Hans put together a list of his Top 10 panoramas from 2003, which include New Year's Eve at Times Square, by Jook Leung, and The Top of the World, Mount Everest Summit.

We thought it was time to revisit the man whom we called the 'VR Evangelist' in an article last year and learn how he had manage to propel his website, and virtual reality, to new hieghts of popularity.

Can you outline the traffic growth on your website over the past year (2003).

The traffic graph shows the growth since Dec 2002. The left graph is the stat for the front page only (Extreme tracker) and the right is the sitemeter stat for all pages. The sitemeter was not installed on all pages until the start of July.

As you can see, the front page only gets 15-30% of the traffic. Link sites, weblogs and also news sites link directly to the fullscreen pages with the result that many of the fullscreen pages are very highly ranked in Google.

Last month’s record of approximately 600,000 visits will be hard to beat. I have made some investigations using Alexa.com, a very good traffic index tool, to compare my website with similar sites.

panoramas.dk’s average Traffic Rank for the last three months was 38,369; at my highest week in February the Rank was around 18,000, in October it was 95,000. The average for the last three months, measured by my sitemeter, was 300,000 visits/month.

Here are the three months Traffic Rank for some sites:

Official tourist sites
visitdenmark.com 45,032
visitbritain.com 14,519
visitsweden.com 75,689
tourspain.es 57,277

Well known Mac sites
maccentral.macworld.com 10,805
macnn.com 23,732

Large photo sites and magazines
robgalbraith.com 18,705
annegeddes.com 20,840
ephotozine.com 32,986
digitaljournalist.org 44,156
zonezero.com 45,505
masters-of-photography.com 45,785

You've received a huge amount of publicity from the mainstream media, can you recount some of it for us.

Actually the mainstream media publicity is very small compared to what I get from alternative media like the weblogs, forums and linksites, at least when it comes to traffic.

I have been featured as website of the week at PCMag, website of the month in the Swedish PC för Alla, featured in the French computer magazine Micro Hebdo, presented in Telematin France TV2, RBBnavi Japan, Startsiden.no, Parade (weekly magazine in US newspapers), news spots at smaller NBC stations, mentioned twice in New York times, the last time by David Pogue (actually that was more a feature of Jook Leung’s New Years VR, and even without a click-link it created more traffic than any of the other features above).

What link/mention are you most particularly proud?

I do not like to set any feature in front but I am proud that Zeldman linked to me twice. Zeldman is probably the most well known web designer in the world and he does not usually link to anything other than web design related pages.

I imagine you receive a tremendous amount of email. How do you keep on top of it, if you do?

I do not, unfortunately. The last few months especially have been a pain for me as I have had a lot of work to do and I simply had to just acknowledge the email. And I apologize to all who have written me and not got any answer.

Do you feel pressured to find an amazing pano each week? How do you go about selecting them?

I have been pressured several times and I also simply skipped the weekly feature for more than a month. I find most of the fullscreens at the photographers’ websites but I also get some sent to me.

How much marketing of your website do you do today, as compared to a year ago?

I do much more. If the fullscreen of the week is one that I believe I can get into some media, I send emails to the sites I believe will be interested. However, some subjects - like the Mars and Times Square panos - only needed a few emails to a couple of the best weblogs. Believe it or not but the Mars was sent to three weblogs and I now have 534 links to that page. The result is that panoramas.dk is now also at the top for searches for QTVR and QuickTime VR along with panoramas and many other search words and phrases. One of the reasons for this is that the weblogs have learned now that there is something called QTVR and they use it more in the actual link, which influences the Google page rank for that search word.

panoramas.dk is a 'hobby' for you, that is to say you have a 'real' job as a photographer. What amount of time from your workweek does the website take up?

At least a couple of hours a day.

Have you received photography work as a result of your website?

Not directly as far as I know but of course it has influenced my page rank in Google, and also for my other sites. And I have received several assignments originating from Google searches last year. (Search Google for Nyberg - Photographer Denmark - vr photographer - qtvr dk.)

Virtual Tours are practically unknown here in Denmark and it will need a lot of direct marketing to sell it. Also, the media in Denmark has not been responsive yet but I can reveal that I recently received a very interesting call, which I hope will change it all. At least it showed me that there is an interest at a high level.

Would you call panoramas.dk a labor of love or do you consider it work?

It has become a part of my work as I consider it a PR site for all VR photographers, including myself.

How much credit would you give to weblogs in your success?

Without weblogs panoramas.dk would still be a site where VR photographers looked at each other’s work.

Weblogs have the ability to publish faster than any other media and that has made it possible to feature fullscreens like Everest, New Year’s Eve at Times Square, and my Mars QTVR; these ‘news panoramas’ get the largest response. If I could get one of these each month I could probably increase traffic even more.

What do you think it is about your website that makes it so popular (the panos themselves, simplicity of design, one-man operation, etc.)?

I know there are those who do not like my design and find it hard to find things on the site. I don’t think so myself, and to me it is essential that I can manage it without databases as I am not at all technologically minded. I have added a search function though. As I am updated almost every day by Google it was easy to use their free website search.

From what I read in forums, most people are amazed by the fullscreens and many mention the difference compared to the small size QTVRs they’ve seen before.

Where would you like to see panoramas.dk one year from now?

I would like to be able to supply the largest news sites - CNN, BBC, etc. - with fullscreen news panoramas from events around the world. This would create more interest for VR than anything else. Of course, they would have to pay for it.

I would also like to be featured in photography magazines. For some reason, virtual reality is not known and/or acknowledged by the photographic community. VR is a photographic creative media like any other type of photography, but you never see it featured in photo magazines, even if they have websites to post the VRs.

What's the one most critical link you've had in the past year?

Links to the Everest panorama were the most important, they increased traffic more than 300% and it has stayed at that level. Everest is still one of the most viewed fullscreens and the other, less promotable, fullscreens have benefited from that.

What do you outside of your photography work and website, i.e. in your free time, if you have any?

Not much. I have a large house and have lived alone for the past ten years. It’s a 40-minute drive to the closest large city (Aarhus) so going to the theatre or cinema is both time-consuming and expensive. I would like to have time (and money) to travel again.

I would like at last to thank Marco Trezzini and VRWAY for giving panoramas.dk a home; without it I would not been able to continue as the traffic started to grow with a bandwidth usage that increased to a level I could not pay for.

10. Week 41 2003 Click for fullscreen QTVR 27.773 views





9. Week 34 2003 Click for fullscreen QTVR 30.185 views





8. Week 17 2003 Click for fullscreen QTVR 31.316 views





7. Week 4 2003 Click for fullscreen QTVR 35.676 views





6. Week 24 2003 Click for fullscreen QTVR 46.298 views





5. Week 17 2002 Click for fullscreen QTVR 46.857 views





4. Week 10 2002 Click for fullscreen QTVR49.504 views





3. Week 32 2002 Click for fullscreen QTVR 73.266 views





2. Week 1-2 2003 Click for fullscreen QTVR 93.552 views





1. Week 22 2003 Click for fullscreen QTVR 465.365 views in 2003