i am thinking of starting a social networking site with free elgg script. Any money to be made from social networking sites? Isnt the social networking market saturated?
I am worried that social networking sites require lots of constant monitoring and moderator work is huge.
The market is very saturated and it's difficult to get traction against networks that have millions of members and have raised millions in funding. The business model typically creates revenue only through advertising, which is directly related to the amount of traffic and members. The current trend seems to be creating niche social networks. Create a network around something you're going to be interested in for a long time. It takes a lot of time and work to create something successful in a saturated market with an ad-only business model, if you're not going to be interested after two months you're probably going to fail. Also, take some time to browse through mashable.com, a popular social networking blog. Look at what others are doing in the industry and what is making headlines.
Even without too much traffic it can if you can find something to (re)sell many people want and enjoy. But you need that product/service and some (targeted) traffic.
social networking sites get tonnes of traffic but with the market very saturated it would be very hard for you to get a very good social networking site, if you decide to do this anyway you will need to give it a lot of commitment and spend a lot of time on it (maybe years).
I agree with "123".. If you have decent traffic and a lot of members, it will eventually pay off. On the other hand, you might just waste your time promoting. I'd advise you not to use a common script that others use; you would be just like the other few hundred site. However if you have a unique script, you can offer what other social networking websites don't offer. So i guess you'd have to find a good niche.
You can add adsense into it ! This can earn more ! If ur getting huge traffic u can also keep banners
There is no such a thing is Saturated if what you're offering is good and hasnt been on other sites. A good service is a good service no matter what you're doing. Find out what people want but has not been done and do it.
I'm sure you could make money with a niche site, but I personally wouldn't do it because there's already myspace. Do we really need another?
...there's also Friendster, Hi5, Facebook, Bebo, and many more. The market allows for multiple players because each network is different, if not in terms of features then in terms of the people. As dailydee said, try something new it increases your chances of success. But it's not easy either way.
Revenue share has gotten huge lately with video, blog, and picture sites, yet there hasn't been a revenue share site for social networking. I think this would be a great angle. Who wouldn't want to get paid to do the same thing they do on myspace? You could make the concept simple if you jazz up some of the features. Like, instead of a simple music player you could make an ipod-looking devise play music, and call the profile something different like "showcase" or "spotlight" etc. (like squidoo with "lens") I mapped out an idea similar to this one a few weeks ago but unfortunately I don't have the money to invest in it.