MarketerMac
Regular Member
- Oct 26, 2009
- 247
- 103
Ok, so I've been searching and searching for information on this and haven't come up with much, so I thought I would put it out to everyone here. The journals seem to be popular (everyone and there brother is starting one about a billion micro niche sites by yesterday! type of threads) and I thought I would take a different direction.
I am interested in starting a file sharing website (similar to mediafire). I've never run one of these before, but I have one of my dedicated servers that I've rented (for a year in advance) collecting dust at the moment and I thought I would try to put it to use. Here is what I've come up with and some questions for the community:
The Script
I've been searching for a script, and the best I've found is: http://www.sibsoft.net/xfilesharing.html (free versino available at http://www.sibsoft.net/xfilesharing_free.html). If you know of better please share it here!
My criteria for the script was pretty simple. It needed to have:
The Hosting
I have read that processor speed isn't so much a factor with these type of sites, RAM is very important, and obviously you need a lot of storage space for everyone to upload there stuff to. I have a server via Hivelocity that is as follows:
Core2Quad 2.33ghz
8GB DDR 3 RAM
2x500GB HD
100mbs Port
I imagine that'll at least get me started. I'll post here in a couple of days if it's running along smoothly or if its crashing every ten minutes so those who also decide to follow me know what's what.
Monetizing
Eventually I would like to have a subscription (premium) membership option, but as a marketing gimmick it's going to be free in the start. I will also run CPM ads on th site (adversal pops, PM me if you are looking to join them
). Ideally I would like to be able to just run the pops but chances are my numbers are not right, here is what I figured -
$200 gets me the server with 5TB of bandwidth
Adversal, on average, gives me about $1.10 CPM (I run a number of other sites that uses pops, this is an average of all visitors to those sites)
Break Even Point (expressed in popups served):
($200 / $1.10)*1000 = ~182,000
Break Even Point (expressed in downloads, assumes 2 pops per DL):
182,000 / 2 = 91,000
Average download size required to break even:
5,000TB / 91000 Downloads = .055GB each
(this can also be expressed as 45,500 uploads and 45,500 downloads, assuming that popups are triggered both on the upload and download)
Since I'm in this to make money, I would like to get a 100% ROI on each server. So if the average file is 25MB (half of my break even point expressed above) then I'll make $200 per server running, per month. Each server (2x 1TB drives, 5TB monthly bandwidth) can host about 80,000 of these 25MB files.
A few other considerations:
To reach my goals, I need about 3000 downloads a day.
Everything above includes only popups, any other revenue streams (other ads, premium memberships) are just gravy. The first month, from a bandwidth standpoint, should be one of the worst (lots of people uploading, not as many people downloading). The second month should bring lots of downloading and help equal this out as uploading expands.
Marketing
With this type of site this should be the easy part. There are tons of forums out there that have downloads, I can simply mirror these downloads on my site and post the links. Not only will I get downloads and adviews this way, but people will discover that my site:
I also have a number of spinoff sites for this one planned (more on that as the journal progresses).
So, my action list for today:
It's great if you like this idea. That's what the thanks button is for. It's great if you want to follow this thread, subscribe to it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE though if you're going to post either ask a question or post something useful that way this thread doesn't end up being 500 pages long and far less helpful to those that reference it in the future. I appreciate it!
I am interested in starting a file sharing website (similar to mediafire). I've never run one of these before, but I have one of my dedicated servers that I've rented (for a year in advance) collecting dust at the moment and I thought I would try to put it to use. Here is what I've come up with and some questions for the community:
The Script
I've been searching for a script, and the best I've found is: http://www.sibsoft.net/xfilesharing.html (free versino available at http://www.sibsoft.net/xfilesharing_free.html). If you know of better please share it here!
My criteria for the script was pretty simple. It needed to have:
- Members area for file management
- Payment processor integration (for premium memberships)
- Upload meter (to show uploading progress for larger files, something AJAX)
- Template system to integrate ads
- Multi-Server capable
- Control file size, types, download limitations, etc. (this script is fairly limited here, but this isn't a huge priority for me). In the future I would like geo restrictions on the above to ensure I get a positive ROI on every DL.
- Antileeching of some sort
- Admin panel to delete files, edit users, etc.
- Stats of some sort
The Hosting
I have read that processor speed isn't so much a factor with these type of sites, RAM is very important, and obviously you need a lot of storage space for everyone to upload there stuff to. I have a server via Hivelocity that is as follows:
Core2Quad 2.33ghz
8GB DDR 3 RAM
2x500GB HD
100mbs Port
I imagine that'll at least get me started. I'll post here in a couple of days if it's running along smoothly or if its crashing every ten minutes so those who also decide to follow me know what's what.
Monetizing
Eventually I would like to have a subscription (premium) membership option, but as a marketing gimmick it's going to be free in the start. I will also run CPM ads on th site (adversal pops, PM me if you are looking to join them
). Ideally I would like to be able to just run the pops but chances are my numbers are not right, here is what I figured -$200 gets me the server with 5TB of bandwidth
Adversal, on average, gives me about $1.10 CPM (I run a number of other sites that uses pops, this is an average of all visitors to those sites)
Break Even Point (expressed in popups served):
($200 / $1.10)*1000 = ~182,000
Break Even Point (expressed in downloads, assumes 2 pops per DL):
182,000 / 2 = 91,000
Average download size required to break even:
5,000TB / 91000 Downloads = .055GB each
(this can also be expressed as 45,500 uploads and 45,500 downloads, assuming that popups are triggered both on the upload and download)
Since I'm in this to make money, I would like to get a 100% ROI on each server. So if the average file is 25MB (half of my break even point expressed above) then I'll make $200 per server running, per month. Each server (2x 1TB drives, 5TB monthly bandwidth) can host about 80,000 of these 25MB files.
A few other considerations:
To reach my goals, I need about 3000 downloads a day.
Everything above includes only popups, any other revenue streams (other ads, premium memberships) are just gravy. The first month, from a bandwidth standpoint, should be one of the worst (lots of people uploading, not as many people downloading). The second month should bring lots of downloading and help equal this out as uploading expands.
Marketing
With this type of site this should be the easy part. There are tons of forums out there that have downloads, I can simply mirror these downloads on my site and post the links. Not only will I get downloads and adviews this way, but people will discover that my site:
- Works
- Has no annoying DL timer
- Has limited ads
- is easy to use
I also have a number of spinoff sites for this one planned (more on that as the journal progresses).
So, my action list for today:
- Grab a catchy domain (I'm going to go dig through my portfolio in just a minute for something suitable)
- Install the script, setup ads, test out everything
- Find at least 50 files to mirror and start posting on forums
- Find someone to outsource the file mirroring and posting to.
It's great if you like this idea. That's what the thanks button is for. It's great if you want to follow this thread, subscribe to it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE though if you're going to post either ask a question or post something useful that way this thread doesn't end up being 500 pages long and far less helpful to those that reference it in the future. I appreciate it!
Last edited:
