Hi, My question is simple... are image hosting sites profitable? I mean, they use much space/bandwidth, so it costs a lot, but are earnings good or not? Greetz and thanks for people who want to share their experiences!
I also thought starting up a hosting site but not for images but for files. You have to keep in mind that you WILL get emails from companies complaining that you are hosting their copyrighted images (Playboy etc) and moreover you are the one who is responsible if any illegal pictures (Ch!ldpr0n) is uploaded... I don't want to have that on my karma.. Besides, there are so many free image hosts already (tinypic, imageshack)... I don't think you will be able to stand up against those competitors, seriously. Imageshack has +- 500 servers... Oh and you won't get paid if they link directly to your image from sponsers, no only if they view it on your website... and forcing people to do that won't make them happy using your service
I think it's saturated, I was searching yesterday and saw many image hosting that hadn't had even 1 image uploaded to them! Also there are big sites as Freek mentioned and it's really hard to gain a chunk of this market.
Yes it still earn me a handsome sum of money everyday. You must target one niche if you want to profitable.
it is not best idea to start a image hosting. because you want to have a dedicated hosting ( cost more ) or seperate server to do that. so try some other ideas