Hosting images for eBay listings.

[bph]

I've been using a free web-hosting service to host the images I include in the descriptions of items I list on eBay. This has now ceased operation and I am looking for an alternative.

It seems that what I have been doing is known as "hotlinking" which appears to be frowned upon for some reason! I am having great trouble finding a free hosting service that will allow hosting of images only.

Why is hotlinking A Bad Thing, and can anyone recommend a hosting service where I can continue to do it?

Thanks,

Steve.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Hotlinking is bad because you're essentially using bandwidth that another person is paying for. There are several free image hosting sites available, I use imageshack.us most of the time, but there's a ton of others. Just google "Image hosting"

 

[bph]

I don't really see the distinction between hosting a web-site for free and hosting an image for free. They are both using bandwidth which the host provides presumably in the hope you will eventually find the need to upgrade to a paid-for account.

Just registered at ImageShack, but unless I am missing something, it only allows posting a thumbnail in a web-page, linking to the image. I can't see a way of including the image in the html of my eBay description.

 

[S0ULphIRE]

Difference is imageshack.us gets revenue from ads for people visiting the site to upload their pics. If xyz.com hosts a pic and you just link to it on your site, every time a user loads your site it will also direct the user to pull the image from xyz.com, using their bandwidth with no return or mention for them at all.

You can use either the HTML link, or the direct link and add your own img src tags

 

[iFargle]

You might want to try setting up a Dropbox account and stick all your images in a public folder and link to them that way. I do a lot of my image hosting that way

 

[bph]

Thanks for the help. I almost got ImageShack to work, but even then it does mess up the layout of my html page. I thought I had found a suitable host at FileDen, but when I clicked a link to their page about image hosting, Avast blocked it as having html:Iframe-inf malware. Possibly a false positive, but not worth the risk!

I always used to use the web-space provided by my ISP, but recently, due to periods of downtime, and thinking of switching to a cheaper ISP which doesn't provide any web-space, I started using Fileave. This always worked very well, but it has now been closed down due to its use by malware merchants. The whole area of free hosting seems a bit of a minefield.

Think I'll have to go back to using my ISP's web-space for now, and hope that if I switch ISPs I can find one that includes web-space.

Steve.

 

[treecky]

ImageShack is a good host. You could also try photobucket or jpegbay.com which is great for eBay pictures.