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I feature all my work exclusively online. What are ways, besides the link-spamming and SEO to drive traffic to your online gallery?

I use Facebook and Twitter to occasionally to post links, but I'd like to find out other methods that have been successful in driving viewers to your gallery.

I'm not interested in fame, or making money, just getting more people to view my art.

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  • Send emails to friends and family when you update your gallery.
  • If you sell photos through your gallery, send your customers emails as well.
  • Forum posting is nice, but then you end up with other hobbyists, rather than a good 'target audience'. Find, instead, people who might be interested in the photo and will post to their facebook pages or twitter, and have lots of 'friends' or 'followers'. These people should get frequent updates.
  • Go to craft fairs and sell prints. Do this frequently enough, and you'll start to see the same people. There is an art community that arises around these fairs, and then there are the customers and the like as well. Some are repeats, others are one-offs, and you should get all of their email addresses for updates.
  • Make your site easy to use. It does no good to have traffic without allowing people to get to your photos. Sites like Kodak, that require logins, add a barrier to entry that people will often just not bother vaulting.
  • Group photos how you think your traffic wants to see them. If you have photos from a trip, put them together. Don't mix trips from two years ago with trips taken recently, and don't lump everything together into one huge datastream.
  • Make business cards with your website on it. Give these cards to potential clients. If you're not doing photography as a business, business cards might seem a bit creepy, so use at your discretion.
  • Tag your photos with appropriate keywords. Some of the photos I have that have gotten the most traffic, I tagged with keywords that were apparently straight out of some vampire fiction; I had no idea why those photos were getting so much traffic until I googled those keywords.
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Get involved in things. Comment on photos, add contacts (such as Flickr) you are interested in and get involved in forums. If other people see some interesting and well shot photos of yours lying around the net, they may be interested to see more. As such, if you interact with people about yours and their photography they may be curious about what your stuff is like. That's one thing you might be able do more of?

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Take amazing photos

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    More seriously though, your focus shouldn't be on how you can force eyeballs on your site. There's no point if people visit and then leave straight away. If your work is good, people will see it. Focus on your art. – matt burns Aug 20 '10 at 8:30
  • Couldn't agree more. – NickM Aug 20 '10 at 11:39
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    Actually I disagree. Consider how many artists were never appreciated during their day. Marketing is as bit as important as artistic skill. I'm not looking for gratification, but what is the point of making art if no-one can see it (unless that is what you are going for). – Alan Aug 20 '10 at 18:42
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Enter contests, even if you don't place, more people are looking at your photos, if you do place, even better.

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