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Can MySpace really be used as a source of traffic to your existing websites, or as the main site to promote your business to thousands of eager buyers?

I found out from MySpace Marketing expert and author of “MySpace Cash Machine” Matthew Sherbone that it’s not only possible; it’s also a duplicable and low-cost marketing system.

MySpace.com is currently the 4th most popular website on the Internet, right after giants like Yahoo, Msn and Google. They have over 100,000,000 registered users - yes that’s ONE HUNDRED MILLION.

Common marketing wisdom tells us that anywehre there’s that much people, there’s an incredible amount of money to be made. But how do you make all that money?

After reading all kind of crappy information on the Internet about marketing on MySpace, I finally landed a great catch. I found Matthew Sherbone, the guy everyone goes to for tips and tricks on selling and promoting on MySpace.

I trapped him in a corner and forced him to tell me everything about marketing on Myspace, for free. In the end, although there was indefinately too much information to cover, we did get a 27-minute call packed with all the good stuff..

In the call you’ll discover why Matthew choose to market his business on MySpace, and exactly how he goes about doing it. We cover quite a lot of great stuff that you can take away for free.

We discuss several key secrets to successful MySpace marketing campaigns:

• Targeted profiles
• Keyword targeting
• Profile linking
• Using pictures
• Using opt-in forms

We also discuss the common the common mistakes newbies make when marketing on MySpace:

• How many friends to add?
• What type of businesses you should not promote?
• One profile or many profiles?

Just enter your name and email address into the form below to get access to the secret interview:

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WebWire - Austin, TX, October 31, 2006 Flapdaddy.com an online community and social networking web site with a Million dollar talent contest offering customizable personalized web pages, video, audio, and communications features targeting individuals with (read post )

PhysOrg - For the future, eBuddy plans to expand with new features allowing users to have one single login to chat with contacts on different networks, save chat sessions and add social networking features like a dating zone similar to those of myspace.com. (read post )

Detroit Free Press - Everything from people lip-syncing pop songs to copied segments from TV shows is posted on it. As with other social networking sites on the Web, you’ll need to monitor what your kids are watching. YouTube is sometimes a cultural and political (read post )

MSN MoneyCentral - QUALCOMM also has updated the Best Community Application category (formerly Best Communications Application) for BREW applications designed to encourage social networking or improve communications such as blogging, email, instant messaging or (read post )

Tri-City Herald - Blogs, personal Web sites, instant messaging and networking sites like MySpace.com can be good ways of keeping up with friends Although it’s nearly impossible for students to access social sites or inappropriate Web sites from school district (read post )

Northwest Arkansas News - Yahoo s original content approach may appeal to big-name advertisers, who have been reluctant to attach their brands to the unpredictable and sometimes racy material found on videosharing and social-networking sites. News Corp. s MySpace is (read post )

Hollywood Reporter - In addition, Turner is in negotiations with distributors all over the digital-media landscape that would put Super Deluxe sans social networking functions on cable VOD, mobile phones, portable media players and video game consoles. The venture (read post )

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The teen suspended for appearing in MySpace photos with drinking and smoking going on is now suing. (read post…)

FTS Wireless Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of FTS Group, Inc., today announced that it will begin offering Helio(TM) Wireless handsets and rate plans through its retail and new Internet sales channels beginning in November. (read post…)

CHICAGO (AP) — More than 500 new energy drinks launched worldwide this year, and coffee fans are probably too old to understand why. Energy drinks aren’t merely popular with young people. They attract fan mail on their own MySpace pages. They spawn urban legends. They get reviewed by bloggers. (read post…)

Less than three years after emerging from nowhere, the hot social networking website MySpace is on pace to be worth a whopping $15 billion in just three more years. Or is it And is the much smaller Facebook really worth the $900 million or more Yahoo is reported to have offered for it (read post…)

By Martin Ricard Ernest Parker and Hazina Williams rifled through their Myspace.com profiles one recent afternoon, checking e-mails, searching for messages from distant friends and exploring a world very familiar to most young adults. (read post…)

Attackers have found a way to user a genuine MySpace account to trick users into disclosing passwords. (read post…)

This week, local parents attended an information session about MySpace.com. It’s a popular website among teenagers. It allows you to create your own web-page, add photos of yourself and your friends, post your hobbies and personal thoughts, and also chat with other friends online. (read post…)

The Power of Myspace
By Jeff Lawrence

Traditional ways of generating traffic to a website have revolved around PPC advertising, search engine optimization, reciprocal linking, content generation, and a wide variety of other means. As the internet continues to evolve another form has made waves in the online world: Myspace. Myspace is categorized as a “social networking site.” What that means it is it is a gathering center for almost everyone. People find old high school friends, arrange for potential dates, communicate with friends, and most importantly to those in the SEO and web analytics fields they use myspace to promote a product or service. Although advertising businesses is technically against myspace’s terms and conditions (they would rather you pay to advertise) hundreds of thousands of businesses and bands reside on myspace. With reports of 100 million users of myspace the potential for promotion is incredible. Myspace, for the first time ever directed more traffic to online retailers last month than yahoo did according to hitwise. That was just from paid advertising, not from individual users of the site.

As an example of the power of myspace we had a staffer create a myspace profile with her name, a few pictures, and a description of the company she works for, us. She added her friends, and then added some friends of her friends. Within four days she had over 650 friends that generated hundreds of hits onto our main website. At the time of this article she was upto 3000 friends in two weeks of Myspace membership. Other myspace members had tens of thousands of friends, and used the myspace bulletin feature to send traffic to events that they were planning, or invitations for their “friends” to visit their website for a new promotion. In addition to this your website link is indexed by Google, further enhancing your position for link building as well. The potential unique visitors that myspace can generate is increasing important on today’s rapidly changing internet. If you have any further questions that we haven’t clearly addressed, or just need some advise feel free to email us at info@sonicko.com or visit us at http://www.sonicko.com

Jeff Lawrence is the owner of Sonicko Consultanting. This article may be reused provided that the full content is published. Sonicko focuses on web analytics and search engine optimization and is based out of Los Angeles, CA. You can reach them at their website at http://www.sonicko.com

Social Networking and Music: MySpace Puts It All Together in a Virtual Community
By Scott G

Today’s music fan interacts with a “community” that is far larger than anyone ever dreamed possible before the widespread personal use of the Internet. This social networking is changing the way people market and sell music and it’s doing so on a global scale.

Here’s How:

One fan hears a song and “tells” a dozen others online. Each, in turn, sends the information (and sometimes the entire song file) to another dozen people, and so on. If the song’s hook is catchy and universal enough, the artist can reach thousands of fans in a matter of seconds. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s free, and it’s global.

Does this viral communication bring any income for that artist (or songwriter, or publisher, or manager, or agent, or distributor, or record label)? No. But does it provide vital publicity that has the potential of selling singles, albums, concert tickets and merchandise? Absolutely.

The New Means of Marketing:

This is a quantum shift in marketing. It holds out the possibility of bypassing brick-and-mortar distribution, while severely curtailing the barely-legal forms of radio “promotion” that many in the industry openly refer to as payola or commercial station extortion.

All this is possible thanks to an ever-growing variety of online forms of communication, including music sites, web portals, blogs (weblogs), music forums, and more. A new site called MySpace.com has put all of these elements together in one place. And because of their vision, MySpace is becoming an information destination for bands, fans, filmmakers, writers, artists, record industry professionals, and more.

The MySpace Nation: “Where do you live?” used to be a question that was spoken out loud; it’s now typed. The answer to that question used to simply signify which part of a city you were from, with an accompanying suggestion of your socio-economic status, and a hint about which mall might be your usual hangout; it now refers not only to your city, but also your state, region or country.

Your virtual “scene” may involve people anywhere on the globe. My virtual community begins in Los Angeles and extends to Moscow, Big Bear, Amsterdam, San Francisco, London, New York, Miami, and several places I have not yet learned to spell correctly. In fact, thanks to social networks like MySpace, one can interact with several scenes. The people who like my goth songs overlap slightly with the rave-trance songs on my remix album, but they are not interested in the music I create for radio and television commercials (they can be quite disdainful of it, in fact). But each social network welcomes news of new music in their own favorite styles.

MySpace: The Future is Now

With two million members (and growing), MySpace.com offers a multi-level entertainment opportunity involving blogs, instant messaging, classifieds, peer voting, special interest groups, user forums and user-created content. Is it popular? You bet: they have statistics that show the site receiving 35 million impressions per day at an average of one hour online per visit. So far, all MySpace services are free, with the site supported entirely by advertisers who are eager to reach exactly the young, web-savvy and web-social music fan that MySpace.com attracts.

Created by Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson, MySpace is already successful on a level that caught many industry onlookers by surprise. While the main MySpace site leads to pure social networking, the section of the site called MySpace Music is a revolutionary way to reach their built-in web audience of two million networked users, and has the potential of rapidly expanding beyond that already impressive figure. As a means of launching unsigned and emerging recording artists, MySpace Music is a formidible tool.

Inside the Minds of the MySpace Creators:

“MySpace Music is what MP3.com should have been, but never was,” Anderson said. “Very few people go to a website looking for bands they’ve never heard of. MySpace Music lets people find music online in the same way they find out about music in person: through their friends. Millions of friends come to MySpace to socialize, and through that process — word of mouth and recommendations of friends — bands get exposure to new fans and fans to new music.”
DeWolfe continues, “The most exciting use of MySpace Music is the way it’s changing the band-to-fan dynamic. A band can go on MySpace and find potential fans all over the country just by sending an e-mail and saying ‘Hello.’ Bands are developing followings and finding street teams online.”
Offering downloads, band web pages, and the ability to connect directly with artists is just part of the attraction of MySpace Music. Each visitor to the site also can participate via user testimonials and ratings. The artists are also able to access a wide variety of music business contacts.

Details from DeWolfe:

G-Man: What’s the history of MySpace?

Chris DeWolfe: We launched the general MySpace site in September of 2003. Our vision was to create a portal where our users could mobilize and connect around shared interests — whether those interests be music, television, dating, nightlife, politics, religion or anything else.

G-Man: How does music fit into the MySpace network?

Chris DeWolfe: Almost from the day we launched, music became one of the primary interests of MySpace users. We believe that most people hear and sample new music based on recommendations from friends. The network affect of our site (friends telling friends), allows new trends and music to spread very quickly. At the same time, bands began flocking to MySpace as a mechanism to promote themselves, find new fans, book shows, and even secure label deals.

G-Man: What are the revenue streams for MySpace?

Chris DeWolfe: MySpace is currently supported by online advertising and sponsorship. We may add premium services later, but any service we currently offer for free will stay that way. We’ve been lucky to secure top tier advertisers such as Sony Music, Interscope, Warner Music, Dreamworks, Napster and others. The promotion works for these types of advertisers because most of our users are hip 18-34 year-old influencers who love music and frequently go to movies during the opening weekend.

G-Man: What are the advantages for artists using MySpace?

Chris DeWolfe: Artists may sell their CDs on our site. The primary use so far has been for bands to mobilize new fans who they ordinarily wouldn’t have met. A band from Iowa can quickly develop a following in New York or Los Angeles. Additionally, bands use the site to book tours and fill venues. The MySpace social network is international. Because MySpace is an online network, it makes geographical boundaries less relevant.

G-Man: Can you compare the MySpace entity with other networking sites?

Chris DeWolfe: Most sites are narrowly focused on business networking, classifieds, or dating. MySpace is a portal that uses a social networking infrastructure. MySpace includes, games, blogs, music, classifieds, forums, mail, instant messaging, and user rankings. Our model has lead to an incredibly sticky site where the average user spends over an hour per session on the site. We have also served more page views than our largest competitor in each of the last three months.

MySpace is just extending functionality around existing mass behavior. Most if not all of those other sites didn’t or don’t have that luxury — they were counting on behavior to develop around functionality. To put it another way, we’re not building it, hoping people will come. People are already on the site sharing information about bands; bands are already recruiting fans and local help; users are already clamoring to download music; they’re already ranking and rating music; they’re already showing up at our parties to hear music they learned about on MySpace. MySpace music works because two million people are already doing what we’re now making it easier for them to do.

G-Man: What marketing arenas are involved (or planned to be involved) with MySpace?

Chris DeWolfe: Two of our bigger marketing partners are the Warped Tour and Rock The Vote. The Warped Tour, in particular, is a great fit for us. We are sponsoring the Uproar Stage and bands from MySpace will be playing at Warped Tour venues. This partnership offers great exposure for MySpace Music and participating MySpace Music bands.

Rock the Vote is also a great partner as it fits in with our mission of allowing our users to mobilize around shared interests. MySpace users can register to vote directly from our home page. We will also be participating in several of their music shows.

MySpace Phenomenon On-the-Grow:
Strategic partnerships are developing almost as fast as bands are meeting fans on the site. The Los Angeles Music Network (www.lamn.com) will bring its membership base and marketing strength into a partnership arrangement with MySpace.

Linking listeners, reaching behind borders, and uniting musicians with fans and industry professionals, the MySpace nation is a phenomenon. Since a passport is free, everyone in music marketing had better pay a visit. It’s at http://www.myspace.com. See you there.

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Scott G is president of G-Man Music & Radical Radio. His music is on commercials for Verizon Wireless, Goodrich, Monaco Motor Coaches, BAE Systems and more. A creative director of the National Association of Record Industry Professionals (NARIP) and a member of The Recording Academy (NARAS), he writes about music for MusicDish.com and the Immedia Wire Service. The G-Man’s albums are released by Delvian Records and are on Apple’s iTunes. He can be reached via http://www.gmanmusic.com and http://www.myspace.com/thegman.

A Myspace Sidebar - It’s Simple Using DIV
By J Andrew Morrison

How would you like to have a column on the left side of your Myspace profile in which you could place anything you like? Even better, what if this column was never covered when some one’s browser window is smaller than the Myspace layout “grid”? Well the solution is much simpler than you might think, and I am going to give it to you right now. I’m not going in depth into the workings of CSS or the Myspace structure. There are a lot of great CSS tutorial sites out there to learn the deeper and more complex aspects of modifying your Myspace layout and Myspace background. Just type Myspace tutorials into Google. Here, I am just going to give you the code and brief explanations of what it does.

First, just to make sure you understand what I am speaking of, visit my Myspace layout at profile sbccjohn (I would recommend opening a new tab/window for reference). Notice the grey box in the upper left corner (I left it plain so it would stand out). Now make your browser window smaller using the resize corner and notice how the banner ad and table stops when it gets near the box. I’ll show you why and how it does this.

Let’s dive right into this Myspace layout modification by looking at the code.

Here is the code that actually builds the box seen in the sidebar. Place this CSS code wherever you put your own modification code. I prefer the top of the “About Me” edit box:

You can put whatever your want here. Even aligned images:

< img xsrc=" url of desired image" />

There is only one line of code needed to keep the sidebar from being covered by the rest of the Myspace layout, it’s in bold below. If you already have CSS modifications using the ‘body’ tag you just need to add the line to the current code. Otherwise you can add the entire style block below the div code listed above; just be careful not to place it inside another style block. Here is the code:

body {
margin-left:155px;
}

That is all you need to build the sidebar for your Myspace layout.

The first block of code tells the browser to create a block of space, 15 pixels from the top and 7 pixels from the left, 150 pixels wide and 400 pixels high, with a 1 pixel border that is black and solid, and to not put any space between the edge and inside content (padding) or around the outside (margin), and make the background color grey.

The second block of code tells the browser to keep the entire Myspace layout at least 155 pixels from the left. It’s important to note the relationship between the margin-left in this block of code and the width in the previous code. You need to keep margin-left larger than width or the Myspace layout might cover your sidebar in smaller browser windows.

Now you can explore with different combinations of colors, widths, heights, borders and position. For example you can have the sidebar start lower by changing top to 100px. You can even add a background image using the same methods you add a Myspace background image. Enjoy the new layout!

J Andrew Morrison is a writer, inventor, and online merchandiser of products and services. You can visit his Myspace Tutorial site at Myspace-Modifier.com. He also has a daily Internet marketing journal and resource center at Getting-Clicks.com.