6 ms·

I don't get how such a bandwidth hog can run only off a few ads.

by ozh 13y ago

Splendor 13y ago
That's not their only revenue stream. They also sell Imgur Pro accounts.
LandoCalrissian 13y ago
It looks like in 2012 they transferred 42PB of data, which is pretty crazy. I assume their numbers are far higher now. It's impressive they can make it all work. I didn't know that Reddit had invested money in the company either, that could potentially be a pretty big boon for them.
- Consultant32452 13y ago
  I wonder if 42PB of data would trigger a bandwidth cap on my T-Mobile unlimited 4G plan.
  - ihuman 13y ago
    Most "unlimited" plans have caps where they throttle you bandwidth. So you would never reach 42PB per month anyway, let alone 42PB ever.
    - Consultant32452 13y ago
      That was sort of the joke, but T-Mobile has real unlimited with no throttling or caps.
      - landr0id 13y ago
        I think that if you got to the point where you're using a significant amount of mobile data and you alone are impacting other customers' experience significantly, they'd ask you to knock it off.
      - psykovsky 13y ago
        Oh, you still haven't reached the point of pissing them off with your abuse.
- Matsta 13y ago
  They use Edgecast's CDN (which is now owned by Verizon?) https://www.edgecast.com/company/news/edgecast-powers-imgur https://www.edgecast.com/company/news/edgecast-powers-imgur Off the top of my head, I think they offer their bigger clients pricing of $0.02-0.04 per gigabyte. I could be wrong though. 44040192gb *0.02 = $880,803 / 12 = $73,400/month.
  - linuxydave 13y ago
    Looks like they don't anymore $ curl -sI http://i.imgur.com/S1iGm2E.jpg http://i.imgur.com/S1iGm2E.jpg | grep Server Server: cloudflare-nginx
IgorPartola 13y ago
Don't you know? HostGator gives you unlimited bandwidth? :) Realistically, bandwidth is relatively cheap and the type of advertising they show on Imgur is likely pretty expensive. Anything to do with home buying (what I've been seeing lately) is usually pretty expensive CPC-wise.
- raverbashing 13y ago
  My experiences with HostGator indicate that, even though they may offer unlimited bandwidth, your site will stop at the first slightest increased usage
  - IgorPartola 13y ago
    That's the joke. Unlimited in all cases I experienced means "limited in a fashion you do not know and cannot control". For anything serious, stay away from unlimited plans (think Backblaze's unlimited storage), else suffer the wrath of the acceptable use policy.
  - linuxydave 13y ago
    Their 'unlimited bandwidth' pitch is just marketing BS. The shared hosting industry has thin profit margins and so they needed to come up with a way to lure in customers and distract them from the fact that they have such strict resource limits that you couldn't use huge amounts of bandwidth anyway.
DangerousPie 13y ago
If I remember correctly they use Cloudflare quite a bit. This probably decreases their actual traffic by a tremendous amount, since they vast majority of their bandwidth comes from easily cacheable images.
- jonknee 13y ago
  CloudFlare doesn't bring your bandwidth costs down, it just makes them get sent out faster. It is indeed impressive that they can serve so much based on ads that many people never see (due to embeds and the like).
  - DangerousPie 13y ago
    This is not correct. If you set the correct headers, Cloudflare routinely caches files on their edge servers and serves them from there. My traffic dropped noticeably after activating Cloudflare, and I am not doing any file hosting.
    - revelation 13y ago
      I think what is meant is that CloudFlare or no CloudFlare, cat pictures have to be transferred and traffic is generated. imgur will have to pay it either way, even if its CloudFlare doing the delivery.
      - linuxydave 13y ago
        You don't pay for the bandwidth CF uses (well, I don't know about their most expensive package but with the others you don't) and using a CDN drastically reduces your bandwidth bill
        ddorian43 13y ago
        using cdn increases your bandwidth bill cause cdn bandwidth is pricier than your dedicated-server/rack/colo bandwidth
korzun 13y ago
The bandwidth now is cheap, when I launched Image Socket I was on two dedicated machines at FDC that served closed to a thousand requests per second. The revenue on advertisements would be 10x (from what I recall) of what I spend on the hardware. The trick is to approach the problem smartly via bandwidth control techniques (ip rate limiting, proper bandwidth queues via ipfilter, etc) and identify abuse early. In 2014, their margins would be (again my opinion) double of what mine where. Hardware is cheaper, bandwidth is cheaper and you have easier access to really fast and complex caching solutions.
ilaksh 13y ago
They don't. They are running off of a few ads plus 40 million dollars.

I don't get how such a bandwidth hog can run only off a few ads.

by ozh 13y ago

I don't get how such a bandwidth hog can run only off a few ads.

Splendor 13y ago

That's not their only revenue stream. They also sell Imgur Pro accounts.

LandoCalrissian 13y ago

It looks like in 2012 they transferred 42PB of data, which is pretty crazy. I assume their numbers are far higher now. It's impressive they can make it all work. I didn't know that Reddit had invested money in the company either, that could potentially be a pretty big boon for them.

Consultant32452 13y ago
I wonder if 42PB of data would trigger a bandwidth cap on my T-Mobile unlimited 4G plan.
- ihuman 13y ago
  Most "unlimited" plans have caps where they throttle you bandwidth. So you would never reach 42PB per month anyway, let alone 42PB ever.
  - Consultant32452 13y ago
    That was sort of the joke, but T-Mobile has real unlimited with no throttling or caps.
    - landr0id 13y ago
      I think that if you got to the point where you're using a significant amount of mobile data and you alone are impacting other customers' experience significantly, they'd ask you to knock it off.
    - psykovsky 13y ago
      Oh, you still haven't reached the point of pissing them off with your abuse.
Matsta 13y ago
They use Edgecast's CDN (which is now owned by Verizon?) https://www.edgecast.com/company/news/edgecast-powers-imgur https://www.edgecast.com/company/news/edgecast-powers-imgur Off the top of my head, I think they offer their bigger clients pricing of $0.02-0.04 per gigabyte. I could be wrong though. 44040192gb *0.02 = $880,803 / 12 = $73,400/month.
- linuxydave 13y ago
  Looks like they don't anymore $ curl -sI http://i.imgur.com/S1iGm2E.jpg http://i.imgur.com/S1iGm2E.jpg | grep Server Server: cloudflare-nginx

IgorPartola 13y ago

Don't you know? HostGator gives you unlimited bandwidth? :) Realistically, bandwidth is relatively cheap and the type of advertising they show on Imgur is likely pretty expensive. Anything to do with home buying (what I've been seeing lately) is usually pretty expensive CPC-wise.

raverbashing 13y ago
My experiences with HostGator indicate that, even though they may offer unlimited bandwidth, your site will stop at the first slightest increased usage
- IgorPartola 13y ago
  That's the joke. Unlimited in all cases I experienced means "limited in a fashion you do not know and cannot control". For anything serious, stay away from unlimited plans (think Backblaze's unlimited storage), else suffer the wrath of the acceptable use policy.
- linuxydave 13y ago
  Their 'unlimited bandwidth' pitch is just marketing BS. The shared hosting industry has thin profit margins and so they needed to come up with a way to lure in customers and distract them from the fact that they have such strict resource limits that you couldn't use huge amounts of bandwidth anyway.

DangerousPie 13y ago

If I remember correctly they use Cloudflare quite a bit. This probably decreases their actual traffic by a tremendous amount, since they vast majority of their bandwidth comes from easily cacheable images.

jonknee 13y ago
CloudFlare doesn't bring your bandwidth costs down, it just makes them get sent out faster. It is indeed impressive that they can serve so much based on ads that many people never see (due to embeds and the like).
- DangerousPie 13y ago
  This is not correct. If you set the correct headers, Cloudflare routinely caches files on their edge servers and serves them from there. My traffic dropped noticeably after activating Cloudflare, and I am not doing any file hosting.
  - revelation 13y ago
    I think what is meant is that CloudFlare or no CloudFlare, cat pictures have to be transferred and traffic is generated. imgur will have to pay it either way, even if its CloudFlare doing the delivery.
    - linuxydave 13y ago
      You don't pay for the bandwidth CF uses (well, I don't know about their most expensive package but with the others you don't) and using a CDN drastically reduces your bandwidth bill
      - ddorian43 13y ago
        using cdn increases your bandwidth bill cause cdn bandwidth is pricier than your dedicated-server/rack/colo bandwidth

korzun 13y ago

The bandwidth now is cheap, when I launched Image Socket I was on two dedicated machines at FDC that served closed to a thousand requests per second. The revenue on advertisements would be 10x (from what I recall) of what I spend on the hardware. The trick is to approach the problem smartly via bandwidth control techniques (ip rate limiting, proper bandwidth queues via ipfilter, etc) and identify abuse early. In 2014, their margins would be (again my opinion) double of what mine where. Hardware is cheaper, bandwidth is cheaper and you have easier access to really fast and complex caching solutions.

ilaksh 13y ago

They don't. They are running off of a few ads plus 40 million dollars.