If you read my article on list building and email campaigns then you would know that profit is in the list. Building a list takes time to reach the numbers that would adequately supply you with enough leads to run a successful marketing campaign. Fortunately, we have a multitude of social networks that we can get involved with to help gather leads.

Right now, Facebook is the king of social networking sites with over 175 million registered members and provides marketers with many options to profit from their success. Below, I will discuss a few of these options that can start bringing immediate traffic and money.

Did you know that Facebook has a marketplace?  Well they do and it is starting to catch on to many Facebook members.  It’s a run in conjunction with oodle.com as a classifieds market.   When you search for items through Facebook’s market place it returns results that are local.  However, when you post items for sale, everyone can see them and contact you if they are interested in what you are selling.

There are categories for nearly everything, including autos, merchandise, real estate, jobs, and services.  Interested parties contact you and arrange payment and delivery methods.  It’s not an auction site like Ebay; it’s a real time marketplace.  Find it by clicking on applications from your profile page then click on marketplace.

Facebook allows members to create Groups and Pages to help connect with like minded individuals. Pages are meant for users to associate with a particular brand or artist creating a fan page and inviting other users to become fans. Create a page to promote your brand or service.

Facebook Pages are similar to normal profiles and can add friends and pictures as well as applications. Communications are by way of updates which are posted on the page wall as well as the walls of the pages friends. The magical part of Pages is they are indexed by the search engines like Google and Yahoo.

Facebook Groups are more like clubs and are administered by the creator of the group and the admin can appoint officers to assist. As long as the group has less than 5000 members, the admin can blast emails to the entire group whereas, the admin of a Page can only contact members through updates on the wall.

The cool thing about Groups is, there are literally thousands of them. You can find a group that has already been established and join then participate. Most groups allow you to post a link in your updates and also add a link to their link capsule. This is a good way to drive traffic to a specific niche.

Now this is the juicy part of Facebook. Facebook applications are phenomenal for generating not only traffic but also revenue. Facebook applications are small programs which users run from within their Profiles or Pages. These applications are a way to become more social with friends through games, virtual gifts and quizzes. Some have practical uses such as giving a means to donate to a charitable group or display things you like and may have in common with other members.

Facebook applications are viral, meaning they spread through users. Incentives are given such as running contests giving away freebies like eBooks or reports. Just recently, a Facebook application called “Where I’ve been” was just sold to an online travel company for several million dollars.

The most popular Facebook application right now is called Mafia Wars and it is approaching 6 million users. Another is Farmville and in each of these applications, the users get turn based play time. Play time sometimes becomes addicting but the user is only allotted a certain amount of points, but they can purchase more points or items to help them be more successful in their game. They can also do surveys to earn more points.

Doing surveys, purchasing point, selling banners and text links are just a few of he ways to monetize an application. You can purchase already made applications which you only need to customize but this can run hundreds or thousands of dollars. An easier way is to create them yourself. There are many sources where you can learn to create Facebook applications but I have found one such place that provides instruction as well as sample pieces of code. It will walk you completely through the steps of creating a Facebook application. Do it yourself here!

If you have no faith in your abilities to create a Facebook application, do not fear, I have also found a place where you can purchase software that will generate applications for you. These applications which you will generate will have all the necessary code in place and instruct you how to customize it for your needs. The generated applications will also be coded to allow monetization through Paypal, banner ads and surveys by SuperRewards. Get your Facebook Application Generator Software Here.