Every once in a while, I get a craving to buy a website or two. It’s the same reason a coin collector buys a new coin…it’s their hobby. I own about 10 sites, and I’m always looking for more, but I want to try something different this time.

If you couldn’t guess by the title, I’m looking into a couple options for acquiring an image or file hosting site:

1. Start one from scratch and build it up.

2. Take over an existing one and start promoting it.

Some of you might think option two is the easiest route, and it may be, but there is always something exciting and fun about starting your own site and taking it to the top.

Sure, I could do both, but I only want to concentrate on one, that way I can give it the full attention that it needs. I hate having too many of the same kind of sites, and only attending to one of them while the rest fall off the map. Promoting a single website properly can get expensive in some cases, let alone multiple sites.

Anyhow, the main draw with image hosting sites (like imageshack.us if you don’t know what I’m talking about), is the insane amount of traffic they can end up getting. They remind me a lot of proxy sites (which I used to run 10 of those, and it was kind of tedious), in the aspect that they’ll always be needed. I know I personally upload images at least once a day, if not more, and I’m just one out of millions doing that.

I would love to own a highly trafficked site like that, and funnel some of the traffic to other sites of mine. Instead of running ads, I would put up banners of my own sites, and count on the high traffic to them to convert.

I’m going to do some more research before I make a decision, but I’ve already found an awesome domain name if I decide to go with option 1 (build one from scratch). I might just pick up the domain name anyway, but we’ll see what happens.

Bottom line – what are your experiences? Have any of my dear readers ever owned an file hosting site? If so, how did it go? Was it a pain in the ass, or easy money? I value your input, and would love to hear your stories!