I think traffic goes in cycles. Also our "talent" goes in cycles. If you have three good days and get lots of hits and comments then when you post an average photo you really feel the hit drop! Also, some people, like me, tend to visit in cycles. It may be a week before I get to one of my favorites. Or I got there, but didn't have time to comment.
When the meta-gallery first went up my hit rate about doubled. The nice thing about the gallery is a good photo will pull in people who don't have you on their favorites list. And I have found some good people to add to my favorites. I admit I never thought I could visit everyone when I joined (Jan.1, 2004) so I took some of Jeanne's favorites (she's my sister) and made them mine. Then I added some people who were fairly new like me, because the "old" PADers seemed like a tight bunch I wouldn't fit in with. (Sorry guys, you're not, but seemed it.) I also made it a point to visit the people who first welcomed me to PAD and made several of them my favorites. I have only about 36 favorites.
I'm not trying to cut anybody out or limit PAD, but I have to draw limits to my daily viewing!!
My experience after three months is that ordinary people like me who don't have eighty gazillion PAD friends don't get many hits when we post a perfectly decent photo of some ordinary thing. Only people who personally know you will bother to look at it and fewer will comment. If you want hits, you have to shoot things that aren't so ordinary, or make the ordinary extra-ordinary, or make lots of friends--sow your comments, intelligent ones, all over PAD. You don't need to put your pad link there, people can just click your name and find the gallery.
And finally, I will host the list of PADers beginning with 2/2/04. If you began PAD after Jeanne stopped maintaining a list contact me with a link to your preferred self-portrait, which I will copy and shrink(?) and a link to your PAD gallery. This way, new people can find each other and make new PAD friends and this growing sea can maybe be made a bit more manageable. I think I'm going to regret this.
Give me some time to get it up. If you are on Jeanne's list, DON'T be asked to be put on mine.