As it's Friday I thought the timing would be right for a bit of light hearted fun - there is also a bit of a lesson in here too :)
My second "white cars" blog post was really successful, so much so that some thief stole it, hotlinked to my images, submitted it to Digg and got a ton of traffic.
But, as the post had over 50 reasonably high quality images it didn't half make a dent on my bandwidth. So much so that I ran well over my agreed allowance with my hosting company and was left with a bill to pay that was over my normal monthly amount.
But by how much? The traffic spiked over a period of about 4 or 5 days then returned to normal. So how much do you think that spike cost me? I'll reveal the answer next week.
[poll=5]
I now have another dilemma. The thing is that I have another "white car" post almost ready to go, and this one has over 100 pictures. And before anyone says it, I know that I have an unhealthy obsession with white cars - I just can't help it.
So what should I do? Write another "white car" blog post and just suffer the consequences in terms of traffic and bandwidth? One thing I have learned to do, is to split the post, so that I only display 3 or 4 pictures on my homepage and only display the rest when the user clicks through to the article. Or should I maybe create a whole new website devoted to white cars? I've been toying with that idea actually as I know the interest is there, I would probably make it interactive too and encourage user content (now watch, someone will do it). Problem is I don't think I have the time to devote to a new project like that, especially as I don't think it will be a big money-maker, more of a hobby.
Anybody have any thoughts?
What I'm listening to right now: Maskerade – "Computer Love"
How much did my “White Cars” blog post cost me? And shall I do some more?
28 Responses to How much did my “White Cars” blog post cost me? And shall I do some more?
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Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I am the founder of ShareMyPlaylists.com, ContentNow.co.uk and some other stuff. I have no idea why I'm blue on this photo though but I like it!
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Stick ‘em on Flickr and use this WP plugin to display them as a gallery on the blog:
http://tantannoodles.com/toolkit/photo-album/
Works a treat – I use it myself: andthenhesaid.com/journal/photos/
consider hosting the pics with a free image hosting company?
I agree with Andy, Let flickr take the big bandwidth hit
Good suggestions guys, do you know if Flickr allows you to display pictures that are say 600 pixels wide?
Take a quick look at Servage.net Hosting at only £4.50 a month. If you exceed their 5010GB monthly bandwidth allowance I’ll be amazed.
Type code ‘shopcodes’ for 25GB extra space too
I pay £10 a month for unmetered bandwidth on a host that stands up to the digg effect without caching or crashing. Try Burton Hosting in Scarborough.
Why not just use htacess to disable hot linking? Otherwise, I agree with the other posters on flickr.
Four suggestions..
1) Get a better host that doesn’t charge for bandwidth – I pay £40 a month for a dedicated server with 180gb space, unlimited bandwidth, etc
2) Get a script that means the images will ONLY work if they are viewed via your own site – in future this will stop people stealing them this way
3) Use Flickr
4) Stop the unhealthy obsession with white cars, if the Knightrider car was in white it would never have been as cool.
Create a whole new website dedicated to your dodgy white car porn and put something affiliate related on your blog for a change *lol*
Sure an affiliate of your genius could do well with a car site, big cars, impact of gas guzzlers… it could end up a museum of what cars used to be if we all end up in small milk float powered toy cars.
You know you have an audience, you have the interest – the best ideas often start this way.
whitecarporn is available too….
Use Hotlink Protection in your hosting control panel. Have any website that links to the image, display a small gif saying the image was stolen from… http://www.here.org.uk
Get free visitors that way.
See a video here on how to do it:
Hotlink Video
Would agree with above – use flickr!
I like Chris’ idea.
I was also going to offer to not look at the post until the month after to spread the traffic burden around but realised i would never have the self control!
Still trying to persuade my wife that white cars are the way forward…
I’d use the hotlink protection option in cpanel.
I’d use the hotlink protection if I were you on cpanel.
You’ve already answered your own question .. you haven’t got the time! However, if you did have the time then I’d set up another site. This would pull the traffic in and then add links through to Flickr to see the whole portfolio of photos. Bottom line is that it’ll not make any money, be time consuming but you’ll thoroughly love it!
So it’s time & money v fun.
agreed, stick them on Flickr
Meant to say that I could let you post it on my car site and I’ll suffer the consequences instead
What’s with all the talking? I want white car porn!
Totally agree. Use .htaccess to disable hot linking and you can in fact bring in traffic if any is daft enough to try hot linking your images.
More white cars please
Even if you don’t use don’t have Cpanel, you can use .htaccess to stop people hotlinking if you’re using a Linux server.
I wonder if you had links from each pic back to the main post if the thief would have kept the links intact? It might be a lesson I will put to work in the future.
Submit to Digg before anyone else copies it!!!!
Amazon S3 isn’t too expensive if you want somewhere reliable but it sounds lie flickr would work. Will be interesting what your total traffic was for the post.
White car is really attractive no wonder why your blog about white cars become a success.
Name and shame the person who committed this dog act on you.
Well, duh!!! You already did I see. Good work – people doing crap like that should always be called out (you should send him the bill for your excess bandwidth).
Ive had issues with copyright. Id find out where he lives and….well, you know the rest
white cars are pretty hot! It was a good post … shame for all the trouble you went through