Internet users: If you could please answer a couple questions for me to help me out..

[lildonkey]

I recently purchased a high end domain name for a picture hosting service, and am in the beginning stages of composing my business plan and marketing stragegy. I could use a little feedback on what you guys want, think.... etc etc

Basically, it is going to be a service just like ImageShack® - Hosting where you just upload pictures easily, and are able to hotlink them on forums, your facebook, when posting comments on your friends myspace etc..

1.) Would you skip over a site that required a free registration to be able to upload unlimited amount of pictures and store them etc? or would you only use one that didn't require signing up

2.) Would you ever consider using a paid image host that was something like $1/month if it meant you didn't have to deal with newsletters or ads on the site?

3.) What features do you think would be useful to you that other image hosting sites don't currently offer?

4.) Would you use an image host that added a very tiny watermark on the bottom right corner that said "hosted for free by xxxxxxx.com" ?

5.) Do any of you even use free image hosts to store pictures to be able to hotlink them?

[b0ld]

your gonna need one hell of a shit load of bandwidth and server space.

[lildonkey]

Originally Posted by b0ld

your gonna need one hell of a shit load of bandwidth and server space.

Yeah I know... You have to invest money to make money.

I'll be getting good organic SE traffic to start things off though, since the domain is PictureHost.com and will be easy to get top rankings for "picture host"

Just undecided on if i want to go with an ImageShack® - Hosting type business model, or a PostImage.org - Image hosting service for forums business model...



edit: wtf... how does PostImage.org - Image hosting service for forums generate revenue? they don't have any ads anywhere... and they have an alexa rank of 1,500.. which means they are getting insane traffic... .. i'm confused.

[thebobman]

I mean this without any offense implied, but aren't you kinda late to the scene?

The field of image hosting is already pretty saturated with sites like Flickr, Picasa, ImageShack, etc. The Google directory for "Image Hosting" provides sites that will provide image hosting service without registration. Hell, even FnK will host pictures with a FnK watermark.

I'm not saying its a bad idea, I'm just thinking with the funds it would take to launch such an enterprise you might be better launching a start-up that provides a service not yet offered by competing image hosting sites or selling the domain you acquired to the highest bidder and investing in a fast growing start up or. Has anybody done image hosting with digg-like capabilities yet? (I realize that digg has an image section, but they don't do image hosting)

[Senior]

I'd try to help my advice is usually 5 years out of date when concerned with how the internet works.

[KrisisID]

1.) Would you skip over a site that required a free registration to be able to upload unlimited amount of pictures and store them etc? or would you only use one that didn't require signing up

NO, as long as it was quick and easy, that's if im paying. If im not paying for it, then I wouldn't want to sign up. It may be better for you then you can watermark the pictures so it will do you better.

2.) Would you ever consider using a paid image host that was something like $1/month if it meant you didn't have to deal with newsletters or ads on the site?

12 dollars a year is chump change, i wouldnt mind paying

3.) What features do you think would be useful to you that other image hosting sites don't currently offer?

The ability to edit photos (crop, rotate). upload and download no matter what file type or extention.

4.) Would you use an image host that added a very tiny watermark on the bottom right corner that said "hosted for free by xxxxxxx.com" ?

If im paying to use the site, then i would mind. If its a free service then i won't care, make it as small or as big as you want, i would say don't make it tiny for the free service, im sure most people won't mind, make it visable to the ratio of the size of the picture.

5.) Do any of you even use free image hosts to store pictures to be able to hotlink them?

If i must, i post them up to my fake free website, then link them from there. Or if the files are too big, then i use yousendit. Most other sites have a stupid hotlink system where clicking on the image will take you to their site, OR have a placeholder saying that this image is hosted elsewhere to be able to view it, please register, which is a big pisoff.

[wishbone]

what it boils down to:

why would i use your service over imageshack?





if you've answered it, you've written way too much to create an information overload. Highlight why I would use your service over imageshack.

[wishbone]

fwiw, picturehost.com loads too slow. who's your dedicated host?

(dear god please tell me it's dedicated)

[jenai]

Apologies for replying within the quotes. You are too lame to figure out how to make a poll for this! :(

Originally Posted by lildonkey

I recently purchased a high end domain name for a picture hosting service, and am in the beginning stages of composing my business plan and marketing stragegy. I could use a little feedback on what you guys want, think.... etc etc

Basically, it is going to be a service just like ImageShack® - Hosting where you just upload pictures easily, and are able to hotlink them on forums, your facebook, when posting comments on your friends myspace etc..

1.) Would you skip over a site that required a free registration to be able to upload unlimited amount of pictures and store them etc? or would you only use one that didn't require signing up
sageb1: No, I like registering at free sites. It provides a sense of connection...

2.) Would you ever consider using a paid image host that was something like $1/month if it meant you didn't have to deal with newsletters or ads on the site?
If I had to pay for an image site, I'd expect to use paypal. But if I had to pay for images, would these images be protected from g00n sploiters and Regime narks?

3.) What features do you think would be useful to you that other image hosting sites don't currently offer?
I think payment would allow downloads. U can make a script to protect free pics from downloads, except when people allow sharing. I'd advise using an appropriate license though, just in case someone tries to upload copyrighted pics he does not own.

4.) Would you use an image host that added a very tiny watermark on the bottom right corner that said "hosted for free by xxxxxxx.com" ?
As long as you ensure none of the watermarked pics are copyrighted. It'll be a while before exif gets to the point where it has a DRM module.

5.) Do any of you even use free image hosts to store pictures to be able to hotlink them?

No, not yet. If I wanted to, I would email myself on Gmail cos I have 5G of space there. Ditto for yahoo and msn, i think.

Extra comments: what is your policy on pr0n? I have to ask. Has the server host a good security policies to prevent someone from using an exploit to hack into a member's account?

Thanks for your survey.

[jenai]

Originally Posted by lildonkey

Yeah I know... You have to invest money to make money.

I'll be getting good organic SE traffic to start things off though, since the domain is PictureHost.com and will be easy to get top rankings for "picture host"

Just undecided on if i want to go with an ImageShack® - Hosting type business model, or a PostImage.org - Image hosting service for forums business model...



edit: wtf... how does PostImage.org - Image hosting service for forums generate revenue? they don't have any ads anywhere... and they have an alexa rank of 1,500.. which means they are getting insane traffic... .. i'm confused.

dude, they are 1500 on Alexa cos of the illegal pr0n images. :p

[lildonkey]

I just bought picturehost, and it hasn't been transfered over to me yet.

Obviously it's going on a dedicated box, i'm not an idiot. The site has all type-in traffic right now, and still got like 500 some odd members, and was generating 150/month with adbrite CPM ads with NO promotion at all... till the guy removed the ads when he decided to build up a user base before monetizing the site.. then he just got never got around to it...

i paid low X,XXX for the domain, so it was a steal...

i've already had offers of very low XX,XXX just for the domain, with no income or traffic... so it was a very smart buy...

Now i'm just deciding what i want to do with the site.

and to answer your question wishbone... Using that logic, there would only be 1 site for everything.. 1 rave forum, 1 search engine, 1 social networking site etc etc etc... Not everybody knows where they can host images for free... I'm not looking to target people who extremely tech savvy... because they will just always end up using the services, and never clicking the ads..

I will target people on like.. pet forums, hobby forums etc etc..

[lildonkey]

Originally Posted by jenai

Apologies for replying within the quotes. You are too lame to figure out how to make a poll for this! :(


No, not yet. If I wanted to, I would email myself on Gmail cos I have 5G of space there. Ditto for yahoo and msn, i think.

Extra comments: what is your policy on pr0n? I have to ask. Has the server host a good security policies to prevent someone from using an exploit to hack into a member's account?

Thanks for your survey.

Yeah you know... since you can hotlink pictures from your gmail account and post them on forums...

FAIL.

[wishbone]

Originally Posted by lildonkey

and to answer your question wishbone... Using that logic, there would only be 1 site for everything.. 1 rave forum, 1 search engine, 1 social networking site etc etc etc... Not everybody knows where they can host images for free... I'm not looking to target people who extremely tech savvy... because they will just always end up using the services, and never clicking the ads..

I will target people on like.. pet forums, hobby forums etc etc..

there wouldn't necessarily be only one of each - one product will not dominate. HOWEVER, in order to succeed you must create a differentiation. While the nerdier forums may use imageshack, hobby forusm and such, from what I can tell, use photobucket. (it seems more end user friendly as a lot of 'casual internet users' seem to use it).

Are you attempting to build a customer base of people who do not use ANY current image uploader? If so, why haven't they used one yet? What's their mental barrier to using current ones (unless they've never heard of them, which would be rare). Or are you going to try to take away business from imageshack/photobucket? If so, what can you offer that they can't. It's not a "you'll be better so there can be only one", but differentiate yourself as an imagehost in order to create a better experience for the uploader (better image history viewing? super quick logins? I don't know.....)

this is the stuff i go to school for so i can be pretty judgemental, but i mean it in a good helpful way :)

[sNyx]

donkey bottom line is SEO, when I want to quick an image online and im even too lazy to SFTP to my own server (yeah that lazy) I hit my google search for "free image host" and use one of the first 3 options. usually is allyoucanupload.webshots as it loads the fastest.

[decypher]

nah i wouldn't use a host that watermarked or reduced resolutions. For example, vimeo.com is way better then youtube if you want to upload higher resolution and HD content to the internet.

As for an image uploading website i would use one more if it bypassed any setup and just allowed me to quickly login anywhere, upload an image, and send the link to someone. I would only use a uploading service that wanted a registration if it gave high resolution options such as vimeo and had high storage capacity and some other social features.