Your Own Social Media Site?

Almost every affiliate marketer (and many marketers) have thought about it. These thoughts have also been addressed over the years with various paid and open source scripts. Boils down to this: Try to build the next Facebook, you'll fail. It's much easier to just use Facebook. Use it and succeed. It's a bit like dating affiliates. At one time or another, they all decide they want to build one. The clever ones decide to build a niche site. The really clever ones decide not to build any kind at all. Both dating sites and social networks (which, pretty much, are exactly the same thing these days) require this: I'm rubbing my thumb and fingers together. Money. To have a chance at doing it right. And money only gets you part way there. You then need creativity, brains, experience, and luck. If you're truly keen on getting involved, I'd suggest you ask yourself who needs such a site and why. Figure that out and if you have the things mentioned above, you'll have a fighting chance.

Tom

Trying to create a website that is similar and competes with the already-popular and well-branded social media giants is a complete waste of time.

Social media sites don't typically have a lot of content when you launch, because there are not enough users to generate the content. These sites need people and you're going to need a lot of them to make your site active.

The easiest way to create a social media sites is to use a host that allows you to install the social networking script right from your account. Most hosting companies today provide scripts for their customers that they can install in just a few simple clicks.

Whatever you do, always work on building a site that will help you draw traffic to your social media site first. Don't do it backwards like so many people who end up sitting and scratching their heads wondering why their social network is inactive and vacant.

Don't even think about it, unless you got some revolutionary social media idea.. if it's just a social media site like the others.. you got higher succeeding chance to win at lottery

I've did with Elgg free script and tried to build a large network, however due to lack of funds failed my project. Making money from Social network site is very hard, as we can't monetize it properly.

Or in the spirit of the hardcore entrepreneur - take all of this "can't be done" talk and kick FBs a$$ ;-)

I think everyone has thought a out it at some point. But unless someone comes up with a crazy revolutionary new idea, it's just gonna be a waste of time. I think it's close to impossible to compete with the big social media sites these days.

Hi,

Yes I've earlier given it some thought and I do believe I came up with a really good model. Unfortunately someone beat me to it and launched a poorly executed version for my niche market and pretty much ruined it for me.

You can't attack the broader audience unless you have huge capital and experience behind you. Find a niche market that you yourself are engaged in. If you're a social chess player and know many others, then that's a good starting point.

However, keep in mind the amount of work you need to put in and calculate if the pay-off is worth it. Are you able to grow it to more than a couple of hundred members? Monetizing something with just a few occasional users isn't going to make you a millionaire.

Why start your own social network?

You might want to start your own social network because it can be a great way to earn good money, but to get there you need people to join your new network and become loyal members. There are plenty of potential members out there, so you need an “edge” – Something unique.
You might already have a great group of people or a community, based around an interest or a geographical area, and you want to be able to pool that energy and talent. This is always a great path to start a social network of your own.


Software that you can do this with includes SocialGO. We have all the usual features you’d expect from a social network, so you really need to check us out!

There is a script called PhpDolphin which lets you launch your own social network. I have played around with it in the past and found out that it has some pretty cool features. Not sure how does it fare today though.

Go to Codecanyon and choose php script.