Hey guys! New member here, [photographer wanting to make wallpapers]

Hi guys and girls,

I was kind enough to have been referred to this forum by someone. And since I can't post in the Website/Reviews section just yet, I hope you don't mind if I added my questions here!

I'm an automotive photographer, thinking about maxing the potential of my archived/used photographs and making a wallpaper website using google adsense as revenue.

First - here is my photography website:

www.eastonchang.com

It's a bit of a niche thing, I don't know how many of you are experienced with wallpaper sites but I know of a few that make 6 figures annually. Even a mere fraction of their revenue would make this project worthwhile for me.

There are differences though however, as I own copyright to the content of my site whereas they do not. So I will have a complete monopoly over my own photographs and thus little competition (whenever people want new eastonchang wallpapers theres only one place they can go!). Going through my archive I think I can dig up at least 200-300 wallpapers to kick start the site. And I plan on adding 1 or 2 shoots every week on a regular basis, so that everyone will get into the habbit of checking frequently.

I registered the name wallpapergarage.com last week and am already working out on a design and layout. I was thinking of going all-out with this site, like having a database, dynamic pages where a random wallpaper thumbnail link is shown on the front page, a counter for how many wallpapers are currently in the database, a page showing the most popular/clicked wallpapers... etc etc

I guess ultimately my question is - is this whole wallpaper site thing with my photography.... a good idea? If you were in my position - would you do this? Is there any major drawbacks I have yet to consider?

I hang out in a lot of automotive forums and can do some initial marketing there, plus I already have a few thousand visits to my site every month (I have the most internet traffic to my portfolio website than any other car photographer that I know of) and I have established wallpaper-website webmasters who are kind enough to be willing to add my site as a link on their site's front page if I were to go ahead with this. To give the site a good kick up the bum with initial traffic.

I want to do this as right as I can, because I am essentially putting all my eggs into the one basket. Photography is my passion and sharing my work around the world is the best treat any photographer could get. To me this is more than just a business venture, it's passion!

I worked out the site will cost about $600 AUD to run, plus all my time and effort into programming and maintaining it... I reckon I need to *eventually* make at least $1000 AUD annually to make this worth my while. Of course I could always just pull the plug if it dosn't work out after a year or two.

Another possible path of revenue from this would be print sales, I was thinking of adding a small "Buy this as a print" link next to every wallpaper thumbnail?

I have done a VERY BASIC initial draft layout for the site, which is more to show what contents I plan on putting the site rather than how it's going to be exactly. I want to preplan where the advertisements are going to go so I want to lay out the site properly from the very beginning.

Any tips and other advise would be greatly appreciated:

www.wallpapergarage.com

The other URL's I registered last week while I was at it was exclusivewallpapers.com and thecarlibrary.com (which I might make something of in the near future if I get the hang of this adsense stuff)

Also - I also have a degree in software engineering and am more than willing to learn whatever to program my own dynamic website. Is PHP the easiest, most obvious choice? I've done a bit of JSP before but I think it might be a bit overkill for a relatively simpler website?

Cheers!

Easton-



OOPS I forgot to add the link for the DRAFT LAYOUT I did so far...

eastonchang.com / sample1

 

You ask too many questions my friend. Welcome anyway. If you contribute first, then break up your questions in smaller chunks and post them in the correct places, many DP members will be able to help you. But with such a post... Where do we start? You're like a kid in a toy store

You're not allowed to request any reviews until later in your DP career btw, see FAQ/Rules for more info on that. If you refrain from dropping links until those criteria are met, I'm sure many here will have answers for you.

 

Somebody, on this forum, offered a free php script for setting up a wallpaper site. You can try searching for it.

It is always a good idea to do a website on a subject that you love; In which you can contribute unique content. Go for it!

Seems rather expensive. About $10 a month for hosting, about $10 a year for domain. That's it.

Try Shutterfly. There are other similar online print shops where you can create a gallery of your photos for visitors to print at a price.

I am no programmer, and I have found PHP easy enough to learn. So...

All the best.

Oh, and Welcome

 

Hi Easton,

Are you still around on DP? I went and checked out your site and it looks great. How are things going with the wallpapers?

 

Hi guys!

Sorry for the late reply - I didn't even realize people started replying this thread of mine ages back.

I've made some contributions, and, alas have posted the (99%) finished site in the website review sub forum:

http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=136675


The final page is here:

http://www.wallpapergarage.com/

Thanks for all your help and feedback fellas

I'm going to start posting the site around the net (not sure yet though), and hopefully going to get some traffic to the site!