jpegr.com

smemon

sink your teeth into this lads

jpegr.com

now owned by yours truely.

criticism/advice/praise/kitchen sink all welcome

Shrimp

smemon

you would have to visit just when it goes down

being transferred atm, will re-post here when it gets back up

edit: thought everything was fully transferred... obviously not. *waits impatiently*

Shrimp

How much storage have you got for the images you hope to host?

smemon

over 200gb

can upgrade host if needed...

Shrimp

ok, i wonder how much a site like imageshack would have... not to say u need that much at all.. but out of curiosity.

smemon

ha ha, well the site is basically brand new.

So for the first few months, i'll have no problems.. should the site take off, i'll go with private ads & should be earning enough in advertising to pay for more space.

once i start to run into debt, the site will be worth a small fortune so i'll sell it

but i don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon.

Shrimp

http://www.jpegr.com/ wrote:

Access denied for user 'jpegr1'@'208.113.128.0/255.255.224.0' to database 'jpegr1'

to let u know.

smemon

yeah thanks, workin on it at atm

Shrimp

Time for bed, ttyl.. good luck with that.

Gordon

Man, imageshack must have millions of terabytes of storage! Good luck with it smemon, it's giving the same error message now btw.

smemon

................annnnnnnnnnnd we're back.

all problems sorted. jpegr up and running again

Gordon

Nice design, I like it.



Would you not be better off making the code of the image include some jimbled random numbers like imageshack? Or does that happen automatically with duplicate image names?

What are the member only features?

smemon

members get their own gallery, like a flickr thing

Rollo Tamasi

Howya smemon?

I got this error message when i tried to upload a 12mb Tindersticks mp3

jpegr wrote:

Uh Oh! That image you tried to upload was a little too big, the maximum size for Guests is KB, and KB for Members.

It's a good domain name, i even bought one with an 'r' recently too, but this crowd over here are going to cause you some problems if you're site is sucsessful.

Maybe in hindsight the domain wasn't a good choice?

Also...why would I sign up to your site over Flickr, Picasa Web, Imageshack, Photobucket...etc...etc...

Does your site have hotlinking enabled or disabled?

If I was thick stupid and didn't have a notion about the web but i know how to use a camera i might think that i can only host jpegs on your site. What about bitmaps, pngs and gifs? If i was even thicker, and please note the if..I would have spent 2 days trying to click on your logo to see if itbrings me back to your hompage.

Do you do any watermarking? Maybe you should for unregistered images? The likelyhood is that a once off user wants to upload an image to share on a forum or to give to a friend...by watermarking it your logo will appear on the footer of the image...hey presto free advertising! I would only do this on images larger than 200 * 200 or whatever because otherwise you're running the risk of obstructing the main image.

What's your revenue model? How are you going to make money from this site?

Who is your target audience? You're hosting in the states, fair enough you have bandwidth to consider, but if you're looking at the Irish market should you not have jumped for the .ie too? It's going to be very hard to rank high in the SERPS in such a congested market place. Compare the irish market to the international market. Obviously the Irish one is a lot easier to rank in than the international one. Your keywords, in my opinion, should be free, image, gallery, photo, photography, hosting, ireland, jpeg, jpg.

You are using 'slogan' as your tagline, it is within this div which your main keyword of 'photo hosting' appears. Change 'slogan' to H1

There is no background info (about us page), contact form, no browsing of images/gallerys, very little instant interaction, no visual uploader, no rss. You have no meta data either on your pages.

Did you pay for this script?

Nice logo but be carefull, you may fall into a flickr copycat category.
Excellent use of Google Ads. They were the first thing i clicked on...but maybe that isn't such a great thing since it brought me to Photobucket. You can configure google ads to blacklist your rivals.

May I recommend an affilation with PixMania. You can get ads for digital cameras on your site.

If you quote me in your reply I want half your profit.:)

Rollo Tamasi

Blinklist, Furl, Fark, Del.iou.us, Digg...they are all your friends. Add the badges to your footer. Get your friends to Digg/Blink you.

Social Bookmarking is where it's at for this kind of site.
But i wouldn't do that until you add more fetures.

Smemon, where is the blog like? There is no personal touch on the site. It's too cold as it stands.

Rollo Tamasi

I signed up this morning but I used the same password as my username while filling out the form and it went thru. My email address wasn't confirmed either. When i got into the members panel...i felt like this guy >

How do i create a gallery?
The process isn't clear. Maybe a tutorial either hosted within the member's panel or an email tutorial would be a worthwile addition?

smemon

hmmm..

you guys are pretty demanding

anyway, the site is fairly new... i plan on expanding/adding new features in the future. I'm aware it lacks a bit of interaction but again that was what i was looking for.. non-nonsense, straight to the point.

However looking back on all the comments perhaps it's a little *too* no-nonsense.

Obviously my target audience atm is the noObs, worldwide... the Irish market, yes is less competitive but is limited. It would take a bit of cash to advertise it here in Ireland which i don't really have. At the minute i'm using myspace bulletins, forums etc... to advertise. Fairly happy with the results so far.

The ads are nicely blended, however getting people to click on 2 ads to gain revenue is a bit like pissing against the wind It's early days though so i'll have to leave them for now and experiment as time goes on. Anyway, revenue isn't a concern atm as i just want to polish up the site first.

The site is 100% custom made. Script, logo, design etc... (not by me of course, i'm not that good). Like i said, i plan on smoothing the edges a bit and making it a little more user friendly.

also, i did buy the site with the domain as a big selling point. 5 letter .com, logical, could be worth quite a bit with a pagerank and plenty of traffic. However i don't plan on selling anytime soon.

appreciate the comments lads. I'll try and take them on board when adding new features to the site

smemon

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

I got this error message when i tried to upload a 12mb Tindersticks mp3

File size is capped - 1mb for guests, 2mb for members.

As i'm not google i can't afford to be storing bucket loads of data.

i've got about 220gb of free space which is quite a bit. However i really don't want to fork out for more storage anytime soon maybe once the site can pay for itself i'll expand the cap but for now, 2mb for an image, should be more than enough

Rollo Tamasi

I think a lot of what i said has gone over your head a bit. You didn't address much of the advise i gave (which is all solid btw, i'm not shooting you down or anything)

I tried to upload an mp3 and the error i got back was:-

Uh Oh! That image you tried to upload was a little too big, the maximum size for Guests is KB, and KB for Members.

Rollo Tamasi

smemon wrote:

2mb for an image, should be more than enough

that surely should be "2mb cache is enough for an upload of 2mb"?
Are you using any GD Lib compression on your images?

I'll be honest with you...In my opinion you won't sell on this website and won't make a return on it. The approach is wrong.

smemon

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

You didn't address much of the advise i gave (which is all solid btw, i'm not shooting you down or anything)

I tried to upload an mp3 and the error i got back was:-

well in fairness, i've had about 12 hours to address the advice

anyway, all of those things will be addressed in due course.

i'm talking to a coder atm, looking at polishing up the site a bit. Have noted your advice and have a few things myself i want to tweak.

i'm going to keep the no-nonsense approach though. Looking at imageshack, my homepage seems to be cleaner, neater and more web 2.0.

But with regards member cpanel and help/demo etc.. it needs to be improved. Having said that i don't want to overcrowd the site with idiot proof tuitions and flashy step by step demo's. The site homepage is virtually self-explanitory.

I agree beyond that though, it gets a little confusing for an average noOb.

smemon

ok,
i've got a coder to do some work. (well, most of rollo's suggestions )

so the technical side of things should be ironed out soon. Im not too worried about the social side of things atm - blogs,diggs etc.. i can do that myself at any time.

i'm just looking for any more advice/feedback on the site you guys have.

first impressions seem to be good from everyone i've talked to, it's just the member area and once you actually upload something which isn't so hot.

that's the bit i'm going to address but just wondering if you guys have anymore suggestions

mneylon

The navigation is a bit counter-intuitive

I uploaded an image as a guest. It generated the code etc., but when I viewed the image using the link provided it opened it in the same window and I lost the image ... basically

mneylon

Your legal texts (terms and privacy) really need to be expanded on.

smemon

blacknight wrote:

Your legal texts (terms and privacy) really need to be expanded on.

yes, two points i noted straight away. When you press the 'back' button, you lose the codes.

text in general is pretty short and sweet. A little too short and looks quite strange because there isn't a big list of terms i'll beef it up a bit.

Seth Brundle

smemon wrote:

text in general is pretty short and sweet. A little too short and looks quite strange because there isn't a big list of terms i'll beef it up a bit.

it seems like you are looking at your terms the wrong way. They are not there to look short and sweet to keep visitors happy. They are there to protect your ass against libel from your visitors and their actions.

mneylon

smemon wrote:

text in general is pretty short and sweet. A little too short and looks quite strange because there isn't a big list of terms i'll beef it up a bit.

It's not simply a matter of "beefing it up".

You need to protect yourself and your users and comply with the law.

It may seem boring and tedious, but when you start getting hit with the legal letters you're better off

Rollo Tamasi

smemon wrote:

well in fairness, i've had about 12 hours to address the advice

what i meant is that it looked like you weren't going to acknowledge there was a problem with anything in the first place. simply because the site looks nice doesn't mean it's functional and just because it's bare doesn't mean it's going to be easy to use.

There is very little direction on the site...you have an opening parapgraph which tells very little of the site, a registration form which fails to mention the benefits of registering, an upload form which fails to mention the file types and size requirement a logo which fails to link back to the homepage.

smemon

you have an opening parapgraph which tells very little of the site, a registration form which fails to mention the benefits of registering, an upload form which fails to mention the file types and size requirement a logo which fails to link back to the homepage.

which is exactly why i opened this thread to get feedback.

i'll take advice on board, weigh everything up, then decide what would be best for the site. I'm not simply posting for the craic. I appreciate the advice so far, and am going to act on it. But as an individual with a full time job, time isn't something i have a lot of so it will be a slow process.

It's not simply a matter of "beefing it up".

You need to protect yourself and your users and comply with the law.

yeah i understand that, just putting it in lay mans terms anyway, despite the negativity here, it's doing pretty well. 1000 page impressions yesterday, 55 registrations, 600 impressions so far today, 30 registrations.

Worldwide traffic and a few diggs. Things could be worse. The fact people are actually using the site rather than just coming to it and saying wow, nice homepage, is pretty encouraging as i don't regard the site as anywhere near perfect myself.

heggie

hey smemon good luck with the site!, I think it looks quite nice, as a matter of interest did you have a white version of it ever? also, regarding your t&c i think people are saying you may be best getting a legal professional to draft it, as user generated content leaves you open to a lot!

smemon

heggie wrote:

hey smemon good luck with the site!, I think it looks quite nice, as a matter of interest did you have a white version of it ever? also, regarding your t&c i think people are saying you may be best getting a legal professional to draft it, as user generated content leaves you open to a lot!

thanks heggie,

i bought the site so im not too sure if it was ever white. It's only a couple of months old though so i doubt it.

yeah, i've added more t & c's and plan on developing it further. I think i have everything covered loosely however i'll still try and be more specific with them.

on a side note, i've had a mountain of traffic from China recently, i've seen the site on a few chinese blogs so thats encouraging.

atm, the US and China lead the traffic with Ireland in 3rd place 57 different countries have now hit JPEGr

ah... the joys of having no target market

Rollo Tamasi

smemon wrote:

ah... the joys of having no target market

and what did you do to target these people speciffically.... or did they fall on your lap?

/
and why do you keep acting childish in this thread? the advise i have given and the advise you have received from others is decent and all you seem to do is post smilies at every attempt. it gives the impression that you're doing your best to swerve away from any criticism, construtive criticism i might add.

zAbbo

Doesn't render correctly for me, text is sitting over the upload button.

Quick advice, don't ask for feedback, and try to act on parts of it.

Sit down, re-evaluate the site, and work out where you are going with it, apart from do-it-up-sell-it-on-get-rich which seems to be the impression from your posts.

No target market, what kinda crap is that ?

smemon

and what did you do to target these people speciffically.... or did they fall on your lap?

and why do you keep acting childish in this thread? the advise i have given and the advise you have received from others is decent and all you seem to do is post smilies at every attempt. it gives the impression that you're doing your best to swerve away from any criticism, construtive criticism i might add.

well, for some reason, the site has been blogged about on chinese blogs along with being submitted to web 2.0 directory which i didn't do so that brought in a wad of traffic.

i'm not swerving away from criticism, or else i wouldn't reply. As we talk, i'm implementing some of the advice given from yourself.

Doesn't render correctly for me, text is sitting over the upload button.

yeah sorry, we're working on it atm..

No target market, what kinda crap is that ?

well, the kind of 'crap' which is working quite well atm. I'm reluctant to target a specific niche, as i'm happy with traffic at present. I'm going to try and slowly increase traffic worldwide and if i can't sustain the traffic numbers, i'll then sit down and try to narrow it.

atm, my target market is the world China & the US dominate my traffic so i'd be a fool to focus solely on the Irish market or European one. I want to keep it 'global friendly' for as long as possible.

heggie

at the same time, your market isnt a 90 year old amish farmer, everything has a target market, *maybe* yours is broader than the next idea, its still key to identify it tho

also, just letting u know i have directory access to the files

http://www.jpegr.com/uploads/2/

prob not what you want.

smemon

heggie wrote:

at the same time, your market isnt a 90 year old amish farmer, everything has a target market, *maybe* yours is broader than the next idea, its still key to identify it tho

also, just letting u know i have directory access to the files

http://www.jpegr.com/uploads/2/

prob not what you want.

cheers for that, we're in the process of tweaking things a bit, fixing errors as we go along...

as for the target market - it's basically any internet user - forums, myspace, general browser...

Rollo Tamasi

this

smemon wrote:

well, the kind of 'crap' which is working quite well atm. I'm reluctant to target a specific niche, as i'm happy with traffic at present. I'm going to try and slowly increase traffic worldwide and if i can't sustain the traffic numbers, i'll then sit down and try to narrow it.

+ this

smemon wrote:

atm, my target market is the world China & the US dominate my traffic so i'd be a fool to focus solely on the Irish market or European one. I want to keep it 'global friendly' for as long as possible.

+ this

smemon wrote:

as for the target market - it's basically any internet user - forums, myspace, general browser...

= very little sense.

I'm sorry but it doesn't make sense.

You're totally out of touch with your users. The numbers might be there at the moment but how on earth are you going to keep targeting chineese and american users? Can you speak chineese? Do you have any affiliations with any other websites? I will be very surprised if you sustain the current level of interest.

Out of curiosity, because I am curious, how are you targetting myspace users?

Rollo Tamasi

smemon wrote:

well, for some reason, the site has been blogged about on chinese blogs along with being submitted to web 2.0 directory which i didn't

Any chance of a link to any of these blogs?

Have you attempted to translate these blogs? It would be worth your while to get in contact with a Chineese person in your apartantment block/college/work place/ local resturant and get it translated. After all these guys seem to be your users. You should find out what they're saying and why they're saying it.

You can use google and altavista to translate the pages but they don't also work so well. If you're serious then you should get the translation done in person asap.

Shrimp

Did you mean: jpgr.com ..:rolleyes: could be a problem

Rollo Tamasi

You paid 500dollars for this site without having a business plan! That's very naive.

How are you going to develop this site? Are you getting support from the original scripter or are you hiring a new developer? The oppurtunity to expand this site is quickly disappearing...

so the technical side of things should be ironed out soon. Im not too worried about the social side of things atm - blogs,diggs etc.. i can do that myself at any time.

And you dugg the site yourself after saying the above...This project could be very costly for you.

smemon

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Any chance of a link to any of these blogs?

Have you attempted to translate these blogs? It would be worth your while to get in contact with a Chineese person in your apartantment block/college/work place/ local resturant and get it translated. After all these guys seem to be your users. You should find out what they're saying and why they're saying it.

You can use google and altavista to translate the pages but they don't also work so well. If you're serious then you should get the translation done in person asap.

it's all positive stuff or basically like a press release - nothing hardhitting, just a general comment on the site and what it's about. (or so google translate tells me )

as for targeting users, i've done no paid advertising. The site must have been digged or stumbled and somebody blogged it - triggering off other bloggers to write about it...

spanish blog
delicious
french blog
another spanish blog
chinese
italian blog
more chinese

need i go on

i was also submitted here
i didn't do it. Anyway, that brought in lots of traffic too.

as you can see, JPEGr is universal. The 'less text, less ads, web 2.0, simple' approach seems to be the key

Rollo Tamasi

smemon wrote:

The site must have been digged or stumbled and somebody blogged it - triggering off other bloggers to write about it...

omg

Rollo Tamasi

Do you want to know what i seriously think...

either you are involved in some sort of spamming or have been duped into purchasing this domain/script.

Have you signed up to any blog for profit programs? Why the decit?

i didn't do it. Anyway, that brought in lots of traffic too.

I don't believe you, sorry, you have paid inclussion written all over yourself.

smemon

You paid 500dollars for this site without having a business plan! That's very naive.

I'm a business man, i wouldn't buy it for the craic I can confidently say, that $500 was an absolute steal and it was a gamble which has paid off. Do the 3 $1000 bids not suggest i grabbed a bargain?

How are you going to develop this site? Are you getting support from the original scripter or are you hiring a new developer? The oppurtunity to expand this site is quickly disappearing...

Both actually. Just last need i hired a guy and polished up a few things - added contact form, got logo linking back to homepage, thumbnail of image when you upload a picture...

we're working on more. The opportunity to expand will always be there. At the minute the site is being used, it's not simply a one-off site people look at and never come back to. (well, that may be the case in Ireland).

So rather than expand, i'm going to try and make the current features cleaner and more user friendly.

smemon

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Why the decit?

what decit?

yes, i digged the site, but never promoted the digg.

i also added to stumble upon... but i suppose i rigged that too and opened multiple accounts to stumble it :rolleyes:

i'd love to know who submitted it to that directory, it certainly wasn't me. I never even knew it existed until i started getting referrals from it.

i've blogged about this irish attitude before - you've claimed i'm a liar, a cheat and a spammer basically I don't get it. What have i done to offend you? Ask for advice on a site?

Rollo Tamasi

Ok grand. I take everything back.

I think you have a uniquely original website which has a fantastic core base of users with whom you have an excellent relationship. I think you have spent your money very wisely considering the seller of the script/domain looked so desperate to sell that he dropped his price drastically. I don't think there is anything unusual about blog posts popping up of nowhere; neither do I think there is anything strange about any directories or anything else that may have your domain listed. I do not think you are over your head or out of your depth at all. I think whoever codes your site will do a great job at picking up left over pieces. I can see that you take criticism and analysis of your business plan and marketing strategies with exceptional professionalism.

Best of luck smemon. I'm leaving this thread for a while now as I can't bare my own honesty.

Out of interest, what are your plans for roykeane.net?

Adam

/me undoes snip

Rollo, I think you're going over the top and that your criticism is no longer constructive in any way.

Rollo Tamasi

Mirror wrote:

Rollo, I think you're going over the top and that your criticism is no longer constructive in any way.

I actually think so too, my apolgies for going OTT smenon.

smemon

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

Out of interest, what are your plans for roykeane.net?

'tis a work in progress. The domain was free, so i bought it. Slapped adsense on it to earn a few crumbs. You know i almost feel i'm doing something illegal here

anyway, no hard feelings. Your original post was very useful and i've already acted on several of your suggestions

Rollo Tamasi

no probs, ttly