effect and have your turn
with today’s web blog.

Depending on the way you decided to create your forum, you may have other options to how to supervise it. If you are a 50/50 owner with someone else, they can help you monitor and manage the forum. You may also decide to hire someone, some active members may choose to take the role free of charge, or hire someone to be a moderator for payment by a timed basis, as well as hiring a co-admin or global moderator and pay with a percentage of the forum’s profits.

Finding a good moderator:

Members from your forum - If you choose to look for a free moderator then you may want to look on your own forum. Post a thread, stating that you are looking for a moderator to help out and post your requirements. You would want to look for someone who does not advertise a lot on your forum, or spam. A member who is active with a fairly large amount of posts and isn’t a new member is a prime pick for this position. Make sure whoever you pick does not abuse this power and they understand what they are doing.

Paying moderators on a regular basis is always a better option as you know you are getting someone who knows what they are doing and has experience with your board’s management. This should not cost too much and could go from $50-200 a week depending on how large your forum is. Cheaper workers may be as cheap as $50 a month and others may work for the simple ability of advertising on the forum.

Using your co-owner to help manage the forum - Depending on what role your partner holds, he may be able to help you. However, if your partner is mostly advertising, and providing money to invest in advertising, he may not be the best person for this position. A partner who helps with logos, designs, and odd tasks may be the best for performing this task; however you may have to teach him how to manage around the cPanel of the forum.

Whatever method you choose, keep in mind the financial status of your web site. You don’t want to spend more then you make when the forum is already a miniature success. Starting off with your forum, you will have to invest some cash, but when the forum is bigger and is making money, you have extra play money to work with.

Also remember that you will not need any forum moderators to help manage the forum until it is fairly large. At a smaller size, you can manage the forum yourself and get a little free help as well.

You should be able to manage the forum by yourself until there are 300 active members, or 10, 000 posts.

For free advertising, you can manually optimize your forum or web site into search engines, post on other forums with a link in your signature, post in blogs, Digg articles, humble links, word of mouth, and more.

You can also invest money into advertising to get more members, and most of the time it is affective. You can pay to get advertisements emplaced on other web sites or forums, pay for forum posters to post on other forums related to your topic in the signature link (note that some forums will not allow this and the links will be deleted). You can also gain more traffic to your forum through posting a referral competition on your forum if it is already partially popular with real members (not paid posters) who are at least partially active. If you have a dead forum, you may want to send an e-mail to all your members to remind them of the forum and let them know that it is returning to popularity and there are contests available for people to win various prizes (most popular is electronics, gift cards and cash).

If you decide to get paid posters to post on other forums, here is a good guide to make sure you get the best for your money:

- The average paid poster for your forum is .05-.20 a post

- The average paid poster on other forums to link to yours is .20-.30

- The average paid blogger will charge differently depending on the blog`s traffic and Google Page Rank

- Make sure all the forums that you get the paid poster to post on allow clickable links, advertising your own forum even if it is on topic, has active members, a lot of traffic and a page rank is always a bonus

- Give the paid poster the code for the signature link and make sure he posts proof upon completion

- The job should be spread across a longer period of time, preferably a month to allow the majority of the active members to see the link

- The more forums that your forum is advertised on, the better.

- The average amount of posts per forum are 10-20 posts a day for a month, however it may differ depending on how popular and active the forum is

Here I think is a important key element to niche marketing and creating
your future.
The number one thing would be Knowledge. Are you surprised, from all
the information on the web, from the informational products, forums ,
blogs and so many more some of us are still sitting wondering how and what
and where to begin.

Well as for many of us ( TMI ) to much information is the biggest part.
It’s like we read through all these guides and collect all the
information and were stuck and feel like there is no where to run and we fail.

A experienced internet marketer has so many more tools and resources
then the average newbie who is looking to make money. A newbie works all
alone and only a few hours a day and when they are online is not very
productive, while a “ GURU “ has a team working under him and can spend
a few hours mass producing and marketing.

For example on niche marketing and the difference…

A newbie who is looking to niche market and wants to build a website
can make maybe one or two a month, spends all of his/her precious time
writing , searching and marketing there poor little site when on the
other end of the totem pole a guru is ready to start his new niche
marketing campaign with the knowledge and crew of resources behind him.
He can through up 100-200 niche sites via a automatic software tool
which the newbie has no clue is even available.

Comes back every day monitors his software tool, makes a few
adjustments and walks away while his marketing campaign is through the roof. on
the other hand the newbie is still setting up there first site and now
gathering content.

The great thing about today in online marketing is that any average Joe
can do it.
Once you weed through and find the right software’s tools to help you
along the way you can achieve success like no other.

Never give up if you have a dream follow and believe, all will come
true.