"If you want to pay for web hosting you need to know about BANDWIDTH. You need to understand STORAGE and TRANSFER."

No matter what kind of site you operate, before you operate, you need to understand BANDWIDTH. Even if your page resides on a free adult host -so you don’t have to pay for it- you should still be familiar with what BANDWITH is and how it works. And if you’re paying for BANDWIDTH, then you absolutely must understand what it is and how it effects your pocketbook.

Bandwidth is a combination of STORAGE and TRANSFER.

STORAGE is space on a web server. When you have a hosting account, you pay for a designated amount of space where you can house images, videos, HTML documents, etc. That space is known as STORAGE. If you have a free hosting account you are usually allotted 10-50 megabytes of STORAGE. Ten to fifty megabytes isn’t really that much. For example, one average thumbnail gallery is around one megabyte in STORAGE size, if you include the full-size images along with the HTML document, ad banner graphics and thumbnails. If you’re paying for a web host, then your provider charges you a certain amount for STORAGE. The more STORAGE you need, the more you pay for it. If you own a paysite, you could need anywhere from one to one hundred gigabytes of STORAGE.

TRANSFER is essentially the action of surfers downloading your content data to their browsers. Every design graphic, Flash banner, video clip, image file and HTML document on your site is made up of bytes. A web host charges a fee for the amount of bytes TRANSFERRED from your server to user’s machines. Every time a surfer opens one of your pages, they are TRANSFERRING your data bytes to their browser software. The bigger and busier your site, the more data you TRANSFER.

To refresh your memory about data size, let’s review:

1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte.
1000 kilobytes = 1 megabyte
1000 megabytes = 1 gigabyte.

To understand TRANSFER a little better, let’s refer to that 1-megabyte gallery mentioned in paragraph three. Let’s imagine you’ve created a gallery page for submission to a TGP. If you’ve done things correctly, then you’ve probably created an HTML page with a couple of ad banners, some teensy little design graphics and about 15 thumbnails. That whole page (graphics/thumbs included) could be anywhere from 50 kilobytes to 200 kilobytes in size. In addition, surfers will also view all the full-sized images you have linked to those 15 thumbnails. A full-size image can be anywhere between 50 kilobytes and 150 kilobytes in size. When a surfer looks at your gallery page and clicks every thumbnail, they are TRANSFERRING somewhere in the vicinity of 1-2 megabytes of data to their machine.

Suppose you built an absolutely fabulous gallery page, which you submitted to all the busiest TGP sites. Also suppose that most of those TGP sites listed your gallery. That could mean that on one listed day, your gallery could receive as many as 50,000 visits, if not more. While not all 50,000 surfers will look at every single full-size image in your gallery, chances are those 50,000 will at least TRANSFER your 100 kilobyte gallery page to their browsers. A 100 kilobytes page will burn 1 megabyte in bandwidth for every ten visitors. 50,000 visitors will burn 500 megabytes. 500 megabytes is one half of one gigabyte.

When you pay for a web hosting account you choose a package that will suit your needs.

For example, a host may offer a beginner package. That beginner package could cost as little as ten dollars a month. What you need to do is examine what is offered for that ten dollars. You need to determine how much STORAGE and how much TRANSFER you get for ten dollars. These ten-dollar packages usually limit you to something like 120 megabytes of STORAGE and 2 gigabytes of TRANSFER per month. If you exceed your BANDWIDTH limits, you have to pay extra money to your web host. That extra money is known as OVERAGE and that’s where they really stick it to you.

To recap, BANDWIDTH is the combination of STORAGE and TRANSFER. Web hosts charge for BANDWIDTH. Your free adult host has to pay for the BANDWIDTH that you STORE and TRANSFER. When you buy hosting you pay for the BANDWIDTH. If you exceed your pre-determined STORAGE and TRANSFER limits, you have to pay OVERAGE fees. OVERAGE fees are generally higher per byte than the fees of a hosting package.

If you want to pay for web hosting you need to know about BANDWIDTH. You need to understand STORAGE and TRANSFER. If you do, then you’ll know why it’s best to make your images and files as small in byte size as possible. When you understand BANDWIDTH you’ll see why it is that a free adult host puts a limit on STORAGE space. If you comprehend BANDWIDTH, then you have a better idea of what your hosting needs will be for you adult site.