What types of file hosting services are there and how to use them. What is a file hosting service and how do you make money on file hosting sites on the Internet? The beginning of the computer age

What is a file hosting service?
A file hosting service is a site on the Internet that allows you to upload your own files there, receive links to download your own files, and then share these files with your friends and acquaintances.
It would seem that everything is extremely simple, but there are some subtleties in this method of earning money.
Choosing a file hosting service
In order to make good money on file hosting services, you must determine in what ways you will earn money. There are 2 great ways:
1. Payment for downloads. You just massively ask users to download your files, they download them, and you earn a pretty penny.
2. Payment for the purchase of VIP accounts (directly for payment).
Both of these methods deserve respect, however, most modern posters choose the second option, since it generates higher income!
What files should I post on the Internet?
You can place a variety of files. For example, many Russian file posters choose erotic themes (Adult) and publish them on foreign porn forums. However, most users forget about the interesting fact that this is all illegal activity, and at the first opportunity you can be held accountable (including criminal) for disseminating such information. Therefore, you should be extremely careful in this regard.
Some people post unlicensed games, movies, books, etc. However, the greatest income (at last count) comes from various erotic videos (photos). However, it is best, of course, not to engage in these frauds.
Remember also that if you post pornographic materials (and other information), your file can be deleted at the first request of the copyright holder! You can read about additional income from postal services.
Where should I place the files?
It all depends directly on how much time you have. If you have a lot of free time, then you can publish your files on var portals or on forums (forums, as practice shows, are more effective). But you can also use some programs that will fully automatically send your links (with normal design, pictures and unique text, of course) to forums and websites. However, most of these programs are paid, and if the program is free, it will have extremely narrow functionality, which will not be enough for you.
How much can you earn?
It all depends, first of all, on which file hosting service you have chosen for your earnings, as well as what method of earning you have chosen (for downloading or for payment).
In any case, you can guarantee that you will be able to receive at least $100 per month with full-time employment. Naturally, you may not get this if you approach the matter unprofessionally. But many professionals can earn significantly larger amounts of money.
But it is worth remembering that over time, earnings from file hosting services are losing momentum; people are no longer so willing to be fooled by offers to buy VIP accounts, but are looking for the same files on the Internet for free (without payment and without speed limits). You can read about additional earnings on the Internet at

File sharing service. I am almost sure that you have visited such a site at least once in your life. It’s especially easy to get to it if you need to download something and you type it into a search engine. Then you click on one of the first results and see there exactly the file you need. You click “Download”, but everything turns out to be not so simple.

First, the service offers you to purchase a premium account in order to download faster and without delays, then it shows about 30-60 seconds of advertising, and only if you have endured to the end, you finally receive that coveted working link to download the desired file. Painfully familiar, isn't it?

So, what I described is a typical file hosting service. This is a site created for the sole purpose of sharing files. Any user can register here and upload their own file, and then receive a link to it. Then you can distribute this link somewhere and receive cash incentives from the service for downloading the file.

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It would seem that they will let you download the file for free, and they will pay you more money for downloading it, what’s the catch? But as you remember, such a site is certainly monetized by its owners so as not to go to a loss. What types of monetization can be seen on a file hosting service?

For example, this is an offer to purchase a premium account every time you try to download something from a file hosting service. Many people actually buy such accounts because they are usually inexpensive (a couple of dollars), but they turn off advertising and allow you to download a file faster, as well as download it.

With the free plan, all these features are not available. And also, if you are already going to download the file just like that, you will see another way to monetize:

Advertising. If you are already going to download for free and have already managed to refuse the premium tariff 5 times, then before downloading you will face another test: 30-60 seconds of waiting, during which you may be shown some kind of advertising.

Actually, different file hosting services impose different restrictions on uploading files on the free plan. For example, you may be asked to enter a captcha and if you enter it incorrectly, you may not be given a second chance. Either you will have to watch the advertisement for a minute again, or they will simply tell you that you are allowed to make 1 attempt per hour and now wait for your next chance.

Perhaps it might seem to you that I am strongly criticizing file hosting services. No, because their owners also need to somehow cover the costs of maintaining such sites, because they simply need a huge disk space to accommodate the heap of files that users will upload to the file hosting service.

How can an ordinary person make money on a file hosting service?

Another way to monetize such a project is to encourage users to actively distribute links to their files, and the file hosting service itself undertakes to pay you for every 1000 file downloads. Payment depends mainly on the file size. For example, you will get more money for a heavy file. The reward range for 1000 downloads is approximately $1-50. It must be said that such a system of sharing profits with active users is not available on all file hosting services.

Another way to earn money is to attract referrals and encourage them to work on the service. You will earn 5-20% of their income. However, all these methods are gradually dying out.

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Typically, file hosting services have some restrictions that allow you to save more free space on your hard drives. Firstly, if the downloaded files have been lying around for a long time and no one has downloaded them, they can simply be deleted. Secondly, the service may specify an upper file size limit. For example, 30GB or 100GB.

History of scam exchangers

There is also a lot of negativity associated with such sites. In particular, many such resources began to be created with one sole purpose - to deceive people and defraud them of money. What dirty methods did the owners of these resources use?

For example, such a site may have everything you need. In this case, in reality, the necessary files are not there, but the script works as if they were there. You, of course, will be glad that you searched the entire Internet and finally found the information you needed, but that was not the case. You will be asked to enter a phone number, and then, as if by chance, they will say that it would also be nice to send an SMS to such and such a number.

The picture is completed by the fact that every minute new comments are added below, as if from real people, and all the reviews are positive. In general, this is not the only method that is used to deceive people, so be careful!

How you can use file hosting

Some services just offer file storage for your website. The more gigabytes you store, the more you pay.

In this screenshot you can see an example of one such service. As you can see, this is practically free file hosting, the tariff is very favorable.

Most file-sharing services subsequently turned into cloud storage. Such a site makes money in a different way. It gives any registered user some disk space. Typically 5-20 gigabytes. To increase this limit, you need to buy paid gigabyte packages with monthly or annual payment. The most popular cloud storages:

Yandex.Disk

Today it is an excellent solution for storing various important files. Imagine if one day your computer's hard drive breaks? What are you going to do? If all your important data is on cloud storage, you will be protected.

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The article talks about such a resource as a file hosting service. What is he like? Why are file hosting services needed at all and why are they gradually being replaced by torrent trackers?

The beginning of the computer age

Once upon a time, computers were an attribute only of research centers; they took up a lot of space, weighed hundreds of kilograms, and the computing power compared to today was simply ridiculous. Fortunately, digital technologies have developed and are developing by leaps and bounds, and today almost everyone can afford a computer, both for work and for entertainment purposes. Naturally, with their popularization, the need for ways to transmit data grew, be it a film, music or a program. Initially, floppy disks helped with this, and later laser disks and flash drives. But how to transfer a file if the recipient is very far away? This is what contributed to the development of such a thing as a resource designed for file sharing. But what is a file hosting service? How does it work and does it have a future? We'll figure this out.

Internet

Imagine that you have a file, be it a work document or something else, and you need to transfer it to another person. This can be done in different ways: on a disk, flash drive or memory card. But what if the recipient is very far away? In this case, the Internet comes to the rescue. Until relatively recently, many people only dreamed of unlimited fast access to the Internet, but now this will not surprise anyone. So what is a file hosting service? This is an intermediate server, an information repository on which the user downloads something, and then gives a download link to the recipient. Simply put, it is a kind of digital “intermediary” that provides access to files via the Internet. To protect information, you can set a password, without which a third party will not download anything, and also set a “lifetime” for the information, after which it will be deleted. So now we know what a file hosting service is.

But why is such a process needed if any file can be sent as an attachment to an email, through some messenger and the same Skype? Not just anyone. All of them have a limit on the size of the document being sent, and the last two methods require that the recipient confirm reception, otherwise the transfer will not take place. But with file hosting services everything is simpler: you just need to send a person a link, and he will decide when to download the information. But the purpose of such resources does not end there.

Multimedia

Most of these services were not originally created for purely business transfers; their main purpose was broad information exchange. Simply put, users upload a huge amount of music, books, movies and programs to these servers, and then share links. Various websites also resort to their help. For example, you have created a platform on which reviews of various software are posted and you can download them. But all this takes up a lot of space, and it is much more profitable to place files on exchangers and simply provide links to them on your resource.

Several major scandals were associated with such activities, which led to the closure of the international file hosting service EX.ua, since illegal digital content was distributed through it.

However, let’s take a closer look at two similar services, which are among the most popular in Russia and the post-Soviet space. They belong to the companies Yandex and Mail.ru.

File sharing service "Yandex"

This service was one of the first to provide the ability to conveniently download and share files; all you needed to access was a Yandex account. At the moment, the service called “Yandex.People” is closed. There is no access to it. It has been replaced by a new one - “Yandex.Disk”, and this is a full-fledged one. In fact, the previous capabilities for downloading and exchanging files remain, but a number of interesting and useful functions have been added, and the main one is the synchronization of data on the work computer and information on the server . So the new Yandex file hosting service is no worse than the previous one.

"Mail.ru"

A similar story happened with this company; there was a service called “[email protected]”, but due to the transition, again, to cloud technology, access to it was closed. However, if users still have information there, they don't have to worry. It has not been deleted and can be transferred to the cloud. The Mail file sharing service was very popular because it automatically saved data that was too large to be sent as an attachment to an email.

This company also carried out several profitable promotions to attract users to the new “cloud” technology. Thus, all users were provided with free disk space of 100 GB, and later, due to the service leaving the testing stage, even a whole terabyte. This is much more than competitors, where only 3-5 GB are initially provided, and you can expand the storage only for money. So the Mail file hosting service is deservedly popular.

Registration

One of the aspects that drove users away from file storage was registration. Since not everyone uses them on an ongoing basis, there were few people willing to go through the tedious registration process. In addition, many sites deliberately limited the download speed if the user was not authorized, or did not allow large data to be downloaded. Now we can highlight My-Files.RU as a good file hosting service without registration.

Most of these services eventually began to introduce paid subscriptions, which made it possible to remove restrictions on speed, file types and their sizes. But today torrent trackers are gradually and confidently taking a leading place. For the most part, they do not require registration, viewing advertisements, fees, and the speed is not limited in any way. So file hosting services in the ru-zone are losing their audience. However, like everyone else.

A file hosting service is a service that provides users with a place to store files and 24/7 access to them via the HTTP or FTP protocol. Such resources allow you to simply and conveniently exchange data between people from different cities and countries.

In order to use the services of a file hosting service, you need to upload files on a special page, using the site’s prompts, after which the service will provide you with a download link, which can be posted on your website, blog, social network page, or sent by email.

Why do we need file hosting services?

Using file sharing services has many advantages.

Here are just a few of them:

• Saving disk space. Despite the fact that the capacity of produced storage media is constantly increasing, there is never a lot of free space;
• Complete independence from the storage medium, since access to files stored on the file hosting service is possible at any time and from anywhere in the world with an Internet connection;
• Convenience in distributing your information and the presence of an affiliate program on file hosting sites. If the information you upload is interesting to people and has a certain popularity, you can get some reward for storing and downloading it.

However, there are some disadvantages to using file hosting services:

• Restrictions on the file storage period, which are applied by most file hosting services. If it has not been downloaded by at least one user within 2-3 months, it is automatically deleted;
• Low speed of downloading files to the service and back;
• Limited disk space for storing files. Most file hosting services allocate an average of 5 to 20 gigabytes of free space on the server.

How to make money on file sharing services?

The file hosting companies themselves make a profit in two ways. The first is displaying advertising. Before starting the download, a user who does not have a premium account watches a certain advertising video. The second way is to sell those same premium accounts.

But how can ordinary users make money on file hosting services? First of all, you need to find a file that will be popular.

The more downloads it has, the more money you will receive. The file format can be anything from popular songs and videos to games and programs. It is important to be the first to post the currently relevant file, without missing out on the so-called “ wave of downloads».

All services have different payment rates, however, on average it ranges from $5 to $20 per thousand unique downloads.

In general terms, the scheme for making money on file hosting services is as follows:

• Searching for a current file in various sources and approving it to be hosted;
• Writing an interesting and detailed description for the file;
• Registration on file hosting services. It is best to register in several services at once, since some sites require mirrors when posting news;
• Registration in services that allow you to post images (for example, Radical, Imageshack and others);
• Placing links to the downloaded file on various sites.

The final point is the most important part of the process, without which it will be impossible to make money on file hosting services, since it is not the fact of posting a link that is important, but the number of clicks on it.

It is best to post materials with a link to the file on the most popular sites. However, as a rule, the more popular the site, the higher its requirements for the design and content of such materials. The design must be competent and beautiful so that the person who sees them wants to download the file.

Before adding news or other material about a file posted on a file hosting service to the site, be sure to read the rules for adding it, otherwise it simply may not be published.

The most popular file hosting services and conditions for making money on them:

DepositFiles

One of the most popular file hosting services on the Internet. Since most users are accustomed to downloading interesting files from it, you should pay special attention to this service

When you register on the site, you will be awarded a bonus amount of $5. Earnings are accrued per 1000 downloads and directly depend on the file size. The minimum upload file size is 1 megabyte.

In addition to regular downloading, you can use the FTP protocol and download files that are located on Hotfile, Megaupload and Rapidshare (if you have a premium account).

The main advantage of using DepositFiles is that the rate at which you are paid for downloading your files varies depending on the number of people who downloaded the file. When certain indicators are reached, the file hosting service will pay you $10, $15, $20 and even $30 for 1000 downloads.

The minimum threshold for withdrawing funds to a PayPal or WebMoney wallet is $10, and when you accumulate more than $40, the reward is withdrawn automatically:

Letitbit

A very popular file hosting service. The download page is extremely well thought out and intelligently encourages the user to purchase a premium account.

The storage period for files depends on their size. A file up to 50 megabytes in size is stored for 30 days from the moment of the last download, a file up to 500 megabytes in size is stored for 25 days, and a file up to 2500 megabytes is stored for 10 days from the moment of downloading. Payment is made for 1000 downloads, and its amount depends on your rating on the site.

Rewards are paid to PayPal or WebMoney accounts. Please keep in mind that the preliminary rating calculation occurs during the day and the final rating calculation occurs at night, so the amount that was awarded during the day may change in the evening.

Letitbit has a special affiliate program: the site pays 25% of the income of attracted webmasters.

If you have your own website, you can take part in the webmaster incentive program: a person who switches to Letitbit from your website and purchases a premium account will bring you $0.1 in profit.

Turbobit

The total size of uploaded files is limited to 200 megabytes for unregistered users, and for those who have registered - 5 gigabytes. The number and maximum size of individual uploaded files is unlimited.

The storage period for the downloaded file is 30 days for registered users, 7 days for unregistered visitors and 60 days for owners of a premium account, which in this system is referred to as “turbo access”.

Keep in mind that from the point of view of making a profit on Turbobit, paid access is only interesting for the increased storage period of files; all other advantages are necessary for downloading files. The minimum size of uploaded files is 1 megabyte.

Cash payments from Turbobit are made only to an account in the WebMoney system. The period from submitting an application for payment to receiving the money is 4-5 business days. The minimum amount for payments is $10. There is no need to wait until there are 1000 downloads, since you can apply immediately.

Let's say I have a file that I want to transfer over the Internet. If you need to send it to one person, you can do this via email, Skype, Viber or via a social network.

But for this, the file must be small in computer size and must be sent personally, so to speak, from hand to hand. But this is not always convenient and not always suitable. Sometimes you need to send something large (more than a gigabyte). Or you need to provide access to information not to one person, but to a group of people whom you do not know personally. And sometimes you just want to download data somewhere so that you can retrieve it at any time.

That's why there are sites called file hosting services. You can upload information from your computer there for free and retrieve it from there at any time. Or receive a link that you can pass on to other people or publish somewhere (on your or someone else’s website, social network page, etc.).

What is a file hosting service

A file hosting service is a special hosting for files where anyone can upload data for free for storage and exchange over the Internet.

There are such sites as paid and free. But usually this is some kind of hybrid: you are given a certain amount of space (often quite impressive) for free use, but if you need more space, then it costs money.

Nowadays the name “file sharing” is not used so often. They are increasingly called the fashionable word “Cloud” or “Disk”.

Verified free hosting

If you have mail on gmail.com, then you already have such storage. To open it, you need to click on the button at the top right and select “Disk”. If there is no email on Google, you will have to register.

The rules are the same: if there is mail on Mail, then there is also a cloud. To access it, you need to click on the “Cloud” inscription at the top (on the blue stripe). If there is no mail on mail.ru, then you will need to get it by registering in the system.

Other . There are a whole bunch of other free hosting services. But they are a little less popular and most of them are not as good. And there is no guarantee that some new service with a very attractive offer will work for a long time.

What is better not to use

There is a category of file hosting services that I would not recommend using in any form - do not upload or download anything there. These are sites where there is a lot of “yellow” and often outright fraudulent advertising.

Where can you encounter them?. Download links from these services can often be found on various resources with something free: programs, books, etc. Indeed, in addition to the fact that you can place absolutely any data on them, they provide the opportunity to earn money: for each download, the person who posted this file receives some small money.

How to use file hosting

The principle is simple: open your Internet disk and upload data there. After downloading, they will be stored there and can be downloaded from there at any time. Or open directly from the disk.

And if a file needs to be transferred to another person or group of people, then in the settings you can make it public. Then the system will provide a link to it, through which anyone can download it. And with this link, do whatever you want: send by mail, Skype, Viber, publish on a website or social network.

Usually, understanding uploading and downloading is not difficult - everything is intuitive. But, just in case, I wrote on this topic.