5 ms·

New Image Upload Support (Stack Overflow and Imgur)

20 points by SandB0x 16y ago

nostromo 16y ago
What always amazes me on reddit is how Imgur has seemingly convinced the entire community that it is some sort of friendly not-for-profit. Having talked with someone who runs a much smaller image hosting service, they are usually quite profitable and I'm sure Alan Schaaf is bringing home a healthy paycheck. And good for him, by the way. I appreciate Imgur's simple interface. I do however wonder how much the reddit community (which seems violently anti-capitalist anymore) will stand behind him as they come to the realization that he's likely making a fair amount of money on the site. Maybe even more money than reddit. ;-)
- Simucal 16y ago
  I'm curious about what Imgur costs to run. I've read that he is paying for 100mb unmetered. He is burning up a ton of bandwidth, thats for sure. Also, I wonder what is in the stackexechange deal for imgur? All images will be displayed inline, with no ads.
  - nostromo 16y ago
    The link (in the comments) states that Imgur offered it free to StackOverflow. My guess is that the images will automatically be linked to Imgur where he'll show ads. If quantcast is anywhere near right, he's showing 20mm-30mm pageviews a month. At $5EPM (that's probably high) for 20mm (low according to quantcast) that's $100k a month. Remember that the "awesome images from other sites" is also an ad. He also fires pixels to ad networks, like scorecardresearch.com and crowdscience.com to add a little extra "ad-less" earnings to the bottom line. On his stats page he says bandwidth used in the past month was 165TB, which on S3 would cost $16,500 plus more for storage used, however I bet he's getting a good deal from Voxel. Update: those may not be ad networks after all -- I'm not sure. If anyone knows more about those companies, I'd love to learn more.
    - nl 16y ago
      I think your traffic estimates are reasonable. http://imgur.com/stats/ http://imgur.com/stats/ says he serves around 45m images a day. I'd suspect 1 in 10 generates an ad view, so call it 500K page views/day = 15m/month. But there's no way he's getting $5 EPM for a photosharing site. Here's someone selling ads on his photo site for well under $1 EPM: http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/listings/76918 http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/listings/76918. I haven't looked at his site in detail, but I think the actual rate is $0.17 EPM. Say 0.50 EPM 15m/month pageviews * 0.50 EPM = $7500. Need to subtract bandwidth costs from that.
      - nostromo 16y ago
        That's fair -- especially since they don't seem to run as many ads as some sites. ($0.75 with 5 ads and ad targeting pixels, etc., can really ad up.)
  - chrisbolt 16y ago
    100mbit unmetered will cost you less than $1000/month.
- nl 16y ago
  Can you explain the economics? I understand that it is advertising supported, but Imgur seems to allow their images to be embedded in other sites some of which serve non-trivial amounts of traffic (eg, reddit and now StackOverflow). Is the advertising on the photo pages really enough to make "a fair amount of money"? I'd love to see the math - even estimates would be great.
  - nostromo 16y ago
    I just did for the other response. :-) Direct link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1616360 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1616360

20 points by SandB0x 16y ago

What always amazes me on reddit is how Imgur has seemingly convinced the entire community that it is some sort of friendly not-for-profit. Having talked with someone who runs a much smaller image hosting service, they are usually quite profitable and I'm sure Alan Schaaf is bringing home a healthy paycheck. And good for him, by the way. I appreciate Imgur's simple interface. I do however wonder how much the reddit community (which seems violently anti-capitalist anymore) will stand behind him as they come to the realization that he's likely making a fair amount of money on the site. Maybe even more money than reddit. ;-)

Simucal 16y ago
I'm curious about what Imgur costs to run. I've read that he is paying for 100mb unmetered. He is burning up a ton of bandwidth, thats for sure. Also, I wonder what is in the stackexechange deal for imgur? All images will be displayed inline, with no ads.
- nostromo 16y ago
  The link (in the comments) states that Imgur offered it free to StackOverflow. My guess is that the images will automatically be linked to Imgur where he'll show ads. If quantcast is anywhere near right, he's showing 20mm-30mm pageviews a month. At $5EPM (that's probably high) for 20mm (low according to quantcast) that's $100k a month. Remember that the "awesome images from other sites" is also an ad. He also fires pixels to ad networks, like scorecardresearch.com and crowdscience.com to add a little extra "ad-less" earnings to the bottom line. On his stats page he says bandwidth used in the past month was 165TB, which on S3 would cost $16,500 plus more for storage used, however I bet he's getting a good deal from Voxel. Update: those may not be ad networks after all -- I'm not sure. If anyone knows more about those companies, I'd love to learn more.
  - nl 16y ago
    I think your traffic estimates are reasonable. http://imgur.com/stats/ http://imgur.com/stats/ says he serves around 45m images a day. I'd suspect 1 in 10 generates an ad view, so call it 500K page views/day = 15m/month. But there's no way he's getting $5 EPM for a photosharing site. Here's someone selling ads on his photo site for well under $1 EPM: http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/listings/76918 http://marketplace.sitepoint.com/listings/76918. I haven't looked at his site in detail, but I think the actual rate is $0.17 EPM. Say 0.50 EPM 15m/month pageviews * 0.50 EPM = $7500. Need to subtract bandwidth costs from that.
    - nostromo 16y ago
      That's fair -- especially since they don't seem to run as many ads as some sites. ($0.75 with 5 ads and ad targeting pixels, etc., can really ad up.)
- chrisbolt 16y ago
  100mbit unmetered will cost you less than $1000/month.
nl 16y ago
Can you explain the economics? I understand that it is advertising supported, but Imgur seems to allow their images to be embedded in other sites some of which serve non-trivial amounts of traffic (eg, reddit and now StackOverflow). Is the advertising on the photo pages really enough to make "a fair amount of money"? I'd love to see the math - even estimates would be great.
- nostromo 16y ago
  I just did for the other response. :-) Direct link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1616360 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1616360