As an independant Webmaster, I have found it hard to find royalty free images relevant to Dating that I can put on my site. I see that you have made an effort to include a few images as part of your components, though not everyone wants to use the component option for the site. It would be useful if you could create an image library that Webmasters could browse and download and/or edit to use on their site to make it look more attractive to the end user. Then we could upload to our own server space and reference the images from the DIYDATING site and incorporate it into the design as we see fit.

Is this a possibility?

This is a good idea, the more images the better.
Other wise the sites are starting to look the same.

A facilty to upload images to our websites space would be a good idea as well.
I know you dont want webmasters to take a lot of your valuable space up, perhaps you could allocate a certain amount each. say 20 meg each, it makes it easier to make own banners, logo, header baners etc. Then upload them.

20Mb ? Do you know how many images this would hold ?

Most of our webservers are RAID 50 machines with 15k SCSI drives in them. These SCSI drives are small and very fast but aren't very big.
With modern SATA drives it would be easy for us to create a server with a couple of terrabytes of storage, unfortunately storage isn't the reason why we can't allow people to do this.
Since our system is free to set up, once people realise that they have free storage, this may get abused, and since the data/photos/information is held on our servers, we are responsible for the content they hold, and if this content is illegal then we may be liable. I would rather not take this risk, when its just as easy to find other free hosting suppliers around the web that aren't in the UK, that don't have all the laws and regulations set out like we do.

Gary

I understand the point you made about the legal issues of uploading images onto your servers. But it would still be useful for you to have a royalty free image library that we could have access/download and edit, and then upload to our own servers, like the system you have in place for image packs. Then our sites would not all start looking the same. Can this not be introduced?

There are hundreds of websites out there that provide royalty free images. These sites are constantly being updated and would be a much better source of images that what we could produce.

Adding a library server isn't something that we will be doing within the next few months, but it may be an option in the future.

Gary

Can you point to a few URL's that provide these royalty free photo's?

hi,

There are lots of sites out there that do this, i suggest doing a google search for 'royalty free images' and you should get plently of results. Take a look at these sites to get you started
istock photos
stock.xchng

Charles

you can buy a licence for some very good photo's and they're not expensive, as little as $20, (just check your agreement carefully)

I don't mean to get anybody's backs up but lets look at what we've already got;

1: FREE database
2: FREE subdomain (if required)
3: FREE hosting
4: FREE support (for us and OUR customers)

and you want FREE photo's and more FREE disk space?

Why not just ask them for a cheque every month instead?
How much bandwidth are our sites using up combined?

If you're serious about making a go at this then you surely have to put something in.

Lets look at a franchised shop in your high street (essentially that's what we have, a FREE franchise), the franchiser can only offer you, the franchisee, so much without them doing ALL the work and staffing and covering the overheads.

Q. What are our fixed costs?
A. Domain name, anywhere between £1.99/year and maybe $7.85/year (shop around, .com is normally cheaper state side but check renewal costs) and maybe a hosting service from as little as £1.99/month, to store any extra images you've got i.e. buttons or photo's if you've strayed from the FREE templates (DON'T USE FREE HOSTING if your income relies on it)

Q. What are our variable costs?
A. ppc's etc. As much as you're willing to invest, which is what it's about, we're RUNNING A BUSINESS plain and simple.

This is a multi-million pound industry, the competition is fierce, look on Google:
Results = about 7,650,000 for sex contacts

If you're serious about making a go and are committed then invest some time (a lot to start with), a little money and reap the rewards. If you've the heart and the balls you'll make it happen, either with an online or off-line business, it won't come overnight and it won't come neither free nor easy but stick at it.

If you're after free money for doing nothing then play the lottery.

Okay, I'm off my soap-box now.
Am I alone in my thoughts?

Also I've found Google Ad-words sucks, conversion rate=60-1, with the same ad, same site, same key words on Overture, conversion rate=6.7-1 over a SEVEN day period. I don't know if the punters are different (just looking for free stuff, lol) or if it's flawed and a robot is somehow trying to waste competitors budgets.
If anyone has experience of ad-words either positive or negative please let me know.

Thanks.

Good luck to you all, (even though we're competing)