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Getting Paid to Socialize

You don't need to be a tech head to make money on the internet anymore. For years people young and old have been monetizing their YouTube accounts. Making goofy videos that get millions of views and then charging big companies to advertise on their pages. Monetizing content isn't the easiest thing in the world, but there's practically no barrier to entry anymore. You don't need millions of dollars to become a media mogul. It can be done with a decent digital camera, a YouTube account, and a quirky personality.

Most people spend their brainstorming sessions trying to come up with the next big idea for the internet. I can recount dozens of conversations in the recent years with friends that wanted to build a better "(insert any popular social network here)". It's easy to fantasize about how you might become the next hot shot featured on TechCrunch. However, I'm wondering if these people are just trying to re-invent the wheel, since the popular social networks already exist. Right now, you literally have hundreds of millions of people that are surfing one social network or another. You can befriend them, poke them, follow them, or link up with them for free. Building an audience has never been easier then it is today.

I recently read an article from SpringWise about an online school called Super Cool School, that lets anyone create their own curriculum online and monetize it. This may require you to be somewhat of an expert in a certain area, which is more of a barrier to entry than my earlier example of YouTube, but it's still yet another way for you to provide your own knowledge or creativity on a pre-existing social network to help you create some additional income.

So before you spend the next 5 years trying to be the next Kevin Rose of Digg or Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, try leveraging what they've already built for you to gain an audience and monetizing some of your own content or creativity.

Hear us out...

Getting Paid to Socialize

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