Image hosting can both be fun and at the same time serve as a stable source of income for image hosts with extra disk space of band width. With the right techniques, image hosts can build a long-term click stream, which can be done by finding the best places to advertise and get the users to avail their image hosting services.
It is inevitable that many people do not want to be bothered with managing their own bandwidth and disk space in terms of uploading their images. This is in spite of having low disk space costs, unrestricted band width, and free web hosting services. People who use auction sites in which contents are hosted by the auction site themselves, would rather pay the fees for the auction than managing their own space. More so, other email systems do not have options for sending attachments or require a file limit of 1 MB. This is where image hosting services come in handy. Most image hosting services allow users to upload images with restrictions on the file size. The original images chosen for hosting by the users are uploaded to the server of the image host, converting them to thumbnails. As images are converted to thumbnails, they are now available for viewing and come mostly with several types of links including forum links, direct links, and hot-linked thumbnail.
For interested individuals who would like to make money out of image hosting, they can simple charge less than those who charge users with huge amounts. Take for example users who upload their images on eBay. These users are charged extra fees in the event that they want to upload as much images as they could. Thus, if the users have thousands to upload for their auctions, the fees add up on their expenses. As such, image hosts should be able to provide services lower that the fees being charged by eBay. This would allow users to market directly to eBay without the extra charges that may affect their auction business on a large scale. More so, if image hosts provide features that eBay does not have, then it can be more advantageous for such image hosts.
In addition, image hosts that offer free services earn money through a specific advertising model. This type of advertising model places advertisements around the images, where they can be clicked; thus, making money for the free hosting site. Although this type of advertising is not one that can actually provide a quick way of making money, it can definitely be a stable source of income once the base has been populated. Interested individuals who want to take a chance on this scheme only need to have a hosting provider, an advertising affiliate, and a webmaster for those who cannot build their own website.
Moreover, in order to earn thousands or even millions from being an image host, one should consider how to create efficient website traffic since the hosting itself has low value range. On the other hand, some websites with moderate traffic can earn as much as those with huge website traffic only if they know how to monetize correctly.