Subscribing to Photo.net

[nathan_rigg]

<p>I want an easy and inexpensive way of setting up a site that people and possibly potential customers could view my images in a well formatted way.<br>

Would subscribing to this site provide this?<br>

Thanks</p>

[Matt Laur]

<p>This really isn't the venue for customer-facing display of your work, Nathan. It can be a great way to interact with your fellow photographers, and some of your customers might enjoy seeing what you post here (images and messages), but you really want an environment that's more taylored to showing your work in a commercial way. And since your customers aren't also going to be subscribers here, they're going to see ads for other services... which may not be a good fit.<br /><br />Are you talking about general portfolio stuff, or about per-project customer review of your work? <br /><br />Incidentally, a subscription here (use and support of this site in general) has great value, regardless.</p>

[nathan_rigg]

<p>General portfolio. The key reason so I can direct prospective customers to view. </p>

[stp]

<p>I direct some people who may be interested in my photos to this site, but I shoot as a hobby and my "customers" are usually non-profit environmental organizations looking for charitable donations. If I were really into selling images and had a number of clients, I would choose something other than photo.net. It's easy and relatively inexpensive to set up a personal home page using one of many templates. I use photium, some use smugmug, and I know there are other alternatives.</p>

[bobatkins]

<p>I think there are better sites than photo.net for that. Sites that specifically address your application. Photo.net could be used that way, but it's not what it is designed for. Try "Smugmug" for example.</p>

[natm]

<p>Try Zenfolio, easy to use and cheaper than smugmug.</p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>If you just want an ad for yourself; you could put that up anywhere; but, if you want to sell your work online, using the computer like a store, it's best to go with suggestions like those above. </p>

[nodpete]

Check out the "Image Pro" site available here if your'e a subscriber. It might be what you want.

[bobatkins]

<p>Image Pro will be good, but it's still in development. The original implementation wasn't good and so photo.net is currently rewriting all the software for it. It's currently in Beta mode, which means it's not 100% reliable and can go up and down as changes are made.</p>

<p>When it's done it will be an application more suited to resenting your work to the public, but right now I can't recommend it as a business solution until it becomes more stable and gets past the Beta phase. Right now, for example, the Image Pro system is down :-(</p>

[nathan_rigg]

<p>so I get Image Pro when I subscribe to Photo.net?<br>

any ideas when the new version will be released? </p>

[joshroot]

<p>I was hoping to have it down by now, but that is the world of programming. Stuff always takes longer than you think it will. I have a "checkpoint" meeting early next weekt hat should give me a better idea of when we will have it going again.</p>

[rayyeager]

<p>I second "Smugmug" ...</p>

[jon_kobeck1]

<p>This site certainly does bring in good exposure for your work though. I posted a few controversial photos last year which started a heated debate. For the 3 or 4 days the thread was active I was averaging 1000 plus hits daily to my personal website directly linked from here. Normally I get about 10 to 20 hits a day.</p>

[daniel flather]

<p>Register a domain, buy a year of hosting, that should be under $100. Build a simple site with an iWeb template. Should be up and running with a few hours work at most.</p>

<p> </p>