How to start social medial networking website?

[Ms. Yoko Anna]

Hello,

Actually, happy new year!

I have been busy working as a masseuse (non sexual) and taking yoga teacher training.
The yoga teacher training is something I never thought I would do as there are already tons of them.
It connects all metaphysical aspect of life and physical body in such a peaceful manner.
I am hoping to throw a naked yoga scene in Toronto area. Non sexual though.

Anyway, this thread is not about my future vision as a yoga teacher.
This is about starting social media website.

I just had a epiphany of a wicked social media concept.
It is non sexual by the way.

It will be no cost for those who join, and will gain revenues from ads.
Do you know

1) if it would be easy for me to start myself, I made my yoko website myself by modifying within the template. So, template is welcome.

2) if I should hire someone and what's the estimated cost for someone to set me up one

3) if starting one is a stupid idea.

I am hesitating to put the contents of it out as it is still in brain storming process.
I believe the contents of the social media should not matter for now, I want to start one.

This particular social media site will need to have the following functions:

a) anyone can join with basic filtering (age, geographical location)
b) anyone can send each other a comment, note, notification, and such (no poke/like please)
c) it must have a sort of geographical polarization (visual listing on a map like google map would be awesome but won't ask too much.)


Thank you for your time,

* please don't ask when I will be back on the scene on this thread! I won't answer for that, plus I don't want to come across advertising for my services. No, I have no plan on it for now.

 

[yazoo]

Starting a social media website is relatively inexpensive for the cost of server usage - $65/month for a virtual machine in a datacentre will more than cover you, and while you are still small you could get away with an even cheaper plan. If you don't know how to run up / configure the software you will have to pay someone.

But the reason that everyone isn't doing it is the cost and strategy of marketing. That's the big barrier to entry. Starting an online community from scratch requires that people know about you, and that requires advertisements. Unless you have found some very clever strategy to market your site through word of mouth, the cost of getting people to your door will dwarf the cost of maintaining it.

Look at google+ A well designed social media site with all of the clout of the worlds premier advertising company behind it. And they are struggling and basically have to force users of their other properties onto it.

If you want to start something for free, take a look at yuku.com. I'd start with something like that - see if you can build a community first, and if it takes off then look to transition it to your own server.

 

[normisanas]

Cost of programming will be very high. It will take months and months to produce something like this with all the features that modern social media applications require to be competitive.