In just a few months SUMOtorrent managed to grow from 0 to 350,000 visitors a day, which makes it one of the most widely used BitTorrent sites. Impressive statistics but how did they accomplish this, and what are their plans for the future? Let's find out.

SUMOtorrent is currently ranked 1,052 on Alexa, which means that they are close to entering the list of 1000 most visited websites on the Internet. In addition, SUMOtorrent is running a much needed – as well as one of the biggest, BitTorrent trackers.

This is pretty exceptional if you take into account that the site only had a dozen visitors 6 months ago when it just started.

We are glad that the administrator of SUMOtorrent agreed to answer some of our questions, so we can learn a bit more about his success story.

TorrentFreak: How many visitors does SUMOTorrent have at the moment?

SUMO: SUMOTorrent is now getting about 350 000 daily unique visitors, while SUMOTracker is now tracking 2 million peers, and is probably the largest public BitTorrent tracker hosted on a single server! We recently launched a second public tracker that we hope will be used as much by BitTorrent users as the main tracker.

TorrentFreak: What did you do to grow this fast?

SUMO: I believe the reason why we grew so fast is experience, ideas and support of countless people!

TorrentFreak: So, with all the traffic you’re getting you must be driving a really expensive sports car now right?

SUMO: I don’t have a car but I advise you all to drive safely, put your safety belt on and respect speed limits.

Many webmasters do not communicate about money and torrents. Truth is that, just like any other popular site with high traffic, torrents sites make an income with 4 zeros, SUMOTorrent included. However, we’re not rich: at the end of the month, with all our expenses (hosting of 6 servers for SUMOTorrent/SUMOTracker), developers, partners, backup servers, services… we have actually just enough cash to purchase new servers next month. Our partners could tell you that we often ask them for a delay to pay them every month :p

We also support various sites and donate to them when we have some extra cash (Filesoup, IndianMP3 …)

TorrentFreak: Are you running the site on your own or do you have a team of moderators helping you out?

SUMO: We are running the site on our own and looking for moderators to help us removing the spam and fake torrents that get through our filters.

TorrentFreak: SUMOTorrent is one of the few BitTorrent sites that has their own tracker, do you think we need more public BitTorrent trackers?

SUMO: Of course we do need more public BitTorrent trackers! Many BitTorrent sites do not have their own tracker, and will tell you that it is to avoid legal troubles. I believe this is only an excuse. When you come to think about it, a public BitTorrent tracker generates a lot of traffic that cannot be monetized as it is not seen by anybody. SUMOTracker costs about $500 per month and we feel like this money is well spent as we are doing it for the community!

TorrentFreak: The Pirate Bay announced that they are working on a new BitTorrent protocol, what is your take on this?

SUMO: I have quite bad memories of the Suprnova/Exeem project, but I believe the SecureP2P project launched by PirateBay will be a great improvement to BitTorrent as it is based on experience of what is not working good in the current protocol and trying to improve it. They have received dozens of suggestions from users all around the world, and I wish the best to them in this enterprise.

We have contacted the head of this project and will provide them with any resources they might need to achieve it. SUMOTorrent will of course support the new protocol, promote it to our users and provide additional trackers on SUMOTracker for the new tracker protocol.

TorrentFreak: Can you tell us something about features you want to add to SUMOTorrent in the future?

SUMO: We will add more languages and buy new servers to scale site architecture with our growth. We will also work on content partnerships, and invite any filmmaker, music group or artist who is interested in sponsoring of his production and free distribution of his content through our site to contact us.

Just like PirateBay and Mininova, we would like to promote groups and help artists getting known through the power of peer-to-peer!

TorrentFreak: Do you have a message for all the anti-piracy organizations out there?

SUMO: Yes, take a look at the 100 first sites according to Alexa ranking! P2P and BitTorrent websites are here to stay, and they are the major means of online content distribution nowadays. This is a fact. Instead of trying to block the highway that leads to your customers, you should put your strategy into question. When the time will come that P2P sites will get better organized (and this time is soon, you know it) and ran by smart structures instead of simple individuals, you will understand you have missed the last opportunity you had to jump on the bandwagon of the digital revolution!

Meanwhile for all torrent users, we are happy to give you a free drive to where you want on www.sumotorrent.com :)

TorrentFreak: Thanks SUMO and good luck in the future!