Social networking sites are great for a lot of things. We use them to connect with friends new and old and we use them to build relationships with potential customers and even business partners. Many of us use social networking sites for promoting our products.

This is common and as long as it’s done right, can be a wonderful way to increase sales and income.

What do you promote on the social networking sites you participate in? Do you promote your own info products in digital form? Do you use your social networking pages to promote affiliate products? Maybe you promote tangibles such as books from Amazon.

Most entrepreneurs in the know promote at least one of these things through social networking because they’re the perfect place for an entrepreneur to expose their business and themselves as a personal brand.

Social networking sites are where you can make yourself known as an expert in your niche – they’re where people begin to see you as the “go-to” person for information or products that have to do with a certain subject.

Because you’re using social networking sites for personal branding, it only follows that you should be promoting products as well. People expect this and actually, they want it from you. If you’re telling them things they need to know about a topic, they’ll want to buy products from you too, because they trust you.

Here are the three most common options for promoting products via your social networking activities:

PayDotCom – PayDotCom is an online marketplace that can be used in two ways. You can sell your own information products through PayDotCom, or you can sell other’s info products as an affiliate. Either way it’s effective in making extra money (sometimes a significant amount) and helping to promote yourself as an expert within your social networks.

ClickBank – ClickBank is very similar to PayDotCom, although they have their own unique ways of operating. With ClickBank, you can sell your own products or sell the products created by others and make money as an affiliate. ClickBank pays affiliates themselves but PayDotCom relies on the product owner to make affiliate payouts.

Amazon Associates – Amazon Associates lets you sell the products that Amazon sells - whether that means books, toys, kitchen gadgets, clothing, or anything else you want to promote through your social networking pages. All you do is sign up as an Amazon associate and you can earn a percentage of any sales that are generated through you. Many web 2.0 pages (Squidoo, Hub Pages) offer built in promotional tools for Amazon, too!

When you’re setting up your social networking tools for your own marketing efforts, don’t leave out the step of promoting products. Doing this not only brings some extra money to your doorstep, but it further brands you as a trusted expert because you’re offering the people you connect with through your social networking efforts something of value, and as an expert, you definitely want to be able to do that – it gives you even more credibility.

Entrepreneurs who are aggressive and focused never fail to find and promote good products through social networking, but they make sure they do their homework, too. Don’t promote things with a low reputation. Always check it out first.

Tiff

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