How a College Student Made $65,428 By Embracing New Media: MySpace, Web 2.0, Social Media, and How It's Changing The Online Advertising World

The online media landscape is changing and major companies are starting to take notice. As a new school year starts across the country, college students are shirking traditional campus jobs and embracing an interesting new way of making money using MySpace and other social networks.

Las Vegas, NV (PRWEB) September 16, 2006 -- As a new school year starts across the country, college students are shirking traditional campus jobs and embracing an interesting new way of making money using MySpace and social media.

MySpace, Facebook, and other popular online student hangouts have increasingly been home to a new kind of fad: smart students leveraging the value of their social networks to bring in real dollars from an increasing number of companies.

“Social media is changing the way people interact with brands,” says Joe Davison, Director of the online marketing firm Zen Marketing LLC. “It is logical that college students are among the first to embrace this shift of the way business is done on the Internet.”

The shift, says Davison, is drawing the attention of major corporate players who are just now starting to accept the need for a social media strategy.

“Take credit card companies for example. For years, these companies have descended down on college campuses giving away prizes or t-shirts in exchange for students applying for a card,” according to Davison.

Now, enterprising students are taking things into their own hands using the power and leverage of their existing social networks and earning as much as $50 for every approved credit card they give away through their network.

“There’s big money in college students pooling their resources in order to be compensated for things they would do anyway, like apply for a credit card. Social media enables that like never before,” Davison adds.

School groups and fundraising organizations are also starting to take notice. With lucrative online marketing programs like this being only a few clicks away, older fundraising techniques like bake sales and candy sales are fading in popularity.

According to Scott Martin, a student from Dearborn, MI, who racked up over $65,532 in less than 10 months using a similar technique, “It is far more than pocket change for me. I was able to pay my own way through college,” Martin said.

According to Martin, sites like MakeMoneyWithCreditCards.com make it easy for students like him to cash in on this lucrative practice.

“Social media, word of mouth, Web 2.0, whatever you want to call it, the online landscape has changed. Along with this comes a change in the way companies reach out to their customers,” says Davison. “Instead of a top-down hierarchy, there now exists an interconnected web of relationships through which products are discussed, recommended, and ultimately purchased.”

And ultimately, this is changing the online landscape for the better – for both companies and consumers.

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