social bookmarking

[affearner]

How important are social networking sites to Affiliate Programs?

[Linda Buquet]

Well, depends on how much time you have
how much marketing skill you have
and how much money you have.

If you have no ad budget and lots of time social marketing can be good for SOME types of offers and a great way to drive traffic.

If you have good marketing skills and budget then SEO and PPC may get better results. But these days it seems social marketing should be at least a part of the mix.

[affearner]

Money? But I thought social networking sites are just for free!?

[Teli]

99% of social networks are free. I believe Linda made the reference to how much money you have for your advertising budget.

If you have a decent advertising budget, then you wouldn't really need to worry about social marketing -- or you could just outsource it.

~ Teli

[Linda Buquet]

"Money? But I thought social networking sites are just for free!?"

They are.

You asked how important social networking is and I said it depends. If you have no marketing budget then it's maybe more important because it's a free way to get traffic. But if you have marketing $$ to spend there are better faster ways to get traffic like PPC.

Hope that's more clear.

[affearner]

Oh yes right. I'm so sorry for this confusion. You see, I'm tasked to work on free advertising. I know that those that require payments are being taken cared of in another department of our company. But my idea is will this be worth my time? Will this gain additional visitors?

[StephenR]

Sure, social marketing should definitely augment your conventional marketing practices quite sinmply because everybody is on at least one of the major sites. Craigslist is pretty much on a chronic downslope but squidoo has definitely picked up the reigns and allows you all the customization you really need.

*Side Note: Also, it would appear Google is also looking very favorably on FreeIQ.com in terms of ranking. It's a great market platform for JV launches, etc. and creats a buzz for your product or service within an already warm market.

[affearner]

Oh yes right, Stephen, I've been working on squidoo these past few months and you can just imagine how cool it is to work and have fun at the same time. Thanks for giving me FreeIQ. In exchange, I'd like you to try out Pingoat.com

[fitnfree]

Wow, just checked out FreeIQ -- thanks for the heads up on that. Can see I'll need to take some serious time and delve into that a bit further!

[StephenR]

Yep, I use Pingoat at least 20 times a day across my blogs. I wonder how much John Reese acquired that for? Great sticky site for him.