If you want to succeed in internet marketing, making online friends can help you. Once you make online friends, it can get you some great results such as:

• Get you new leads
• Get you help in the social sphere
• Help You sell more stuff
• Get help with problems

Get new leads when you stay in touch in online water coolers or make friends with someone who’ll pass along helpful info.  This can also apply when you’re in a jam. Maybe you’ve got some online friends with technical skills that can talk you through that problem. Get help in the social sphere when you need a great article Digged or Stumble’d or want someone to write a helpful review or testimonial for you and sell more stuff because your online friends can help you do that by talking about you as the “Go-To Guy/Gal” in a particular area of expertise.

How Do You Make Online Friends?

The web can be a little bit cliquish but the cliques are not impenetrable. Here are five tips to help you get started:

1. Find blogs in your niche and comment on them, blog roll them and post on your social networking sites how great they are. The website owners will take notice of you
2. Be helpful in online community forums in your niche for newbies. You can find some great protegees who will happily promote you
3. Sign up for all the social tools you can and befriend people who are either in your target audience or in your peer group (preferably BOTH if it’s suitable for that application)
4. Do something philanthropic online and do a giveaway to get some attention.
5. Join an entrepreneurial group. There are groups online dedicated to helping each other build their businesses. Some groups are available on group sites like Google, Yahoo and MSN and there are paid memberships sites such as StomperNet, Internet Entrepreneur Club or Universal Wealth Creation as well that help people and some even offer conventions.

Over time, a bit of socializing can bring you some profitable dividends and if you can find some friends in high places you can definitely make more of an impact online and become sought after as an online friend to others as well.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008

If you want to advertise your business, your services or hire some paid help, you probably want to use classified services. You don’t have to necessarily take out an ad in the paper and pay for it (although that isn’t a bad idea!)  There are some free ad sites that will let you post your ad and get word out that you have something you want or something you need. Here are a few options:

Craigslist

Craigslist is free and has some great features including the fact that you can decide how you want people to apply for or respond to the advertisement. You can put your information or have replies come to an online Craigslist address that you have access to. You could also simply refer to your URL and disable replies to the posting.

Kijiji

Kijiji is owned by the eBay folks and is a great classifieds website that allows you to post free classified ads. One of the great things about Kijiji is that you can also post photos unlike Craigslist so this site really lets you jazz up your ads to make them more appealing to viewers.

USFreeads

USFreeads has been around for nearly ten years and can be a great place to get high traffic.

Online Forums

Look at online community forums in your niche. Many will have buy, sell or trade sections that you can post in for free. Some sites have premium ads available that you can buy but you can find plenty of free online classifieds ad places to take advantage of.   Forum posting also has the potential of getting indexed for SEO value so consider posting ads in your signature section of your forum profile as well as individual posts.

There are plenty of places to get free advertising online. Social marketing is a great way to do so as well. We’ll explore a lot of social networking sites in the days to come on seanseo.com as well.

Have a most outstanding day.

Dana Prince
Internet Marketing Blog
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008