How do free image hosting sites make money?

I was just wondering. I know bandwidth is getting cheaper but how on earth can they host all those images for free and make a profit?

 

CPM ads I would think.

 

any ads can work, google even. CPM is ideal as not many clicks happen on image hosts. The key for image hosts is they can get alot of unique visiters fast.

bandwidth is a issue, but image hosts are odd like that. They may use TONS of bandwidth 1 day and barly any the next. Just depends what photos and what links are pointing to the image. Image hosts are mostly use on forums. Which may bring a crapload of people one day, the next may be none.

 

Ads ads ads and more ads, but dont force ads as in begining
let the flow build up
after that hit the iron when its hot

 

Indeed they have about 3-4CPM ads + popups + adsense lol

 

and 18 + stuff too

 

Indeed, ad for such sites work...

 

Started some time back an image hosting site only for the good stuff.
He makes good money every day from that site now, because once he started getting tons of pictures and lots of members, he started not only selling ad space, but charging to get into the site.

Something I thought about, but then, would the grandkids come bouncing in the room as I am viewing?
Yep, and the wife would not let me forget that!!

 

free image hosting site can make money through Google adsense but not so much, as many visitors you get you beed better server. and people do not like to click on ads in those kind of site. the CPR is low.

 

Check this site out www.imagefap.com they just started in feb of this year and rank 526 on alexa. What kind of bandwidth do you guys think they use a day?

 

Yes, I know I'm asking you to visit another thread.

I'm hoping you will find my idea worth your time and give some valid input on how to improve it. I feel it is a new idea, but I could be wrong for sure.

One thing about DP members, they have seen it all.

Please take a moment and look at:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?p=2170032

Maybe it is the answer, and maybe it is just plain ridiculous.

Twas

 

I used to own an image hosting site...piclynk.com - just sold it couple months ago. I had adsense on it and cpm ads. Clicks were very low. It was an experiment to see how it does but it wasnt worth my time. I sold the site for $3200 after 2 months. Made more money selling it then i made the whole 2 months.

 

There are money making chanels for such hosting sites.

1. Ads on the pages (But I will not recommend pop up/ pop under as these annoy the users too much)
2. Membership fee to use the site.

Having said that, both chanel work only if your site has decent traffic otherwise it will just a wastage of time.
I have started the free image hosting site imagesak.com where I am using none of the above chanels at the moment and will wait till i get some decent traffic.

 

With a decent domain name and some smart marketing, one can quickly grow traffic to a free image hosting website. With ever decreasing costs of storage space and bandwidth and more and more interesting advertising opportunities, it's certainly possible to generate revenue if you can drive enough traffic to the site.

Normally acquiring traffic is not especially easy or cheap but one of the the compelling things about the free image site model is that usage of the site can spread virally at a very quick pace, especially if you initially do some "seeding" of your own by spreading images that you host around sites that your frequent (social networks, forums, etc). If you do this tastefully and appropriately with images that people may want to resuse elsewhere, you should start to see some results.

As far as monetization, in addition to traditional AdSense text ads (which pay only when clicked by a visitor) one should look into display advertising and possibly even rich media advertising which pay decent CPM rates.

 

Where did u sell the image hosting site for $3200

I have a few need to sell them off

 

adsense and cpm ads are the main income.
Some times, u could sell some link if the site rank high.

 

i would either go with flippa or ebay, depending on what you want out of it.

 

So basically whats required to get a high price for the domain

Is it Alexa rank all matters
OR the income u made from the site that matters

 

it's not easy to manage image hosting website especially when it getting big as you will need good server with enough ram and bandwidth

I don't think bandwidth is cheap , 100mb dedicated port cost few hundreds not sure exactly how much but not cheap