Not necessarily a social network like Facebook, but a niche social network similar to goodreads.com and there would be a lot of downloading of pictures. I understand that I need a website designer, 1-4 good coders, & investors. Is this correct? I want it to be designed well, so I’m guessing this will cost me more.
Also, I need info for a business plan. How would I project yearly profits? I would include small ads on the site, but I have no idea how much that would bring in.
Also, should I ask this question on a “business” category instead of computer programming?
I’ve had a lot of Debbie-downers answer some of my questions, so please let’s pretend this is the best idea ever.
Categorized | Affiliate Marketing 101
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Social Networking Site?
Posted on July 26, 2011.
1. If you have no idea what your getting into, then its best avoid it. Such questions state your going into it blind. If you want todo a trial run of a social networking website you can try ning.http://www.ning.com its a premade network site which you can add your own ads, collect your own profits, register your own domain for $25 a month. Without having to do anything as you require. With $12 a year for domain registeration that will come to what? $412 yearly?
If your great idea gets popular you can start considering other things.
2. Just cause you have “Ads” you will make money. Ads is based on “hits” or the number of unique Ips which visit the website. So hence unless you build a customer base you have no hope of making money.
3. Facebook became popular because it remained ad free till it had a massive customer base of a few million. It also had a huge financial backup of a few million to pay for the servers and bandwidth it required. It was only after that initial million they started placing ads and generating a profit. Till then they have been red lining. All companies are like that, they don’t expect profit immedieatly. even twitter right now has no ad based revenue they are only still planning on it.
So I suggest starting on Ning, see how it goes. If you start getting a good following then think about doing some background programming work on your own backend. That way you save more money then from the get go, where you have no members at all.
I don’t think there is a set number of people you need, it just depends on how long you want it to take.
You can start out with a fairly small amount of money, use free web hosting like 000webhost.com which still gives you 1.5GB storage and 100GB bandwidth and the expand as needed. A top level .com domain can be as little as £8 ($13) a year.
As for the business side I would recommend something like Google AdSence although its really difficult to tell how much they will actually pay you so its difficult to know how much money you will make.
I’m also a web designer who would be interested in making your site for you my website is
http://www.joelhoskin.net76.net/flexdevs/ I offer a free non premium domain for the first year, free hosting and my prices are very competitive so do check out my site
e-mail me at flexdevs@gmail.com with you requirements and I will send you a quote, but you don’t pay up front you only have to pay when you are happy with my designs.
EDIT:Just read what the person above me said as I was writing mine. I would design you a bespoke website for less than $412 based on what you wanted.