Image Hosting Site - What should I expect

[ebemunk]

I built my site, its ready to go. Its an image hosting site something like <others> but its a whole lot easier to use. I found a very good hosting and am planning to buy a hosting package tomorrow, and get the site going. While doing that, I signed up for adbrite and am planning to sign up for adsense. What should I expect for the first 6 months and what strategies should I use in this particular website to increase my traffic, therefore my adsense income. Thank you for help.

[edited by: tedster at 12:21 pm (utc) on Oct. 4, 2005]
[edit reason] remove urls [/edit]

[humblebeginnings]

Hi Ebemunk,

Welcome to WW.
Your question is really very general, so it will be very hard for WW members to give you a specific answer.

I first would like to mention (without trying to p*ss you off) that you are not allowed to post URL's on this forum. Especially since you are refering to it as "very good hosting". Folks here might think your post is a commercial.

You are also refering to an "image hosting" website. I shall not repeat the name of it cause it also could be understood as selfpromotion.

If your site indeed is "something like" that site you should expect to get banned from Adsense in a couple of days because it violates the Adsense Terms Of Service seriously.

My advice would be to read the Adsense TOS carefully and to make an entirely different site than the one you mention...

[ebemunk]

Oh sorry. I didn't know that.
Well the thing is, I have a friend that actually does this service and he's in his second month in with adsense. so he's accepted and got his payments already. I'll check the TOS but I'm doubtful why google would wait to ban his account if it is not alright.

ps. how do I edit my previous post, I want to erase the links.

[humblebeginnings]

The image hosting itself is probably not a problem.
As long as the images comply with Adsense TOS(!)
But the site you mention appears to have no content but links and some of these links refer to sex websites. Doing that is making sure you will get kicked from Adsense.

About editing the post; while you are reading this, look to the left of your own post. It says 'user profile' and then 'owner edit'.
You know what to do;-)

[ebemunk]

It does not say the owner edit thingy in the first post though. Anyways I'm very sorry for that. My site does not have any external links and I have added a categorized uploading system that will determine wheter a picture is an "adult" or "private" so it does not show those in the main site, those pictures can only be linked to by other site that wish to use my service. hopefully that is not much of a problem.
the friend said he made 150$ the first month, without any advertising. is it possible or am I taking my expectations a little too high?

[humblebeginnings]

Hmpf... Guess I am not clever enough to understand the owner edit option fully. It appears it only is there at my last post. Other posts don't have it.
Well, forget about it. Perhaps the moderator will delete the URL, no big thing.

But to get back to your website.
Do you mean your website has an adult section and you are charging your visitors money to get access to nudy pics? Is that what you are planning?
Cause I don't think Adsense is gonna like that.
Sorry if I don't understand it...

[incrediBILL]

the friend said he made 150$ the first month, without any advertising. is it possible or am I taking my expectations a little too high?

If $150 is all you're expecting you can make more panhandling at a busy intersection.

Think big - but image galleries and forums tends to perform lower than other types of sites.

[ebemunk]

No I would never ever consider doing a site that charges for nudity pics. Since I provide this particular service, I guess there is no way to prevent this kind of pictures being uploaded to my server. So rather than just uploading it, I provide the user to at least tell me that they are sexually explicit images. So when I save those in my database, those are categorized as "Adult" and no one can access to those image but the uploader him/herself. So shortly, there wont be any pictures like that in my site shown anywhere.

[trialofmiles]

You are also refering to an "image hosting" website. I shall not repeat the name of it cause it also could be understood as selfpromotion.

humblebeginnings, I get the feeling you found the wrong site while doing your detective work. You probably went to the wrong imageshack. It's not .com, it's imageshack.us. I know WW has a policy against linking sites, but I think they usually let authority sites through, and imageshack is a very well known free image host. It pretty much single-handedly set off of the free image host fad.

As for imageshack, they used to have Adsense, but as I checked just now the main page had YPN. I don't know what the reason for that is, but it shouldn't be because imageshack was breaking the Adsense TOS. They have their own TOS that doesn't allow people to put up pornography images (although I think some people slip through the system).

Like incrediBILL said, the free image hosting business model isn't that great. It depends on people visiting the hosting site, which IMO if you're going to allow remote linking, isn't too often.

[humblebeginnings]

trialofmiles, ebemunk,

Many apologies for my stupid mistakes.
Guess I have posted enough for today...
Ebemunk, again sorry, thought you were refering to the dot com...

[incrediBILL]

I would never ever consider doing a site that charges for nudity pics

You would make WAY more doing that than AdSense, that much I know for a fact

[netscan]

I would never ever consider doing a site that charges for nudity pics

You would make WAY more doing that than AdSense, that much I know for a fact

Yeah, but then you have to consider the new record keeping laws regarding explicit content.

[ebemunk]

I'm buying my host today. Wish me luck, guys =)

[photo200]

I've tried this business model - basically no luck.

1. CTR is low like on formus
2. Risk that some "Copyright violation" or "adult"
images will be on your site is quite high.

Only yesterday I've removed all Adsense from it.

[humblebeginnings]

Best of luck Ebemunk!

[blue_eagle]

expect $0.03 or less per click if you are using adsense on it.