Development of a travel photo gallery site

Am asking for feedback on how to further develop my travel photography site

[Scooter24]

My site is a big non-commercial photo gallery, with about 1900 pictures from SE Asia, Africa and Europe. It's basically pictures and also contains some travelogues and travel information. The main focus is travel and photography. I launched the site in March and at the moment I have an average of 500 unique visitors/day, each visiting an average of 12 pages. There is a guestbook and now and then somebody leaves a message.

The general user feedback is that the pictures are stunning and people are impressed to find such an extensive concentration of images on specific countries.

I'd like to further develop the site and was thinking of adding some kind of interactivity to it, i.e. enabling visitors to leave a feedback. That would mean for instance
- polls
- visitors can leave comments on individual images or galleries
- message boards - although there are already many travel related message boards in the Internet and maybe there is no big point in adding another one

The idea would be to increase the traffic and sooner or later find a sponsor (or sponsors). Sponsors could for instance be Amazon to advertise its travel books, maybe digital camera manufacturers (all photos were taken with one brand of digital camera) and travel operators (just guessing) - or anybody else who might want to be associated with my site.

Anyway, I'd like to hear your opinions on how to further develop such a site. What should I do ?

[aspdaddy]

Hi Scooter,

I'd do some profilling on the hits you get first.
View the referrers so you know where they come from, what terms etc. Once you have this info try targeting products that you think they will buy ..camera supplies? Lonley planet books? Hiking boots? Find something that works, build a store and give it a good pr link from the gallery site :)

[Scooter24]

aspdaddy,

thanks for the reply. I also have a full time job which has nothing to do with webdesign, so I'm not sure if I would have the time to set up a store (although my wife currently isn't working).

The referrers show more or less that people access my site when they look for imformation and images on these countries (all holiday destinations).

My questions basically is, what can be added to a travel photo gallery to enhance the visitors' experience and ultimately the traffic.

[tedster]

I'd suggest you get that poll running and find out what current visitors would like to see you add. Nothing like asking people what they want instead of taking your best guess!

[Mardi_Gras]

Scooter24 - if you placed the URL in your profile it might give people more to go on to help you :)

[Scooter24]

About the poll: how to do that ? Can ít be done with Java ? I'm having some problems with CGI. Where can I find the software ?

<sorry, no personal urls within the post>

[edited by: tedster at 3:07 pm (utc) on Aug. 21, 2002]

[Mardi_Gras]

Actually, you should put that URL in your profile - not in your post - you may want to snip it from your post.

[colorspots]

i would become at least an amazon associate so that you can collect commisson on items sold on your site. I make about $500 per quarter on one of my sites having to do with scrapbooking.