I want to make a website that allows people to upload files, and allows linking to the uploaded files. But I have no idea how to monetize it. I can’t really think of any premium features I could charge for, and I don’t think putting adverts on the site will be effective, since most of the traffic will probably be of people just viewing the files, not the website and ads placed there. Has anyone got any suggestions? Has anyone seen how other similar sites monetize it?
Thanks!
You’re about to learn why file hosts spend all their time on abuse prevention
Price it based oh usage/storage?
I feature a couple of interviews with indie founders who have managed to monetize with their niche sites
Most common examples would be paid ads, paid subscription to a higher tier of service, or affiliate marketing.
Hope you find something there for yourself.
So Megaupload? Advertisements worked for them
why would you spend time and effort if you arent sure the market is there? Easy way to burn time/cash.
validate the market first
I may have a niche for you. DM me and show me what you’ve got. If you’ve any doubts, check my profile.
Microsoft’s OneDrive (and I bet the other cloud storage too) has some premium features, like password protect your folders/files, larger storage, higher priority in support tickets, etc.
Interested in your findings if you stumble upon anything else than ads and storage space.
There is a market for that, probably going to want to go developer oriented. You can have an api that interacts with the file system. Filestack is a product that does something similar.
If you can interact with the files using an API, that’s super useful. There’s just competitors already, I personally wouldn’t switch over on an existing project and I imagine others wouldn’t either so you’d probably want to target users just starting to build their apps.
Some ways to monetize could be some advanced feature, easy image resizing, cdn capabilities, on the fly image editing.
Even without the api and just linking to images, a premium feature allowing easy resizing to thumbnail, banner, original size, etc(by attaching some parameter to the url) could be super useful for static sites too.
Lots of directions you can go, I think best bet would be to find a startup that needs a product like this and build around that while making them your customer.
There is a market for that, probably going to want to go developer oriented. You can have an api that interacts with the file system. Filestack is a product that does something similar.
If you can interact with the files using an API, that’s super useful. There’s just competitors already, I personally wouldn’t switch over on an existing project and I imagine others wouldn’t either so you’d probably want to target users just starting to build their apps.
Some ways to monetize could be some advanced feature, easy image resizing, cdn capabilities, on the fly image editing.
Even without the api and just linking to images, a premium feature allowing easy resizing to thumbnail, banner, original size, etc(by attaching some parameter to the url) could be super useful for static sites too.
Lots of directions you can go, I think best bet would be to find a startup that needs a product like this and build around that while making them your customer.
What? There are plenty of things you can charge extra for:
-direct linking/embedding (also solves your ad problem)
-increased upload/download speeds
-data center replication
-custom branding
-custom domain
-increased storage or bandwidth
-increased time before file/account expiration
-increased file types or sizes
Have you done any research into this space in terms of what’s feasible to offer for free? If you had, you’d see plenty of space for paid upgrades, like the above.