Million Dollar Idea or Not - Niche Social Networking Site?

Good Luck to you. I would do the teacher one, so they can share teaching things with each other. But make it so people with .edu email address can sign up. If you make it open to everyone it might not work. Also you would need to recruit a few teachers who could recruit a few friends who could recruit a few more.
Its possible...If your gonna dream, dream big!!!
Wish you the best in 2008.


Oh and $500 should be fine, get phpfox and get a diff template and have some programmer write code for $75 to make only .edu people able to sign up. Easy to do.

Also maybe get a partner to split costs and do a lil brainstorming

 

It is all about good marketing. It's not completely about your budget. You need to know how to market such a site and have a good plan in place. Make contacts with people in related fields and learn what they did to market their site. Ask them if they can help you. Don't be afraid to take on a partner in the know.

 

Here's another option to Ning and Dolphin. You can setup your site for free with www.thevillage.com and choose a template and be off and running in no time. You can then ease your way into it by hiring a designer to customize it more for your brand if you don't like the template. It's simple to edit graphics and features. The site is ad supported and has The Village branding on it (small logo in the top left), but it is at least a place to get off the ground. Then if you find that it is potentially a million dollar idea, you can pay to take The Village logo off of the site. You can then sell your own advertising on the site.

So you could spend all $500 on markeing if you wanted to do it this way. Also, you can setup as many villages as you want to, so you can try a few different things and see which one sticks. There's huge potential in lots of niches, good luck with whatever you choose. The advantage of using The Village is that the product has support, I'm not positive if Dolphin does and Ning has limited support.

 

Yes, dolphin has terrible support. I have basically had to pay one of the developers to work on it with me. I love how it's shaping up though! http://www.WriteInYourVote.com

Also, I was under the impression Ning was more along the lines of "The Village" you're talking about?

 

If you are willing to do some work, it can work. If your purpose is find a script throw it up there with no thought to target market position, it won't work.

And if you are chasing rainbows for a get rich quick scheme, then, no, it won't work. Those who have made big money did work for it. You Tube wasn't easy to invent from a programming standpoint. It was driven by a passion and now they are sitting on easy street. But it was a super innovative idea that took lots of time and brainpower to execute.

You can download Smart machines free. If you have a domain name and a cpanel with fantastico you can have the basic forum in 30 seconds or less, free. I did this one: http://coloreddiamond.info

I started with a much fancier and prettier layout but it wasn't as stable across all browser platforms so I switched to one of the standard layouts and changed the stylesheet. So it did not turn out like I wanted initially but the members love it because it caters to them, a target market with special features that they love. And it's easy for members to navigate which was a crucial part of the development.

$500 would be a slim budget and you'd have to do a lot of work to find the conduit through which to position and market the forum. Then there's the issue of getting a forum off the ground which is by no means an easy task. Take it from the person who has created more than one of them and had booming success as well as dismal failures. I would imagine traditional direct mail in addition to ppc ads would be needed to get membership.

 

I like your site, looks like a lot of work went into that. Yes, Ning is similar to The Village. There is also Snapville.com which is a similar concept as well. Their signup hasn't been working lately though, so i'm not sure if you can try it.

 

yes. I think you can make a million dollars off a niche site, provided you have the right one. you can go to a magazine site look for a niche that is buying. If the niche is looking for info than your site
well work in that niche.