I was just reading that their bandwidth costs are now up to roughly $1 million a month. What I'm wondering is how does a website that utilizes video sharing site get started? There's a bunch of them out there.... ebaumsworld, funnyvideos etc. How do they cover the costs of the videos in the beginning when they aren't getting much traffic? I have an idea for a smaller site within the niche that I currently am involved in that uses video sharing but am unsure of how bandwidth costs would be covered in the beginning. I'm serious about looking into developing this site so any thoughts on this would be awesome. Thanks, Sean
Ebaums makes alot of profit from cpm, ppc, direct sales, affiliates, adbrite etc they make the most of all there traffic. You tube as far as i know have made a loss since they started but they have alot of funding. Still dont know why they use hardly any ads and no cpm at all. You should make more then the hosting cost from link sales and ads, for a startup your bills will be small as you get bigger youll attract more advertisers and get accepted into better programs. If you tube utilized there space like ebaums do they would make profit no doubt.
I'm guess YouTube gets funding and overall they can cover those costs. I know facebook.com had donations of like $23M in like 2 months last year, and they are no where near as big as YouTube.
Im serious about creating this website but don't have any real experience with video sharing/giving users the ability to upload videos/rank them etc. Is there a website or company that you guys can point me in the direction of who could create this type of sites for me? It would basically be a site run on the same concept as youtube but smaller and with a more specific purpose. I already have a lot of marketing experience but would simply need help with the actual technical aspects of creating the site itself. Thanks
Im pretty good with code but dont have much marketing experience ... maybe we could work out a skill trading deal if you are interested. My website that needs promotion is in my sig. As far as hosting, bandwidth, and storage space goes check out the link below. They are reliable for dedicated server, which you will need if you want to host videos. Jumpline.com
To get started, you can use youtube as the video platform for your site. It allows you to embed movies from youtube to your site which will make things easier and cheaper for you.
Bandwidth for ebaumsworld isn't that big of a problem for them. They make their cash off of a bunch of people on the internet by stealing their content... and tagging it with their watermark.
YouTube: 42.94% MySpace Video: 24.22% Yahoo! Video Search: 9.58% MSN Video Search: 9.21% Google Video: 6.48% If you see the above data according to Hitwise May, 2006 for individual market share, you can imagine how tough competition is involved in such business, even giant like yahoo/MSN and Google are far behind from you tube and you tube still remaining in number 1 position pulling out myspace in second position.
Starting a site is pretty easy. Just use a youtube clone and customise it a bit. To start with you won't have to pay loads of hosting fees as the site will not get much traffic. If it get popular you just have to pay more for the hosting.
Just sign up to a host that gives you loads of bandwidth -- i use dreamhost. That will give you pleanty of bandwidth and storage space while you get your site going. Remember you dont need any more then a dreahost account --- until your site gets popular. Dont worry about how much bandwidth myspace uses -- just think what your site will need. I get 2000 uniques a day, and most of these watch the few videos on my site, but im nowhere near the limit i'm given each month. If i do suddlenly decide to add more videos to my site, and start getting even more visitors, i can then get a dedicated server. -- hopfully, by then, if i do start getting more visitors, the advertising will pay for it. Right now my ads easily pay for my hosting.
Yea, its all about controlled growth. Don't grow to fast, start small and as you get a wider audience and you feel ready, then expand!
I actually started my paintball video website two years ago by simply making my own. The bandwidth was about 5-10 gb a day. This was with only forum thread advertising. If you're going with a niche site, expect something like this if the videos are good. Make your own videos... they'll help.
Thank you! It warms my heart when people are informed enough to mention this in any thread that mentions e-baums world
You mean the hosts? They aren't liable as long as they remove offending content upon notification. The entire internet would break down if it weren't like this.
This does sound quite interesting. The first thing you should probably look for is a content management system that allows video uploading, sharing, user profiles etc. I just did a quick Google Search for some. If you are looking for free, you can test drive most of the major Opensource CM Systems at Opensourcecms.