Member Bandwidth
 

How much are you allowing your members to download before you disable accounts? I'am pretty easy going most times, but when a Trial Members is leaching like 5 gigs a day, something isnt right :)

I know some pretty big sites cut most people off at 2gb a day. What do you have it set for?

and is there any software that can give Full Members more bandwidth then trial members?

Ive seen bangbus do that back in the days on the 3 day trials. They wouldnt let you download half the movies on the members area.

Solution: don't use trials.

True, but think about full members who leech like 5gigs a day, thats 150 gbs a month, even at 20 cents a gig, thats 30 bucks wasted on bandwidth.

Thats the exception though, not the rule. Besides, do you really have 150gb of content on your paysite?

not yet :winkwink:

I think I am going make my trials alot more expensive and reduce the number of days by 1. Then setup a bandwidth limit of 1.5 gigs a day.

Think about "unlimited" cellular phones or being able to have 1.5mbits in your home for ~$50/month.....

It's the same thing... SOME of your clients will be leeches, but overall you should be quite profitable.

Believe me, I understand the whole bandwidth thing quite well since I used to run a paysite, but I never limited anyone, even trial users. I mean, honestly, if I got cut off while on a trial there is no way I'd trust a site enough to recur.

If I decide to set up my own paysites again I'm not having trials. It'll mean less affiliates, but the ones I do get will make more money in the long run. :)

There was a paysite that offered free trials to surfers (the surfer had to enter only a valid e-mail to get it); the trial lasted only one hour, and during this hour the surfer could only view thumbnails (he was forbidden to view large pics).

I think limiting the trial members' traffic can protect your content from being posted on TGP. Those who steal content from paysites for their TGP galleries are too grasping to pay the full price of a membership.

We have developed the software for limiting the bandwidth and the maximum viewable file size for any group of members of your site. So if you are interested in protecting your content, just contact me: e-mail: wyvern (at) rbtechgroup (dot) com ICQ# 83300875 (nickname: Yerdnat)

are you serious?

we have a lot more than 150gb of content in our memberarea - and we have at least one member pr week that uses a spider of some kind and tries to download the whole thing...

We have NO limits on downloads, and we are trying to put all spiders in our .htaccess, but still someone manages to go do their thing...

We have been thinking about setting a limit, but havent done so yet.

Yes.

24 hour disable at 512MB. Trial members are the only ones who ever read the limit. And its usually in 200minutes or less (i.e. 40KB/sec for 230 mins, or what not)

I've had members email to complain and I tell them to become a full member to get dl privilages. Never happens.

Shit ... 20c a gig is pretty expensive to be running any decent sized program/site.

This is very interesting.

We are about to open a plug in lease gallery and do not know whether to disbale the right click download facility or limit it. The problem comes when a site sends members that just want to download the whole thing. 1 or two we can live with, but if it's more we are going to have to limit the amount of B/W a site gets.

If a member joins your site they've JOINED your site. They are entitled to everything you've promised them for the money you're asking. So either let them have it, or be prepared for a nice tasty chargeback on your cheap ass.

Simple solution:

Use crypted links. Those are run thru a database to load the pages and pictures.

This will effectively limit the bandwidth due to the fact that the surfer can only click links and not use offlinebrowsers at all.

Interesting, never thought of that. How does one implement this sort of thing? And does it increase server load significantly?

Where can you get it cheaper than that?
Or at least like that?
What's the minimum usage you need to get this kind of prices?

this member got his moneys worth the other day!

Hits - 20521
Files - 18144
KBytes - 74254728
Visits - 32

:)

kidding right?

solution, if you dont have a script to gauge xfer per user or some shit, put a bonus area that has loads of content for them that they are allowed to access after 3 days of membership only (this is very simply htaccess timestamp checking... we pioneered this on oliversmoney and it worked great

If you have your own tech guy, get rackshack. They are quite a bit cheaper and with so many big guys going bust and leaving the business, you would be amazed what kinda servers you can pick up for next to nothing compared to 4 months ago.

We don't use em, but we push more volume. Only pushing a hundred or so gig a day, but still enough to be paying only cents a gig. you gotta go out and make a deal. You aren't gonna get any seriously good prices if you just join up on the host's splash page.

Man I'm amazed that you guys are shocked at this. How the hell could you afford to do hosted galleries and make good profit if you are paying 20c a gig? Dude ... with some of the designs out there on hosted galleries I'm amazed they can turn a profit at even 10c a gig.

This is all horseshit. If you wanna do better than 20c/gb on dedicated boxes with decent configs using non cogent bw you better be pushing into the 50Mbit+ averaged.

Some of you guys were talkin what, 100GB/day? Ha. I'd pay $.30/gb for that kinda level of commitment.

Mate .... we only push 100gb a day and we pay cents per gb, non cognet, with a fucking reputable and stable host.

Push for a better deal.

Theres very little credibility to my post coz I aint gonna tell you who i'm with or who the host is ... so you don't have to believe me.

Cheers! :Graucho

so its not managed hosting?

Strangely enough it is ... managed that is.

Like the other guy said in the thread, if you do 50mbit commitment on cogent, you can get it low as 12 cents a gig, I'd use that shit for hosted galleries and what not..... 20 cents a gig is VERY reasonable, most sites are paying double that and then some..

I'd consider streaming the videos if you want to control the bandwidth. That will prevent the excessive downloads.

I changed to secure streaming in my paysite at www.adultpaid.com and the bandwidth usage dropped almost 50%.

You can get very decent, reliable Cogent bandwidth a lot cheaper than that. We do 13 cents a gig with 10mbit (on 100mbit burstable for peaks), P4 with dual HDD included. Cogent is actually excellent for movie and download sites.

I agree with that outlook but tell me, how are your rebills since the switch?

Is that because half your members got pissed off and left :question