How do you monetize a social networking community?

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mj1256

Joined: Jun 05, 2006

# Posts: 727

Posted: 08/31/2006 02:17 pm

The big Internet marketing buzz of today is:

"How do you monetize a social networking community without alienating your communities members".

Its clear that the members of these communities dislike any attempts at commercialization and want all of the components and functionality for free.

The popular sites populate their pages with google ads, which clutter the sites, are to some extent ignored, raise advertising issues due to where the ads contentually appear, and sends the community to sites that are not covered with advertising....ah...yet.

Using the following criteria (which comes from articles about the subject),
How would you monetize a social networking community?
1) you can't put ads on the webpages of the site, including the main page
2) you can't use a freemium to premium model for site components
3) you can't use a pay to join or subscription model

You can create an isolated subsection of the site for ads, but would they be seen? How would you present it so that it isn't blatant advertising?

So...I challenge you all to reveal just how deep your thinking can be??

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bhartzer

Administrator

Joined: Jun 08, 2000

# Posts: 7033

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Posted: 08/31/2006 02:28 pm

Myspace is having a hard time monetizing their community. They have ads, but they're essentially run on a CPM model (advertisers pay for banner ad impressions).

When it comes to the site's visitors, the more sophisticated (or "web savvy" ) they are the tougher it is to monetize. The best bet may be to monetize it with banner ads for 'branding purposes' and keep the site free.

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dudibob

Joined: Oct 13, 2005

# Posts: 1413

Posted: 09/01/2006 12:58 am

Google have just struck a deal with myspace (and ebay) to have adsense on there. Should be interesting

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SportsGuy

Moderator

Joined: Aug 30, 2002

# Posts: 3550

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Posted: 09/01/2006 03:16 am

Sponsorships, selected product placements and text links. wink

Trouble is, in order to get advertisers on board, there must be proof the volum eof traffic exists and that this model will work for them.

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mj1256

Joined: Jun 05, 2006

# Posts: 727

Posted: 09/01/2006 07:33 am

Great

myspace already has the google ads, but there are problems for the advertisers
1) can't do multilevel ad placements, its just the column of text ads
2) compeditors ads show along side your ad
3) advertisers are complaining the they don't like the content page that their ad is appearing on (conflict of interest)

criteria was for no ads on site.

sponsorships and product placement sound interesting.

Hitwise reported that myspace sent 2.53% of the total online retail site traffic and outdid MSN. Does this mean they can monetize in the same way search engines can?

Is 2.53% a good conversion rate, or is it only good because of the shear size of the myspace community?

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SportsGuy

Moderator

Joined: Aug 30, 2002

# Posts: 3550

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Posted: 09/01/2006 11:15 am

The real stat to look for was revenue generated by that traffic from Myspace v. any other sources.

if that revenue number is good, then the 2.** is solid. More is better, less is worse. Always use the money to set the baseline, IMO.

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