At a recent Social Media-themed breakfast event for New Hampshire’s Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, one speaker (Leslie Poston, co-author of Twitter for Dummies) told the assembled audience there were 537 different social networking sites online. 537! And that doesn’t even count all the networks on Ning and other services like it, which allow you to build your own social network using their templates, or custom-made communities like “Greenopolis,” or “Equestrian Life.”

So when it comes to deciding which social media platforms make the most sense to use, the options can be overwhelming – if you let them. However, with a little focus, guidance, and strategic thinking, you can just as easily simplify your choices.

What follows draws from our 6-week “Social Media Kick Start” Virtual Boot Camp, which expands on these topics with self-paced learning modules.

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One of the excuses we hear most often from struggling online marketers is that they don’t make more sales because they don’t have a list. We even hear that excuse from marketers who have been online three, or even five years.

My question to them is always, “What are you waiting for?” “Why not start a massive list-building effort today?”

When I look at how I built my database, I used only a few primary methods. Here are the most effective ones that I used:

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One of the excuses we hear most often from struggling online marketers is that they don’t make more sales because they don’t have a list. We even hear that excuse from marketers who have been online three, or even five years.

My question to them is always, “What are you waiting for?” “Why not start a massive list-building effort today?”

When I look at how I built my database, I used only a few primary methods. Here are the most effective ones that I used:

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There is a common misconception that a website automatically catapults a business to global stardom. This could be true – with a lot of time and money spent on it – but in isolation, a website is next to useless. No doubt all you SEO experts out there will think I’m teaching grandma to suck eggs but there are literally thousands of people starting out who just don’t realise what it takes.

The truth is, a website on its own is akin to opening a new shop at the bottom of a dark, gated alleyway – with no signage or advertising. Passers-by will do exactly that, pass by, never knowing what wonderful products you are selling. Without the brightly lit signs, local press, opening launches, special offer flyers and other advertising, nobody will ever know your shop is there!

It’s the same with a website, unless people know it’s there, they will never visit it.

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by Bob Sullivan

Almost everyone forgets a Web site password once in a while. When you do, you click on the familiar “Forgot your password?” link and, after entering your pet’s name, identifying your high school mascot or answering some other seemingly obscure questions, you can get back into your account.

But there’s a problem: A criminal can do that, too. With the help of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, personal trivia is getting less obscure all the time. You’d be surprised how easily someone can uncover Fido’s name or your alma mater with a little creative searching.

Some security researchers are beginning to sound the alarm about “password resetting” tools, suggesting they could be the weakest link in Web security.

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StumbleUpon is one of the biggest social networking sites. The innovative function in StumbleUpon is a special tool that allow surfers to expose sites related to theirs interest. Also participants have ability to thumb up or thumb down particular website, it’s simple rating. It can be a great free traffic opportunity for you as StumbleUpon is generating for me the most traffic over other social networking sites. In this article I would like to share with you most effective tools to gain more traffic from this site.

Where to start in StumbleUpon?

Go to StumbleUpon.com and register an account. Also install toolbar to your web browser for faster bookmarking. When you will install it you can go to your site and click icon I like it! It will open a new window where you can write your site review, tags.

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There are many ways to make money online. Unfortunately, many of the money-making techniques actually take money to make money. This means that you need to begin with money if you hope to make any money.

However, there are several free ways to make money online. Let?s take a look at four of them right now.

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