File Upload Business Model

Hey Everyone,

What is the business model behind the File Upload sites, like Upload2.com? What is the method of making revenue?

Just curious as I see the benefit for the user, but I don't see how to monetize a site such as this.

Thanks,
BFIZ.com

most revenue would be gained from google ads and maybe some banner rotations.

So, if would be if they click on the image that was hosted for free, then that would be shown in a window where their would be PPC ads?

PPC on the ones that are just starting out and problably CPM networks on the larger ones. When you upload a file, you gotta give the link out.. so when someone clicks the link to view the image that you uploaded, they will probably be presented with an ad somewhere on the page alongside your image.

I'm guessing that's how most of them make money today. When I had my image uploading site, I depended on AdSense to bring in money. Not much though, probably about $0.50 a day.

Edit: Ooh, I just noticed "file" uploading site. That will include the likes of YSI, filefront, etc. too right?

What file uploading scripts are there?

Originally Posted by Spencer What file uploading scripts are there?

Before Katrina, I had a file uploading site with over 300 members using Celeron Dude's script here http://celerondude.com/

And I can't remember where I got my image uploading scripts from. I'm gonna have to go search for them

I think the market for this type of site is getting extremely over saturated. To make any kind of nice petty cash out of this you are going to need a very large user base. And to get a large user base you are going to have to compete with the already well established sites. You could do it and see where it gets you, but I wouldn't expect much.

These types of sites are popping up everywhere, at one point they did have potential for some good revenue, but like anything else once everyone tries to do it profit goes down.

I saw serveral similar scripts at hotscripts.com

Although the image hosting 'industry', if you will, is quite saturated now a days, I'm sure that if you bring something creative and useful to the table, people would eat it up.

Money from image hosting can be made off of advertising for the most part, although it would be very hard to even break even if you're going to go all out on servers and the like.

At the end of the day, I don't really think it's worth it -- but if you start off small, there's not much to loose, except maybe the 7.99 a month you've got to pay for hosting

You could always go "Web 2.0" (urgh, hate that term) technologies and generate visitors, users and income with the future of web application design. There could be so much more to image/file management than "upload-n-go" type sites.

Originally Posted by freedom Although the image hosting 'industry', if you will, is quite saturated now a days, I'm sure that if you bring something creative and useful to the table, people would eat it up. Money from image hosting can be made off of advertising for the most part, although it would be very hard to even break even if you're going to go all out on servers and the like. At the end of the day, I don't really think it's worth it -- but if you start off small, there's not much to loose, except maybe the 7.99 a month you've got to pay for hosting

I agree.

Also, there's always a part of the web that isn't captured by that industry yet and it's just waiting for you to find it. So while everyone's fishing in the big pond, go to the little one