The Wallpaper Directory

Posted on 8th November 2008

Following on from my last post, I’m going to take some time to discuss a rather unconventional project I started six months ago. The reason I call it unconventional is because it’s not a single website rather a collection of related wallpaper sites combined to form an overall network. The sheer scale of the project meant it had to be handled slightly differently and that’s something I really want to touch on as we work our way through this article. Lets get stuck in.

The Scenario

Those of you that read this projects scenario in my last post can skip this section but for those that have never heard of this wallpaper network project, I’m going to quote a section from my last post which you should read and digest below.

Well earlier this year I purchased a project off a friend, some of you may remember me mentioning it on the forums. Those of you that didn’t, well in simple terms he had this grand old plan of buying loads of niche wallpaper domains like say ferrari-wallpapers.com or sea-wallpapers.com and turning each one into a site earning atleast $1 per day.

On paper the challenge doesn’t sound too difficult but it was going to be hardwork and I told him that the day he started. Anyway I continued with my life and a month or two later we were talking again so I asked him how it was going. To my surprise he had not only lost interest in the project but had also decided to off load the project which at that time was maybe 1% complete and earning a whopping $0 per month.

Now under normal circumstances I would have stayed away from this over ambitious attempt at earning money online, but there was something charming about this challenge, it had a point to prove and something very experimental about it. So like its previous owner I too was seduced and ended up buying the project for around $800. This included over 120 niche wallpaper domains and one master domain which represented the overall network.

Well the idea was simple enough all I needed to do was develop atleast 100 of these sites, and if each site earned $1 per day that’s approximately $100 per day extra income all on autopilot. Yes it sounds highly achievable but the real question is can it be pulled off ?

The Script

Ok so I’m sitting on around 123 new domains in my namecheap account of which 1 site Funny Wallpapers was half developed by the previous owner. In fact the site in question is still in the same state it was when I started, ugly, loads of broken links and only a handful of wallpapers to share. (Edit: It’s now been converted) Check the image below to see how it looked:

If you’re a digitalpoint user you’ll quickly recognise the skin and realise that it’s the infamous CollectPHP script in action. Since I purchased the network I also purchased the previous owners choice of script. On initial inspection I wasn’t hugely impressed with the script but after checking out my options which included:

a) coding my own script (could be time consuming)
b) using other 3rd party scripts (most much more expensive and requiring a license per domain)

I quickly realised that CollectPHP was going to be the way forward. For starters the script was 100% unencoded giving me full access to the source code, I could use it on as many domains as I wanted and most importantly it actually did most of what it said on the tin.

My main concern however was the look and feel of the site and how easy it would be to modify. A quick glance into the code revealed a few more things:

a) The script was actually very poorly coded.
b) No templating system was in place.
c) The script had some bugs

I quickly realised that before I could get to the skin I needed to get my hands dirty with the code. If I was going to develop in excess of 100+ sites using this script I needed to make sure the scripts weak points were re-coded sooner rather than later.

Overall this wasn’t a huge setback as after a day of fiddling with the code I manged to get the script to a point where it was cleaner, more managable and even had better SEO urls for search engine readability. The script was ready to go and working just the way I wanted.

The Skin

Ok so I had the script working perfectly but I still needed a skin that wasn’t being used by every single owner of this script. Just go to digitalpoint and you’ll quickly realise that 99% of wallpaper site owners are using this script unmodded complete with the naruto header at the top.

That’s right on DP it doesn’t matter what theme your wallpaper site covers, good old naruto is the theme to have. I’ve seen car sites, barbie doll sites and even pet sites all using the same skin complete with the orange naruto header. You would think people would have the decency to atleast change the header but for some even that’s too much work (but lets not go down the whole list of complaints I have with the buyers and sellers on DP churning out cheap useless sites).

Getting the skin right and of course distancing myself from the overused naruto skin was a top priority. My requirements were simple, I needed a skin which was 100% unique but more importantly easy to update, change and adapt for different niches.

After a day of messing around in photoshop I came up with a fixed width layout which employed a simple header image that could be swapped and changed to match the niche I wanted to create. I modded the css file as well so that I could quickly change the background and font colors to complement the style I was targeting, I’ve taken some screenshots of the skin to show it in action, see below:

As you can see the skin looks much better than the original, true it’s still not a work of art but it does the job and most importantly carries the content and adsense ads perfectly.

(Quick tip: Wallpaper sites convert very well when the ads are placed above the fold of the page and offer very few distractions in terms of other links and buttons. My experience has shown that the type of users that pass through a wallpaper site are very likely to click on links and ads that are related to their niche so putting the ads in the center of the page just above the fold works very well for click through rates.)

Overall my tests showed that running my skin versus the standard naruto one increased my revenue by almost double. Never under estimate the importance of a sites skin, the placement of your ads and how it can impact your revenue.

The Earnings

Ok so the building blocks for the project have been explained, I’ve even hinted on the success of the new skin but what about the sites, what sort of traffic are they getting and what are the earnings ? My initial goals were to earn $1 per day via adsense but was this really achievable?

The above questions are all key areas that will determine the future success of this project and it’s for this reason my very first decision after sorting out the script and skin was to run the project on a smaller scale. You would be foolish to develop 100+ sites without knowing the answers to the above questions, so my first task was selecting 10 domains from the 123 and getting them online as soon as possible. It took me around 2 weeks to completely launch my first 10 sites (this included adding over 200+ wallpapers to each site and performing some light SEO).

My initial findings were actually quite demoralising, firstly I learnt that adsense on wallpaper sites can often be quite low paying, my initial clicks were very very low and my total earnings were around $1.00 per month. Yes the above is not a typo $1 per day about 3 months ago would have been an amazing feat because each site on my network was struggling to make that in a month.

Despite the above one thing that was in my favour was that my search engine rankings were still improving hence the type and quantity of traffic I could capture was bound to change. Remember the low earnings per click is usually related to the quality of your traffic. Until your sites move higher up the search engines you can usually expect more of this cheap overseas traffic. Overseas clicks are usually lower paying per click compared to traffic from the USA, Canada and UK which you usually only capture once you maintain better rankings on google.com.

As of today search rankings have improved vastly (but still well off where I want them to be). Despite this let me give you a break down of where the earnings are as of today. Remember I have only launched 10 sites.

- 1 site is earning $2+ per day
- 4 sites area earning $1-$1.50 per day
- 5 sites are earning $0.10-$0.50 per day

So what does the above demonstrate ? Well to me it shows that the $1 per day goal is certainly achievable, it also indicates that with time the potential to earn is much greater than $1 day. The second positive point is that apart from the initial investment of time required to upload the base set of wallpapers you probably only need to update and add new wallpapers every 6 months.

Remember these are 100% auto pilot sites which require very little involvement on a day to day basis. Secondly sites that run on auto pilot fetch a much higher value when you sell them. So instead of the usual 12 month revenue model a solid page 1 ranking site with a good selection of wallpapers could easily return 18-24+ months of revenue upon selling.

The Actual Directory

I haven’t really touched upon the parent directory i.e. http://www.wallpaper-network.com yet but this site itself has been extremely successful and is continuning to gain solid rankings on the search engines for many key terms.

The model is simple keep adding quality sites to the directory, many of these are mine but the site is open to the public and so far around 20% of the submissions received belong to other webmasters. Over time as I stop developing new wallpaper sites this percentage will increase.

The wallpaper directory isn’t earning much at the moment (maybe $10 per month via adsense) but that’s expected. The positive point however is that I would say what is being offered is almost unique on the web. There are at most 2-3 quality directories catering for the wallpaper niche and I’m pretty confident that as more sites are added to the network offering featured subscriptions as a means of monetisation will be completely possible allowing for incomes as high as $200-$300 per month. (I say the above based on experience and actually having owned a quality niche directory in the past).

Final Words

Building sites on the web is all about quality and patience. Rushing any task usually leads to failure and disappointment, if there is one thing I can recommend and suggest to webmasters embarking on new projects its that you should plan well and then stick with the program trying to improve and provide real value to your users.

The web is no different to real life, if you deliver a site that people can take real value from you will be rewarded by repeat visitors and a good ranking on google. If you build sites with a short term viewpoint and the intention to make a quick buck you’re sure to be one of the losers. Yes there are ways to speed up things and optimise certain processes but in all cases hard work and patience have to be a part of the equation.

Overall I hope this case study has offered some insight into the scope and potential of developing wallpaper sites and more so developing a complete network. When I get to 50% I’ll make sure that I post some updates and include more data with regards to the actual traffic and earning stats which by then should be much more substantial. As usual feel free to leave a comment if you found this post helpful.