Torrent sites making $50,000 per month

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...BitTorrent.gif

As we all know high traffic sites generate a lot of ad revenue. One question that I have been dying to see answered is how much money these big torrent sites are making. Armed with my scary question I emailed a few bittorrent webmasters and waited for them to reply. Almost all webmasters were hesitant to answer my question and were not sure if they could trust me, one even replied that they only do press releases via TorrentFreak. After negotiating with a few webmasters, they agreed to hand out a global estimation on how much revenue they generate, under the condition that I don’t reveal their identity.

Having emailed around 12 torrent site owners, only 4 of them were ready to spill the beans. One very large torrent site with over 500.000 visitors per day told us that they are generating around 30-40K per month and a double of that amount during the last two months of the year. Another torrent site with more then 300.000 visitors told us that they were making 50K per month on average. The other two torrent sites were generating a revenue of 35-60K respectively.

When you think about it, most of these sites are administered by very young people, some under the age of 20. We were wondering what such youngsters are doing with that amount of money, well we got a few interesting answers. One site admin told us they were investing in real estate and side projects. Some even told us that they believe bittorrent isn’t going to last forever. The growing pressure from anti piracy groups has forced us to look for other sources of income.

Final thoughts:

It’s obvious that Bittorrent is big business and that webmasters will go to extremes to protect their interests. The only downside to having all that money is that it makes you a big target for anti-piracy groups. No wonder these webmasters are so careful. Keep up the noble work guys!

:source: Source: http://www.peertopress.com/how-lucrative-is-bittorrent

The Pirate bay and some of the bigger private sites would have to be making at least that much cash. Personally I think it's a bit messed up to be making cash of p2p particularly seeing as how the content all comes from the scene anyway. BT is about sharing not profit imo.

My first news item :)

and yeah i have to agree, we dont even make 1/3 of that in a whole year, never mind a month.

but then we dont get 500,000 visitors a day, and we dont have any ads on the site at all.

Im still suprised they make that much though, as i would have thought most users would just ad block them.

when you say we you mean FST right?
WE do have ads on site but i doubt it brings any hard cash.

no when i say WE i mean blackcats-games, im not even a member of FST (or any other private tracker for that matter)

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Originally Posted by stoi

no when i say WE i mean blackcats-games, im not even a member of FST (or any other private tracker for that matter)

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FYI, FST = File Sharing Talk

ah, im tired, let me off :) 10am and no sleep.

but i havnt a clue how much this website makes, so i was not implying this website as we, but blackcats-games. (it is in my sig, but obviously some people have sigs turned off)

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Originally Posted by stoi

ah, im tired, let me off :) 10am and no sleep.

but i havnt a clue how much this website makes, so i was not implying this website as we, but blackcats-games. (it is in my sig, but obviously some people have sigs turned off)

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no worries mate. I actually did understand you the first time :)

BTW, which staff member are you on blackcats?

this thread is going way off topic now lol but im the owner.

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Originally Posted by stoi

this thread is going way off topic now lol but im the owner.

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wow, big man!

And back on topic, I'll bet demonoid is well above average on that list. 3M+ users and god knows how many visits per day. Plus they give Privileges to those who pay.

This torrent site business must be quiet lucrative..... esepciallyt those sites that charge you for access. its a joke really.

I do it purely for the fun of it. Money never even entered my head when I started in this game, although it did become an issue when we took the next step and moved on from my own PC.

A donation is a gift from a member showing appreciation for what you provide. If your lucky enough, the donations you receive should be enough to sustain your tracker. If not, then you have to put your hand in your pocket to sustain, or quit the game.

With respect to the giants, and indexers, they are a different ball game to the private TB derived sites. Most, if not all, have no membership requirements, and they are not donation driven, but rather they earn their revenue via advertising. Their revenue, therefore, is created by the willingness of people who visit their site, and click on their ads etc.

I don't blame them for generating such money. I'd do the same if I was in their position. At least they have a healthy balance to fight any court actions that may loom (TPB for example).

On the flip side of the coin, generating that much money from piracy will also have a good effect for small private trackers, because the heat will more likely be directed at the behemoths, allowing the private communities a small measure of freedom for the time being.

i'm confused, how do they make so much money per month? just adds? and those BT sites that don't have adds, they make their money just from donations? 50K/month seems so high to me, but wtf do i know...nothing apparently.

pay per click dude
and some fix ads

I hate the idea of some sites making money for their own personal business.

I'm not saying they are, but when it's close to 50,000 dollars, I don't think they're spending it all on servers...

A torrentsite is supposed to survive, and that's it. You donate to keep the site alive, if you are in a lack of donations, you -can- do a fixed banner-thingy, but still just to keep the site alive. When you're making personal money on p2p, I pray to higher powers they're getting owned one day, and fined with hundred thousands of dollars.

It seems a bit harsch, but no one, and I mean NO ONE are supposed to make money on other people's work.

Amen
-Vidde

If they dedicate their lives to running the site (TPB), they should take a decent salary. We have so much to thank TPB for ;)

dang...i wish i knew how to program C++ and .NET etc so i could get a piece of this action hahaha *sniff* html is easy enough

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Originally Posted by Vidde

I hate the idea of some sites making money for their own personal business.

I'm not saying they are, but when it's close to 50,000 dollars, I don't think they're spending it all on servers...

A torrentsite is supposed to survive, and that's it. You donate to keep the site alive, if you are in a lack of donations, you -can- do a fixed banner-thingy, but still just to keep the site alive. When you're making personal money on p2p, I pray to higher powers they're getting owned one day, and fined with hundred thousands of dollars.

It seems a bit harsch, but no one, and I mean NO ONE are supposed to make money on other people's work.

Amen
-Vidde

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there is old saying "robing a robber is not a crime"
so actually its not their work in 1st place to be taken advantage on, its been stolen in 1st place.
i totally disagree with not making money, as far as its not the donated money their taking advantage of they can make money out of their effort and risk.
its not that people are forced to click those ads, they can always block those ads if they mean nothing to them.
and again as said private tracker dont make those numbers so most probably donation's are spend in good cause, and open tracker dont ask for donation or ratios because they make money out of advertisement.

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Originally Posted by killuminati96

dang...i wish i knew how to program C++ and .NET etc so i could get a piece of this action hahaha *sniff* html is easy enough

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you dont need to, most of the private tracker(atleast until a while ago) provide a copy of redbeared tracker code, you just need to setup server details and you'll have your tracker up.

Contrary to what the topic post says. I beleive most of these sites making that much monthly are skimming the donations. They are not making 50k a month off of adds.

I know of a site that has mentioned to me they make 60k in donations avg per month.
I could see if they were using the money for supplying stuff or even supplying uploaders with files ect... but this site im mentioning doesnt even really use the money for anything. Their files are all submitted by users.
Thats a real shame to see some sites making that much money and lining their pockets... when many small private communities dont even get enough donations to pay their server bills.

I think that if the site makes money then good for them. As long as they are not exploiting the users to make money then who cares? Ask the big site owners how much personal time they spend on managing the site and I wouldn't be surprised if it was pretty much a second job. As long as the site isn't extorting members what does it really matter? If the site makes enough off of donations every month then get rid of advertisements.

wow. i knew some sites make a good profit but that's insane. as far as i am concerned they're taking huge risks for our benefit and i say good for them if they make a nice living doing it. i don't agree with p2l at all but if we're not being forced into donations, and not being forced into clicking ads then i say they deserve it for all the hard work they do and risks they take. i just wish they would share the wealth with me.:yup:

-otis

amazing stats!

well I am not a website owner so i dont know, but would ads generate that much money a month? would people click them that many times ... I thought it was like $ .0001 a click or something stupid like that ... that would be 500,000,000 clicks a month ....

the majority of this would have to be through donations, but since you are donating (giving money) then who cares if it is lining the pockets fo the owners ...

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Originally Posted by fifty99

well I am not a website owner so i dont know, but would ads generate that much money a month? would people click them that many times ... I thought it was like $ .0001 a click or something stupid like that ... that would be 500,000,000 clicks a month ....

the majority of this would have to be through donations, but since you are donating (giving money) then who cares if it is lining the pockets fo the owners ...

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On some advertising setups you can set the minimal amount of cents per click on the ads, So if they set the minimum amount to 10 cents, Thats only 10 clicks per dollar. Some sites pay 10 dollars a click on there PTC profile, So 50k clicks on them would make 50k in a simple way.

Depends what traffic that get and if these big sites are willing to pay $1 per click on their ads etc.

i have no issue with sites making that much in revenue as long as its not by telling users they need donations to run the servers. sites with ad revenue like that do not need any donations and the sites that do need donations to run if their is an overage i dont see an issue with the owner making a decent salary from it but nothing like that.

Making money a living hosting a webserver to me sounds like every geek's dream. I'm glad they are making money.

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Originally Posted by Vidde

It seems a bit harsch, but no one, and I mean NO ONE are supposed to make money on other people's work.

Amen
-Vidde

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This is a vague statement. (The following argument pertains to public trackers and semi-private trackers without the peer-id [eg. demonoid] only).
Even though it is immoral (not to mention very much illegal) to buy a movie, album, etc. and turn around and sell it to other people for a profit, the trackers are not doing this (obviously).
Instead, they take advantage of their visitors by incorporating pay-per-click advertising on their site.
Trackers provide torrent files that provide a swarm of peers from which people can then get their file(s). So the source of the tracker's profits are two degrees away from the product than the aforementioned scenario:

The lowest tier (1): The peers with the copyrighted file(s)

- the direct source, disconnected from the tracker

The middle tier (2): The torrent file that connects the "buyer" to the swarm

- torrent files are semi-disconnected from the tracker, since you can get, for example, a demonoid torrent file from thepiratebay (or from your friend for that matter)

The top tier (3): The site, or the "seller"

- they the torrent files and the advertisements/donation function that create the revenue

*Subdividing tier 3: the site subdivided into the site and the source of income

-since no one is making you donate or click on the advertisements in exchange for the torrent files, the site (or rather the script providing the torrent files) should be tier 3a and the direct source of revenue (donations, ads) should be tier 3b
-i my self never donate and never click on ads (i got them disable :yup:), so they don't get any money from me (unless their revenue from ads is based on the number of visitors per month as well :ph34r:; in that case, the subdivision is fallacious!).

In the opening scenario, the source of revenue was directly connected to the copyrighted material. There was one degree of separation there.So since the source of the tracker's profit is two (potentially three) degrees away from the copyrighted data, the situation is much (potentially much much!) less moral than you portray it to be, Vidde.

wow

wow but you know they are taking a big risk they could end up paying 10 times that if they loose a law suit also they pay for the servrs and don´t a lot of the BT torrent sites also pay for seedboxes so members can download faster. If they make that much money i guess thats just good hustle.

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Originally Posted by killuminati96

dang...i wish i knew how to program C++ and .NET etc so i could get a piece of this action hahaha *sniff* html is easy enough

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torrent sites use php