Starting A File Hosting Company - Need Some Advices

Muhammad, I will have to agree with you there. I wouldn't see much use in yet another file hosting website, as they have all already been pretty much covered.

 

That looks like a rather bad idea to me. You're going to need a lot of bandwidth and a lot of diskspace. No, you don't need multiple servers. Serving up files is a trivial task for even an old CPU like a 200Mhz pentium. I used a 200Mhz Pentium running WinME and handled over 1 million requests in a month.

You'll either need one very large harddrive or modify the script to divide the files up among multiple drives.

I run the majority of my sites off of a 933 PIII with no trouble at all. I recently set up a mirror of Project Gutenberg. All together I think that server has around a quarter million files (not an exageration) and gigs of database information.

Anyway, yes this is easy to do but unless you have access to cheap hosting it's going to cost you a lot more in bandwidth to run than you could make in advertising.

People also hate uploading through their browser. Especially large files. It'd be better if you used an FTP server to handle uploading files.

On the other negative side, most of the files people upload will be illegal so you can't allow open access to the files which means you are very limited in where you can put adsense.

 

Unless you are creative and have ideas!

Look at http://filebux.com for an example.

 

I don't think image hosting sites do very well with adsense since their is generally not a lot of content, therefore, the ads tend to not be related or of interest to visitors. There are usually image hosting ads displayed and that just takes visitors away from your site. However, that is not to say you can't make it work, just my thoughts. Good luck!

 

NO, they are not well enough. Try adding two 336x280 Large Rectangle under "UPLOAD" Button..

 

well, we are running filehosting service for 1.2 year now.

site is based on custom written script(public written can be hacked easily)

rev is based on subscriptions, ad rev.

pros of this type of services:
-you can use it for free
-easy to generate rev.

cons
requires hardware(we allready invested approximally $xx.xxx to servers(we own all of them))
-users support
-hardware managing

for today our site is in the top10 file hosters on the market.

 

custom or public doesnt matter
offcourse private is safer

 

I think file hosting business is still growing. If you can get people to host their files and use them then you win. Since I started my my site hotfile.us (three months ago), already over 3,000 files uploaded with 2,756 GB used in Bandwidth.

Peace,

 

Do you make a profit or loss from that?

 

I've been running a file hosting service since september(2,5 months).I'm hosting ~250 files,100-250 unique visitors daily,but no real ad rev.
I might be wrong but IMO most of the users using file hosting services tend to avoid clicking on ads,they just want to start downloading the file as soon as possible.That means if you want to have ad rev you have to rely on heavy traffic...

I believe generally there is still room for more,but if you want to be really competitive you must have a good budget(for servers,bandwidth,advertising,etc.).

azizny whould you like to share some info about your service?
Are you paying for advertising or are you just promoting your service by yourself?

 

If I wasn't, then there is point of the website.

When I started the service, it was in a shared server. Then after I started getting more visitors, I used another used server I wasn't using much either. Then after that started a brand new server, soon I will be adding another server.

How I promoted the site:

* I own some animation website, I uploaded several old anime shows, which are very hard to find, and if you do very costly, for old timers. This way I am starting to get a lot of animation websites uploading files on the website too.

* I started a partner service, for which if you have a lot of files provided to users (scripts, games, etc..) either I host the files for them, or they pass by my website which I then pass back a password to download the file (and share the revenue with the partner), which proved to be very successful and 60% of my traffic comes from such partners.

* The last thing is that I never deleted any files. Although my TOS states that inactive files get removed after 60 days.

Peace,

 

Thanks for the info azizny.
How exactly are you sharing the revenue with partners?I mean,are you using some kind of automated script or what?

It's good to have a website to push traffic to the file hosting service,it helps at least until the service gets popular.

"The last thing is that I never deleted any files" that's a very good move IMO.
I had to delete many files because of bandwidth problems and because of that I lost many visitors,and of course the deleted files where never again uploaded by the users(propably they went to another file host) :-(
That's exactly why I advice everyone who plans to start a file hosting service: Be prepared to spend money if the service gets busy.And I mean hundreds.Users will leave for ever if the service is unable to serve their files.

I'm trying to get my traffic back now hehehe,and I was just thinking if I should pay for some advertising or not?Now I'm promoting the site my self.

ps. azizny do think this: -"I might be wrong but IMO most of the users using file hosting services tend to avoid clicking on ads,they just want to start downloading the file as soon as possible.That means if you want to have ad rev you have to rely on heavy traffic..."- is true?I mean,are you satisfied with the clicks/visits ratio of your service?

 

Your mini files hosting is the same with my images hosting. But my site use verify code to control flood. If you open all your doors, your servers will be dead by streams of serious files. --> Die host.

Take a look at my Images Host: http://www.allimagefiles.com

 

Easy script. On the site that provides download, when the user clicks on download.php?file_id=33. It redirects them to hotfile.us/partnener.php?file_id=33&site_name=XXX

Then I just after like XX seconds, I give them the download link, download.php?file_id=33&password=XX.

download.php when accessed checks for password XX if good, pass else forward to hotfile. Of course the password is encrypted into binary and is dynamic based on the user ip.

Some partners I actually host the files for, this they don't get to share the revenue.
It's good to have a website to push traffic to the file hosting service,it helps at least until the service gets popular.

No, the ratio is pretty nice. I use a slick move, the page is divided into three sections (left,middle,right) each time the file upload/download area appears in different section. This forces users to SEE the ads.

I can't seem to access the website, is it me?

The only flood control I have is on downloads over XX of MG, you can download and upload as many files as you like. Ofcourse I use javascript validation so bots get a hard time working with me.

Peace,

 

if this is what you want to do, then:

1. customize the script with your own colors, fonts, images, etc
2. change the ads colors to match your site's colors
3. leave the ad placement as it is, and learn as you go which ads are fairing poorly and then experiment with alternate positions. OR research online regarding the best ad positions (sky scraper, 300x300 square normally) and try to incoorporate those in the design.

 

hmm ok ill try to do that

 

Also something I just noticed I wasn't doing right today.

Make sure your site works in all browsers (including opeara,IE and FF).

Peace,

 

yes ill make sure abt that

 

Thanks i am going to start this soon

 

Let us know how you get on! I would very interested.