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Profiting from a Wallpaper Website

12th November 200727 Comments
Creating a wallpaper website can be very profitable; not only can they get a high CTR but they can also get high traffic relatively easily. Visitors to wallpaper websites tend to be internet novices so have very little ad blindness and in turn will often click on well placed ads. These visitors also link back to your website (and hotlink) more often than most people which leads to higher search engine rankings and general refferal traffic. In this article I will discuss how to create a profitable website similar to Naruto Wallpaper running on the script Turnkey Wallpaper Site Creator.
Naruto Wallpaper

Deciding on a Topic - Search Frequency

When deciding on a topic for your wallpaper website you should take into consideration the search frequency of various wallpaper keywords because in 1-3 months time you could be getting a lot of traffic (1000+ uniques per day) from Google if you choose your keywords wisely. To find out the search frequency of keywords I used the tool Keyword Discovery and searched for the word ‘Wallpaper’ although the tool is plural sensitive so you will also want to search for ‘Wallpapers’. Here is the results of that search (click for full view) -
Wallpaper Keywords
You should skim over that list looking for keywords which interest you, which you would enjoy creating a site about. The important thing is that the keyword is on the list so we know that people do search for it.

Deciding on a Topic - High Paying

Working out how much the advertisements will pay per click (CPC) in each topic will take a bit of guess work but this Google AdWords Tool can help to make better estimates. When I say it requires some guessing, I mean that when you are skimming over the list from above you should think to yourself “what ads would be displayed?” and “will they pay highly?”. For example, ‘PSP Wallpaper’ will display PSP game advertisements which could pay decently, ‘Free Wallpaper’ would display advertisements for free things which won’t pay a lot and ‘David Beckham Wallpaper’ would display soccer jersey and soccer ball advertisements which could pay well. Once you’ve taken the search frequency and advertisement CPC into account you can decide on a topic.

SEO - Link Building

Assuming you have uploaded some wallpapers and modified the banner to make your website high quality, you should start link building. There is only three link building techniques which I recommend:
  • Social Bookmarking (StumbleUpon) - StumbleUpon can bring large traffic spikes if the wallpaper and offer are of a high enough standard or out of the ordinary. One wallpaper at NarutoWallpaper.biz brought 5000 unique visitors from StumbleUpon in one day - Sexy Christmas Girls.
  • High Quality Link Exchanges - link exchanges alone are enough to give you decent SERPs, just do 15 or so link exchanges with high PR and high traffic websites in your niche.
  • Waiting - if the wallpapers you offer are good you will generate backlinks organically; people will link to your wallpapers and homepage. Also, it takes at least one month from when you do your link exchanges until your SERPs bring any substantial traffic.

SEO - Capturing Long Tail Searches

If you have done some good link building you should have no trouble ranking for long tail keywords. By long tail keywords I mean not hugely competitive; my main target keyword would be ‘Naruto Wallpaper’ or ‘Naruto’ but one long tail keyword I target is ‘Naruto Uzumaki Wallpaper’. To target this long tail keyword I create a wallpaper about ‘Naruto Uzumaki Wallpaper’, upload it to the website then wait one week and you will start ranking for it. To find more long tail keyword you return to Keyword Discovery but this time search for ‘Naruto Wallpaper’ rather than ‘Wallpaper’. Now create a wallpaper for lots of long tail keywords and soon you will have lots of search engine traffic.

SEO - Image Search

Image search engines have the potential to send huge amounts of traffic to a website, even more so for a wallpaper website. NarutoWallpaper.biz gets 400 uniques per day from Google Image Search but amazingly only 10 NarutoWallpaper.biz images have been indexed, and they are only thumbnail images! If Google ever gets around to indexing the 100+ full sized wallpapers the traffic would be astronomical. Although the problem is that Google seems very slow to index images, NarutoWallpaper’s pages get indexed in 1-2 days of creation but the images take months to be indexed. If you can get your images indexed though, you’ll be laughing. Here’s the best image search engines -

Image Search Sites

Monetization - AdSense

Turnkey Wallpaper Site Creator already has good ad placement, the ads tend to receive between 5% and 25% CTR depending on the source of the traffic and the relevance of the ads. For example, search engine visitors convert far better than more general visitors. The ad blocks on the homepage convert well because they are displayed front and center in the middle of the content.
Ad PlacementAd Placement

Monetization - Link Sales (Optional)

On top of the AdSense revenue a wallpaper site earns you have the option of selling links. As you may or may not know Google discourages selling links especially if it for the reason of passing PageRank, that’s why this section is optional. Turnkey Wallpaper Site Creator includes by default a Partners section which you could add one of two things, paid links or link exchanges. I prefer to stick with link exchanges and focus on AdSense rather than link sales but you always have the option to do both.
Partners

Popularity: unranked [?]

27 responses so far ↓

  • 1 dremstar // Nov 14, 2007 at 12:57 am

    How about bandwidth and host you suggest?

  • 2 Marty // Nov 14, 2007 at 3:35 am

    I will deffinately take all of these tips into account when i create my wallpapers website, which should be soon. Thanks again :].

  • 3 admin // Nov 14, 2007 at 5:51 am

    1,000 uniques per day equates to 1gb per day, or 30gb per month. 10,000 uniques per day would require 300gb per month.

    30gb is probably the minimum transfer you should get. I use http://www.dreamhost.com for hosting.

  • 4 dremstar // Nov 14, 2007 at 7:18 am

    Thanks for the tip.
    I’ll try out when I have resource/money

  • 5 bek // Nov 26, 2007 at 5:15 pm

    this is want i try to find.
    i’ll make a wallpaper website so i think i’ll learn all the tips from you

    tx

  • 6 agilius // Dec 20, 2007 at 8:25 am

    I have a simple question. Where do we get the wallpapers ? We ripp them from other sites ?

  • 7 admin // Dec 20, 2007 at 8:27 am

    You have 3 options:

    Make them yourself.

    Rip them.

    Find wallpapers released under a free use license, such as some creative commons licenses. DeviantArt has some released under creative commons, but most don’t have a specified license.

  • 8 Francis Sim // Dec 24, 2007 at 10:38 pm

    So wallpapers released under creative commons licenses can be used on other websites without any copyright infringement?

  • 9 admin // Dec 24, 2007 at 10:47 pm

    I think so, yes.

    You can read more at http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/

  • 10 nam // Dec 29, 2007 at 1:29 pm

    H0w to submit to StumbleUpon?

    I can’t get visitors from them!

  • 11 admin // Dec 29, 2007 at 1:31 pm

    Submitting alone is not enough, people have to rate your website highly for you to get substantial traffic from StumbleUpon. If your site impresses people they will rate it highly and you will get lots of traffic.

    Or you could ask your friends to rate it highly, which would bring you as least a little traffic.

  • 12 nam // Dec 29, 2007 at 1:46 pm

    i understood already!

    Thanks!

  • 13 Tizz0 // Jan 5, 2008 at 9:24 am

    Can you explain in more detail how these websites make money? And we can get in trouble for ripping wallpapers from another site??

  • 14 admin // Jan 6, 2008 at 5:27 am

    You make money by displaying advertisements. If you steal copyright images then sure you could get in trouble, but I don’t think it’s likely you will.

  • 15 ricky // Jan 21, 2008 at 7:48 am

    what do you mean buy ripping them???
    playing a game and taking a screenshot?

  • 16 admin // Jan 21, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    I meant taking them from another place without permission, although the other two options are preferable. Taking a screenshot would be making it yourself.

  • 17 wedding invitation wording // Jan 21, 2008 at 7:45 pm

    Would you recommend buying the wallpapers from DP? I think there are some people in that forum that sells wallpapers.

    I’ve read your case study and realized how fast you may have uploaded all the wallpapers. How did you do that?

  • 18 ricky // Jan 21, 2008 at 9:41 pm

    ohok cool sounds like good money
    good article

  • 19 admin // Jan 23, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    Weddings, my http://www.NarutoWallpaper.biz has 8000 uniques per day not from having 1000s of wallpapers but having good keyword research. I only have 100 wallpapers after 5 months but each of them get significant traffic. I used to add 5 wallpapers every few days but now I just add 1 or 2 a week since I have exhausted almost all of the Naruto related keywords.

    You can buy the wallpaper packs if you’d like but I think smaller amounts of wallpapers with good keyword research will be more successful SEO wise.

  • 20 Car Insurance Discount // Jan 24, 2008 at 6:10 pm

    Does this include future updates ?

  • 21 admin // Jan 24, 2008 at 10:12 pm

    Sure does.

  • 22 Ricky // Feb 1, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    Hi, I’ve spent about 3 months now creating wallpapers from images I get when doing google image searches. I’ve paid no attention to copyright or anything….just simply typed in band names, etc….then made photo collages using the resulting images. Is this copyright infringement? I’ve created new works, but I’ve possibly used several copyrighted images in the creation of the new works….I’ve searched the internet for hours and you’re the first I’ve found that seems to be discussing anything like this. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. This is my first site and I don’t want to get sued upon completion. Don’t want to start out on the wrong foot.

  • 23 admin // Feb 1, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    I see lots of people turning promotional images into wallpapers and I’ve never heard of one being sued, I assume they would have better things to do with their time.

    What you did I think is minor copyright infringement but I doubt anyone would sue you. I expect the worst that would happen is they ask you to take a certain wallpaper down.

  • 24 Ricky // Mar 23, 2008 at 5:08 pm

    Hey there again!
    So do you think its worth it if i made a psp wallpaper site? do you think people still search for psp wallpapers ??

    And i was wondering does your wallpaper site: http://www.narutowallpaper.biz/ make your time worth while lol

    Thanks heaps man
    Ricky

  • 25 admin // Mar 24, 2008 at 4:31 am

    People do search for PSP Wallpapers, but you would have to SEO well to see the search engine traffic.

    Yes, http://www.narutowallpaper.biz does make decent revenue.

  • 26 James // Apr 20, 2008 at 8:26 am

    why aren’t you using any cpm ads. you could make more than 50 bucks a day

  • 27 admin // May 19, 2008 at 5:37 pm

    I don’t know which CPM company to use. And the couple I’ve applied for seem to have either ignored my application, or rejected it.

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