The rise and fall of Gazup You are probably saying that Gazup still working, but if you are one of the guys who used Gazup services in its first months, you know that this site is not like before. Who is Gazup? In late of 2008, a website came with a good idea (I don't know if original). Spread the same file among many hosters. The user would need to send it just once to Gazup server and then Gazup would upload the file to other hosters (initially 4 hosters, if I'm not wrong). Better than this, Gazup decided to pay the people for using its services. Initially $3 per 1000 download, but I will talk about the payment later. The service Creating mirrors on many hosters is a pretty cool tool - that's why there are so many sites doing this nowadays. But as you can imagine, it is a hard work. Even if you are good programmer and know how to do it, the reliability would always rely on the hosters. If a hoster is overloaded or just down, of course that Gazup wouldn't be able to upload files to that hoster. This was and still being the major problem that Gazup faces. But it was not the only problem with the hosters. Some hosters, like Gazup, also pay for the downloads and when using Gazup, users would like to send the files to their accounts on those hosters. Otherwise, they wouldn't earn money with the hosters, only with Gazup. The main hoster that everybody asked for support was RapidShare. Big hoster that everyone uses to share files, but the problem was not only because of the potential money that people would lose if Gazup couldn't send the file to their account - by my experience I can say it is not easy to make money with RapidShare - but the problem was because the files were being uploaded to a free account (not a collector account), which meant that after 10 downloads RapidShare would remove the file. Gazup tried to fix it, but it still not working. Just to be fair, Although RapidShare offers an API well documented, all the other sites like Gazup also have problems with RapidShare accounts. The last time I tried to upload a file to a hoster that required an account, it was not able to complete the process. Gazup also offered (I don't know if it still working) a automatic thumb maker. If the file was a video file, Gazup would try to create thumbnails for this video. Pretty cool because the users could post this images on boards and save time. However, due the video codecs, it never worked very well. Also, as you can imagine, it would take some resources from the server. So, I guess that in some cases Gazup was deliberately not generating the thumbs. And this brings me to a feature that never worked and will never work. The re-upload feature. According to Gazup team, if any file was removed from a hoster, the uploader could easily re-upload it just clicking on a button. But of course, Gazup would have to have the file on its server. Does Gazup keep the files on the server? I will let Gazup answer that... From their Abuse page: And it was Gazup that put the last line in ALL CAPS. The payment It was, no doubt, the main reason why many uploaders were using Gazup. I'm honest, I started using them because of the mirrors, but quickly I started uploading files using Gazup because of the money that I could earn. Initially, as I said before, they were paying $3 per 1000 downloads. But after 3 months they lower it to $2 and later they applied a tier that was based from what country the downloader was. People went crazy because of that, but it was the solution that found to stop some uploaders that were easily earning up to $800 per month. So, the top uploaders were now making no more than $300/mo. Another thing that people use to overlook was the top uploaders. Gazup would pay only the first 20 uploaders with more points. Anyone below that wouldn't receive a penny. So guys only found about it later and from time to time, someone was argue on the support forum because of that. I also overlooked this rule and I thought that I would really earn money no matter how many downloads I got. But later I started to get a lot of downloads and reached the top 20. The money I made No much like the top uploaders, about $80. They paid me twice on my paypal account. However, Gazup owes me two payments (about $60), which I'm pretty sure that I won't get. During its glory days, Gazup always paid in time. One or two users complained on the forum that they were never paid. Seems that they were from countries where Gazup couldn't send money using PayPal. They tried to find another way to make the payment, but the last time I heard from one of those guys, he was waiting to be paid $200 that he earned in February and March 2009. Yet about the payment, I know that they were cheating on the users, counting wrongly the downloads. If you were a uploader there, you know that the minimum point for a download was 5 points, however I got 1 point on many of my files. The fall Although Gazup had always some problems with the hosters, few users angry about the payment ans some lies to attract more users, I can say it started to fall when it got hacked by the infamous Nobody Coder. It affected deeply all the services and the team too. Gazup was down for maintenance for about one week and when came back online the site was running a backup of more than 1 month. For an active uploader, 1 month is too much time and it means hundreds of files. But it wasn't all. Before the attack, Gazup had a team that was offering a good support, either on the forum as in IRC channel. After that, everybody was gone, leaving only one guy. I assume, for obvious reasons, that this guy is the guy who is paying for everything. One week seemed to be a long time for many uploaders and when Gazup was back online, they didn't come back to keep using the site. But I won't blame them. After the attack, Gazup, that is now only one guy, decided to suspend the rewards temporarily. So, no more money for the downloads. However, naturally, Gazup was still making money with the file uploaded before and the files new that were being uploaded. Initially it was intentioned to be temporarily - that is what I like to think - but later the rewards was completely removed with no warnings. On the support forum - now the only place where users could put their questions as the IRC channel was dead - the admin promised to proceed with the payments of the earnings made before the attack (May and June). Yes, Gazup had a lot of guys to pay, including me, and as far as I know, nobody was ever paid for this period. Just few guys were accessing the forum asking for the money, including that guy that was still waiting for the payment from February. I put some questions on the forum and other guys too. It was mainly about the payments and because of some (many) bugs that Gazup had. Files that were not being uploaded, FTP that was not working, mirrors pages with no links... The admin, after give some answers, just disappeared. For more than 1 month he didn't even log in the forum. And suddenly, the forum was shut down. No more forum to anyone. Now, Gazup has no rewards, no support forum, no IRC channel... nothing. I thought that Gazup would just "drop dead", as the domain name was about to expire (it was Nov 23, 2009), but Netco Solutions - the company behind the project renewed the domain name for one more year. I don't know if they did it to assure that users can still use the mirror pages or if it was for monetary reasons. As it still has ads, I'm sure they still making money. From my files they will not make money. I'm slowly changing all my posts and replacing the Gazup mirror pages with my HotFile links. The reason why I don't use other mirrors sites is because they are all a crap and have the same problems that Gazup has. Related links Please review Gazup! a new file mirroring website with a difference
Just looked at the site via Alexa. Not 100% accurate, but I like using it in anycase for somethings. The site well went up quickly in Alexa ranking and has just come back down as quick nearly.