Due to the popularity of sites such as MySpace and FaceBook, people have been searching on how to build a social network. The highly popular sites are custom jobs but there are free social network software like MySpace and YouTube.

Before going on with the free social networking scripts, let us determine first the social network requirements. We usually need a blogging component, some profile page a la MySpace, and a forum of sort for community discussion. We should look for these capabilities in a social networking script.

An old hand, and therefore proven and tested to be stable, at social networks is the free script elgg. It started out as university project to get the professors and students connected. It is now one of the most popular social network script.

A recent newcomer is BuddyPress, based on the popular multi-blogging platform Wordpress-MU. Coming from the creators of WordPress, BuddyPress will soon be up there with the rest of the free scripts in popularity.

Finally, if we have some web development talents, we can always tweak and customize a Drupal installation into a social network. Drupal is an extremely versatile and powerful Content Management System (CMS).

Actually, the most difficult part of building an online social network is finding our niche and getting members to join.

NOTE: This is a guest post by Mack of The Marketing Effect.

Everyone is talking about Twitter these days and you might have heard about people who are making money with this free service. This is true. You really can make money online with Twitter.

In case you didn’t know, Twitter is, as they call it, “…a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?”. This is what makes it different from other social websites and a gold mine for people who want to promote their business, website or want to make money online.

Many of you are probably wondering “How can this service make me money?” Well, as I said, you can promote your businesses and bring in more clients, promote your money making website, or generate leads to affiliate links directly and make money that way.

The secret to a successful money-making endeavor is getting followers who will read you’re tweets. The usual way to do this is by following other people and hope they will return the favor. Another  way to gain followers is by adding a “Follow Me On Twitter” button on your website. However, if you don’t have the time but have the money, there are paid services out there that promise a large volume of followers for a fee.

Important Note: Not all accounts are real. What I mean by this is … a lotsof other people have made accounts that have been automated by robots or third party services like http://tweetlater.com or http://twitterfeed.com .

On the other hand, these are good services you can use to automate some of your tweeting. Like for example: Twitterfeed.com will make a tweet with the link to every new post on your blog. And TweetLater.com will allow you to send direct messages to people who have started following you, allowing you to build a relationship with those people. Building relationships is the most important aspect of social media marketing. It does not have to be something very personal but just enough to make people trust you and take note of what you tweet.

In the end I would like to point out that Twitter is a great service, it is free and most of all it can make you a lot of money if you use it correctly. Cheers to all and happy tweeting.

A while back, we’ve finally caved in and created a twitter account for one of our online endeavors. That’s how we learned of an ad company based in the U.K. that offers cash in exchange for allowing them to insert some sponsored tweets among ours, Be-A-Magpie.

We will let this image do most of the explaining of how their system works.

More questions? Check out their FAQ. Interested? Join here.

Whew! ReapMoneyOnline is back online. Last time we checked before going to bed, RMO was chugging along slowly but surely. Twelve hours later, it went off the track for the umpteenth time with another internal server error. Don’t we just hate it when these things happen?

It seems that EntreCard has noticed RMO’s brief absence too because we received an email with the following content:

Your account ‘ReapMoneyOnline’ on entrecard.com has been deleted. The administrator gave the following reason:

Rule 10: http://entrecard.com/docs/doku.php?id=blog_quality_standards.

Please contact deleted [at] entrecard.com if you have any questions regarding this action.

Please include the following:
User ID: 3396

So, EntreCarders who click on RMO’s EC card are getting the “blog deleted” notice. For easy reference, Rule No. 10 of the EntreCard Blog Quality Standards states: URLs must be valid: Sites with URLs that do not work or are wrongly typed will be deleted.

Technically, ReapMoneyOnline’s URL did work while it was down because people who visited this blog got an “Internal Server Error” page. That means the URL, and site, do exist but there’s something seriously wrong with server-side stuff. A non-working URL usually comes up with a 404 or “page not found” error. Although, lately, we’ve noticed an OpenDNS page for non-working URLs.

But that is not our main concern. If any EntreCard admin says RMO has violated any of the rules, they should know, wouldn’t they? We understand how hard it is to oversee and manage thousands of blogs and if they say that RMO is not up to the EntreCard Blog Quality Standards, even if only temporarily, then its fine with us.

Our main concern, or concerns, are: (1) The EntreCard credits we’ve been saving for the launching of 1 or 2 blogs we plan to link with RMO’s account and (2) our other blog linked to RMO’s account which was up and running all this time. This is the first time RMO’s account was deleted, and hopefully the last, so we’re not really sure what happens with the credits. We also cannot access our other blog when RMO’s account was deleted.

Anyway, we’ve already sent a request for reinstatement and the following suggestions:

1. A grace period before deleting the accounts of blogs with server errors. Normally, we take action ASAP when our sites go down but the issues usually can’t be resolved in a matter of hours, especially since we have to communicate with server technicians on a different time zone.
2. Suspend blogs with server issues instead of deleting the account. This way, we can still access other blogs linked to the said account. Like we wrote in our email, life is already stressful enough  without us worrying EC will delete RMO’s account whenever one of our blogs takes a dive.

Do other loyal EntreCarders have a similar experience? We have recently clicked on a lot of EC cards with “blog deleted” notices, including ones that have recently advertised on RMO.

UPDATE:

A day after we submitted our request for reinstating RMO’s deleted account, we were able to access the it again. We now have answers to our previous questions.

1. All ads bought on RMO thru EntreCard were automatically canceled. This is one less thing to worry about.

2. Except for the running and lined-up ads, everything else remained the same, including the amount of EntreCard credits. Again, we emphasize that the EntreCard credits we have before and after the deletion remained the same.

Aside from being our main blog, ReapMoneyOnline is also our test blog. This is where we test new features, services, and widgets.

We have enrolled RMO with Scoutle and installed their widget (called the stage) at the bottom of the right side bar. It’s the one with the footprints (reminds us of Gnome) with 2 figures walking and meeting. Scoutle is a free service that provides automated social networking. Sort of like we meet people but don’t actually meet them since we have our scouts to do that for this blog, which in the case of RMO is named Bren.

We’re not sure how it can benefit bloggers except for making new friends we didn’t meet. Any ideas?

The flash widget looks cute though…