Photo Gallery: Is it even worth it?

[Livenomadic]

I'm working on a big expansion for my site about "skydiving abroad" and played with the idea to start a photo-gallery (I'd probably use phpgallery).

I have 0 photos about skydiving abroad so I would have to gather the neccessary photos through contacting organizations and then setup the whole system.

However, I am beginning to think that making a photo gallery isn't really worth it:

1) People rarely look at them
2) Heavy Bandwidth use
3) Lots of time to build
4) No revenue (who clicks on adsense in a photogallery?!?!)

Anyone else have experience with galleries have any insight or suggestions?

[Liane]

I have 0 photos about skydiving abroad so I would have to gather the neccessary photos through contacting organizations and then setup the whole system.

Well that does present a rather large problem. However, if you can make it work and can realize the traffic a photo gallery provides, it can be worth the trouble.

1) People rarely look at them

Not true! I am in the middle of building a very extensive photo gallery which currently has 31 pages and 295 photos. I will likely have well over 400 by the time I'm finished.

My traffic has doubled in the last 6 weeks (compared to last year) simply because of the photo gallery. Sales inquiries have increased by about 23%.

I'd say its definitely worth it if you make money selling sky diving adventures?

2) Heavy Bandwidth use

So be it ... if it produces sales.

3) Lots of time to build

So be it ... if it produces sales. Anything worth doing is worth doing right. Time invested in your site has to go against the cost of sales and should produce a financial benefit by way of exposure leading to sales.

4) No revenue (who clicks on adsense in a photogallery?!?!)

Can't help you there. I don't use ad sense or any PPC model.

My advise would be to build a very small gallery to begin with and see what happens to your traffic. Start with one or two pages of really good shots. If you don't get increased traffic or increased inquiries, maybe its not worth it. Your call.

For me, its been well worth the effort! My customers just love it and natural incoming links are already beginning to accumulate. Heck, even one competitor is linking to my photos!

Yeah, photo galleries are definitely worth the time & effort IMHO. Its one hell of a lot of work, but for me it has paid off! I guess it really depends upon your application? :)

[webmastertexas]

My photo galleries generate pretty good revenue. I put Fastclick banners on the page, of course, not Adsense.

[isitreal]

If people rarely look at them then you aren't having heavy bandwidth use, obviously, since nobody is looking, there is no bandwidth being consumed.

If people do look at them, which I've found they do if you're offering something that they want to see, then there's no reason adsense wouldn't work.

It just comes down to if a gallery is a plus to the site, does it make it more of a destination? For something like skydiving that seems like a no brainer, I'd want to see people skydiving, reading about it isn't very interesting, it's sort of like rock climbing.

[BwanaZulia]

I think it is worth it.

It does not have to be hard to build, I use a bunch of automation from iPhoto -> server software that does all the dynamic layout, etc. People love photos.

On one of my sites, I restricted viewing of the gallery to people who were registered guests, never stopped the flow of registrations at all.

BZ

[webmastertexas]

True, building the "gallery" is probably the easiest thing I've done. compared to the site template, galleries are a cinch.