Feb 22, 2010
Revenue Generating Image Hosting Website
After 4 painstaking days, I’ve finally managed to put together my first revenue generating website. This site was suppose to be a one day job but it took longer than anticipated due to some unforeseen bad coding on the script. Anyway, this website is an image hosting site. The idea is definitely not unique, nor does the site have any kind of niche. So, why did I choose an image hosting site? Simply because it’s an easy project, easy to promote and practically maintenance free.
An image hosting site is propelled by its users. It requires very minimal work for webmasters, and this suits me perfectly, since I’m quite allergic to work. People will use the site if it offers some sort of benefit. The benefit I chose to provide is simplicity. The site gets straight to the point allowing users to do what they need to without hassling them about signing up or any of that annoying mumbo jumbo. Since there are many image hosting sites out there, I’ve seen some use numerous techniques to differentiate themselves. There are some that offer advanced savvy features but an average user like me will never get past the first upload screen anyway. I’ve used the oldest trick in the book, a fast loading layout. Users appreciate when a site is not resource intensive, although in this day and age who still uses dialup? Anyway, I’ve always appreciated when webmasters used simple straight to the point layouts.
This project was inexpensive as no custom coding was required. I just used a free image hosting script from http://www.scripteen.com/scripts/scripteen-free-image-hosting-script.html. After browsing the author’s site for a while it seems this script still has bugs and the author hasn’t made any updates for some time. However, after testing the functionality of the script thoroughly I found that it works for the most part and can be utilized. There’s another script that’s much simpler and require no database at http://chevereto.com/ and support for this script seems to be ongoing. I chose Scripteen over Chevereto mainly because my hosting is not compatible with Chevereto because they disabled some server functionalities for safety purposes. That was a major bummer, but oh well that’s life.
A demo of the script I’m using can be found at http://www.zemgy.com/. It has a very simple default layout, and straight forward navigation. Unfortunately, the coding is very poorly done. The HTML is definitely not up to par, it’s using a lot of deprecated codes that shows sloppiness. I’ve changed most of the deprecated codes on my version. The core is also not very well written, but it is way too time consuming to redo the core at this point. As you can see, I’ve changed the layout too. Not because it wasn’t nice or anything but since it’s the default layout, everyone that uses this script will have it too.
I put Google Adsense on the site for now because I have not yet applied for another advertising agency. For an image hosting site, I think it’s best to stick with CPM and not CPC. The reason CPM is better is because people generally go to these kinds of websites for the images only, nothing else. The likelihood of a click on the ad is slim to none. I will be changing them to CPM when the site generates more traffic.
So, what did I do to promote the site? I’ve uploaded some images and posted them in relevant topics on large forums. I’ve posted the thumbnail links to the actual image on forums, so when people click on the thumbnails it will lead them to the website where the ads are shown and also let people know that the service exists. I will take 5 minutes of each day to post some images in forums until the website is self sustained. Using social networking websites will give this site a free boost too. What about paid advertisement? Don’t be silly, my goal isn’t to compete with the big boys, it’s just cutting myself a small slice of the pie.
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