Online photo sales

Hey all-

I've been looking around for a quality service to sell my event photos online (especially for weddings). I'd like for my

clients to be able to log in to their private gallery, select photos to order, and have the photos delivered in their

respective sizes and media. I've looked at Pictage, of course, but I don't have $99 to spare at the end of each month.

On a lower end, I've also reviewed Shutterfly and dotphoto (the latter of which had some fairly negative reviews).

What is the best online service? How has your experience been with the company? I am looking for minimal upfront

pricing, expedient and reliable delivery to the customer, flexibility, and options.

 

Thanks!

 

-Michael

Michael,

I have a smugmug account, and I LOVE IT! I can completely customize everything including prices. For the value, I cannot say enough good

about it! Consider this though: If I shot weddings, events, or high volume stuff I would without a doubt go with Pictage! I spoke with one of there

reps the other day and what I found out blew me away - send them your raw files and they do the rest. THAT alone would make me switch. I just

shot my first wedding in 8 years a month ago (in RAW) and spent a week adjusting and color balancing. For $99 a month, how much is your time

worth? They do it for you, and again, if I shot 1-2 weddings a week, etc, I would be using that. Then again, I hate HATE post production. It has all

but killed the fun of PHOTOGRAPHY. Just my $.02

Hope this helps...

I use pictage, usually happy with the final prints, the album design is great, I always uplaod final files though, and their accounting and payout is ATROCIOUS. Google pictage and complaints and check for yoruself. J

I've read a number of posts on this issue over the past few months. I've yet hear what people think of Print Room. I just started an acct with Print Room and am waiting for my prints to be sent to me in the mail. From what I've experience the site is good. The pricing is very flexible. You can set up packages, Discounts, and something called "Photo Pass" which sounds like a good marketing tool especially for event photography. A classic acct doesn't have any monthly or annual charge.

 

Does anyone have any first hand experience with print room?

I use Digital Darkroom I own the Assembly edition , the web edition is free.

I use printroom classic account and I'm very happy with it considering I don't pay an annual fee. I've also

looked at Exposure Manager and another one I just saw but can't find on these forums like picture pro but its

very different. Pictage is offline right now so I can't compare them but I'll put my experiences and research on

the above here quickly...

 

Printroom - The faults I have with printroom are minor, for the free acount I have few complaints. However their

available products are typical. They offer prints in pretty much every possible size but until recently it was

only glossy or matte finish. They finally added fine art and metallic prints. Everyone seems to offer coffee

mugs and mouse pads but those things seem to me like something you want to put a snapshot on not a wedding photo.

I'm not thrilled with the 13% + 3% they charge but I understand there is overhead and I set my prices

accordingly and accept it. The printroom manager software works well to manage galleries but I still have to

tweak the gallery settings online like password protecting them.

 

Exposure Manager - $64 or $99 annual fee, percentage of sales, almost identical to printroom with a few

exceptions. I noticed that they had unlimited storage where printroom I don't think offers that and that was a

good thing IMO. Other than that I think they were very similar.

 

Pictures Pro - This is a very different approach to photo shopping carts, this is a $279 one time fee for the

software, charge accounts, hosting, etc are all additional/separate fees. However Pictures Pro may have the

flexibility I wish to offer to my customers. This isn't a site like printroom or exposure manager or others,

this is MY site with my domain name. There may be some complexity setting up Pictures Pro on a hosting service

especially for a novice, especially getting email and other aspects of your online business setup you may have

challenges. Its a smaller support network than say printroom, and printroom has been very helpful support wise.

 

I hope that helps, ultimately neither of these options helps you to market yourself and get word out that you are

in business and

taking orders. Search engine optimization and marketing are two separate concepts to drive business to your

site. That step is really up to you.

Michael:

 

I don't do much print sales at all. My main speciality is photographing law enforcement and prisons, not offering those

images as prints even...*lol*.

 

But, every now and then I do pro bono work covering events for local charities etc and at those times people often want

the option to buy prints. I've been using Digital Events Online for years and have never had a complaint from a client

about getting a bad print. The upload is fast and seamless. It is easy to customize your site. And the people that work

there are incredibly helpful.

Hi,

 

I use Printroom.com... the $99 per year pro account. Have used it for about 3 years now. It's a good arrangement

for me.

 

They provide free software to make thumbnails and manage your galleries. You get a lot of storage space, I

currently have maybe 100 galleries up total, probably well over 10,000 thumbnails, and have about two thirds my

alloted space still available. You can add more storage, too, if needed, for a one time fee.

 

There's a lot of flexibility how you use Printroom. You can do just as you wanted, password protected galleries,

and can order proofs yourself if you wish (at wholesale prices), use passwords or not, watermark or not, etc. It

can be tied closely in to your own website, customized to appear the same, etc.

 

There's a more premium level of service ($199 a year), but it's more than I need.

 

I like having the name and phone number of a support rep, and his supervisor. But, I've had most issues and

questions resolved quickly via email, usually within a few hours.

 

We used Smugmug before Printroom, and weren't happy with the quality of the prints at that time. I do hear that

they have improved dramatically, so it's probably worth considering.

 

One key reason I use Printroom is that they are local to me (SF Bay area). So, as a rule my customers enjoy what

amounts to overnight shipping, without any additional cost.

 

Their pricing (and thus mine) is competitive on prints. Their pricing on specialty items like coffee mugs, tote

bags and mouse pads seems a bit high, forcing mine to be really high, or me to simply enjoy less profit margin. I

suspect they send out this type of work, and that's why it's so expensive.

 

You can set up your own pricing structure and select the products you want to offer or not... Ton's of

flexibility there. Or, you can just use their recommended/default pricing (they have three price structures:

wedding/portraits, other events and sports).

 

The 13% + 3% is well worth it to me... When things get busy, I'd go nuts trying to keep up with order

fulfillment, and would also have the added cost of accepting credit cards, plus hassles of collecting sales

taxes, packaging and shipping, etc.

 

I have my account set up now so that every order needs my approval. That way I will only finish optimizing,

balancing, cropping and correcting photos once ordered. This means I can initially just do a fast edit and bulk

RAW conversion to get thumbnails uploaded. It saves lots of time and work!

 

There are some minor glitches to Printroom... nothing is perfect, I suppose. Little stuff like not being able to

modify an order in some ways once it's placed (such as a change in print sizes, even if the price is the same).

Customer has to cancel the order and re-order.

 

Never had a customer complaint, and Printroom offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee anyway. My payout check

arrives like clockwork on about the 17th of each month, and I've never found an accounting error in it.

 

I'm not so much a wedding photographer, I do other sorts of events. But, I think, with the possible exception of

really nice, high end albums (locally, I'd probably try Nayaco.com for those), Printroom can probably handle all

you might need. Whoops... I just looked and Printroom does have albums, too. They do offer some sort of

post-processing and custom hand processing of images, a bit of additional charge to the customer, but I haven't

needed that service and am not familiar with it. Oh, they have an ICC profile available, to help soft proof your

images on your own, calibrated monitor.

 

I'm not entirely sure what Chris is referring to with respect to prints... Printroom has the usual gloss, luster

and matte finishes and a very large range of sizes. Also the metallic. Plus, B&W and sepia conversions. Prints on

canvas are relatively new (and not cheap), maybe that's what he means.

 

Another thing that's relatively new, you can create an event specific website, for any particular event you wish.

This is as opposed to a photographer's storefront, where all the events are listed. The event site looks similar

and costs some additional, one-time fee ($50?), but premium subscribers gets some for free, included in their

membership (5?).

 

According to their own hype, Printroom is the largest and fastest growing pro-oriented online service of its type.

 

As far as I know, they are the only service that's actually licensed to use a certain number recognition &

sorting program, which is more of a sports photographer's tool. Others are using it, but in violation of the

patent some guy has on it. Printroom licensed it from him. If you ever find yourself photographing a bicycle race

or triathlon it might come in handy, but it isn't free.

 

Sub-accounts are available, if you have second shooters working with you. That way they can directly submit their

own work, using their own passwords and not have full access to your account. Hand in hand with that, there are

virtual galleries. Typically this is where other hidden (unpublished) galleries are the source of images that are

combined and published in another, virtual gallery. The records of sales through sub-accounts are kept distinct,

to help with bookkeeping. There's a one-time cost to setting a sub-account, but the last time I created one it

also came with a substantial increase in storage space that made it worthwhile.

 

You are welcome to poke around my Printroom galleries if you wish.It's at www.printroom.com/pro/amfoto1 I'll be

happy to try to answer any questions.

 

Hope this helps!

 

Alan Myers

San Jose, Calif.

 

Alan Myers

San Jose, Calif.

Pictage is geared toward wedding photography though costly. You can set up private galleries and instant print

purchases & delivery on the Photoshelter Archive also as that costs $30/ month but they are intended to be a

stock photo site more than anything.

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