Ask HN: Help me find a niche for my file sharing site

Re:Ask HN: Help me find a niche for my file sharing site by jolan on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @03:49PM (#2997598)

Rather than going for a niche, how about a wider audience? The majority of file sharing sites allow anonymous uploads and yours does not.

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Re:Ask HN: Help me find a niche for my file sharing site by mcrittenden on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @03:54PM (#2997616)

I originally allowed anonymous uploads (back when it was just a hobby site that I wasn't trying to make money off of) and took it away for a couple reasons:

- It was losing me tons of money because uploads were coming in like crazy and I wasn't making any money off of the site.

- I had no way to keep track of who's uploading what and interact with or analyze my customers and their usage.

I'm considering adding anonymous uploads that expire after a short amount of time (like 5 minutes or so) just as a way to let people try out the service before signing up. Do you see that as a good alternative? Or is even that not enough?

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Re:Ask HN: Help me find a niche for my file sharing site by jolan on Wednesday September 14, 2011 @04:14PM (#2997689)

> losing me tons of money

There are a lot hosts that charge for throughput and not actual bandwidth, i.e. https://www.gandi.net/hosting/

> I had no way to keep track

Cookies?

If you like reddit, advertise it there as "like imgur but for all file types"

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