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Create Your Own Social Network (and It’s Free)

By Jillian | July 10, 2009

Facebook and MySpace are a great place to connect with other people, whether you’re a college student, a mom, a person building your career, or a business owner. But both Facebook and MySpace have limits.

What if you could create your own social network? Actually, there’s a great site where you can do just that.

It’s Ning.com. On Ning, you can set up your own social network, completely free. You choose from over 50 different themes, and if you want, you can even control the CSS and add third party applications. This allows you to completely customize both appearances and function.

Ning offers a latest activity feature, member profile pages, friends, messaging, and of course, you can add videos, photos, chat, music, events, and blogs. You control who has access to your site, and have the option to approve members, if you desire.

Right now over 1 million people have already set up their own social networking sites on Ning, and 27 million have signed on. It’s a good place to search for interest groups and find compatible people.

Of course, Ning would be great for setting up a “get-together” site for your extended family, or a “keep in touch” site for old classmates. But I’m particularly interested in the business possibilities. With Ning, you can create a real 2.0 site where your readers can go and see your latest offers, watch your videos, and communicate directly with you and each other.

All this is free, but for a less than $5/month, you can publish your Ning site under your own domain name, and for an additional fee, you can add other features, such as setting up your own advertising revenue stream.

My friend, Mark Hendricks (a kickass Internet marketer and contributor to Your Internet Cash Machine), recently set up on Ning, and that’s how I got interested. In fact, on his site, Mark has included a resource for finding JV partners: http://ississ.ning.com/group/jointventuregroup. It’s new, but with Mark’s many readers, it’s likely to grow quickly, so I encourage you to check it out.

You can learn more, and browse around the existing networks, at www.Ning.com. Let me know if you find anything interesting!

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