How to attract website traffic?

[CrazyPuma]

I don't think this is really about "business of pro photography" so I'll put it here ...

Like many others, I'm (slowly) building a more serious gallery. I'm using exposuremanager (they rock) and thus I believe I don't even have a possible built-in member audience ala smugmug. Web-only sales are all about traffic numbers, so besides search engines (always do that), what other ways do people have to get traffic to their websites?

I can think of some:

1 - register to hundreds of forums agressively post links, tho that often irritates forum mods more than anything else :D
2 - Purchase traffic from some web company; these are typically ineffective and bogus, however
3 - buy into Googles ad click thing, to have your site posted on their side-ad column
4 - the old style webrings and such - but then you need banners, which I don't like, or a link page, which while probably possible to do on exposuremanager probably isn't a good idea, and doesn't look very good either.
5 - RSS feeds, which I think exposuremanager doesn't support, so not valid in my case?

Anything else?
I'm always amazed at how certain sites/forums seem to be able to generate thousands of vistors or members in just a few months, even when they're not for/about a popular known topic. How do they do that? lol

[Pekka]

It's all about content. Your content must interest people AND you must get the site known in right places so people find your site. You can put a link to your sig of course, but all kinds of "member fishing" is a no no here. Webrings might work, and link directories. After certain threshold word goes around and that brings people there.

Interesting content can not be faked. It either is or is not. Any amount of web design can not help that. Google picks your site higher if it has unique content, and also if it is linked to a lot (which means content is interesting to many).

[CrazyPuma]

You can put a link to your sig of course, but all kinds of "member fishing" is a no no here.
Lol, it's pretty much a no-no anywhere, with good reason - ad-spam of any kind is annoying. Don't worry, I won't do anything like that here. :) I have a hard time bringing myself to do it at all, even in sigs, really.

Content is a given, but when it's a photo gallery site - that isn't a "funniest cats on the web" or some such, haha - it feels difficult to have content that will really drive people to go (and more importantly, come back), since what is an interesting image is so subjective. So unless you're enough of a writer to compose lots of "how to" articles on photography or some such (like dan heller), I guess you just have to keep uploading new images frequently and hope over a long period of time that what you like to take pictures of is what the masses like to look at?

Even if one has the "best content in the world", the hard thing is getting people to even go there in the first place; was kind of hoping someone might have a gallery success story or three that might relate to that.

[CrazyPuma]

Quick thought: Do people like short notes/stories/captions about an image's origin? Could that be "interesting content" to give a gallery something more than just a list of pictures? :)

[ieatstars]

Quick thought: Do people like short notes/stories/captions about an image's origin? Could that be "interesting content" to give a gallery something more than just a list of pictures? :)
I can't speak for everyone else, but I would definitely find that interesting. It bugs me when I find pictures where I can't figure out anything about them (ie where it was taken, some info on the subject, etc)

[liza]

You might try something like this:

http://firefactor.coffeecup.com/