Making money online through Adsense and other ad networks

Friendster may have made it to the pages of history by being the first social networking site when it opened its virtual doors in 2002, but making history doesn't always mean guaranteed profit and Friendster is unfortunately one good case example of that happening.

Although Friendster claims to have as much as forty million profiles uploaded in its database, its numbers in the United States aren't even remotely close to its competitors. Friendster has in fact been relying on approximately $25M worth of venture capital to continue its operations. The said website, however, is hoping to finally increase its profit margins by partnering up with Internet search engine giant Google Adsense.

In the past, Friendster had been primarily relying on Yahoo to provide ad matches for searches made by its users on its internal search engine.

"Google allows Friendster to leverage the best industry platform to monetize our high-growth global business." Jeff Roberto, Marketing and PR Director of Friendster, remarks when asked about the multi-year contract stipulating Google to be the sole resource of advertising and web research for Friendster.

Roberto also expresses his company's hopes of using the partnership with Google to further expand their services worldwide as its core audience is primarily located in Asia at present. Financial details of the contract, however, have not been disclosed.

In August 2006, Google also closed the same deals with Friendster competitors MySpace and Facebook. In the same year, Google earned a little over $3B and its online ad partners earned even slightly more than that, according to Canada's London Free Press.

via NewsFactor