How to market my image hosting website ?

Hello !
Please help me with ideas to develop my FREE image hosting website : Visual JPG

Please help me with any ideas that may help me to make my website very popular worldwide.


ps. : i posted a promotion here but nobody replied

 

Oooof. Get a good design for it first.

 

Nice domain name but you need a design+logo so you can actually start branding.

 

Use Digg. I hope your servers can handle the load if you reach the homepage.

 

You can start hosting a funny image and use it for comments in myspace or replies in forums.When people click it,they will go to your image hosting site.

 

ok ,
i ordered a logo from here

what else do i need ?
how to get real traffic ? and how to be popular ?

 

get a design, find a niche to promote to.

To Start with, Tell us what you have done already - (hint search on this - there is a post almost every week on this exact same subject)

Getting an image host established is tough work. Just go to google and search for "free image hosting" - you can see that you are up against it! It has taken me nearly 2 years to get into the first 3 pages of the SERPS - and I still have a long way to go to get to page 1, and I spend a lot of time each month to just stay in the top 30 results.

You need to market to a niche, you need a marketing budget, you need to differentiate yourself from the other 70 Million Free Image Hosts out there. Seriously, if you don't have around $500 (min) you are unlikely to do well. You do need a decent server(s) to handle the traffic if you become popular, you need to ensure your Host allows pR0n - as sooner or later you Will get those sort of images uploaded.

In the last 2 years, I have seen literally hundreds of new Image hosting sites come, and most of them dissapear within a few months because they didn't properly plan for what to do when they started to become popular.

 

what kind of returns should one expect from an image hosting site.
i guess the bandwidth cost is huge and the big guns are really popular like
photoshare and imagehost and some other popular sites.

i am myself thinking of doing an image hosting site but am not sure of the budget and techinal aspect from a site like this.

i have a traffic source for a site like this. i think i can get 100-500 visitors a day to a site in this genere.
now my questions are
1. Is adsense revenue enough?
2. what kind of ROIs should i look at? Thinking of 500$ a month of spending What kind of turn around time shold i look at.
3. what kind of script is required to run an image hosting site?

all the information on these will be really helpful.

 

It is risky using adsense on a page that has images uploaded to it - if it is a pR0n image it only takes 1 person to report it to get your account canned and there goes your revenue

Part of your investment should be a dedicated server to handle the traffic.

There are a lot of scripts out there that you can use to manage an image host. I have 2 different turnkey type scripts that I have heavily modified so they a bit more secure and actually provide some of the functions that I need.

My sites only earm me a small amount each month, but I use them as part of my network - they both get traffic drven to them and also drive traffic to my other sites. If I only had an imagehost, I would have given up on it a long time ago. It took me over a year to get a return on the free site, but less than 3 months on my niche paid image host.

 

i think it is not risky specially if the website has TOS that prevents uploading porn images..

 

A TOS does not stop someone from uploading an image - no matter what, you will get people who upload porn images. You will need to be vigilant!

I have had a few instances where I didn't notice porn images and blew around 5Gig/day of bandwidth until I removed them! If you do go ahead and put adsense on a page showing images that you have not approved, then I just wanted to point out the risks associated with doing it. Most people don't want to risk losing their adsense account when there are other ways of making decent $$ without it on these sort of sites.

 

Remove the Ads, they are ugly and they won't make you any money until you have a lot of traffic.

 

how come rapidshare.com uses adsense then ?
anybody can upload porn images on rapidshare.com and view them for all ..
its not my fault if someone upload porn images.. till i receive reports about them.. because iam not supposed to watch what ppl upload to my website !
am i right ?

 

Please feel free to totally ignore my advice - I am not forcing you to listen

All I will say on the subject is do so at your own risk

 

On rapidshare you don't actually view any pictures that anyone uploads through the site, you download the file to your pc and then view whatever file it is. I believe adsense's policy on porn is that they do not want their ads associated with things like that so don't want them viewed directly with them, I may be wrong, but it sounds about right to me.

Also it may not be your fault if a robber injures themselves on a danger your house, but you will still be liable (in the UK anyway). It is the same with a site, it may not be your fault, but ultimately it is your responsibility, however fair or unfair that may be.

 

thats wrong!
try :

the image is viewed on rapidshare.com !

 

I appreciate the advice you're giving. What other ways to you recommend, instead of adsense, to generate revenue for image hosting sites?

 

I can't view it on the rapidshare site?? It just takes me to a download page.

Also can I just say, proving us wrong or finding mistakes in what we say won't protect you from adsense TOS.

 

I had paid to Correctus to get my website listed in 555 directories..
and i had paid to Raghav to design a professional logo , have a look to it !

Even though my website isn't receiving suitable traffic till now :S
what are your suggestions now ,please?

 

I'm running an image hosting site, http://www.pixelshack.com and it's proving to be a struggle.

I bought ads on a few sites and I have gotten almost no traffic from them. I started posting bulletins on myspace and that has generated a lot of traffic, more than before. To give you some more advice, I would be lying. I've tried all the stuff they mention on this page. I would like some help to, please!

And to ala101, google can do whatever they want to, if you have p0_rn on your server, even if it can't be easily found, google can and most likely will ban you; now please stop arguing, you lost.