I have a few ideas on how to use Ning to bring traffic to my web business. However, I quickly discovered that most of the good Ning sub-domains are taken. Finally, I found a decent sub-domain called WebMob. At this time, the site is nothing but a place holder domain until I get the time and insperation to make something of it.

If you haven’t heard of Ning, it is a site that allows you to create your own social marketing network. There is a good article in Fast Company you should read if you are not familiar with them. Take a look at Ning, and if you think you may have use for it in the future, try to secure a good sub-domain. It doesn’t cost anything, and who knows, if you get a good sub-domain, there may be a market for it in the future.

Ning is one of those ideas that takes big money to get started. One of the founders of Ning is Marc Andreessen, the creator of Netscape, who sold out to to AOL for $4.2 billion dollars . After one big win like that, he now has enough money to throw website ideas against the wall until one sticks like a well cooked piece of spaghetti. To start Ning, Andreessen put $15 million in ‘pocket money’ in the company to prime the well.

Unfortunately, I don’t have that kind of money to do the spaggetti test on my website ideas so I have learned how to build sites cheaply with various bootstrap marketing methods. Fortunately, building websites that make money on the cheap is what I like to do best.

On a side note, Ning is free unless you want to get rid of their strip of adsense ads and replace it with your own adsense (or other) ads. To host your own ads you need their premium service priced at $19.95. So before you go premium, you need to make sure you are getting good traffic to at least cover the cost of membership.

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