What are some of these best marketing ideas for online blogs and websites? I have found that social networking as well as affiliate advertising has helped a lot. What have you found?

Blogs are much better than social networkd for onemain reason...

People are acutally paying attention to what they are seeing in blogs. If you rely on social networks you are trying to outshine the main thrust of the network...socializing.

I found a fairly decent socail network called NING.

It isn't nearly as cluttered as MyPace and the members tend to be older than thos on MySpace.

It might be worth exploring!

Blogs because you are actually attracting people interested in what you are selling.  I sell consumables, so marketing to my existing customers is really important to me. I do a monthly newsletter with specials. I also include several business cards with my products so that when my customer is raving to her friends about them, she can also provide them with a business card!

Thanks so much for all of your input. I think the blogs have won this one.

The only downfall of the blogs is to get the people to your blog.  I think that you can use social networks to direct people to your blog.

Personally I believe that the best way to get visitors to your site is by having great content. If you have plenty of original and search engine optimized content then you will rank well in the SERPS.

Ahhhhhh!!!!!!!!!  That is so crazy you just mentioned Ning.  I stumbled across them completely by accident one day, but found the features to be so user friendly that I'm using it instead of the traditional platforms for my author website.  It's hard enough as it is to promote a novel without having your website look just like all the rest, you know?

Anyway, I'm drifting off-topic probably.  I agree here that Ning seems more customizable and more user-friendly than myspace.

There are many types of marketing. The most effective and the costliest one is the Google ads, although they are costly they are effective in marketing.

I agree that content is very much the reason someone comes to your site.