Comments on: Dilemma: SA or International?

By: glitch

glitch — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:03:35 +0000

oh ya, and what warwick said… advertise guys!!! the more popularity, the more people will use the service. and if your infrastructure becomes overwhelmed and you need to do some upgrades, then you’ll have some money from advertising to take care of that. and when you start getting really big, start introducing value added services at a price!

By: glitch

glitch — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 21:00:41 +0000

guys, firstly i must say well done. i had this idea but didnt have the starting capital or location. anyways, i truely understand the situation you find yourself in. however i’d like to point something out that some people will agree with. why dont you make quickshare local only – like, only accessible from within SA borders. you wont need any international bandwidth to use this service, just as a perk for the employees running this site and the company. if people want to have their stuff accessible internationally, then let them be on a paid package, but construct that model so well that you guys dont end up running at a loss. this is a really good service guys, think of whats in the best interests of SA’s internet users… we need sites like this to share things with each other since our damn lines are so slow to be able to email things etc.

i say keepin things within the country will do good. if some want international, make ‘em pay!

By: Warwick

Warwick — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 09:33:24 +0000

Local rules !

Just a thought, if you host on international servers we could have problems accessing the data via the transparent proxies. I’m thinking RapidShare that is useless.

I suggest limiting the free account’s space, introduce paid for services in various sizes making the larger sizes the cheapest per MB pricing. Introduce advertising to compliment your revenue streams.

By: SpoOkie

SpoOkie — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 08:36:01 +0000

I’d love a paid for service. The 30mb filesize restriction is getting me a bit down atm as i would love to host some of the HD gametrailers locally (quickshare is the only option at this stage) and hosting the content on my own site is even much more expensive.

I’m all for a paid for service.

By: Squonk

Squonk — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 13:09:33 +0000

I agree with the CD123′s comments. The fact that you host locally is your selling point.

I would therfore suggest solution 1 – keep it free for local small users and introduce a pay service for those who want more.

The price will however have to be fixed at a level at which using international bandwith is still more expensive, otherwise the international file sharing sites will be more attractive.

By: Ismail

Ismail — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 22:03:49 +0000

Hate telkom

SA need more free Game and Software Developers
I can’t do it all alone as a grade 11 Student

By: CD123

CD123 — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 11:37:36 +0000

As a former website owner I would suggest that you do not take any big decisions while the site is so small.

The local bandwidth is a HUGE advantage and the 200MB free is in my opinion enough of an advantage (on local bandwidth) to draw the attention and new users. More users make your ad space more valuable and will you (hopefully) be able to get some income from it.

As per one of the remarks above, going full out for international bandwidth just put you in competition with the overseas guys with similar or better offers (no specific advantage for local users).

Cost is also a huge aspect (obviously) and where you intend to sell it, cheaper is normally better, but local bandwidth might still be preffered by certain users, even at the extra cost.

I would suggest, 200MB free local as a marketing ploy (and to get user numbers up) and (if possible) option between local or international for paying customers.

Regards

By: FleRoY

FleRoY — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:54:29 +0000

I can’t say I didn’t fear this would happen.
Bandwidth is our greatest problem in SA, well the cost there of.

In my opinion, keeping the site local is the only option that would keep 90% of the users interested.
As far as my knowledge goes QuickShare is the first and only file host in SA, so noone can refuse the price of the paid packages.

-~= I vote option 1 =~-

I was wondering if you were planning on having a package designed for users/companies to have offsite backups? Due to certain policies, Brokers are forced to have two backup systems in place, on-site and off. Which needs to be updated once or twice a month.

Would love to hear how things turn out.
QuickShare is SA’s one and only, hope the support from the users will help keep it that way.

Regards

By: Stoke

Stoke — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 10:40:50 +0000

If you do host overseas, then you are no longer differentiated from the other websites offering a similar service.

However, offering this kind of service for free at those costs is simply no on.

I suggest hosting the free packages overseas, and then providing us with the choice of overseas and local paid hosting.

I am however at a loss regarding the high cost of local bandwidth. Surely you should be hosting with an ISP that can differentiate between local and international throughput. That ISP should then charge accordingly, based on the current accepted price of ADSL local and international bandwidth.

I’m also pretty sure that our oh-so-great ISP’s are not on the ball insofar as this kind of hosting is concerned. I’ll go do some investigating. Laters.