Hometalk do-it-yourself community

When you think of homes and gardens you don't exactly picture New York City, but a do-it-yourself website based in Manhattan is becoming a huge hit on social media.

Miriam Illions co-founded Hometalk.com five years ago and calls it the world's largest DIY community. It's a place where people come together to share ideas, advice, and inspiration about their homes and gardens.

The site itself is a bit of a DIY project. Bootstrapped by Illions with just a few initial users, now 3 million Hometalkers share advice and ideas around the world. Illions says Hometalk's 100,000 tutorials now have 1 billion views. The site gets 18 million visits per month, 8.5 million of them unique visits.

When Illions first started Hometalk she thought the site would attract a lot of professional advice, but homemakers are stealing the show.

One woman's all-natural oven cleaning hack posted on Hometalk's Facebook page last month already has 42 million views.

Like a lot of other media companies, Hometalk has realized the value of Facebook, especially Facebook Live, using it to bring cameras inside the homes of popular posters.

Outdoor projects and hacks are huge now that it's summertime, from using soap to keep deer out of your yard, to other great solutions from around the world. Illions loves a Hometalker in Japan who shows how he turned his tiny front yard into a gorgeous garden.

With summer ending, Hometalk is approaching its peak season. Illions says fall is like Christmas on Hometalk and Christmas is definitely like Christmas on Hometalk. She says you can practically smell the pumpkin spice in the air when the fall projects start coming out on Hometalk.

But Illions believes there's a season for everything on Hometalk and something for every person, whether you know what you're doing or you're looking for ideas to make your home better.

She says they've got everything from cleaning hacks to decorating a room to knocking down a wall and expanding a space.

Hometalk is about what people do in their homes every single day to make them beautiful and to love where they live. Hometalk currently makes its money through digital ads and branded content partnerships.

They're hoping to soon build in a way for people to buy materials through the site or even exchange products with other homeowners.

You can check out the hacks and ideas on www.hometalk.com, on Facebook www.facebook.com/hometalk or by signing up for a daily email.