How to sell photos online?

[tigerli]

Hi everyone,

I have taken some nice photos at a large holiday party, and many people at the party are willing to buy my photos.

What are the easiest way to sell my photos so that

1. the customer can buy prints online, and the printes will be shipped by a lab to them directly without my handling;

2. I will receive a fee from every print the customer buys

3. the customer can also choose to buy the photo JPEG file at a higher price instead of buying prints?

4. The online photo album has a password option so that the customer's privacy can be protected.

I heard that getting a pro account at Smugmug.com is a possible solution to my situation. Do you have any experiences on using Smugmug to sell photos, or any suggestion of other online services? :confused: ;)

Thank you
TigerLi

[tigerli]

Anyone has any suggestions or comments? thanks.:D

[cdifoto]

Anyone has any suggestions or comments? thanks.:D

I set up my own site because I wanted to print my own and ship from here rather than never see the results. I've never used Smugmug although I considered it. Lots of people are using it so I guess it can't be all that bad.

[Rhys]

I use Smugmug but it's $100 per year. I also use photobox which is free but isn't at all good.

Smugmug's got a good package. I'd be interested in doing my own production but can't really work out how to do all the complex website bits and I'm certainly not paying anybody to set up a website. Plus I'd rather somebody else handled the credit card fraud end.

[cdifoto]

I use Smugmug but it's $100 per year. I also use photobox which is free but isn't at all good.

Smugmug's got a good package. I'd be interested in doing my own production but can't really work out how to do all the complex website bits and I'm certainly not paying anybody to set up a website. Plus I'd rather somebody else handled the credit card fraud end.

$100 a year isn't bad at all...except for the lack of control over printing part. I'm paying $40 a month (that's right, $480 a year!) for my commercial web hosting AND I had to build my website myself (for the most part).

I'm paying it because I don't just sell prints and I'm a control freak so it's worth it to me.

[jwhite]

CDI, just curious. Is what you do with your photographs, ie the recent wedding, the track stuff, etc, your primary job? If it isn't, you must be loaded with photography stuff in your off hours, especially now that I know you also do a website. I find it hard enough to keep up with the photographs I take and get them to people that want them or for myself to print up, and I know I take far fewer pictures than you do. Just a hobby for me though (at least for now).

[cdifoto]

CDI, just curious. Is what you do with your photographs, ie the recent wedding, the track stuff, etc, your primary job? If it isn't, you must be loaded with photography stuff in your off hours, especially now that I know you also do a website. I find it hard enough to keep up with the photographs I take and get them to people that want them or for myself to print up, and I know I take far fewer pictures than you do. Just a hobby for me though (at least for now).

Well yes and no. It's my primary thing, but I'm still poor. heh. Meaning that I'm not really all that busy. I also have things automated to the point where even if I was *in demand*, it would still take less than a full-time job's involvement.

Example is when I batch process my images. I edit them as necessary, but then I have Photoshop actions that resize, apply USM, and save the same image in different folders as necessary. IE I always have one for print (edited but no sharpening), one for the web and USMed accordingly, and one in newspaper print size (easier to email). Every image goes through that process, but if I know I'll never send it to the paper, I turn off the save/resize actionw for that particular folder. I usually try to get the exposure and everything correct at the point of image capture so that minimal editing is necessary anyway.

As for the image orders...the website I have set up is geared towards ecommerce so I can print shipping labels and packing slips and do all that order management stuff right then and there with minimal time invested. A FedEx shipping label is just a matter of putting the appropriate label paper in the laser printer and clicking a couple buttons. The customer automatically gets an order update email with the tracking number included when I click *Print*.

Uploading the images to the website is a matter of browsing to an excel spreadsheet containing the image names/properties/descriptions to upload it to the server, then FTP'ing the images themselves to the server for display. I have the spreadsheet set up in such a way that all I need to do is use the find/replace text feature of Excel to change the dates in the filenames...uniformity in filenaming helps achieve that.

Basically it boils down to get all the small tasks as automated as possible and you'd be surprised at how much time you can save. Because really...everything in life can be seen as a series of small tasks.

I'm actually quite bored most of the time. lol.

[Rhys]

$100 a year isn't bad at all...except for the lack of control over printing part. I'm paying $40 a month (that's right, $480 a year!) for my commercial web hosting AND I had to build my website myself (for the most part).

I'm paying it because I don't just sell prints and I'm a control freak so it's worth it to me.

Have a look at freevirtulservers.com who host one of my websites. They charge me a lot less -more like $40 a year. I have 100mb webspace and 2GB per month. If all you put is VGA-sized images then you're really not going to use the 2gb up. The even give you agora shopping cart. In fact, I'll give a screenshot:

[cdifoto]

I had a cheap host before my current one and for what I do and need, there is no comparison. They were constantly sending me emails that I was using too many server resources (yet I was stating within my plan), and they weren't nearly fast enough. They also had a lot of downtime and incompetent tech support.

My current setup is SQL database-reliant oscommerce with a lot of contributions that need certain installations and includes that not all hosts will allow or install for you - or dont even know the first thing about.

The plan I have now gives me 100GB of data transfer per month and 10GB of storage, plus a myriad of other features & benefits.

[yerfdog97]

Please excuse my inexperience if this reply is totally off base. However, if you're not really selling that many photos, this may be a good solution. Check out photoreflect.com. They have a program where they'll set up your website for free. It's a very simple setup. It says they have unlimited uploads. They don't charge a flat fee, but they charge a percentage of sales, typically 15%, when ordered through the website. You can submit to labs through Labtricity. I use Richmond Camera, and I LOVE everything they print (everything is printed on Kodak Endura paper). They'll ship directly to you or customer, however you set it in the software. You do need to use Express Digital Darkroom, but the Web edition is free online. Hope this helps!

yerfdog97

[Rhys]

As I posted a few days ago, elsewhere...

I have stuff on my smugmug site. quite honestly I find the pro account is a rip-off at $100 per year. I'd rather just not bother than use smugmug for next year. Sales in the few months since I opened the account and uploaded a ton of photos have been exactly nill. I'd say if you want to have a smugmug account for your own vanity then do it. Otherwise, don't bother. It's not worth the hassle.

Over the years I have tried many ways of using the internet to make money. Thus far it's still costing more money than I receive. Even my software sales site is not getting anywhere fast. I haven't even made the minimum sales needed in order to get the first batch of money off the company and that's been there since 2002.

I do not believe anybody who claims that their sole income comes from a website. I do not believe that websites are worthwhile for anything more than advertising. There is a ton of sharks out there offering services for cash - I call them internet pimps - such as webspace, website design, credit card processing etc. They'll all take your money but you'll never get anything worthwhile out of the internet.

[cdifoto]

It's not up to web hosting companies to make money for you. All they're for is space to place yourself. It's up to you to put yourself out there via advertising, click-through (sometimes they work sometimes they dont), pay-per-click (same/similiar as click-through), etc and get the sales/business/money. You have to market yourself. You can't just set up a website and sit back and wait for people to find you. Why do you think my screen name is my web address? Because when people see it...they don't ALWAYS associate it with being just a screen name. People are curious critters...they like to copy n paste "just to see" - a link doesn't always have to be clickable. :-)

Believe what you want but it IS possible to make decent/good/awesome money on a website. Look at Amazon.com, Buy.com, etc. They don't have retail stores.


As I posted a few days ago, elsewhere...

I have stuff on my smugmug site. quite honestly I find the pro account is a rip-off at $100 per year. I'd rather just not bother than use smugmug for next year. Sales in the few months since I opened the account and uploaded a ton of photos have been exactly nill. I'd say if you want to have a smugmug account for your own vanity then do it. Otherwise, don't bother. It's not worth the hassle.

Over the years I have tried many ways of using the internet to make money. Thus far it's still costing more money than I receive. Even my software sales site is not getting anywhere fast. I haven't even made the minimum sales needed in order to get the first batch of money off the company and that's been there since 2002.

I do not believe anybody who claims that their sole income comes from a website. I do not believe that websites are worthwhile for anything more than advertising. There is a ton of sharks out there offering services for cash - I call them internet pimps - such as webspace, website design, credit card processing etc. They'll all take your money but you'll never get anything worthwhile out of the internet.