There are hundreds, maybe thousands of social networking sites. For those of you who don’t understand exactly what a social network is, here is a simple, non-technical explanation:

Social Networks are networks that people create by linking to people they know, who link to people they know, etc.

What does this mean? Well, have you heard of Facebook? MySpace? YouTube? Digg? All of these websites are built on the concept of social networks. People publish content, and link to all their “friends” who also publish content. This content might be a personal blog or profile, photos of themselves, a video or links they find interesting.

This is the basis behind the Web 2.0 revolution.

What makes social networks so powerful? A few reasons:

• Users post the content
• Users link to their friends and bring traffic to the website
• People tend to believe their friends
• They can grow rapidly and virally

There is no doubt that social networks are powerful. How can you harness that power to build a business? Lots of people have tried to monetize social networking… I’m not talking about the website owners, I’m talking about members. Most of them have gone about it the wrong way, spamming members and getting banned from social networking websites forever.

This blog is all about the right ways to effectively market on social networking websites, and harness their power to make money.