MySpace is becoming a haven for marketers to peddle their wares. It’s also becoming a haven for affiliate marketers. Personally, I’m slow to adopt marketing on MySpace, but advise clients to set up their pages to build their network of loyal fans and readers.
Recently, I’ve decided to test out the MySpace waters myself by doing a personal case study to see how fickle MySpace users truly are and about the profit potential. But, I will do so with extreme caution because of something I read on the 5 Star Affiliate Forum.
Jon the owner of the WickedFire forum and an Affiliate Summit panelist reports from the Summit that Myspace has announced it will be suing at least 20-25 ad networks.
MySpace has taken a hard line and is going after affiliates, affiliates networks, and other would-be advertisers/spammers with a vengeance. Reading through the terms of use shows they have a strict policy against any commercial endeavors on MySpace. You may even end up having to pay $50 for each unsolicited message (bulletin, e-mail, or otherwise) send through the MySpace service. Think they can’t figure out who you are? Well, if you’re promoting a product or company, it wouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
From what I can tell, the marketers and groups targeted by MySpace have been egregiously promoting their service of spamming members and MySpace is not discriminating based on company size — they are even going after individual affiliates.
From what I gather, MySpace doesn’t frown upon sending traffic to your own legitimate website (otherwise a number of artists and musicians would be in a world of hurt). The qualms lie with people wanting to make a quick buck off of the giant social network by spamming its users. That said, I do believe you can market yourself on MySpace without setting off their radar as long as you do it intelligently.
It may take more time to see results, but it could end up saving you millions in legal fees.
