In the past I’ve hosted my own photos in the shudder-inducing original GalleryI , before moving to Picasaweb, purely because I like using Picasa to manage my photos. Aside from the web interface being a bit wonky, the main problem is that nobody seems to notice your work – I got a sum total of seven comments in the 12+ months, and with no way to look at statistics I didn’t have a clue if they were being seen at all.
The catalyst for change was the Flickr app on my Blackberry, and the recommendation of a few friends that their photos really do get noticed. Before plunking down the $25 a year for a pro accountII I decided to post three sets to test the waters. One being my visit to Alcatraz (which was the most popular on Picasaweb), and two that I thought would only be of interest to a minority of people, so that I’d get a good gauge of traffic.
I really didn’t expect how well received three sets, completely unpromoted, were in the short time I’ve had them up. With a fair few comments, a request for a group addition and plenty of hits, the icing on the cake was a message from self-tour startup Schmap letting me know that one of my Alcatraz photos would be in the sixth edition of their guide to San Francisco. They might not be Lonely Planet, but it’s something that wouldn’t have happened if I were still using my old solutions. It’s a strange pick (and was taken with my tiny p&s whilst standing on a Segway) but I guess they liked it.
Hopefully soon I’ll migrate all the other photos over and succumb my twenty five bucks to Yahoo.
