I also find the social networking sites to be very time consuming, and also, I am unsure about promoting my product through them. I mean, do I sign up as myself or what? I'm not sure...
But what I did do today actually, was sign up at Amazon Mechanical Turk. I funded about 250 "HITS". I pay .04, and folks from around the world bookmark or add my link on their social network sites like facebook, digg, delicious, etc.
The idea cam from Tim & Steve at CommBlue.
By the way, my name is Audrey, and I'm a brand new affiliate marketer. This may be the only thing I know anything at all about on these boards...