im noticing a steady growth on my image comment site and seem to be getting close to my bandwidth limit on my virtual server. my question goes out to those who run similar sites...
do you just keep upgrading to meet your demand? virtual or dedicated? Do you even out on cost of server/revenue?
One thing to do is make sure that nobody is leeching off the pictures posted to your site - so disable hotlinking.
It is not uncommon for many people to leech off such sites and that can easily account for multiple GB per day as the site gains popularity. Obviously you can offset any leeching by requesting a donation from sites that use it a lot to help offset hosting costs.
The other thing is to enforce limits - so people can host 10 pictures free or a set size limit free, but to host more they would need to pay a small amount per month ($5 for every x storage or every x amount of pictures etc) - if enough people subscribed it can easily offset any bandwidth increases.
