Sports photos hosting and selling site

[nicholasfrench]

<p>I have been building my own site to do host and sell my photos on of sport events that i shoot, but untill i get the flash albums worked out i would like to get some shooting underway to sell off, I have come across a few but i cant seem to remeber the urls, i have seen them where they host the photos for free, as many as you want and you bank 80% of whatever they purchase. idealy something, where the site assigns a number to the galleries ahead of time so that i can hand out cards for them to get to the photos. Any places that you have worked with or have seen and like are appreciated. i would like it to be a sports one if possible, makes it look a bit more legit to the parents getting the cards with the URL on them.</p>

[acedigital]

<p>www.photoreflect.com is what I use - you don't assign numbers in advance, but you can identify the event with a description such as "Jones Little League - Orioles vs Red Sox etc. They have different templates, and do all the shopping cart processing and printing through Labtricity online print partners. There is Digital Darkroom for FREE.</p>

[aimee_pieters]

<p>Just a thought - Why not have them go to YOUR website and then click on a link to order an event by name. You would drive lots of traffic to your own website.<br>

I also recommend that you use a service associated with a lab so that your customer places the order, the lab makes the prints and ships them directly to the customer.<br>

Otherwise you'll be placing orders, checking them in, repacking them and shipping them out - why?<br>

Good luck with this.....-Aimee</p>

[alan_myers]

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I use www.printroom.com to host my stuff, as well as all online order taking and product fulfillment, much as Aimee suggested. I'd never try to do all that because I'd much rather be shooting and editing more images, than taking orders, collecting payment, printing, packing and shipping.</p>

<p>I plan a site of my own, but even once that's done I still won't try to host these galleries on it. It's far more efficient to just use the existing setup. There will be a link from my website to my current Printroom galleries, which can be completely customized to appear seamlessly as additional pages within my site.</p>

<p>Printroom costs me $99 a year and I've been using them three years now. Besides the annual fee, they collect an ongoing percentage of the profits, too. There's a more exact formula but I think that works out to around 16% or so. It's well worth it to me! There's a more premium level of service with some features I don't really need, that costs $199. There is also a basic, free account available to check it out if you wish.</p>

<p>Printroom provides a software to help manage my account and galleries, faciliate thumbnail uploads, etc. There's also good support and training, as well as a very extensive list of print styles, types and sizes, plus a sizable list of imprintable specialty products (mugs, tote bags, calendars, jigsaw puzzles, mouse pads, etc.) to choose from. Exactly what you offer and it's pricing above the basic wholesale price is entirely up to you.</p>

<p>One reason I use Printroom is they are local to me. This means my customers receive their orders very quickly, without and expedited shipping costs. Whoever I used, that would be a consideration to me.</p>

<p> </p>

[greg_koni]

<p>I have used smugmug for selling my sports / event photos. They have several levels of accounts all with unlimited storage. I have a pro level account that allows me to customize my page, set my prices, and I forward the links to the albums to the team's manager. The parents can then browse and order using a credit card. Smugmug handles the printing, shipping and credit card billing and retains 15% as their fee and mails me a check for the balance. It really frees my up to just take pictures that I can batch upload at the end of the day. Go to smugmug.com and take a look. They have trial accounts so you can test drive and if you use this coupon code (Qj2D7W0vzU3ys) when you register you get $5 off the annual subscription. It has served me well for 5 years and has more than paid for my equipment purchases. Good Luck!</p>

[jpglive]

<p>Like greg - I use smugmug as well. I have the pro account that allows unlimited storage and it really is unlimited. </p>

<p>I use a firefox plugin called FireUploader to upload the files once I go make the galleries in smugmug. You can customize the look and feel of the site as well as point a domain or sub domain name to it.</p>

[john_sobecki]

<p>I looked around for a few months for a similar site until I found <strong>Candid Color Systems</strong>. They have several options for software depending upon your business model. They do not charge any fees for software use. They only charge when a photo product is ordered. Their cut is about 10% and that includes handling credit cards. You can also link from your website if so desired.<br>

So far, they have been extremely helpful. They even supplied me with over $100 of samples using my images. They do some really neat custom posters that are affordable that you can charge a premium to parents.<br>

Their business website is just OK but make sure to check out their internal support website called Candidnet. You will have to sign up to be able to see all that they can do. The main website is <a href="http://www.candidcolor.com">www.candidcolor.com</a><br>

Good Luck!</p>