Create a Social Networking Site and Monetize it

As an entrepreneur it’s easy to get caught up in the day to day efforts of product development, marketing, and sales. However, a key factor in building a long term, sustainable business is the relationships you create and maintain with customers, partners, and employees.

rSitez CEO, Rohan Hall, was quoted this week in an article by Inc Magazine that provides excellent tips that business owners can use to create better business relationships that can strengthen and grow their business.

The link to the article is below.
http://www.inc.com/guides/201101/how-to-build-better-business-relationships.html

DAVENPORT, FL, January 19, 2011 /24-7PressRelease/ — There are many people that will agree that the United States education system needs some work. The recent movie, ‘Waiting for Superman’ pointed out many of the issues and made some suggestions towards resolving some of these issues. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, donated $100 million on the Oprah Winfrey show towards this cause. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Rupert Murdoch and other tech giants all have gone public with their position on the need to make America more competitive with education reform. And now a new social network called Moolakee has been created to help with this effort. The site was recently featured on Fox News (http://tinyurl.com/moolakee-foxnews) as a 21st Century Teaching and Learning tool and has just partnered with Costco to provide discounts to its members.

The following is from a recent interview with Jewell Folta, the Founder/CEO of Moolakee and her vision of how she can help the school system compete better with Moolakee.com.

What is Moolakee.com and why did you create the site?

“ESCAPE to Moolakee! is a place where educators feel they are valued and have purpose. ESCAPE to Moolakee! is a rewards-based social networking community for educators that promotes excellent educational standards, resources and rich dialogue while contributing to benevolent cause.

“Because I interact with teachers on a daily basis, I see how stressed out they are. I also see how much education has changed over the recent years; while the change directive means well, it has put a lot more pressure on educators and I see how this change has affected their once cheerful personalities.

“I wanted to create a place where teachers could engage in a professional environment however, they would feel appreciated and have fun with it, too. Another reason I am passionate about this idea is because ESCAPE to Moolakee! gives purpose by providing 21st Century practices as well as giving to philanthropic causes.

“If I may elaborate more on this, there are many children and adults who are very sick with cancer and other diseases. Currently, students sitting in classrooms, right at this very moment, have the potential to be our future scientists, researchers, presidents, etc, that will find cures for these diseases. Don’t we owe it to our teachers and students to give them everything they need, so effective teaching and learning can happen? It’s all one big circle and each depends on the other. That’s one reason why ESCAPE to Moolakee gives so much of the membership fee to charities. All of these things, as whole, will make a difference in our world’s future.”

Do you have a background in Education?

“I’ve been in education since graduating from Miami University of Ohio in 1996. I also hold a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Technology. While teaching high school Biology at Lakota Locals Schools, I also served as the building’s Student Government Advisor and supervised students to raise thousands of dollars for local charitable organizations. I was deemed one of the district’s Master Teachers and was one of four key leads the district’s successful goal, for all faculty and staff, to become Novice Certified. I accepted an Administrative position as the district’s Educational Technologist, at Springboro City Schools focusing on 21st Century Teaching and Learning. I also conducted several eTech Ohio presentations and organized the district’s Summer Technology Mini-Conferences, participated in Battelle for Kids Value-Added Data for Learning initiatives, was a Discovery Education Star Educator and also was on the High Schools That Work committee, before founding ESCAPE to Moolakee!

“Several years ago I was a part of an educator network that provided teachers with excellent resources and professional development. However, to be a part of it, one; the district had to purchase their product and two; the educator had to apply and there were requirements and expectations. Therefore, not all teachers could be a part of this exclusive community. When I was part of this community, I remember thinking how wonderful it would be if there was something this great that ALL educators could be a part of. Opportunely, I acquired a position to work with a company that had this vision in mind. However, the company did not see it to fruition and decided to finish the work. Web 2.0 is a way that teachers can connect with each other from all over the country and the world therefore adding priceless, incessant value.”

How were you able to create this social network website?

“I am technology savvy when it comes to the user interface however; I am not experienced in writing or developing a program and definitely needed someone to do it for me. After several months of trying other do-it-yourself solutions, I knew I had to find a company that could help me. I found rSitez.com via a Google search using several search terms for example, “white label social network.” I liked a lot of the out-of-the box features that rSitez provided and rSitez beat competitor bids with customizations that ESCAPE to Moolakee! needed. Not only were the out of the box features wide-ranging, Rohan, the company’s CEO, is very cordial, accommodating, professional and really took the time to understand ESCAPE to Moolakee’s needs.

“I couldn’t find a white label service that provided ALL of the features and options that I needed to be available for educators, in ESCAPE to Moolakee! specifically, a document library, reward structure. I don’t think there is even one out there that will do it all. Most likely, if you want to set yourself apart from other competition, you’re going to have to invest in some customization.

“The rSitez team has been delightful to work with. They are very talented have been prompt in response to support tickets. I also value that the team has been very professional and courteous. I wish I could take them all out for Starbucks!

“I’ve had several very nice surprises from rSitez. One day I logged in and the theme was absolutely beautiful! I had no idea that rSitez was working behind the scenes on a brand new theme that captures the feeling that I wanted ESCAPE to Mookee! to have; and I didn’t even ask for it! That was the big one however, I’d like to mention there were a few other functionalities that rSitez understood were important for ESCAPE to Moolakee! and they surprised me by creating them. Very thoughtful and rare to have a company help you this way. I’ve been very pleased with the experience and rSitez has given me some customizations that I did not have to pay for and I really appreciate that.

“Working with rSitez has been a very nice experience. The management and the development team are hard-working, professional and courteous and really listen to understand what your company and social network needs are, during the custom development process. I’ve been impressed with everyone that I’ve worked with. I would like to mention that I value that Rohan, the company’s CEO, especially understands the challenges of an entrepreneur and seems to become part of the entrepreneur’s team by valuing and supporting the company’s mission and objectives.”

rSitez specializes in creating unique social networking websites. Each site comes with a variety of social networking features including blogs, chat, video, photo sharing, audio and a lot more. The sites are integrated with Facebook for content sharing, and include a variety of monetization features to allow the site owner to generate revenue from the site. The sites are 100% white labeled and can be customized to the last detail.

Bill Attinger spent twenty years helping small businesses grow, whether by founding them himself, or by consulting with other companies to help them acquire financing and to grow. He wanted to convert this wealth of knowledge into an online community that entrepreneurs could use to prepare their business for market, secure capital and attract talent. With this, Actseed.com a social media platform focused on removing barriers to Entrepreneurship was formed. The following is from an interview with Attinger, CEO of Actseed.com.

“I was almost ready to write a book about the experiences for other entrepreneurs. A few months later I realized that I could help many entrepreneurs simultaneously in a much more involved way by building an entrepreneur-centric community dedicated to new business creation”, said Attinger, CEO of Actseed.

“My business model crystallized when I recalled one of my favorite Chinese proverbs that go something like this: “Teach me and I’ll forget. Show me and I’ll remember. Involve me and I’ll understand.” I’ve dedicated many years of entrepreneurship to the “show me” stage. Writing a book would have reverted to a “Teach me” stage, but launching ActSeed will be stepping forward into the most valuable arena for entrepreneurship: “Involve me.”, Attinger continued.

“We were planning to build a custom application within the social media construct when we discovered the rSitez platform. Once we determined that rSitez gave us a solid head start on the basic components of a community based platform, we were able to focus on customizations to the base rSitez platform that drives ActSeed’s unique value to its members.

We did extensive research on open source platforms and commercially available social media platforms. I believe we first noticed rSitez in a comparative study of various social media platforms. rSitez seemed to give us the best opportunity to build our unique data model and customized community platform; other social media platforms didn’t seem to offer the same customization possibilities. Another appealing factor was that rSitez’ CEO, Rohan Hall, was also an entrepreneur who quickly grasped ActSeed’s vision and has been very open minded and innovative on how to approach the uniqueness we’re building for the ActSeed community. Rohan embrace our business goals was an encouraging sign that he and his rSitez team weren’t just interested in getting paid for a random customization project.

The general approach for the rSitez development team seems to be what is known as “agile development”, which really suits those who don’t have a deep technical background; the rSitez team seems able to take a concept and translate it into delivery for less technical clients.

We are investing heavily to enable our defined member groups to engage and interact in a very structured manner within ActSeed. While the overall combination of features is most important to us, the ability for our entrepreneur members to use ActSeed’s custom profiling, scoring and searching tools to evaluate their preparedness to launch a new business and then efficiently identify investors, workers and service providers who can provide the necessary support is the most critical. Why? Because this is the core value we’re trying to drive into the entrepreneurial community.

Really interesting what is happening in the world of social networks. Apple surprised the world introducing a social network called Ping to complement their iTunes store. Regardless how much you like the name, Ping, a somewhat old-fashioned name, some, such as Wired, are saying Apple has created a social network that’s “already too big to fail.”

I agree it is really big,  with 160 million active iTunes accounts, it may not need to do much more to encourage music lovers to share their tastes, and presumably, to buy even more music. This is going to work for a lot of people but it is going to leave a lot music lovers unhappy too. The same as Facebook, we all use it but for most of us we are not passionate about it. This create opportunities for new, big or small, more intimate social networking sites and obvioulsy at rSitez we are more than happy to help create these new online community sites. Anyway, let´s talk about this new social site, Ping.

The media is saying that this new site is going to hurt MySpace, as this popular social site has focus on music for a long time. Some can argue that Apple saw blood on the descending numbers of users in MySpace so they jump into the opportunity but I will argue that even if MySpace will be on the top, as they were 3 years ago, Apple will still push their own social networking venture. The reality is that the last three years has proved that social media and online communities are here to stay and the market will continue to expand over the next ten years. This path reminds how e-commerce started too. Initially people said that internet was ok to buy books but it wasn´t practical to buy other stuff like clothes…well, 10 years later, apparel sales through internet continue to outpaced the sales growth of tradittional stores. And this don´t stop yet! Brick and mortar retailers continue to jump into this new medium. The last one, ZARA, one of the biggest (they sell more than GAP) and probably the most succesful apparel retailer in the world just opened their online store yesterday.

Similar to e-commerce sites, social networking software allows website owners to monetize different opportunities providing an engaging service to their users. This business model has been proved by hundreds of social sites. You probably only heard about Facebook, Linkedin or MySpace in the news but there are a big number of smaller sites that are making money too. Therefore as far this continue we will see other companies or entrepreneurs create their social networking website to offer something unique to their audience and complement their regular business or expand into new opportunities. Apple understood that owning the user experience in their own social networking site will help them to capture this market opportunity and position themselves against some of its competitors such as Amazon that sells tunes at MySpace or Google and Microsfot that both own or participate on social networking websites.

Last thing, that I would like to mention about Ping. It seems that Ping is not going to be integrated with Facebook. This is very interesting for the social networking industry as anti-facebook voices start to raise. Ping´s lack of integration with Facebook seems to have an intriguing back story, with Jobs telling AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher that Apple couldn’t agree to the “onerous terms” the Palo Alto Playa — the only member of the 500-million-plus social-networking users club — was trying to impose. It seems, according to Business Insider, like Apple killed support for Facebook in Ping at the last minute. You can think that maybe Apple is part of the only few that are not going to be scared by Facebook but I can assure that the movement has started.

Anyway, let me know what you think about Ping. Cheers!

If you have an e-commerce website you know how tough competition is these days. Most of e-commerce websites are built in plattforms that allow customization of the look and feel but they have limited options on customazing how to present your products. As a results a lot of them looks like the one that your competitors have. Well it you are one of our customers these limitations are not part of the contract. You can really define how to present your gallery of products and how to make them more appelling to your customers. Related with this aspect of your social networking site or e-commerce site, websites like cuflinks.com and weber.com do a great job using Product Photogaphy and also videos.

As explained in a great article from smashing magazine. Product Photography could well be the single most important design aspect of any e-commerce website. Without the ability to touch, hold, smell, taste or otherwise handle the products they are interested in, potential customers have only images to interact with. Ultimately, the softer, tastier, flashier and more attractive your products look to shoppers, the more confident they’ll feel about purchasing from you and the better your conversion rate will be.

While any product can look great in a photo (sometimes deceptively so), keep in mind that your images should match your website’s overall aesthetic and your company’s image. This is key so if you are contracting a company to develop your e-commerce site be sure you can customize your product gallery as you really want and not as thousand as other medirocre e-commerce sites. If you need assistance with a new e-commerce site or to integrate e-commerce features in your regular or social networking site please do not hesitate to contact us. Rsitez is the leader on custom social networking sites and powerful e-commerce is one of our areas of expertise.

The examples that I mentioned have incorporated high-quality product photos onto their websites.

CuffLinks.com
CuffLinks.com clearly puts effort into photographing its vast selection of cufflinks. It offers customers a good view of its cufflinks from all angles. It also shows the packaging or box that the cufflinks will ship in, giving us a well-rounded impression. Fortunately for this company, the size and inflexibility of cuff links make them a relatively easy product to photograph. Take a look at their many other products and the different angles the shots have been taken from.

Weber
Moving out of the kitchen and into the backyard, Weber, a well-known maker of grilling and other cooking equipment, has a fine product photography area on its website. The website itself is pretty basic, as you might expect, without much in the way of attractive text or icons, but the sharp images and high-quality close-ups add a lot of visual appeal.

So, Product Photography can really enhance your e-commerce website and can make a huge difference on your customer experience.  If you liked this post, then read Smashing Magazine’s recent article in How to Use Photos to Sell More Online for another look at photography and e-commerce. Also consider this extensive practical guide to photographing various products.

Personally, I always find TED presentations very inspiring. The latest that I watched is from Seth Priebatsch, a 21 year-old that runs SCVNGR. Two things impressed me about Seth Priebatsch: One, his infectious, get-you-out-of-your-chair enthusiasm. Two, the inventory of entrepreneurial feats he’s managed to accumulate at a remarkably young age. He got his first startup at age 12, and by age 18, he’d founded another — PostcardTech, which makes interactive marketing tours for CD-ROM.

Now he’s working on SCVNGR, “a massive experiment in building a mobile game together.” Backed by Google Ventures, SCVNGR is part game, part game platform. Players play SCVNGR by going places, doing challenges and having fun — outside of the office, beyond the screen, in the real world.

I think he points different ways in who you can use what he calls “game layer” to engage your website´s members or users and also make money. In his video there are different examples of monetization and here in rsitez we already developed custom social networking sites that contained some of these elements. The results varied by site but overall I agree with Seth these tools are very powerful. Anyway, judge by yourself if his presentation inspire you. Enjoy!

Checking the 2010 Andy awards winners, I come across this new website www.booneoakley.com that has been built using Youtube technology, see the video below. The results are pretty amazing and it got amazing buzz. This is one more way to use social media technology. At rsitez we helped some customers to built their social networking sites around video concepts and maybe this is what is coming next…I like it! good job Boone Oakley! Check it out

According to the new Nielsen Co. report, the shift to social networks for communication is changing how internet users spend their time online. We already know it but this is one more confirmation in how social networking websites and software is affecting how people interact online. With Facebook leading the pack, social networks now account for 22.7 percent of the hours spent in front of a computer, a leap of 43 percent over last year’s figures.

The shift to social networks for communication caused a precipitous drop in email and instant messaging. Time spent emailing was down 28 percent and instant messaging dropped 15 percent.

Given a typical hour, Nielsen says the average user will spend 13 minutes on Facebook and other social networks, six minutes playing games, five minutes with email, 2 minutes each on browsing Internet portals like Yahoo, instant messaging, watching videos, conducting searches, and reading software information for a total of 36 minutes. The balance of the hour is spent on 77 additional categories measured by the firm, all of which take 2 minutes or less.

I can only see this trend continue to grow as more and more unique social networking sites and other kind of online communities are developed to cover more topics and users interests.

Maybe you have an idea to create a social networking website.  Not one like all the others that you have seen.  Many of them look the same and have exactly the same features.  You have an idea that will make your site … unique.  A vision that will make your social network stand out from the rest.  You have thought about how to grow and monetize the site.  You know what features you would like to have on the site.  You have a targeted niche audience and a clear value that you would like to provide. The problem now is to find someone to build the site exactly the way you like and to do it within your budget.  How do you go about this?

You can create a social network within a few minutes by simply going to rsitez.com.  However, rSite go beyond the 1-site fit all approach often used with social networks.

rSitez makes creating a custom social networking site easy by using the UDD methodology to develop a custom social networks.  These sites are based on your specific requirements.  This approach involves 3 steps in the process.

rSitez UDD Methodology

Understand (U) – A Project Manager from rSitez team will give you a call to discuss your vision for the project.  The technical responsibility of the project definition lies with the Project Manager, not you.  So you don’t need to understand the technology, code, technical jargon or fill out long forms in order to try to explain how the software should work. You will simply need to explain in your own words on the phone with a live person what you want the site to do.

The project manager will be able to ask follow up question to get a clear understanding of your project, the features you would like, and how to implement these features.  The focus will be on your vision for your social networking software.  Once we are clear about what you want from our discussions with you we are ready for the next phase of the UDD methodology.

Develop (D) – Our Development team is responsible to developing the application per your specific requirements.  They convert your vision for your social network to actual code for the application.  For example, instead of searching for members by city you may want to search on members within a certain radius (ex: within 100 mile of your location).  The development team will write the code to do this.  Or you may want to have integration with your corporate system where someone can click a link from your corporate application and automatically login to your social networking site without having to sign in again.  Our developers will write the code to do this or any other custom features you would like for your site.

Some examples of recent custom features our developers have created for clients include:

- Single signon where members from a corporate system can automatically login to their social network

- Facebook feeds with comments and friends

- Radius search to target geographical advertising

- Facebook integration where content and branding from the client site is posted direct to members facebook wall

- Full document library where any type of document can be uploaded and shared with other members

- Webcam and video sharing features

- Payment and monetization options and integration with different payment processors

- Different member types where specific features and access are given to members based on client specification

- Points and reward systems

- Management content reporting and downloads

and much more

Deploy (D) – Our development team will help you to deploy your application.  This includes providing full documentation for custom developed features, responding to any questions about the application, and providing technical support. The team continues to support the application indefinitely after the deployment based on our licensing agreement.  The team is also available to create additional features or meet new development requirements per request.

The end result is a custom social network with unique features that meet your specific requirements.  This will enable you to provide a targeted offering and let your social network stand out from other networking sites online.  This could help your site to grow faster and better than competing social networks. In the end your members will appreciate the specific details, value, and targeted approach provided by your network.

About the author

Rohan Hall is the Founder/CEO of rSitez, Inc. (www.rsitez.com), a technology firm that helps entrepreneurs create custom, revenue-based social networking sites.  He is the author of Stop Working, a book that teaches entrepreneurs how to use technology, globalization, and networks to build a global business.  He has developed technologies for a wide range of entrepreneurs and Fortune500 clients including HP, Corning, Oracle, Honda and various others.

Seal Concert Barcelona (www.rsitez.com)

I went to a Seal concert last night in Barcelona at Poble Espanyol.  Poble Espanyol (http://www.poble-espanyol.com/pemsa/en.html) is a traditional Spanish village in the center of Barcelona.  The village main purpose is to showcase Spanish history, culture, and architecture… and occasionally to have incredible concerts.

The village was packed last night with approximately 7,000 people paying an average of 40 Euros ($52 USD) per ticket.  The crowd was well entertained as Seal performed songs from past and future albums.  The concert was certainly well received and I think everyone had a great time.

The concert lasted for 2 hours.  Before the concert even started all tickets were sold and before he sang the first song the concert had made approximately $364,000 ($52 x 7,000).  I don’t know about you but I’m pretty impressed by the numbers.  I don’t know of anyone personally that makes that much money from 2 hours work.  The crowd went crazy with each song especially when he performed his hit song ‘Kiss From A Rose’. 

Seal’s performance was excellent as he charmed the crowd.  At one moment he bent over to sing to some screaming girls as they reached up to grab his hand and rub his head.  He flashed some perspiration from his head in the crowd and they screamed even more.  He had a great smile the entire time probably thinking … ‘I loooove this job.  Oh yeah, and thanks for the cash!’

About the author

Rohan Hall is the Founder/CEO of rSitez, Inc. (www.rsitez.com), a technology firm that helps entrepreneurs create custom, revenue-based social networking sites.  He is the author of Stop Working, a book that teaches entrepreneurs how to use technology, globalization, and networks to build a global business.  He has developed technologies for a wide range of entrepreneurs and Fortune500 clients including HP, Corning, Oracle, Honda and various others.