Hi, I'm currently planning to start an free image host, similar to http://imageshack.us Does anyone ever started that type of site here, if so, how were you converting these type of visitors into clicks? I'm starting this site because I can get a lot of traffic (40k unique per day & 300k page views)... Thanks a lot in advance, Prookle
Image host sites are very easy to get traffic for... just post pictures on very big forums... If you post 500 posts a day on the 20 biggest forums, and 400 of these posts includes an image hosted on your site, you'll get a lot of traffic. It's just a matter of numbers... Thanks, Prookle
You can definitely make money with a popular file hosting site, but NOT with Adsense or other PPC network. Eventually you'll realize all those hits aren't converting, and be forced to go to CPM ad banners to take advantage of all the impressions. Plus, using networks like Adsense you run the risk of a user uploading an obscene image that violates the TOS and get you ban.
Are you talking from experience? If yes, can you tell me which picture host site you own? Thanks, Prookle
It's common knowledge. There is also so much TOS violations going on with these image hosting sites that a lot of them are getting banned for it.
I have a flash jigsaw application that uses the imageshack api to allow visitors to create jigsaw puzzles of their own images. Google advised that since my ads are running on the page with the app, I'm responsible for the image content. Since I have no way of monitoring what images the user uses, I decided to remove AdSense. I switched that page to a more lenient but less profitable CPC provider.
Picture sites are not good for revenue because viewers come to view photos. They don't usually click on ads.
Using this theorie, YouTube would be totally pointless since people come to watch movies, not to click on ads, don't you think?
Well i run a imagehosting site for few days and it consumes a lot of bandwidth around 10 GB bandwidth in 10 days. So i just dropped that idea
i once had an image hosting site. custom script, custom design. people loved it! but i had to close it down after 4-5 months. because: - it was a bandwidth killer. no web host accepted my site, and told me to go dedicated. - visitors never click on ads. i tried everything i know, i played with them, but it never go beyond 0.3% daily ctr. - i never got relevant ads. well, in fact i got, but they were not useful. i got a lot of imagehosting ads, blocked them all, because i didn't want to lose my visitors to them. then i got a lot of photography ads. both ads never worked out well. visitors rarely click on them. - i needed to monitor all images. what if someone uploads pr0n content, and someone else mails google about it? - i spent my days and nights to build a good site. i added image rating, i added tagging, i added zip-downloading, i added zip-uploading (users upload their images in a zip file, and my site extracts and adds images one by one), but my visitors never used them.
1. youtube has more traffic than you can ever dream of with an image host. 2. The type of traffic you are talking about is temporary unless you make these "forum posts" daily. 3. Image sites, flash sites, video sites, are notorious AdSense loosers.
If you don't care about the opinions of the people you're ASKING FOR ADVICE from, why bother asking for the advice in the first place? Just go do whatever you want and don't bother us with it.