This is the first time I've had a potential customer ask me to host his 50 sites which contain pornographic material. I guess most people see at the top of my tos that I do not allow it and back off. I decided against pornography when I started the company because of legal issues and because my reseller didn't allow it on their server. Now, being established for a while and having my own servers I am actually thinking of reviving my tos and allowing adult content, but only to resellers. Before I do, I want to get some comments from you all.

Do I really need to think about legal issues?
Are they usually high bandwidth/disk space consumers (bad for a slight overseller)?
Does the server's performance degrade with these types of sites?

Be ready for DoS attacks against your servers, as adult websites are often targets.

Originally posted by Nullified
Do I really need to think about legal issues?
Are they usually high bandwidth/disk space consumers (bad for a slight overseller)?
Does the server's performance degrade with these types of sites?


1. Legal issues as in you can not host child porn and few other type of porn. As long as it is legal and not copyrighted then you should be fine.

2. From what I am told porn does use a lot of disk space and bandwidth.

3. Not sure

Though I know Erica from Simpli.biz could answer your questions better since she has been hosting for a while. :)

Nullified,

I had a similar situation about 2 years ago. A guy I met through some business classes (both of us furthering our education) at my local college found out that I did some hosting and asked if I would be interested in hosting his 5 sites. All 5 of them were paysites and he was registered properly so everything seemed legit.

After doing some more research I found that people whom host adult sites often tend to have problems with spam/ddos and other attacks on the servers.

If you search around enough you will find both pro's and con's for this hosting venue. Just make sure if you do take on the business, to place them on seperate servers on a different IP range. Also, get some additional e-mail monitoring services to monitor for spam. I've heard horror stories of thousands of e-mails being sent out daily using huge amounts of resources.

Let us know how it goes.

On the pro side, you'll find that most adult webmasters, as clients, are typically more technically saavy then your average hosting client which lessens your support burden.

Unless of course the webmaster is Debbie in Dallas :D She's more savvy in other areas.

lol, nice. I need to rent that :)

Nullified,

As Dan Grossman said you will probably receive a few attack. If your servers are protected correctly I wouldn't care to host adult websites. We purchased Cisco hardware firewalls for this reason and since then we never had any problem with the adult websites we host.

I would suggest you to not host these sites on your shared IP. Many designers hate to share an IP with adult websites.

Good luck!

I have hosted and currently host adult sites/content and have yet to be attacked. I do keep all adult content on its own ip# just incase. If hosting adult content for clients be sure to inform through your TOS that the 2257 records is posted at the bottom of EVERY page they have. The one thing mainly to consider is bandwidth. I have had an adult forum with ~300 members at one time burning betwen 4 to 5 gig a day with only members being allowed to view content.
I recommend to pick a budget server from somewhere like managed.com and take a fly at it before putting on your current hosting servers. Just a thought :)

-Dave

I would host adult sites on a different server. Adult only server.

Originally posted by DavidL
I have hosted and currently host adult sites/content and have yet to be attacked. I do keep all adult content on its own ip# just incase. If hosting adult content for clients be sure to inform through your TOS that the 2257 records is posted at the bottom of EVERY page they have. The one thing mainly to consider is bandwidth. I have had an adult forum with ~300 members at one time burning betwen 4 to 5 gig a day with only members being allowed to view content.
I recommend to pick a budget server from somewhere like managed.com and take a fly at it before putting on your current hosting servers. Just a thought :)

-Dave We've had no issues with the few adult sites that are currently hosted across our servers. No DDOSes, no copyright complaints, no nothing :). We have non-adult sites using up more bandwidth than the adult sites, so it's really luck of the draw. However, if they want to use a lot of bandwidth and are willing to pay for it, we have no problem either.

Consider getting a deposit in case of overages, which you can't collect. Also avoid paypal.

Originally posted by Cserver
Consider getting a deposit in case of overages, which you can't collect. Also avoid paypal. Actually, just disable the account when it hits its limit, and you won't have to deal with overages :).

As long as the legality is ok. There should not be too much of a problem.

1. Make sure your data center allows adult material to be hosted. Some data centers do not allow adult material to be hosted on any server connected in their facility.

2. As previously stated, make sure you have good hardware. This includes a good firewall as well as extra email software to handle high loads. Additionally, should the customer be willing to pay for it, you may find that exploring a clustered solution might be an excellent way to accomplish this; or even to possibly expand your business scope to the adult market.

3. Periodically monitor what the customer is uploading. Make sure no child porn or any other form of illegal porn is being uploaded, and if it is, you have an obligation to report it to local authorities (you assume this by accepting adult site customers). Child porn is a huge problem on a global scale, although predominantly in the US and Europe.

Other than that, it can be extremely profitable if handled effectively as word of mouth is used quite often within the adult site community when they've found a good host. Best of luck with it.

Adult sites get more Password traders, spoofs, robots, and dictionary attacks then Dos or DDoS. I don't think they use more bandwidth than non adult sites. I do however think they use their allocation more then non adult sites. Thus if you rely on overselling your servers stay away from adult sites. Of the hundreds of adult sites we host less than two dozen use more than 100GB per month. We do however have a several that frequently burn 100GB's per day!!



Originally posted by Dan Grossman
Be ready for DoS attacks against your servers, as adult websites are often targets.

Never had any problems with adult sites, although we do not target the adult webmaster market, they are allowed to signup.

The only sites that get DoS on our server is sites run by teen webmasters who pissed someone off.

Actually, just disable the account when it hits its limit, and you won't have to deal with overages .

Probably the best way to lose a customer that I am aware of. I seriously hope you do not practice this! A warning would suffice, but not suspending!

we just charge overages. if the account is getting insane overage charges we'll notify the customer before suspending to see what he/she has to say.

100GB's per day?!?!?!

I think that would scare the heck out of many small business hosts...... That's one heck of a bill at the end of the month. Hoping the check doesn't bounce would drive me to drink. :)

Trust we do take precautions, maintain communications and require pre-payment for additional bandwidth. We are happy to offer the customer an upgrade based on on anticipated usage at an economical rate. Rather than slam them with a bill at the end of the month for overages.

Originally posted by jn0vara
100GB's per day?!?!?!

I think that would scare the heck out of many small business hosts...... That's one heck of a bill at the end of the month. Hoping the check doesn't bounce would drive me to drink. :)

From someone who ran some adult sites, and did some adult hosting at one time...

Besides the obvious things like making sure the datacenter allows adult (most do) here are some things to think about.

1) IF there is child porn on the server your hard drive can be confiscated (sp?) and you as the owner/leaser will be held responsible until you provide proof it's a sublease on that server who owns it.

2) do not oversell adult bandwidth. If they are doing gallery spots, they may get only a listing or 2 one day, then another get a listing on a major TGP and chew through 20+ gigs in a day. (or more as posted above) tho if they are doing that much most people that size will be on a dedicated.

3) keep them on a server by themselves. Don't have regular sites on a server that also has adult content. Reason as stated above. Get a good TGP listing or 2 and it'll bog the server down for the rest of your clients.

3) Check pricing, adult is kind of like co-lo diskspace and bandwidth can't be oversold so you need to bill for the full usage of what you offer.

4) be careful. A LOT of adult sites are run from overseas, CC problems will take up time to resolve. I had issue with 2CO with a very honest customer who was in romania and they rejected his CC just because of where he was from. He had a 10Mbit dedicated, so it was a good chunk of change per month. (yes he really used the full 10mbit at peak times. I'd say he averaged pushing 8Mbit 24/7.

Of course there are other things, but I think the #1 thing is that most normal hosts don't "get" how much bandwidth is used in adult hosting.

Originally posted by Eu1net
I would host adult sites on a different server. Adult only server.

I'm not sure if this will help your decision or not but go here:
http://www.cozyacademy.com/classrooms/legal/index.asp

They have a decent general info section about porn legalities - written for webmasters but the host rules can't be far off. Just keep in mind that you may also have to comply with any decency laws in your city, state and county (depending on where you are) so check those too.

LH

be ready to sell large amounts of bandwitdh very, very cheap.

I also suggest going to cozycampus.com - great community.

The Paypal thing is something very important. They may shut down your account if you sell adult hosting and you may lose all your subscriptiones etc.

Have a lawyer write a rock solid TOS and leave you liable for nothing. Adult hosting is a big business. I also suggest a firewall in between your web servers and your router that is able to handle at least a gigbit connection because it those ddos attacks do come in they are never really more than a couple hundered meg.

MuzzleFlash: This is offtopic, but I like your signature! :)


So far I have not needed to make 19 posts thanks to the search function.

I host adult websites.

I've never had a problem. The bandwidth usage is HUGE. You would not believe, even when they host no content (for example, I host a forum with about 300 members. No content. Uses about 4 GIGS transfer a day.)

I don't worry about child porn. That has nothing to do with adult webmasters. Child porn is child abuse, and I really don't like lumping it in with adult webmasters. Most adult webmasters seem to be pretty normal guys.

I've never had a DOS problem, but I use a seperate IP for adult websites just in case.

Most adult webmasters are completely normal. We're made up of normal men and women who like to work from home and make our livings that way. You'll likely find stranger people working at your local MacDonald's :)
And you're 100% correct about child porn. It has nothing to do with the porn business. I'm sure it's a business somewhere and someone is making money off it, probably along with illegal guns, narcotics and other sortid activities criminals make a living off of.
btw, I go through about 150gbs a day and I am a small business by comparison to other sites.

Originally posted by Dances_With_Pork
Most adult webmasters are completely normal. We're made up of normal men and women who like to work from home and make our livings that way. You'll likely find stranger people working at your local MacDonald's :)
And you're 100% correct about child porn. It has nothing to do with the porn business. I'm sure it's a business somewhere and someone is making money off it, probably along with illegal guns, narcotics and other sortid activities criminals make a living off of.
btw, I go through about 150gbs a day and I am a small business by comparison to other sites. you must have your own server of which you either own (colo) or rent. Or maybe you have your own cage? Anyways I couldn't handle 150gbs per day for one site or I'd be paying a whole lot of overage. You must also have a 10 or even 100 mbit connection.