Image Hosting

September 7th, 2004, 5:25 pm

Hey guys and girls. This is the deal......

I want to open up a website that is strictly image hosting. I will offer image resizing, format conversion, automatic code generating, and other stuff like that. I don't want to have to charge people to use it, I'd rather just put up a few ads.

I can get 40gb of transfer each month and 1gb of space. I plan on limiting images to 185kb.

So now I have a couple of questions. First off, do you think that I will have enough space to start out with? I don't know how popular the site wil be but I can store about 5500 images and transfer 225,000 images each month if they are all the maxium size.

Second, how should I go about doing it? Should I require users to set up an account? Or just allow anybody to upload? If I use accounts, I will be able to give everybody a directory where they can access their files as opposed to losing the link and having to re-upload the file.

Third, what should I charge for advertising on somewhere like that? I want to make some money off of this (~$100 a month) after I can get it up and running.

Now its your turn to lemme know what you think!!!

September 7th, 2004, 5:32 pm

every free image hosting place i have found get popular really quick - they end up turning into paid only accounts within a few months because of the popularity.

September 7th, 2004, 5:35 pm

I have found too many free ones to let mine go to paid. If all else fails, I can always tell people they are gonna have spam in their inbox! At least it is free!

Any other ways I can make money for that kinda thing?

September 7th, 2004, 5:58 pm

adwords has been making some money. although you have to be weary as it takes keywords off your site and advertisers your competitors until you block them lol

September 7th, 2004, 6:21 pm

I was gonna use that, but I am only 16 and they require you to be 18 and you have to fill out all kinds of tax paperwork and such. Not to mention the fact that they are everywhere now and you don't really have any way of changing the size of them. I would rather use images directly from companies because I will be able to cut out the middle man costs and maybe even work out some good deals with people as opposed to let evreything lie in the hands of Google.

September 7th, 2004, 10:51 pm

Anybody have any ideas on the rest of the aspects???? What about a domain name? I have been considering the following:

pic-host.com
hotlink-spot.com
hotlink-heaven.com
image-hotlink.com
photo-hotlink.com

Any suggestions?

September 7th, 2004, 11:01 pm

yeap - dont seperate them with a dash

[joebert]

September 8th, 2004, 3:36 am

I might be missing somthing here.

Where would the ads be with image hosting,
Would you watermark the images ?
Would you send email to thoose who have images hosted ?

I think the only lasting way to make any money with image hosting is buying HUGE chunks of bandwidth & buying servers so you can lowball the competition.

A good example, http://www.myimgs.com/index.php?page=index

September 8th, 2004, 3:32 pm

I don't plan on anything that in depth. Just a simple image server that is free. That is to start out with anywho.......

September 10th, 2004, 3:51 am

I have one unused dedicated server so I've decided to make it an image hosting : http://images.realgoodhost.com
I do not plan to make it paid. The storage is 40 G and the traffic is 500 G. I want an advice do I have to change coppermine with something better ?

September 29th, 2004, 1:08 am

I have new domain for the previous post : http://imagecup.com

September 29th, 2004, 8:16 pm

Thats a good name. Truce 40GB yould be plenty to start out with just make sure you use a host with scalable plans. Once you get some traffic you may even find a host (hint hint) to sponsor you.

jean9 wrote:

I have new domain for the previous post : http://imagecup.com

April 20th, 2007, 9:50 pm

Hello,

As you know nothing is free. If you dont pay that doesnt mean that it's free. They can ask you to put their link on your images. I own http://www.alkaspace.com and i recently upgraded the free disk space to 200 megs and the bandwith to 1000 megs. They hosting is usually paid with the click the persons put on your site.

Michel