You have provided a heap of great information for anyone who has or is considering running an image host.
Fighting with a porn: another round, first blood #1 First round Today my website was very slow. To get a any picture I needed to wait something like 5 minutes. After I chatted with a VPS support I found that 99.9% of RAM was used, because I have 240 users on site. This seemed quite a strange. #2 Second round Host restarted server. 2 minutes, and website is down again. Another 250 users on website waiting for their files. #3 Third round Mailzas founds that porn mafia are using "download.php" for hotlinking. So instead of "download.php", I redirected all requests to same full page + ads. Mailzas Wins, traffic drops 10 times, website is fast again. Here is screenshot for You to view how much traffic dropped. NEXT UPDATE: How to get FEW KILOGRAMS of traffic to IMAGE HOST
How to get few thousands of traffic to IMAGE HOST I bought 2 image hosting ebooks from digital point. One is from Mubin Ahmed, was not bad ebook, gaved my some information, some inpiration, and some stats, however some links are not working. But anyway it is good ebook. Another ebook here is sold for 7$, was with some information too. (By the way, what a point to sell ebook for 7$?, how much he expecting to make? 140$?) Need traffic, post celebrities photos! So Mubin writes, that in order to get traffic You post some celebrity photos, to forums, where they are shared, and Your traffic will start to explode. After reading I started browse, but best image hosts, with maximum page views per thread, have "confirmed image hosts", and that means, that administrator must confirm Your image host before You can upload pictures to that forum. WHAT I DID I created an accounts on 7-10 forums. To that ones, which has "confirmed image hosts" I wrote a PM, asking to confirm my HEYIMAGE.COM. 2 forums accepted my website, maybe few more will accept it too. Also I have 2 more, where You don't need acceptance. From time to time, I upload some VERY CAREFULLY PICKED PICTURES to these forums. GALLERY FUNCTIONALITY To copy images to forums, one by one, is too much work for me, so I implemented "galleries functionality" to my forums. So I upload 10 images, and get all image codes, by one click. CAR FORUMS TOO? Also I thought which else forums, could benefit from image hosting. For me seems it could be car forums. However they have slightly less page views than a celebrity forums. HOW TO GET BANNED, FOR LIFE, FROM FORUMS? - Post old photos, already shared - Use Your image host, if it is not confirmed - Write too much messages to admins - Upload anything, except exceptional images RESULTS After posting like 10-15 messages with pictures I can confirm, that WISELY DONE, it is true, that You can get huge amount of traffic from forums. TRADITIONAL SCREENSHOTS Here is screenshot showing, how I got XXX Visits from a forum in one day, where I posted 2 messages, with a pictures, in one thread. Of course not all forums will give You results like this. On heyimage.com, click on image, to maximize, it will be easier to read numbers.
How You think what would be second theme interesting to read? 1. CHANGING MODEL TO MEMBER BASED 2. OPTIMIZING WEBSITE TO GET MORE $$$ per page view. Something else?
That was an interesting read. Would have liked to have read that when i started out a few years ago in the image hosting headache Good Luck!
Thanks for telling us about that, interesting ! Post some more steps up how you go with your Secrets please!
Increasing earnings, per page view IMAGE HOSTS USUALLY DO NOT EARN ANY MONEY One of secrets in free image hosting, is that free image hosting websites usually do not earn any money. All money earned is usually spend on hosting expenses. What are reasons for this? Hotlinking eating too much bandwidth, little page views, little revenue per page view, and so on. What I will do in following months, I will be increasing my website earnings. My goal is to sell this website for 10 000$, so I think it should earn something like 700-800$ per month to be sold for that price. MOST IMPORTANT METRICS I believe, there only 4 things, most important to any website: * Visits * Pageviews per visit * Earnings per page view * Returning visits INTRODUCED PROGRAMIC UPGRADES Yesterday I tried to optimize earnings per page view. For a future needs, I created admin interface, where I am counting different page views. Why I do this? Because good, and porn areas are showing different ads. So by viewing at these stats, it would be easier for me to be on track everything. Please take a look at stats. I am quit a lazy, so I am proud of myself, that I finished this. SHOW A CPM ADS, INSTEAD OF CPC Another secret for Image hosting is that people usually click very little on the ads. I think reason for this, that eyes usually concentrate on a graphic shown on webpage, not ads. So if You want to earn more show a CPM ads, instead of CPC ads. But then I analyzed free image hosts, I see, that usually people just add goodle adsense to it, and forget. INCREASING EARNINGS PER PAGE VIEW Yesterday I changed only one thing on adverts. I added one POPUP ad, which will be shown only, once per 24 hours, per visitor. Earnings per page view increased from 0.18$ per CPM, to a 0.67$. 4 times Please take a view, at earnings per day graphic I could look at it for hours P.S. Thanks to people who are replying to my posts. To write such a post takes plenty time, and I would not do this, if not feeling, that my posts are valuable to someone.
How you think, is my english language ok to write a blog, or I should hire someone to edit me before I post something on the blog?
Your posts are very informative. Thank you very much. I also have an image host which has been running for about a year now. Not much traffic. Ill try implementing some of your tips Thanks once again.
Its awesome dude. Wish u best of lick. I myself have ImageHost. ANd i also gone through those. And different ppl solv in differet way.
This is encouraging me to open up the big content serving sites again, like an arcade and image host. Once i raise te funds I soooo am. Great thread btw.
i have been making money on my image host for awhile now and still offer hot linking, hot linking can still bring in money despite what people say and it also helps to bring traffic to your main upload page by linking to it. i have tried a few ways to get more money like hand approving gallery's and adding high paying cpm ads to them to trying out affiliate ads. which btw works if you have the time to check gallery's every day.. what i found is the hardest thing with running an image host is just keeping the site up, from data flow issues, dos attacks and dns, http and mysql servers rolling over not to mention take down notices which freaked me out. i'm currently using about 300-400gb a day using two servers i plan to increase my usage by another 100gb a day with in the next month or so with my 3rd server.
Thank you for this information. I have 2 image hosts that only get 20-100 visits a day. Your ideas/methods have given me inspiration! Thanks, Robert