[Informurself]

how much does it cost to build and run a social network? not a myspace time of social newtwork but a social network with a following max of about 2 million users.

I know designs, web development, legal fees, and servers are some of the most important cost so how much would that run about

[MsNadi]

Check www.socialdegree.com - a blog on the innerworkings of the social networking industry.

To answer your question, you need to further define the parameteres: What does the network consists of - are they simply profiles that people fill out with pre-defined criteria with the option to ad a few pictures or are they fully customizable web spaces (like MySpace)? That will severly affect your bandwidth requirements.

What's the average length of time people spend on the your network? Again - affects bandwidth.

And you say 2 million users - what kind of time frame are you talking about? 2million registered users, but only 100K monthly site visits, or 100K registered users with 20MM monthly site visits.

To put things in perspective, on HOSTING FEES alone, YouTube eats up about $1MM a month. At the same time, on HOSTING FEES alone, MySpace eats up about $600K a month. (www.socialdegree.com and www.techcrunch.com).

You haven't even got into designs, web development and legal fees (which in the social networking environment, aren't that big of a deal). What you haven't considered is marketing - which despite the focus on "viral marketing" is a much larger expenditure for social networking firms than many think.

[Informurself]

Thank you for the information
question answered

[nado]

Here we go:

Software: www.phpizabi.com (free)
Domain: www.godaddy.com ($8)
Hosting: www.dreamhost.com ($8 p/month)
Marketing: Word of Mouth, hitup blogs, forums, newsletters, ezines in your target niche (free-cheap)

Done

There are dozens of other myspace clone scripts and other variations out there too... google is your friend.

cheers
nathan

[Informurself]

I see now that starting out it does not cost that much you just have to be prepared if the business takes off .

So realistically you can start this business with less than 500USD

[nado]

Originally Posted by Informurself

I see now that starting out it does not cost that much you just have to be prepared if the business takes off .

So realistically you can start this business with less than 500USD

Yep it's very cheap to start, but then you have to take into account that being so cheap almost anyone can startup a social network.

Pick a niche that has demand but isn't being fulfilled. Start with the free app I mentioned above and hit the marketing hard.

Hopefully you can then start getting some revenues to expand and add some unique features.

[PHPMine]

Originally Posted by nado

Yep it's very cheap to start, but then you have to take into account that being so cheap almost anyone can startup a social network.

Pick a niche that has demand but isn't being fulfilled. Start with the free app I mentioned above and hit the marketing hard.

Hopefully you can then start getting some revenues to expand and add some unique features.

i highly recommend you start with a free app and once you get "big" consider a more feature-spesific aproach. also, let your members know that you will upgrade some features and ask for a lot of feedback from them.

if you need help marketing i can throw a few ideas at you.

[clp11479]

if you want to build something that is quality you will need to hire some coders to build programs for you. anyone can use the free codes so why would somebody go to your site when it has the same exact features as the next guy's site since you both used free stuff.

you can hire people through elance.com from singapore who know their sh1t for a cheap price (cheap compared to here). you need to integrate features into your site that no one else has, features that users want so that people have a need to use your site. otherwise, your site will just be a dime a dozen.

something that totally blew my mind is the site dogster.com and catster.com
i read an article that the guy who owns these sites made $100,000 in one month worth of advertising revenue. a social networking site for dog and cat owners. unreal. the article also said he got VC funding of $1,000,000. that is just crazy cuz the site is not designed that well and the concept (to me) is a little far fetched.

[The Stealthy One]

The programming expertise can be acquired for next to nothing. So can reliable Web hosting. Your biggest expense will be bandwidth. It depends on what you let the users do (just text-based, sound, video, etc...), but you would be looking at at least $35,000 per month if you wish to provide a quality experience to your users.

[Informurself]

Thanks I was told startup cost would be about 15k but I i am having trouble figuring out what is the conversion rate for bandwith to vistors

[jpmorgan13]

check out snapp, it runs me.com and you can buy a platform for 250 bones that is tens times better than phpizabi. plus, the aforementioned free software is still in beta, which presents a whole new basket of problems.