Niche Social Network or Membership Site?

3 replies
Kind of a broad question, but I am planning a project in a niche that I have a very personal connection with, and that would lend itself beautifully to either a specialized social networking site, or a membership site that essentially offers services and community features, in return for fees.

When I first thought of it, and came up with the domain, I thought "blog" to promote related offers and CB products, maybe creating a CB product of my own. Giving it some time to gestate, I think that would be wasting the opportunity.

The broad market is HIGHLY profitable, and my niche is essentially a micro niche, not all that competitive but with decent demand, and presumably will soon grow in demand, and get overly exploited by savvy marketers (thus I want to move fast.)

My questions are:
1) Is monetizing a social network site as easy as it may sound? I have seen a hardcopy book (title and author escapes me) professing that starting social networks (presumably free ones) is one of the hottest and best routes to financial freedom online.

In that case, would the revenue come just from ad revenue and CPA offers, etc?

2) Looking at it from the "online real estate" perspective - which one would make a better "investment" long term? I would think that either model could be grown sufficiently and then flipped for large dollars. I am just interested in figuring out which one stands the best chance of building and keeping equity (both in ramping up quickly, and long term equity.)

I realize there are probably no absolute right/wrong answers. Just looking for some perspective here, especially from those of you with experience in launching either model.

P.S. The niche has nothing to do with those in my signature, just FYI.
#membership #network #niche #site #social
  • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
    If I were you, I would start a Niche Social Network.

    I just posted a thread about this a few days ago you should check out:

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...l-network.html

    I'm looking at a long term 'investment' with the social networks I am starting
    (using: Elgg - Open Source Social Networking and Social Publishing Platform.).

    Jared
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    • Profile picture of the author dou9las
      Jared,
      Looks like your other thread is *exactly* the kind of discussion I was looking for on this subject. Will proceed over there (guess I should have dug a little bit before starting my own thread..)

      BTW, going back to one aspect of my question for a minute, besides the long term investment value in creating an authority site, any thoughts on monetization?
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      • Profile picture of the author Jared Alberghini
        Originally Posted by dou9las View Post

        any thoughts on monetization?
        You can do the same with a social network as a membership site, by creating 'private' groups/sections, and charge a fee to access that hidden information.

        As for monetizing the targeted niche traffic, I suggest integrating your own ad network using this:

        Serve ads quickly. Make money easily. | OpenX

        "OpenX is the world's leading independent ad server. It provides you with the simple tools you need to make money from advertising, whether from direct ad sales, OpenX Market, or third party ad networks (like AdSense)."

        .jrd
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