Is it hard to make money with free hosting site?

Discussion in 'General Business' started by tradester, Dec 24, 2008.

  1. #1
    Free hosting sites like http://www.filefront.com/ which allow free hosting of content, files, images etc
    What are the costs involved? Clearly the hosting will be main cost. Also some marketing/ promotional cost but I would imagine most of the traffic would be viral or word of mouth
    The script can be a standard template either free or bought for low price
    What about revenue? PPC like adsense, PPA affiliate programs, banners and links
    Anyone with experience care to share please. :)
     
    tradester, Dec 24, 2008 IP
  2. Kwaku

    Kwaku Well-Known Member

    Messages:
    1,217
    Likes Received:
    45
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    140
    #2
    I run free web hosting, file hosting, video hosting and image hosting. Free web hosting and free image hosting are making me money. File hosting are not.

    Thing with free file hosting is that the ones that make a lot of $ make money are hosting 99% illegal stuff (rapidshare being a good example); mere mortals like us cannot do that as you will get complaints, DMCA stuff etc and your provider or one (or more) of the upper level providers will block/switch you off. So I have to remove the illegal stuff making my file host not very popular :)

    Same goes for videos.

    Sure I can host in countries where they dont' care about this kind of thing, but there bandwidth is very expensive, so then it would need a huge upfront investment.

    But web + image hosting do well for me. Especially free web hosting. I am currently writing an ebook on blackhat free web hosting; it is one of those things that really work and never really gets saturated.
     
    Kwaku, Dec 24, 2008 IP
  3. asholar

    asholar Peon

    Messages:
    435
    Likes Received:
    3
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #3
    don't try any free hosting. They will delete all your files, if u use more resources.
     
    asholar, Dec 24, 2008 IP
  4. Jordan656

    Jordan656 Peon

    Messages:
    399
    Likes Received:
    1
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    0
    #4
    ive heard that free forum hosting can be lucrative, especially if you have a good support forum with revenue sharing
     
    Jordan656, Dec 24, 2008 IP
  5. mentos

    mentos Prominent Member

    Messages:
    15,280
    Likes Received:
    473
    Best Answers:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    330
    #5
    The cost of maintain this kind of site is quite high as you need to buy a powerful server not counting the cost of maintainence and marketing budget spending.
    For the revenue part,you don't need to overcrowd your site with banner ads and affiliate link,you need only attract a few high end paying advertiser to advertise at your site such as game developer etc
     
    mentos, Dec 24, 2008 IP