What other revenues streams are there for a social network? This is what I have to so far... - Advertising(PPC, etc) - Account Upgrades(very significant) - Affiliate Marketing - Purchase Commissions, someone sells their work on your site and you make a part of the profit
That's a good question. Social Networking industry yet to discover how to make money. Besides the ways you have listed above, there are of course some additional services like clubs, gifts, blogs, forums, games, banners, post cards but they work more effectively for Dating or Mixed sites. You can try to develop services at your site for your members. This may be a good revenue model if you have a niche social networking site as you know what your users might need (e.g. weather forecasts to their emails, special events etc) What may help is that in the internet there are many software vendors who offer these service opportunities with software itself. And all that you need to do is setup pricing range and market your site accordingly. Last time I checked PG Social Networking Software and found it pretty much answering the above requirements. I'll be glad to hear your opinion on it and any thoughts on revenue models. Cheers!
Its a fancy word for methods of making money through social networking sites. Facebook makes money from ads etc. so does MySpace. Great post SjulyN: Recently I looked at Imeem.com, they seem to advertise for quite a few businesses. For example Burger King and Guitar Hero(a PlayStation game). I imagine that advertising for these companies will bring in some large profits. The problem is that Imeem is a very popular music site that has signed agreements with some big people. It would take a while to grow to that size. You don't ave to be the biggest and the greatest to make money from social networking. All you need to do is set goals and keep growing. Still I think there are other undiscovered streams of retinue for social networks.
Social networks are lost when it comes to making revenue... With as much data as they have they should be making CRAZY money. If I had 1% of myspace, orkut or facebook's data I would never have to work again.