Please review my personal project site...... | Hacker News Reader

Please review my personal project site......

1 pointbalasi3 comments

Hello smart people at hacker news.This is a social networking site I built with asp.net technology.I would like to know your ideas, opinions or any reactions about my project.I also would like to know any ideas to attract more site users/members without costing me a lot of money.The site revenue right now comes from the displayed ad from google adsense which is very less compared to the site's operating cost.Is there any way I could monetize the sites services(any ideas)?Anyway thanks in advance for your time to reply and I would appreciate any advise you can give.....

the site url: jamafriend.com

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I think it's great that you're trying this. Please keep it up! Some feedback items:

I'd say hold off trying to monetize - take a look at Facebook: it doesn't cost a penny to use the service, all ad driven. If it's easy to stick a Google ad in here and there, go for that.

Also, for creating the blogs - I would suggest taking away the requirement of contacting an admin to gain access. If you really want people to come back often, let em blog as much as they want. If you are fearing that the spammers come by, delete them - it's your site!

One minor design nit-pick / feedback - the mouseover menu items - could you make them a bit bigger? Kind of small targets.

well, unfortunately if you're getting into the social network space, you have to consider that you are taking on Facebook and other social networks, and you have to make sure you find a niche.

This isn't the early days of social anymore. What makes your site different? Why should a person use your site instead of Facebook, LinkedIn, Last.fm, Flixter, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc etc. oooh the list goes on and on.

This doesn't mean there isn't an opportunity for you, but if you have something that nobody else has, it is not readily apparent to me from what I can see from your home page.

You may have to allow people to discover some of the non-social content (you list news, sports, etc) in order to grow visits and get people interested.

I don't see the reason to put that behind a sign-in wall

What is unique about your website?

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