Monetize Pro

Social media is free insofar as Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter don’t demand registration fees of their users.  But most people don’t have an unlimited amount of time to spend dropping links on social media sites, and so you might want to use some info posted on the Royal Pingdom blog to decide where your energy will be best spent.

“A quick look in Google Trends confirms how strong Twitter’s media presence has become in 2009,” an article states.  “The first thing you notice is the enormous boost compared to previous years (Twitter launched in 2006).  It’s like a race car accelerating.”

The post then continues, “That in itself is impressive, but it gets even more interesting when you start comparing it with other big Web properties like Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, and even Google and Yahoo.  And just for fun, we threw in Microsoft’s new search contender, Bing, and Microsoft itself.”

As for the results, it’s simple: Twitter beat everything with the exception of Google and Microsoft (and those have been pretty close races in recent days).

So if you’re looking to turn a social media promotion into money, consider focusing on Twitter.  Unless your target audience is David Letterman, anyway.

The odds of you losing money due to a scheme with Google’s name attached to it are decreasing.  Earlier this month, the search giant started cracking down on payout scams that cite its brand.

Here, as the AdWords Help Experts reported, is the text of the email Google’s contacting certain advertisers with: “It’s come to our attention that you have submitted ads that promote Google Money Tree or ads that promote a misrepresented affiliation with Google.  Due to multiple complaints from our users and publishers, we’ve made the decision not to accept these ads.”

The email then continues, “This is a notification that your account has been suspended due to the submission of these ads and your ads will no longer run on Google.  Please note that future accounts you open will also be suspended.”

So Google’s taking the matter quite seriously, which is nice.  Google’s actually scored high in a number of “brand trust” surveys, so scams in its name are especially dangerous.

With all due respect, we’d just offer the tip that you avoid doing anything the least bit suspicious-looking.