Topic awaiting preservation: Stock photography websites (Page 1 of 1)

Hi all, just a question with these websites... I noticed they have hi quality images and when you purchase them you can actually download them there and then! These images are around 30mb each and they literally have thousands of them.

What i was wondering is how they manage this, i mean say they have 3,000 images - thats 90 gig of images right there, not to mention the bandwidth they would use up. My host doesnt even offer any packages with that much disk space.

Im assuming for the smaller sizes they offer you could use GD or something to resize it to save space.

Seems crazy to me, anyone know how they do it? Maybe their own server

With a dedicated server the disk space is not a problem. As for the bandwidth many hosts put no constraint on it.

I doubt they use GD or something to resize the images on the fly. They more certainly stack as much HDD as needed. Again, the diskspace is not really a problem for a site making money ( either by the ads or by selling medium/large versions of the images )

Yeh i guess it must be a dedicated server solution, i havn't set one of those up yet - they probably cost a fair bit. :/

Yes, but you can also buy, maintain and (partially) set up the server yourself and rent a place in the buildings of a host which decrease the costs. Obviously when you have to work physically on the server ( to add a new HDD, reboot ) there's generally a little delay since you have to notice the host before coming in.

Yeh i havnt found a good local host though, my current hosting is a 3 hour plane flight away.

One thing that annoys me with how they (just about all of thc ompanies) charge hard drives, is per hour. Why the hell should i pay an extra $50/month for another 120gig hard drive, when its only $100 to buy one outright. I guess if i did my own server this wouldnt be a problem. I guess i dont want to spend my time on maintaing servers at this stage..

How do you think the hosting companies fill their pockets of money ? they charge expensive amounts for all the services and interventions aside the hosting.

To burn a backup DVD, the host used at work made a proposal with 2 weeks of delay and 1,200 ?!!! One the high managers replied them it'd be faster and cheaper to carve the backup in stone.

lol, yeh it seems pretty nasty out there! Everyone has to make a living i guess.. When i have alot of clients it may be worth switching to a dedicated server instead, but the cost per what you get for general reseller plans is quite efficient so it could be hard to beat!