There are many ways to cuts costs in setting up your own commercial website for selling photos. However, the task of trying to get your photo site ranked in the search engines can be daunting. A higher ranking in the search engines means more traffic. Traffic exchanges can be useful for the short term so do not hesitate to use them if you so desire. From experience, once you stop using traffic exchanges the visitor rate will drop if your site is very new. Submitting to free search engines and directories are useful but be aware that it could take months before your photo site is even listed. The reality is that it could take two or three years for a site to become fully developed on the internet unless your willing to pay for sometimes very expensive advertising. This is not always feasible for someone on a tight budget.
Good backlinks are hard to get unless you pay for them. There are a few free sites for artists that will help you get a little higher on the search engines. One such site is artistsites.org. Another one that can aid the “starving artist” is Artist-Listing.com. The latter has a free membership as well as a paid memberships that allow you to showcase more of your work than the free version. There are also some free hosting sites that rank well in the search engines that can help get you to the top of the pages quicker. Trading links is fine as long as the link is related somehow to the subject of your site. There are also social networking sites.
In the long run it will take time and patience to get your photo site noticed if you do not really want to pay for the extra expenses of promoting your site.