Hi, I am offering you my services, you need not to pay anything untill you are happy, Shoot me email at link@techndu.com, if you are interested. Amish
If I am not mistaken your site is a clone of http://www.43things.com with some minor changes. Anyway, good luck.
Above ideas are good. Set up an affiliate program and pay affils for every user they send you. Design banners, the free Ipod theme can work for you. For starters, Adbrite and Adengage can give you a small feel of where you can take this project.
Some good tips here and I agree most of them. I've had reasonably good results with Adengage and press releases. You might also get some hype going on the other social sites.
I can't access that site atm from my FF3. Maybe you need to edit the .htaccess. As for the budget, you might need at least $10,000 for marketing. Word of mouth is definitely not enough unless you offer something really different. And if you offer that "unique" value, it's even better. You can borrow money from investors so you'll market your site well. Internet marketing (apart from SEO, adwords, etc.) is not easy though.
I can add only one thing to the conversation: blogs,blogs, blogs! Advertise on them, find some good deals on paid reviews and buy as many as you can. The people, that are reading those blogs are enough tech savy to know what a social network is and how to use it. They are probably members of few of the big ones, so if you make a social network invite script, that can allow your users to invite all their friends at Facebook, MySpace and Digg for example you can get quite a lot traffic for real cheap. Also when you capture their emails you can remind them for your existence from time to time. With their permission of course.
If im not mistaken... You could release a press release for your site to build up anticipation for your services. You could also find a site that is much like your own, contact the company and have them market your site within their own. Maybe even through a secondary opt-in option. I've never done anything like what you are doing. But I hope this helps.
I will suggest you create a group on rightsoul.com to promote your social site, if you work hard you will get more than millions interested in your group, from their you can mail then to join your site.
i would Say promote it through social networking site such as Dlinked, facebook, twitter. since this is where people interested in social networking are.
You could start by promoting your site by press release and classified ads. Optimized your targeted keywords for your site and then start from not so many users. If your site gain some users, ask them what they want from your site or much better to put yourself to their shoes. Think of something that people are looking for a site that you have, that they can't find it in any other site. The uniqueness of the site is what makes it more interesting. That's my opinion.
I know it sounds wrong, but go on Facebook and start a fanpage for your new social network. Also, go to various forums and promote there, especially if you have a contest, people will register at the prospect of a free prize, I would Have you made flyers? Or little cards that you can leave around cities you visit and pass out..
You should also try to talk your friends and family into using the site and telling there friends so you can get more real data out there not test stuff.