I'm interested in getting involved with hosting my own website so I can post stuff I do and sell it for a great low price.

How much does it cost to operate like a basic webiste where consumer can download your material?

Thanks

$7325.67 per month.

In addition to the $7325.67 per month:

about $10 / year for the domain name
about $7 / month for the hosting
a few hundred per year for some bs fee ccbill charges if you want to accept visa but you dont necessarily have to take visa.

First thing to think about before people start throwing figures at you is, where do you want to host your vids. If you just want to sell cheap vids, then there a lots of suppliers out there, you dont even to build a website you could host it from a yahoo group. The main thing to think about is the percentage taken by the supplier hosting your downloads. Out of the percentage taken by them what kind of backup, advertising, support, serverspace will you recieve.

regards

Andy and the team.

7325 a month. YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS

It was an arbitrary number in response to an arbitrary question.


There is no number, everything relates to everything.

You could build a basic website and host to for $30 a month, but if it's popular it's going to either get more expensive for bandwidth or just crash when a limit is hit. You may not be able to run a CC companies software. If it's just a DL store with Soundguys system it 10% + server + bandwidth fee's. That calculation is based on how many videos/images you put up and what size there are.

If you hire a designer, it depends on who and what level. Basic and good are expensive. If you use a CMS then what $$$ value do you assign to your own time?

There is no definitive answer to the posters question other than "It depends".

Well thanks for that Noise.
I have no idea what most of it means , but thanks

Noise is right. There are too many variables. Perhaps what you are looking for is a rough idea of the steps you're going to get into. Here goes:

Hosting: Anywhere from $10 monthly to $500 monthly and up, depending on whether you're on a dedicated server, shared server, what type of server, how much bandwidth is in your package, whether it is managed or not, etc. Make sure they allow adult material even if your material is only soft-R or whatever.

Programming: Somebody is going to have to program you a site. They (or you) could start with a content management system which is free, but it can still take a while to customize it how you want it. From scratch, a fully-programmed site could cost well into the 10's of thousands. I guess if your programmer starts from a turnkey platform, it should cost maybe in the hundreds.

Design: Almost no programmers out there are good graphic designers, and vice versa (IMO). You've either got to get two people together to program and design your site, or get a company that has these people in-house, or find someone that can do both.

Billing: If you go with a 3rd-party processor like CCbill, expect to pay them 15% to 20% in fees. If you want to go through the excruciating task of setting up your own merchant account and 1st-party credit card processor, well, good luck. You basically can't get one in America, but you can get companies that will set you one up offshore for hefty fees. If you do, they'll charge a lower percentage, but expect up-front fees into the thousands, rolling reserves, and lord knows what other fees.

If you want to avoid all that, then of course I recommend using one of the various clip store services that are around.

Jeez, how long is a piece of string.
Back in the early 80's I was a programmer for Rolls Royce, I would have absolutely no idea where to start now, is how much things have changed in a mere 30 years. I know the laptop I'm typing on now has more capability than the mainframe I used to program.

Anyway Raptor, I hope you've got an answer

I recommend you contact some professionals in this area:
http://adultwd.com/

We work with them for the past 5 years and they are the best!
Their prices are fair and the work quality and delivery is excellent.

Two times half its length.

Two times half its length.

Mmmm, that would make it 3 times longer than I thought

Easiest way to start is a UMD download store. It's completely free to set up and then the UMD takes 30% of each sale in commission - you get the other 70%, minus the payment company fees (2.5% I think).

Next step up from that is you set up a domain name website and embed the UMD store in it. Decent hosting costs about £20 a year in the UK, don't know about elsewhere.

Next step up from that is your own actual membership site with someone like CCBill doing the card processing, for that you need CGI hosting (so it can run the CCBill stuff) and a host that a) provides a decent amount of space, b) doesn't run screaming when you mention adult material, and c) is OK with the bandwidth you'll use. This is where it starts to get expensive.

If you don't know HTML and CGI programming, it can get very expensive.

But if all you want is to be able to sell downloads, then a UMD D/L store is all you really need to get started.

Good luck!

Uh, there seems to be a lot go ignorance on the subject of using CCbil and servers.

I worked out what my percentage of turnover goes to CCbill and paying for servers. It's just a little over 20%.

It's not difficult to find a good hosting company the deals solely with adult material. There are a few reasons to run a DL store than a membership site, cost is not one of them

I'm thinking overall costs here - including things like programming and design work in building a site - IMHO you need a fair bit of automation if updates aren't to become an all-consuming chore, which means someone proficient in Perl (or PHP). Plus the time commitment that comes from a members' site, where new releases must happen to a timetable. It's a whole order of magnitude different in terms of commitment than a DLS where you only have to update when you feel like it, and can take six months off if you want to. Once you have subscribers signed up, you never stop running to keep things on time.

Agreed though that if you don't take VISA and do find a good hosting company, costs don't have to be excessive.

Yeah, I don't really think about cost of the actual website. I'm not a coder in even the loosest sense of the word, installing a CMS is pretty damn easy - I have a coder because I just don't have the time to shape a CMS exactly how I want it. I'm also not a graphic designer so I have someone for that as well.

So many don't understand how many disciplines are involved if you want to make this a business. It's a big ask to try and master video production, editing, graphic design, coding, accounts. Having real talent for more than one is big time rare. I would only say I'm pretty good at two, so that's what i concentrate my time to, but I realize the others are very important.
But yeah, vidown and UMD remove the need for a website being built, but anyone using just those is really doing themselves a dis-service and leaving money on the table.