Image Hosting: A good business or a complete failure?

Lately, more and more image hosting services appeared on the net. Even though i think the business starts to be saturated, I see each month new image hosts on the forums. Then after a short time disappearing… So, let’s see the cons and pros of why to have, or not an own image host.

As I said in one of my previous post, I manage one of the image hosts and worked for one of the oldest and biggest ones. What I saw in the very first moments, is the enormous transfer rate of the image data. There were moments -better said almost always,- when a 100mbit connection’s download band was completely saturated. That means that in one month the webserver transferred 32 Terra Bytes of data. Even if the owner of the image host found a good uplink provider, that means 3200 US dollars… in one single month.
So, after the above calculation, I was thinking of how to cover the costs of the server. 3200 dollars is a smaller fortune, so covering that cost isn’t so easy.
At that time, the following options popped in my mind:

1. The most obvious: Ads
2. Subscription based service
3. Donations

The ads. As I see on every host, this is the one the most opt for. The problem with the ads is that not all networks allow any type of content. So, depending of what the owner of the image host decide to deny to host, finding a good network might be very hard. There are two type of image hosts: one which allows adult images, and the one which doesn’t. If the owner decides to let adult material to be hosted, it will be hard to find a good advertising network which allows adult content. My experience is that BlackLabelAds is the one which pays the best, especially their full page ads and allows adult content. If the owner decide to not allow adult content, even Google’s AdSense will do the job. The only problem is that one of the biggest, well, better said greatest non-adult image host will suck the owner’s clientele like a magnet, and if there are no visitors, the ads don’t pay at all.

Either case, the ads are paying only if they are fetched on the host. So the owner has to bring visitors to his/her site. And NOT the uploaders! The users which has account stay about 10 seconds on the image host. That’s not enough at all, for anything. So, the owner has to bring somehow else the visitors to his site. The most convenient way is to don’t let the uploaders display full size images on the remote sites, but thumbnails which are hotlinked to the original image. This has two effects: it reduces the bandwidth consumption considerably, and will bring users to the site.

Another option to cover the costs of the server is to offer subscription based service. Only a few hosts do this, so probably is not a too good idea. Let’s see why? One single reason pops in my mind: users don’t pay for something which exists in free version too. The owner may have some subscribers, but not too much. If he wants a lot of subscribers, will have to advertise the site massively, and advertising costs…. a lot! So this option to sustain the site is not the best. Possibly the existent users will be very happy with the service, but the owner will not have an acceptable revenue.

The last option I listed is to accept donations. Would you donate for a service just to keep it running? And is free anyway… Most will say no

Another issue with letting users upload files to the server is that the users will upload files to the server . This can be a very big security risk and usually webmasters doesn’t allow file uploading to not let users with bad intentions to exploit server resources or to upload malicious software, scripts to it.

The number of concurrent connections can also be a problem. Apache can handle a limited number of connections and if you don’t set the MaxClients directive wisely, the whole server will go down the hill. For example, if you set a too low number, the connections will be queued, then if too many users in the queue the server will not be able to handle them and the connection will time out. On the other hand if you set a too high number for MaxClients and you have not enough RAM, your server will deny to serve as each process eats up some RAM, too many processes, not enough RAM and the server will hung.

So, as a final word, starting an image hosting service is a very bad idea in my humble opinion. I can’t list any good reason of why to start another one.

Let me know what are your own thoughts on this subject. You could even try to convince me that it’s a good idea