Sid - Blogging for Newbie Webmasters’

I returned home late today, got really involved with some digital printing work with my friend. Blogging was the first thing in my evening schedule. So, I logged on to WP Admin Control Panel and again it was loaded with comments awaiting moderation. If you look at them casually you can hardly detect these are the comments posted by my dear spam bots, rather you will be confused looking at the relevance of the comments with the actual post - Adsense related topics get Adsense related comments, affiliate program related topics contain comments in that subject and some of them are just crazy - “I can’t understand some part of it but…”; i do not waste much time before sending them to the comments-bin! This is the love story of the spam bots with my blog here at hedir. Driven by spam attacks, I’ve made it compulsory for all visitors(?) to sign up. I know this must be a great drawback for my blog’s popularity but no way. I am a lonely poor dude - how long can I wish to fight spams? And I suppose spammers love my blog like nothing else in this internet world.
Next comes in the line is my profile at mySpace and the story is no different. I get comments, messages and never has done much delay to comment back or to give replies; but only to see a big RED CROSS with the notice “Profile Deleted” after someday. MySpace team really does some good work to control spams. And that crazy Captcha is a good sentry(for me - it is simply discouraging with crazy characters you can hardly decipher!) protecting comments/messages from spams; still spammers( Bot?) find entry without ticket to mySpace as well. At times I wonder if I’m interacting only with bots in mySpace. Rarely I receive comments from genuine human saying a simple ‘Hi! Hello!’.

With such a negative impression in my mind about social networking sites (Spammers paradise!) I tried ORKUT, and voila! there was fair amount of spam as well but in the form of human probably! I got some great offers to interact and chat with college girls(!!!) - not bad! and was careful enough not to get flooded. The check for spambots in ORKUT is much simple - characters are not that much crazy going (Unlike Google Bot!). At least they do not discourage you from scrapping or posting in forums. Firm, modest, gentle and green characters often representing some meaningful words (not always, I guess) add just more fun to ORKUT and Blogger as well. Well done Google!
If fine, if you ask me to compare my Blog (this one), mySpace profile and ORKUT - i must say - my blog is leading in terms of inviting spam bots for its shear lack of spam filters. I get over hundreds of spam comments if i do not care to visit my comments moderation tab for more than twenty-four hours; then comes mySpace - probably, my early loose settings gave them entry pass; and finally ORKUT where i’ve been able to ward off spams and able to interact with more human hopefully.

That’s my simple story about fighting against spams! And what else to do?

No updates from Google - neither PR nor ALGO! Internet, without a Googly-wave looks dull! and i get more time to spend with spams (bots?).

So, you have your mySpace account and have few friends and tried with posting bulletins - still you can’t just drag visitors to your sites - I think as a lot of mySpace members  are actually trying to get some traffic to their own website - it is not that easy to drive traffic to your website. If you offer something for free there are literally thousands others offering the same free stuff! If you want to sell some products, you need to do it tactfully - as they do not let you use your space for commercial purpose - and also you will get a lot of other members selling the same stuff as you are doing. MySpace appears to be producing some good returns for the music bands and that too if they are already a familiar name or they have implemented some special promotion strategy to get thousands of friends.

At times it looks like quite impossible to see space profiles flooded with friends - just wonder how do they manage time to get such a huge number of friends because they must have some activity other than making friendship requests at mySpace! Bots or automated scripts may somehow do the task for them. Otherwise, it just  compels my wonder.

Anyway I am in no way against having a profile with thousands of  friends - as you can simply take advantage of getting necessary exposure by posting relevant comments at such a crowded profile - and it works.

However, I would also like to give mySpace classified a try - why not use it for the purpose it is there- promoting your products or services! Oh! Just for the GPT lovers, the sad news is that you can not post your Referral links at mySpace! Better, you make a decent blog, make some high but realistic commitments regarding earning opportunities that your programs have - and then give some referral links at the bottom. I think promoting an informative blog using mySpace classified is not that difficult - just you can’t use the term : Get Paid To - over there. No problem! You must be clever enough to create a suitable alternative catch phrase!

But whatever the way you feel better, I think mySpace classified also deserves a try! A network with millions of visitors must be the best place where you should spend more time each day and if it allows you to promote your products - nothing is more delightful in the world than this small piece of dry information.

While using mySpace classified just do not repeat the same Ad, they have a fifteen days of interval restriction in between to Ad posting. So no other way but to wait for fifteen days before launching your next outright campaign to get some visitors to your website.

If it works, do not forget to share it with me - atleast tell it to me - as I have just told all that I could have about using mySpace for promotional purposes!

No, MySpace does not let you place your Affiliate links or other commercial advertisements in your profile.
But Internet Marketers are simply digging new avenues to use MySpace for promoting their brands for FREE.

Then what is mySpace?

It is a social networking site where users can make friendship, to a varying degree ( just friend, activity partner, serious relationship or networking) , or at the most, spend time to build a network. And MySpace does not charge you a single cent to do that so far and so long you create a personal profile.

What can I do in mySpace?

mySpace is a multi-featured sites providing you myriads of opportunity to interact with your friends at mySpace. First of all, you can create your profile - write some stuff about yourself, your interest, hobby, music, movie, persons you would like to meet as well as your heros! MySpace also allow you to blog, upload photos or videos, send bulletins to all of your friends or send message to anybody. It also let you post comments about your friends in their profile page. You can send a friends request to anyone ( Almost! ) in that  social networking site.

Ok! Got it! Then how can I promote my product or services?

As I have told earlier that you do not have permission to use mySpace for commercial purposes. So you can’t be vocal their about your products or services. But there are nice ways to do the task. Fact is that I followed the guidelines given in the links below to give it a success with few modifications - as you know - few tricks. So I would first of all share with you my opinion and then would like to request you to follow those links. I believe you can get decent a traffic and m…… using mySpace.

OK! Tell me what to do?

First of all, always keep in your mind mySpace is a Social Networking Site and it is the place for your friends and not any free advertising forum where you are free to promote your products or services. So, it calls for a modest approach  with  personal touch to win the race.  Here goes my tips:

1. Create a decent profiles - try to reflect the person you are not any product or service - your taste, your favorites and some hints to what you do - your profession, or occupation etc.

2. Add friends.

Do it following a definite schedule - check if the person has similar interest or share common thoughts - this helps a lot in future communications  - before sending a friendship request. You will see some of them has actually wanted to become your friends. Greet them at the first meeting by sending messages or posting comments  to their profile.
3. Post blogs to give updates about yourself and sometimes about your products or services.

4. Add photos - if you are selling some fancy items - like handbag for woman - show some items in your photos.

5. Create a semi-amature video presenting you as a person and tell something about your interest. For example, if you are selling handbags for women, share your source of inspiration or how do you stimulate your creative thoughts. If you  can manage relevant videos from  sites like YouTube - use it to see some big hits.
6.  Send Bulletins - you can send bulletin to communicate with your mySpace friends. Provide important announcements and updates about anything interesting or try to go for a more focussed campaign - driving traffic to a particular websites.

7. Take part in relevant communities - it will provide you the right exposure

8. Use mySpace classified for promoting your products or services and that is allowed. mySpace classified ( I could not product any result though!) is also a great way to drive traffic to your profile.

9. mySpace does not allow you to create multiple profile, so, I’ll not recommend that anyway. Also do not send spam messages - I’ve seen Spammers get deleted from mySpace overnight.

10. Be co-operative and a good listener - mySpace has really lot of juice still left for you.

Good luck.

Further reading:
1. ) 10 Ways To Make Money With MySpace!

2. ) Self Promotion on MySpace!

Those two articles are complementary to one another and provide enough information on MySpace Marketing, still, I’m digging for few more and let you know whenever I get something new.

MySpace Promotion

Creating profile in mySpace is really a challenging task as they do allow you to use HTML and CSS tags. So, you can tweak with CSS and HTML to get the desired looks and feels.

Although, you can not do much with the basic layout as you do not have controls over the basic page layout -i.e., the DIV and the table structures, but by changing background property, font size and color, and hiding certain sections - you can really give it a very different look.

Here is a simple step by step method to jump start your mySpace profile:

BASIC LEVEL ( Copy-Paste Method )
1) Set the background image/ layout:

Free Background Image / Layout: Copy the code and paste it in the About Me section

2) Hide Top/ Bottom Navigation Bar, they look ugly.

Copy and Paste the code given here!

3) Hide Details Section; if you want it to hide at all.

Simply copy and paste the code given here.

4) Remove Blog(?) and Extended Network Section:

Simply copy and paste the code given here

There are better alternative to hide the ‘Extended Network Section’ only, but that needs editing CSS style for ‘blacktext12′ class; set it to display: none to hide the text.
Obviously there are much more settings you can change or hide:

Get a full list here!

ADVANCED CSS EDITING

You should have some knowledge of basic CSS to do this.

Here you have to find the respective class and edit it.

This will give it a new look.

How to do that?
Open your mySpace url.

Click: view -> page source

This will show you the HTML page source.

Find the text, whose looks and feels, you want to change.

(Example: I tried to change CSS style for my Name: ‘SID’, I searched for the word ‘SID’ in the page source window and got that.)

Next Locate the CSS:

(Example: It is something like => class=”nametext”)
Here we get it, the class governing behavior of ‘SID’ is nametext.

Now change the CSS property of the class nametext, you can use DreamWeaver to do it more easily.

Copy and paste the changed class property in the About Me section in place of the existing class property. It must be placed in between ’style’ ‘/style’ block.

Done.

Experiment with different classes to change the overall looks and feels of your mySpace profile:

This is my profile:

http://www.myspace.com/myphp

Is Google Adsense Ads Allowed?

MySpace does not let you use Javascript, anything - including Google Adsense Ads - that contains Javascript, is not allowed.
What more I can do with mySpace?

You can create blog, add and share photos, vidoes - and there are some more fun stuff.
In fine, MySpace is really a perfect site for social networking, it may give you a great expose as well. The task of tweaking with CSS/HTML is really challenging for any programmer. Enjoy it, as I have done so while editing it.
Cheers!

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