Led by Facebook and Myspace, social networking sites have really come into their own in the internet world over recent years. They gained popularity because of how easy they made it to talk to friends, and businesses soon saw how useful they could be for online marketing. The problem comes when a business tries to eschew an actual website in favor of a profile on one of these websites. Here are 10 reason's not to do this.

1.    They are networking sites, not marketing or ecommerce sites, which means they are not set up for online trading. It's good to have a profile, but don't rely on that by any means.
2.    You make your image through your website, and even more important, having a website lets people know that you are serious about your business. It lets people know that you are at least a little business savvy.
3.    You can customize it. A social networking page follows a fairly rigid structure, but with your website you can do literally anything you can imagine with it. This gives you a great deal of creative freedom.
4.    You won't find any perks on a social networking site. A hosting service will throw in special offers and allow you to add any number of features to your personal site.
5.    Domains are much less expensive than people seem to think. A domain can be had for as little as $10 a year, and reliable web hosting can be secured for as little as $5 monthly.
6.    It is much easier to expand. A website can be linked to your social profile and vice-versa so you get the best of both worlds.
7.    You can track your visitors and clients with your own website, something that is much harder to do on your Facebook page.
8.    With a social networking profile you can't save all your page views and traffic if you have to close down your profile and open a new one for any reason. You can keep the same stats for your traffic and page rank if you ever need to switch hosting providers.
9.    You have more opportunities to market yourself, because you can have both a personal website and a networking profile, allowing you to incorporate a little bit of each into the other.
10.    And lastly, more options. If you start building a large website and find that you can't run it anymore, you can sell it! Try selling your Myspace page.


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