Have money, not time (or skills)

[luan]

I've had this idea for about 2-3 years (which I was reminded of when I recently went to look for a webhost on these forums), but not the time, energy, or skills to implement. I still don't have the time, energy, or skills and will never actually do it myself, but am in a position where I could fund such a project, were it feasible...

I like free things. I wish I could have free webhosting, but I hate the adverts or spam that goes with it, so I end up finding the cheapest web host I can find. If only the advertising was not so noticable or made me look like a cheapie for using a free host, I wouldn't mind so much....

I would like to know if it is possible (or even tried previously) to set up a free web host where the income for the hosting is purely from text ads integrated into the actual website text itself. Not the kind of advertising you see like the ones on top of this page, but advertising that is based on the site's text, integrated into the text. I would like the host to be a real host, even allowing domain names, scripts, ftp and such - basically what you would get if you paid $2-3/month.

What I see is that a person designs their site and uploads it. A program on the server would then scan the document and find relevant words, and link them to advertising. It would limit the number of links to say one at a maximum per 100 words. I've seen these kind of advertising before on many sites, but have never seen it implemented on a free website provider.

If someone can convince me that it is a viable venture, I would be interested in funding the start-up costs, and taking a share of any eventual profit, if any.

Tell me your thoughts. Is it too late? Should I have done it a few years ago?

[brutetal]

Well, I think you mean by the keyword text ad links is the Google Ads or Google Adsense Ads.
You can still do it, but I don't know a script that can force ads on to a website with the main page text content. Your gonna have to do that by yourself or tell your users to do it.

Basicly, its too much of a hassle to do.

[luan]

Basicly, its too much of a hassle to do.

And that is exactly why I want to do it - because no one else that I know of is doing it, I think that it might be possible to make enough income to cover the costs this way, and users might actually prefer it rather than a huge banner ad or frame.

[brutetal]

If you can find a plausable way, then good luck.

[Darknight]

from what i gather
this would mean the only way to ever know is by checking every users site
Witch if you have 100s thats a good days work ;)

[luan]

from what i gather
this would mean the only way to ever know is by checking every users site
Witch if you have 100s thats a good days work ;)

I was hoping that someone would tell me that it could be done by a script.

Like I said, I have the money, not the know how or time.

[AMC]

amz ones told me she had a script on her site that checked all her members sites makig sure they werent running ads, it must be a pretty short step to reverse it.other than that i can only suggest that if you have instant signup your email sends them the code and their site will only be allowed if the site is running ads within three days of completion that way its up to the user, and if the user doesnt know how, then he can always ask the tech support.

for this you want to ask somone like KRAK_JOE, he's better at these thinggs than me

[Wojtek]

I think he's talking about intellitxt (http://www.intellitxt.com).
The reason why you don't see them on freehosts is because they require 500,000 pageviews monthly to signup.

You could hire yourself a coder to code such ad-inserting script and you then find advertisers who would pay to actually advertise on your free sites.

Question is: would your users prefer this kind of advertising compared to regular banners?
I for one would not host with you as I see this advertising method as too intrusive

[Fried]

Clicksor (http://clicksor.com) advertising have contextual in-text advertising - And they don't have a page view requirement. :)

I wouldn't say it's a very good idea to put contexual adverts on people's websites, that's even more annoying than your average banners.

Otherwise, yes, it is possible to make a top banner or something that IS relevant to the text on the web page.

It's not very hard to find software that allows you to force ads on web pages, but you'll need root access to your server with apache installed.

If I was using free web hosting with ads, then what I'd prefer the most is that the web hosts allows you to place the ad code myself, so I can choose where I want to place the ads. It's also possible to make a script that will check websites if they have the ad code on or not.

[luan]

Yes, Intellitxt and the similar services are what I mean. I saw this a few years ago and thought it would be great to have a free web host around it. It is interesting that you think people would be more annoyed with these ads - I think the opposite.

Okay, because I am completely naive on these things, how much does it cost to run a server for 1,000 average free web hosting clients? Or if 1,000 clients is too much for one server, how much can the average server reasonably handle, and how much does this server setup cost? How do I find people to make these programs for me, to run the server for me? How much do they cost?

[Starcraftmazter]

Yeh, you could make something like what Chitika uses.

A script could easily be written in PHP to check if the user has it on their site.

Basically, it opens a socket to the site, downloads the page, and performs a search for whatever js code would be required to do this.

It would probably be a script with an src on your main site.


But yeh, this whole idea is rather complex, but moreover, I doubt people would like this.

I'd rather have ads on my site, like boxed google ads than this.

[fireshark]

Why not use mod_layout, as for forced free ads, and insert ad code there?

[Starcraftmazter]

Hmmmm, interesting :D

[krakjoe]

Why not use mod_layout, as for forced free ads, and insert ad code there?

It's not so great, firstly it breaks any script that uses ob_gz_handler ( near on every forum in the world ), plus, you have to restart apache everytime you create an account, or make people wait for thier account to be ready for use, also, ppl hate having thier design screwed up by banners on the top and bottom of thier pages.

I would prefer intellitext to banners every time......

[Darknight]

Yes, Intellitxt and the similar services are what I mean. I saw this a few years ago and thought it would be great to have a free web host around it. It is interesting that you think people would be more annoyed with these ads - I think the opposite.

Okay, because I am completely naive on these things, how much does it cost to run a server for 1,000 average free web hosting clients? Or if 1,000 clients is too much for one server, how much can the average server reasonably handle, and how much does this server setup cost? How do I find people to make these programs for me, to run the server for me? How much do they cost?

This is a question many ask & many replie with it depends on what size plans, what type of websites, how many hits there getting, etc. there is no # of people that will fit. :p
Best thing to do is get a budget server see how it gos then decide later what you need :> btw I srsly doubt your get 1000 on one server
My guess would be around a 300$ server would = around 400 ppl But then again iv never been in the free hosting game only paid hosting witch also includes ircds etc.

PM a free host with experence like amz they might be able to tell you more.

[luan]

My guess would be around a 300$ server would = around 400 ppl But then again iv never been in the free hosting game only paid hosting witch also includes ircds etc.

Hang on, if we use a more conservative figure of 300 people per $300 server per month, this still equates to each person generating a minimum of $1 per month, or 3.33 cents per day to break even. Looking at various sites, they seem to be paying out more than 3 cents per click-through. That is, on average, each person that I host would need to get just at least one click-through per day on however many pages they have on their sites. Is it just me, or does this sound ridiculously easy? Someone tell me that it is harder than this.

[Starcraftmazter]

It's harder than this.

Say you have a forum based post2host. Say you have 400 users, and to host 400 users on a single server, is a ridiculous notion, unless that server is ridiculously powerful, at which point it will cost a lot more than $300/m

Now, of those 400 users, maybe 40 will visit your forums every day, and of those 40, maybe 5~10 click the ads, and and can equate to as low as 50 cents. Per day.

Geddit?

[luan]

Yeah, I thought it was going to be harder...

But it is not 400 people, of whom 40 visit per day, of whom a certain amount click. It is 400 people, of whom have x number of webpages, with y number of visitors. That is, even if x=2 and y=2 then you have 1600 pageviews per day. Using your figures, this would be 1600/40=40. 40x.5=20. 20x30=$600/month.

Hey, but like I said, I have no clue on these things.

[Starcraftmazter]

Oh, you mean with the ads on the header.

Well, don't assume all sites will get similar traffic.

You usually get a large amount of sites with minimal traffic, and a small (very small) amount of sites with high traffic, and they mean business.

[luan]

No, no ads on the header. Ads in the actual text itself, contextual, Intellitxt type ads. One advert every few hundred words. Imagine this whole page but no advert on the top, no google text bar, just one contextual advert in the text of every two or three posts.

[Starcraftmazter]

Oh right...I forget things easily lol.
Same principle though.

Also, a heavily visited site, wouldn't want random links all over their content.

[luan]

True, but a heavily visited site would also probably pay for their hosting. Hey, I pay for my hosting, and my site gets 15 visitors a day! (I pay because I hate the adverts, but the interesting part is that all these people come to a site that has never been advertised. I've never even bothered submitting to the search engines.) If someone offered free hosting with all the features I needed and only intellitxt type links, I would strongly consider using it....

[Starcraftmazter]

How about posting instead? :P

Well, I don't know, personally I hate them. Have you ever seen a page, full of clicksor contextual ads? It looks bloody horrible, and IMO, it is very hard to form a good opinion about a site, when it's full of them.

[luan]

True.

Oh well, I guess that is another brilliant idea that wasn't. Thank heavens I have a proper job. Hehe, posting here reminds me of my youth...

[Starcraftmazter]

Hehe :D

It may still be a pretty decent idea, we would never know unless we try.

All I'm saying is that I predict it wouldn't be very popular, but that's just me.

[Darknight]

It's harder than this.

Say you have a forum based post2host. Say you have 400 users, and to host 400 users on a single server, is a ridiculous notion, unless that server is ridiculously powerful, at which point it will cost a lot more than $300/m

Now, of those 400 users, maybe 40 will visit your forums every day, and of those 40, maybe 5~10 click the ads, and and can equate to as low as 50 cents. Per day.

Geddit?

wow, well I was just guessing that over 1/2 of them will be n00bish getting no hits but in that case i dont think i will be looking at my adult post2host hobby just yet ;p

[fireshark]

No my point was where adcode would usually go, just stick in the js for the code by intellitxt (its just a js right?)