Movie streaming website journey

Advertise on BHW
Leonard Euler said:
Never had one. But I guess if the site gets bigger, they will get interested. My hosting is in OVH, domain is in Njalla.
Click to expand...
They will. So, keep a backup, and in the meantime, try to expand to some other domains as well. This will help you target more KWs, and you can easily use the same source files, saving the BW but having the potential to earn more.
Leonard Euler said:
200-300$/month. I don't want to show too many ads.
Click to expand...
That's not much with the number of visitors you're getting. Figure out a better monetization plan is what I would say.
 
V said:
They will. So, keep a backup, and in the meantime, try to expand to some other domains as well. This will help you target more KWs, and you can easily use the same source files, saving the BW but having the potential to earn more.

That's not much with the number of visitors you're getting. Figure out a better monetization plan is what I would say.
Click to expand...
Thanks, my friend. I appreciate your help. As I already mentioned, monetization is one aspect that I haven't figured out yet. As far as I can tell, similar websites are running ads; I don't know other ways that also provide decent anonymity. For SEO, I tried Bing's URL submission, but it doesn't seem to work well. My main source of users is Reddit.
 
Leonard Euler said:
Hi All,

Since my teenage years, I have been interested in how the movie streaming websites work. I have mostly done backend development (java) and
for the recent couple of years DevOps. But the frontend has always attracted me for some reason. So, 2 years ago, I started the website for movie
streaming. I didn't know how existing websites work (WordPress plugins, embedded links, etc.), so I created everything from scratch. Initially, I would
download movies from torrent websites, transcode them to HLS, MPEG-DASH streams using ffmpeg and other tools and upload the results to cloud
storage. Soon, I realized it was taking too much time, so I created a GitHub Action that would do the job for me provided the MKV/MP4/AVI file and the
transcoding spec, which is telling the action which audio/subtitle streams to transcode, which resolutions, etc. This saved me a lot of time, but still it was
taking to much (finding the source files in torrent trackers, checking which audio streams are available, etc.). So I came up with the crazy (at least for me) idea.
I created movie/tv-show scraper. So provided just movie id (say from TMDB) it would go to preconfigured torrent trackers, find the best releases based on
resolution, available languages, then automatically trigger transcoding jobs. It would also check every day if better resolutions, more languages are available
and update accordingly. Currently, I have about 400 movies and 30 tv shows. I don't use third-party embedded links. I am approaching 100k/monthly users.
This is the good part) The bad part is I don't know where to go from here. The whole system (proxy servers, transcoding servers, cloud storage, etc. ) takes 500$/month
to run. I think I have hit a wall on monetization and traffic increase aspects of the project. Recently I was thinking to abandon it, but it is a little difficult as I have
put a lot effort and time into it (though I have also learnt a lot of new things). I was also thinking of creating embeddable URLs so that other can put them in
their website, not sure though if it will work as there are a lot of competition there too, also I don't have enough movies.

I just wanted to share my story with you.

Best Regards
Click to expand...
why dont you use movie streaming API like vidSrc?

i personally havent tried them, but they will solve part of the hosting video expense
 
Assclown said:
why dont you use movie streaming API like vidSrc?

i personally havent tried them, but they will solve part of the hosting video expense
Click to expand...
When I was starting I didn't have any idea how the websites are created. Now when I look back I don't regret, because doing from scratch forced me to learn a lot of things (HLS, MPEG-DASH, ffmpeg, transcoding, etc.). I am even planning to create my own api.
 
ShadowRealm_11 said:
Nice journey, bro. Could your automation tools (like your GitHub Action or scraper) be packaged into a product or SaaS?
Click to expand...
I think so. Now I am the only user of the API, but with some effort I could create it multitenant, so that others could also make requests based on IMDB or TMDB id.
 
Leonard Euler said:
Hi All,

Since my teenage years, I have been interested in how the movie streaming websites work. I have mostly done backend development (java) and
for the recent couple of years DevOps. But the frontend has always attracted me for some reason. So, 2 years ago, I started the website for movie
streaming. I didn't know how existing websites work (WordPress plugins, embedded links, etc.), so I created everything from scratch. Initially, I would
download movies from torrent websites, transcode them to HLS, MPEG-DASH streams using ffmpeg and other tools and upload the results to cloud
storage. Soon, I realized it was taking too much time, so I created a GitHub Action that would do the job for me provided the MKV/MP4/AVI file and the
transcoding spec, which is telling the action which audio/subtitle streams to transcode, which resolutions, etc. This saved me a lot of time, but still it was
taking to much (finding the source files in torrent trackers, checking which audio streams are available, etc.). So I came up with the crazy (at least for me) idea.
I created movie/tv-show scraper. So provided just movie id (say from TMDB) it would go to preconfigured torrent trackers, find the best releases based on
resolution, available languages, then automatically trigger transcoding jobs. It would also check every day if better resolutions, more languages are available
and update accordingly. Currently, I have about 400 movies and 30 tv shows. I don't use third-party embedded links. I am approaching 100k/monthly users.
This is the good part) The bad part is I don't know where to go from here. The whole system (proxy servers, transcoding servers, cloud storage, etc. ) takes 500$/month
to run. I think I have hit a wall on monetization and traffic increase aspects of the project. Recently I was thinking to abandon it, but it is a little difficult as I have
put a lot effort and time into it (though I have also learnt a lot of new things). I was also thinking of creating embeddable URLs so that other can put them in
their website, not sure though if it will work as there are a lot of competition there too, also I don't have enough movies.

I just wanted to share my story with you.

Best Regards
Click to expand...

Please learn to format your posts before posting to make them readable.
 
Incredible journey! Have you considered offering API access or a white-label solution so others can build on top of your infrastructure?
 
You basically built Netflix solo. hehe Big respect for that. Most people just install a plugin and call it a day — you went full backend with torrent scraping, auto transcoding, and cloud setup.

For traffic and monetization, a few ideas:
  1. Use ad networks that don’t care too much what you host. Not ideal, but they pay decent.
  2. Offer a paid option — “Watch in Full HD with no wait” for a few bucks a month. Even 1–2% conversion is something.
  3. Embeddable player is smart. Let others use it on their sites, add a small logo or ad, and you grow passively.
  4. Launch a few mirror sites, tweak titles and content a bit, and you can rank for more keywords — good for SEO and traffic.
You already did the hardest part. Just needs a clever push now to grow and make it sustainable.
 
Deleted member 752298 said:
You basically built Netflix solo. hehe Big respect for that. Most people just install a plugin and call it a day — you went full backend with torrent scraping, auto transcoding, and cloud setup.

For traffic and monetization, a few ideas:
  1. Use ad networks that don’t care too much what you host. Not ideal, but they pay decent.
  2. Offer a paid option — “Watch in Full HD with no wait” for a few bucks a month. Even 1–2% conversion is something.
  3. Embeddable player is smart. Let others use it on their sites, add a small logo or ad, and you grow passively.
  4. Launch a few mirror sites, tweak titles and content a bit, and you can rank for more keywords — good for SEO and traffic.
You already did the hardest part. Just needs a clever push now to grow and make it sustainable.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the input. For the second point, can you recommend an option for payment processing that allows staying anonymous?
How paid options usually done for the type of websites?
 
u can scrap and cache the hls links instead...use a proxy when playing it
or use other movie APIs
 
Hey guys, I created the first version of the video embedding API. I called it YAMBED (short for Yet Another eMBED).

Advantages:
  • For many movies/episodes, other audio languages are also available (not only English). Popular ones are Spanish, French, Russian, Ukrainian, Italian, Hindi.
  • Player is a state-of-the-art (e.g., has thumbnails, better accessibility, etc.)
Disadvantages:
  • The database is quite small compared to other API providers (~30 TV shows and ~400 movies)
 
Advertise on BHW
You must log in or register to reply here.
Sign up now!

Main Menu

Home Main Forum List Black Hat SEO White Hat SEO BHW Newbie Guide Blogging Black Hat Tools Social Media Downloads

Marketplace

Account Selling Content / Copywriting EBooks / Methods Hosting Misc Proxies For Sale SEO - Link building SEO - Packages Social Media Social Media - Panels Web Design More

Making Money

Affiliate Programs Hire a Freelancer IM Journeys Making Money Pay Per Click Site Flipping Want to Buy

BlackHat World

Dispute Resolution Forum Suggestions & Feedback Introductions Lounge
Back
Top