Facebook has made a savvy computer guy extremely rich and is extremely useful as a social networking tool. There was an article in the Toronto Star, written by Chris Sorensen dated Monday Dec 10th, 2007 that titled “Face it, we love our Facebook” that tells us about 8 Million Canadians have a Facebook account – I don’t know about you – but that spells opportunity to me!

To advertise or not to advertise. I will confess that I tried to advertise this website on Facebook. I had a hard time getting my wording done right – for some reason, I could not get my advertisement accepted (maybe I didn’t have enough bikini clad models in it). But, my inability to put together a proper advertisement aside, I want to bring to lite to issues with soliciting insurance on a platform like Facebook.

Based on the statistics listed in the article about 71% of the users on Facebook fall between the ages of 25 – 50+. That is a significant demographic for anyone selling any type of product. It is simply another way to get into the places where people are relaxing and not thinking too much.

The problem with selling insurance on Facebook stems from the kind of clientèle that would be received. Yes Facebook can get you in front of alot of faces but as a Facebook user, I can honestly say that the advertisements annoy me. When I go on Facebook, I am looking at friends, family and group site to see what other people have been doing and to check out their photos…I am certainly not buying anything.

My viewpoint seems re-enforced by the calls that I have received, simply by having my website listed in my profile. The calls I have received are usually higher risk clients, who can’t afford the insurance product that they are looking for.

So why go for this type of business?

Perhaps a broker or insurance company is trying to “beef up” the amount of business in their portfolio. Perhaps they can see that these people will eventually be good customers.

Whatever the reason, I think it is important to understand that selling insurance on a social site is going to yield more of the higher risk clients as apposed to a business networking site like Linked In. For me, I am going let people know on Facebook about what I do, but I don’t think I am advertising there in the near future…rather, I think I will beef up my Linked In site.