How long do you leave a clients wedding gallery live

[jessica_sims]

Hello,

 

Thank you for reading.

 

Typically I leave a clients wedding gallery live for six months. However after talking with a client recently I was given

the impression that this wasn't long enough. Thus, I am left wondering how long is long enough?

 

How long do you leave your clients gallery's live?

 

Thanks in advance,

JS

[sarah_dugan]

i work with collages.net and the package i go with is 60 days. however, they've been great in re-releasing the events at about mid-october through december for xmas ordering, so it ends up being about 4 - 5 mos total.

 

i offer the chance to extend the galleries, but i have yet (in the 3 years i've been doing this) to have someone take me up on the add-on.

 

smd

[ryan_smith10]

Hi JS,

 

I leave the gallery live for 3 months, and it's implied that the orders are to me made by then. The last payment is made with the order (33%), so I wouldn't enjoy waiting a year for their order and hence my payment.

 

I give my clients a CD with low res images numbered accordingly, and I send them an order form document, so if they require more time, or if they want to order more later, they have that method to do so.

 

3 months IMO is enough time to sort through the photographs and choose which ones they want printed, however isn't enough time to procrastinate. A happy medium I think.

[tim_schultz1]

3 months. Give them a sense of urgency.

[gpjoell3]

I also use Collages and I give my clients 90s.

[edrodgers]

Since I've moved to Smugmug, I haven't taken any of them down. It's been a year and a half.

 

But I'm not what you would call obsessed with making money. :)

[savagesax]

With printroom.com, there is enough room ( memory) on there site to keep a job online for about a year.

[jo_dinning]

I leave them up for as long as I am receiving orders - this is usually around three months by which time most guests

who are likely to place an order will have done so. If the B&G or immediate family contact me about prints down the

line after the images have been removed, then I am always happy to put them back online again for a short while if

they wish to make further purchases.

[tdj]

I leave galleries up for 90 days; 60-90 days should be sufficient, even for us procrastinators! To increase the sense of urgency, I offer a discount on orders placed within the first 3 weeks of a gallery going live. The vast majority of my orders are placed within those 3 weeks. The couple, along with their parents, receive a slightly larger discount on their orders. YMMV, you have to experiment with different marketing approaches to discover what works best for your business. Best of luck!

[sam_ellis]

I'm with Ed, I say I will leave them on SM for a year, but I never really take them down. There's no additional charge to leave them online with SM, so why bother? I've had a few clients who have placed orders two or three years after the wedding.

 

Sam

[think27]

I don't have on line galleries. I still use proof albums and I get orders as much as 8 years later. ;-)

 

Most are 1 to 2 years later. None are within 3 months. 85% order $1,000 plus plus. I've had exactly one month 2 years ago where I didn't have an order in house in 8 years. I'm on my last order of 5 and just got a call from a groom from 1998, another from two years ago and another from last summer. Met another couple two weekends ago in Old Town while shopping and they told me they are sorry to procrastinate but they are planning to finally get it done soon!

[rachel_peek]

My studio has had success with 3 months. If a bride requests more time, we can extend it. But we never go longer than 6 months, as we give our clients the digital negatives on their one year anniversary anyway so they don't need a web gallery for proofing anymore.

 

At the end of that third month, a sense of urgency definitely propels print sales, especially from clients' family members who are signed up for notifications and alerts and they see that "time is running out!".

 

But your personal choice is going to depend on a lot of factors: Your choice of lab and/or web gallery and their policies, whether your make your money predominantly off your shoot fee or your prints or a combination of both, and also how well things have worked for you in the past. If it aint broke, don't fix it! If you're most comfortable doing 6 months, and one client requests longer, can you just make adjustments for that client individualy?