With the variety of Gallery products available for your forum, it is easy to find one that will fit both your needs and your budget. You may be thinking why do I need a gallery on my board or my board’s topic doesn’t really fit the need for a gallery. It is time to expand your thinking.
I have found on each of my boards that a gallery is always a welcomed addition. It has never been something members get upset about, but it is quite the opposite. If nothing else, you can say it is free file hosting. no matter what your topic is, people will always have something to share visually through pictures. Even if it is just personal pictures of them and their family. The reason I bring this to you today is because CruiseLineForums.com and SprintUsers.com are both seeing incredible amounts of consistent traffic coming through our galleries. Each of those forums get HUNDREDS of unique visits daily through the gallery images from sources like Google Images.
Some would say this isn’t quality traffic, but I feel differently and here is why:
1. They are searching for images related to my forum’s topic
2. I have ads on all of my gallery pages, so this WILL generate extra revenue
3. I offers branding for your site when people come and your URL and design sticks in their mind
4. It can be viral - If a guest comes and finds some fantastic pictures, they might tell others about your forum
I hope this has encourages you to either get a gallery on your board or better use the one you currently have. 
Hi ! Quite smart!
I just installed Photopost a few days ago on one of my forums. I’m not very technically adept so it took it a few days to get it to work like I wanted it to. So far, its working out very well.
I tried to get to your Photo Gallery on SprintUsers but it said I had to be logged in. How does google spider your images if guests can’t get to it? Unless I am hitting the wrong gallery.
I think the comment that it can be viral is overly optimistic. If anything then the user will just download the awesome image and email it to someone else.
I am not at all convinced that a photogallery is worth the expense (if you buy one), or the bandwidth, considering that there are dozens of free photo hosts (i.e. photobucket) users learned to use.
Ads on the gallery pages only means impressions, they CAN generate revenue, but WILL generate revenue is again an overstatement imho.
I am sure you have adsense channels set up, or other ways to track which ad was clicked if you do not use adsense. What are your real world numbers for gallery CTR?
One thing you aren’t mentioning here is CPM ads. So my galleries will make me money. I know for a fact galleries can be viral and have multiple studies as proof. You can pay for a good gallery but you can also find good products for free. It is a worthwhile addition to any forum.
Brent - You can see what I am talking about by clicking on the wallpapers link.
I don’t use a gallery on my forum yet. I have hotlink protection enabled to converve bandwidth. My current hosting offers 200GB a month and I am at around 35GB, so I have plenty of bandwidth to spare, but it just irks me that people would hotlink to my images if I were to implement a gallery. Is there a way to allow galleries to be indexed by Google Images but still prevent hotlinking?
But how much bandwidth can we expect to use up with a gallery. I know this all just depends on the sites traffic. But what if people start linking to your pictures etc. I’m new to this so maybe these are noob questions but I’m guessing this gallery will cost some $$
I doubt the bandwidth usage will be too bad. I think most have ways to limit the size and dimensions of uploaded pic. I am going to try this with my forum. I have added an upload function to put picutres into posts, but I think a gallery where someone can look at all the pictures by “User X” would be a nice addition. I hope to pic up some Google image users as well.