How Does Facebook Make Money?

Social networking websites have become hugely popular recently and the largest and fastest growing one is still free to belong, so how does this immensely popular website make money and provide its service free to members? How does Facebook make money if it is free to join?

This phenomenal website has over half a billion members now. You may not think of it as a membership site, but in order to use the website each user has to sign up and provide quite a lot of personal information, which makes this website a hugely powerful database.

The fun of interacting daily with the people you have met from all walks of life over the decades is such a strong pull that people willingly insert an amount of personal data they would surely hesitate to divulge to other organizations. I have over three hundred personal friends on Facebook, 

nearly all of whom I have known personally at different times of my life, most of whom I would never have expected to have any contact with ever again, before the rise of internet social networking. So for me, this is a personal miracle!

But how does this giant site make money if you can join up for free? The amount of web pages required to run a website for half a billion members must cost considerably! Well, who would be interested in advertising to such a keyword friendly database?

 Every company on Earth that wants to make money! And so far, surprisingly few companies have really switched on to the fact that they can gain massive targeted exposure for their brand very inexpensively on this colossal site.

But every day more and more companies the world over sign up to get their brand seen here. One way to accomplish that is to set up a free community page about the company or a particular brand the company promotes, such as a popular beer, or an insurance service. 

The fastest growing paid advertising method is to advertise in the right hand sidebar: you can choose what location, what interests, and what gender and age your advertisement appears to. That is far more powerful for any business than advertising in a directory.

As more businesses want to advertise in the sidebar, the cost of advertising will rise, making Facebook ever more money. A business can include their logo or a picture here, which they cannot in pay-per-click search engine adverts. The advertisement can include a click through to a community page, a group, or the company's own website. I think this is the most powerful interactive marketing opportunity ever developed!

Yes, I think social networking will continue to grow in popularity because every day I see new people joining and asking to be my friend. Only a fraction of the people I have ever met are actually already active users so the growth potential is huge. I certainly think the novelty value will fade and many users will gradually migrate to other websites, but the sheer number of active users at present makes this social networking website the biggest, cheapest, and most effective advertising opportunity ever for every business, and therefore the advertising revenue potential is so great that users will not have to pay to belong.

It is a win-win situation for the website developers, businesses, application developers, and users. The internet in general, and social networking in particular, is changing the way we interact with people on a daily basis. Word of mouth recommendation has always been the most powerful marketing promotion, and now the internet has its own variety which every business, big or small, should begin to plug into. So advertising is the answer to "How does Facebook make money?"

Do you want to make money using the power of free social networking and social media marketing? Join me now and learn for free with video training, tips and secret strategies the Pro's use very day!

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