5 ms·

The site will simply not operate with large margins like other sites. The cost of keeping the servers and development running will be covered by a premium plan

by NoFile 10y ago

The site will simply not operate with large margins like other sites. The cost of keeping the servers and development running will be covered by a premium plan that's targeted to heavy users.

ferbivore 10y ago
Isn't storing and serving terabytes of stuff pretty expensive? How many heavy users do you think you'll manage to win over in the first place, much less convince them to pay for the privilege of uploading their 100GB of illicit car diagnostic software to your website? Do you have an actual niche you plan to target? I don't mean to be negative, it's just that I've seen the transition from free to freemium to ad-supported to Rapidshare to dead happen over and over again. These services don't seem to operate with large margins - from the outside, it looks more like all of them are on the brink of bankruptcy.
- popey456963 10y ago
  I generally see prices of 2 cents per gigabyte per month for active storage, even less, most under half a cent per gigabyte per month for long-term archival. Assuming there were willing to fork out 10 dollars a month, they would be able to get around a terabyte of storage. Lets imagine our average citizen uploads quarter of a gigabyte, that means 4,000 visitors uploading files per $10 client. Assuming you can keep other costs really low, it's not too outrageously expensive.
  - skrowl 10y ago
    You're forgetting the transfer / bandwidth costs.
    - untangle 10y ago
      But also offsetting credits from dedup.
      - warkdarrior 10y ago
        Not with encryption
- NoFile 10y ago
  A few years ago bandwidth and storage was much more expensive than it is today. Rapidshare was a service that had to swiftly and reluctantly change their business model. They were operating out of large offices with over 60 employees and due to the change they saw a sudden drstic drop in revenue. Rapidshare's financial information isn't public since it's a private company, but one could argue whether they were actually losing money or not making the profits that they expected at the time of the shutdown.
  - gressquel 10y ago
    I think Rapidshare earned tons of money. At one time RS was the go-to filehost for pirated material. They had almost anything you wanted, and they seldom removed files. Then came the FBI raid against various filehosts. I remember few of the other hosts got taken down and charged, while others shut their site down as precaution. I remember Rapidshare starting their decline during this phase, something tells me Rapidshare did it on purpose and 'ran away' with the earned money before the feds got them. Well thats my theory :)
  - redm 10y ago
    This is a misnomer, as bandwidth gets cheaper, file sizes get larger due to technological advance. Think about the average size of a photo from 2006 and from 2016.

by NoFile 10y ago

The site will simply not operate with large margins like other sites. The cost of keeping the servers and development running will be covered by a premium plan that's targeted to heavy users.

ferbivore 10y ago

Isn't storing and serving terabytes of stuff pretty expensive? How many heavy users do you think you'll manage to win over in the first place, much less convince them to pay for the privilege of uploading their 100GB of illicit car diagnostic software to your website? Do you have an actual niche you plan to target? I don't mean to be negative, it's just that I've seen the transition from free to freemium to ad-supported to Rapidshare to dead happen over and over again. These services don't seem to operate with large margins - from the outside, it looks more like all of them are on the brink of bankruptcy.

popey456963 10y ago
I generally see prices of 2 cents per gigabyte per month for active storage, even less, most under half a cent per gigabyte per month for long-term archival. Assuming there were willing to fork out 10 dollars a month, they would be able to get around a terabyte of storage. Lets imagine our average citizen uploads quarter of a gigabyte, that means 4,000 visitors uploading files per $10 client. Assuming you can keep other costs really low, it's not too outrageously expensive.
- skrowl 10y ago
  You're forgetting the transfer / bandwidth costs.
  - untangle 10y ago
    But also offsetting credits from dedup.
    - warkdarrior 10y ago
      Not with encryption
NoFile 10y ago
A few years ago bandwidth and storage was much more expensive than it is today. Rapidshare was a service that had to swiftly and reluctantly change their business model. They were operating out of large offices with over 60 employees and due to the change they saw a sudden drstic drop in revenue. Rapidshare's financial information isn't public since it's a private company, but one could argue whether they were actually losing money or not making the profits that they expected at the time of the shutdown.
- gressquel 10y ago
  I think Rapidshare earned tons of money. At one time RS was the go-to filehost for pirated material. They had almost anything you wanted, and they seldom removed files. Then came the FBI raid against various filehosts. I remember few of the other hosts got taken down and charged, while others shut their site down as precaution. I remember Rapidshare starting their decline during this phase, something tells me Rapidshare did it on purpose and 'ran away' with the earned money before the feds got them. Well thats my theory :)
- redm 10y ago
  This is a misnomer, as bandwidth gets cheaper, file sizes get larger due to technological advance. Think about the average size of a photo from 2006 and from 2016.