How to promote a new social network site like this?

I'm trying to discover ways to promote my new social networking site. I'm new to website marketing. So far, its just been word of mouth to some of my friends.

http://www.lifehoo.com

I have $2000 budget. What might be best ways in terms of getting a strong momentum of users to join the site initially?

Thanks!

 

spend $500 on a contest
then a few hundred on Adbrite.com ads on similar sites.
Then look into any other forms of advertising.
Consider buying a few myspace bulletins too.

 

andy,

before you spend any money, you should if you haven't already answer a few questions. How is your site different from the myspaces & facebooks.....How does your site add to peoples online social status. What I'm trying to say is, first carve out a niche for your site (example target: high schoolers, college folks, people with a glass eye -- sorry my attempt at humor). Once you establish this demograhics, expand to other ones. Don't go for the whole market. Just how I would do it.

 

Hire a hot girl to model for you and use her as Picture Bait

 

tyler is taking the ol' shoemoney route!

 

You can't argue with these results

 

Hi Andy,

your website is interesting. I never seen such a website. First, I think you shouldn't buy links as part of your campaign since you shouldn't count on search engine traffic in beginning since you don't have clear keywords.

First you should post some press releases and try to get some articles in newspapers and magazines, if you haven't done already it.

I think you should buy PPC advertising from some websites. Websites which might help you are some magazines, entertainment websites, myspace...

I advise you to spend your money on site target PPC advertising.

 

Your site looks good. Good luck with that.

I guess regular seo activities (buying backlinks and optimizing site) are still valid for your site too. Other than that you may concantrate to get direct traffic by buying post to blogs, Adwords advertising, press releases..

 

Another idea : forum banners are usually cheap and they have large reach. They could bring cheaper traffic than AdWords which is as quality as AdWords traffic for this kind of website.

 

one more idea from me..
i own a social network site like yours
just put an msn/yahoo/aim/gmail inviter to the site - this will increase your traffic and number of members
then buy some quality ads from adbrite or adengage

good luck

 

phantomdll what is your experience with adengage?
I've heart that adbrite & adcenter has cheaper traffic than AdWords which isn't so bad. Adbrite traffic could be bought for 0.01$. Although, we've used only AdWords so far.

 

i am publishing adengage on my site and i am also giving advertisements to adengage
they are pretty good, you can find many cheap sites to advertise on. their photo ads are pretty attractive(brings traffic fastly), and i can pay via paypal to advertise.. so i like it
but i can't compare to adbrite cuz i never advertised on adbrite

 

that is a nice looking site you got there !! thumbs up

 

adengage is much better than adbrite when buying ads.

 

hey u submit in some smo sites and build some back links definitely u will get superb result

 

The best way to promote your site is through social media optimization (SMO) and social network site like Facebook, Myspace, Youtube, Xanga and other social site. You don't need a high budget as to promote your site but you can pay per click (PPC) techniques.

 

You can promote your social network by listing it for free at findasocialnetwork.com. It's a search engine for social networks, blogs, forums and other community sites.

http://findasocialnetwork.com

 

good advice

 

Try it with google adwords and encourage your users to invite friends.

Sam

 

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