How does 'FRIENDSTER' earn income?

[myco]

How does social networking websites like 'friendster', 'facebook', 'myspace', etc.. earn income? Aside from it's advertisements and adsense.

[mickmel]

Advertisements are it for now. Not much else there.

When you have tens of millions of users, ads can earn some HUGE money.

[kaire]

Yep, mainly it's from advertisements. But they can also earn additional income from selling stuff straight to the people who have accounts with them -- Facebook sells "gifts" for $1 each. They're just pics you put on your profile but they only have a certain number of them so some people are willing to buy them. That's direct income right there.

Friendster does the same thing. Not with image "gifts" like Facebook, but they sell "flowers" you can give to your Friendster friends. That's direct income too.

Buying stuff directly from these social networking sites seems like a waste, but think about how they all have *millions* of members. Some of those people are willing to pay for stuff like that so the chances are the companies will make money from atleast *thousands* of their customers.

[poncy000]

1. Pop-up ad and image ads. Theses kind of ads are pay per impression basis ads. Advertising companies pay based on the thousand of impressions, ussually not less than 4 U.S. dollars per 1000 impressions. Take note that Friendster receives millions of impressions per day.

2. Contextual Ads from Google. I just recently notice this 4 to 6 months ago. Its the same as in number one but it is a pay per click basis ad. The advertiser pay for every click on the advertisement.

3. Sponsored links in the web search. Advertisers pay on various methods, maybe a pay per click or pay per impressions.

4. Upgrade in the friendster blog. One of the product selling services of Friendster.