I am thinking of launching a image hosting site. Does image hosting industry still have any potential? I am looking at custom built script with some extra features than turnkey ones availble in the market! what do you guys think? should I go for it?
I am very skeptical about the business. It may get quite bandwidth intensive especially with the tons of uploads and downloads you are going to get. Also make sure that you are proactive to ensure that no illegal pictures are uploaded. Try to see how to can monetize the business so that it would pay for itself.
As long as you are offering something not everyone out there has, it can be successful. Theres a lot of free image hosting sites, you really need to stand out.
yeah offer something else that NO ONE else does and the site should become a hit. Also make sure to advertise it right to get it out there among the other sites if you decide to launch an image hosting site. regards
yeah offer something else that NO ONE else does and the site should become a hit. Also make sure to advertise it right to get it out there among the other sites if you decide to launch an image hosting site. regards
Unless you have a huge unique selling point or a huge audience (who would be the target audience for the image hosting site) to launch it on, then bad idea. It is an incredibly saturated market. Of course, he is banned so this is more of a general point now.
I have previously done a tinypic.com clone for one of my customers. However, I dont' know how's going on on his side after the work. You need very good hardware infrustructure for free image hosting site. And for now, the only way I can think of to monetize from suc sites is advertising: adsense or other CPM ads. I think good investment is absolute in the initial stage, it will pay off in the long run.
Serving files for others requires a lot of bandwidth as eddy2099 stated. Even more so with the use of places like Myspace. If your site becomes a target of great value, consider it to be 'owned'
Probably the worst idea you could have, it's not even the fact that they use a lot of bandwidth, since they don't you're hosting images not files or videos but the fact that the markets over saturated and the competition is way too far ahead of you.
Image hosting is a good idea but when it's innovative like Pinerest or Tumblr. You can see there are still many ways to make this bussines with profits.
I agree. It is a losing proposition. It is not that easy to sell ad inventory at good prices and you will end up selling it for pennies
There are too many image hosting services out there. If you want to create good service offer something unique, for example API for image upload/resizing, statistics for views, which sites are displaying the image (via HTTP_REFERRER), etc. Don't just copy the features all image hosting services have.