How do you start your own social networking site?

That would be a question whose answer would be costly to you. If you know how to do that, you will make a lot of money and if you find someone who can tell you, he or she is gonna want a piece, if not all, of the pie.

You could try ning.com or its competitors.

It’s expensive and A LOT of work. You’ll have to compete against the likes of Facebook…ouch. And there’s a good chance that the whole operation might fail…and there goes all your money fer nothin’. I suppose that’s enough pessimism for one day…

The first step is observing. Look at the popular social networking sites. Find common traits of them all and then find their “niche traits.” Learn from them. Discover what attracts people to them and discover the unique traits of that social site that keeps ‘em comin’ back. You will need an original, creative theme and main idea for your own social networking site.

Then, buy a good manual or two on the subject. The free advise pages on the internet are good for general information, but if you want a lasting site, more indepth and professional info will be needed. Ya can’t find that kind of information for free.

Then, once you have done your research and decided on your ninche, go to ning.com and test run the idea. If your site is successful on Ning, you will then want to move your own domain if you want to expand and establish a worthy reputation. Running a professional social site on Ning is like a law firm (or any business) attempting to have it’s website on Angelfire. If you want credibility, you have get your own domain and domain name.

Ning is the way to go for your needs. If you feel the need, expand later, but if you just want to get your foot in the door or experiment ning is free and easy.

I’m actually looking into that myself. I am reading “A Complete Idiot’s Guide to Building a Web Page & Blog (6th edition)” and it’s been a bit of a help. It teaches you about HTML and other neat stuff. Either way good luck.