You guys might be tired of answering these common questions a lot, but sadly there isn’t enough information that applies to my specific website type.
I’m about to open a new image hosting website. It certainly differs a lot from what the current market offers. It’s completely written from scratch and I created it with the intent to make it popular. However, now that I’m at the ending phases of the creation, I’ve secured a solid host for one year (without violating their policies for sure) with unlimited bandwith and space - Only the number of files matter which maxes out at 500.000. I guess this is quite good for the beginning; I doubt that I’ll need more for now. Considering I get lots of traffic, I’ll eventually run past the file amount limit, but then I’m assuming I’ll have enough money to get myself a dedicated server or VPS at least… So here comes one of the essential things that I’m seeing as an issue: Money.
I’ve reserved some advertisement space on my website on the header. I’ve planned using Google AdSense to power my ads. Seeing that my site is responsive, I’ve adapted the ad space with Google’s ad sizes. I thought that having proper ad sizes on different screen sizes might actually play a role… There is only one ad field on my website.
Why would my site stand in front of what the current market offers? Well, I tried making it attractive, but still keep the simplicity. The site is highly responsive and it’s based on Bootstrap 3. The color theme is red. I’m sick of all the blue all around: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. so I thought I’d try something new for once. Not that I’ll reach their level of fame, but just saying. As for the “functional” part of the site, I tried extending the limits as much as possible… 2 MB image file size, up to 10 images at the same time, remote uploading up to 30 images at once, uploading a ZIP archive with images inside it etc.
Registrations are “socialized”, meaning you can sign up for a native account or use Google, Twitter or Facebook for signing up. Images can also be viewed by a rendered website view, they can be liked, disliked, favorited, shared (Facebook, Twitter, Google+), commented on and reported. The comments can also be liked or disliked. Users can also have albums of different types: Private (only the creator can see it) and Public (which receives 3 other subtypes - Personal, Global and Shared). Albums can be also followed.
I can’t mention here all the features I’ve coded in - they’re too much. It’s also worth mentioning that I’ve used AJAX all around to prevent useless refreshing. Even uploading is fully asynchronous - in all three cases.
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I assume I did good job on the script, but how do I advertise my site after I take it online? Could someone show me some good sources? Is there a better alternative to Google Adsence for earning money? I need all the start up advice that you guys can give me.
Thanks for reading.