Advice on creating a website

[sheryl_bury_michals]

<p>I've been shooting rugby for about 15 years (first film, but mostly digital now), but in the past few years I've shot social events and not-for-profit events. I feel it's time to put a website of my work together, but I would like to know if there are any what are the advantages/disadvantages between creating one yourself or going to a site like SmugMug or Zenfolio to create it there? Also, how would you put a watermark or make the photos view-only and not able to be copied on a site, so people don't "take" your work without permission. Some sites I've seen use watermarks on their work, but others don't and can still be able to not have the image copied without permission.<br>

Also, on one indivdual's photo website I've checked, they charge $6 for a 4x6, $8 for a 5x7, and $12 for a 8x10. On SmugMug, they charge a hell of a lot less ($2.99 for a 5x7 I think), even though they do the printing work for you. I found that interesting, as you'd have to sell an awful lot to reap any benefits, or even to cover your own operating costs. How do you hanlde online payment? On several forums I've checked, it seems paypal is the way to go (as you can also use your credit card if you don't have a paypal account).<br>

Any advice would be appreciated, as people are willing to pay for my work, and it would be better to have a site that can accommodate them.<br /><br />Thanks<br>

Sheryl</p>

[bill_mussett1]

<p>Wedding photographers seem to like Smugmug. I'm not familiar with it, but I believe you can set your own pricing. A watermark along with posting low resolution images should help minimize theft of images. I believe galleries can also be password protected.</p>

<p>You may want to read through some of the posts in the Wedding & Events forum on Photo.net for more suggestions:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/wedding-photography-forum/</p>

<p> </p>

[jpo3136b]

<p>Some of the portfolio sites will have the disadvantage of putting your photos right next door to another photographer's. It can be easy to get lost in the crowd. The crowd can be over a quarter of a million people big.</p>

<p>Meanwhile, they'll offer printing and collection services in a way that's usually easier to set up and maintain. </p>

<p>Build it yourself, and it's as good as you can build it. </p>

<p>As far as photo protection goes; I just don't put anything up that would seem to print well beyond a small sample image. A big collection of high resolution images would just be too fat to work well on websites anyway; you want the page to load quickly. If they don't see what they like in 10 seconds, they're out of there.</p>

[rcyoung]

<p>At sites like zenfolio where you are "with everyone else", the solution is to register/park a domain name (say at GoDaddy) for $10/yr, then have it set (instructions are available at zenfolio & GoDaddy) to point to zenfolio. I just started a professional photo site ( I decided to "take the plunge" after nearly 50 yrs and see what happens in the professional ranks) which I have at zenfolio, but it "appears" as www.foreveryoungpix.com to the outside world.<br>

I decided to go with a "pre-built" template because of the simplicity and speed of setup. I could program one myself (I have a primary business site for database consulting which I did from scratch almost 9 years ago), but by the time you assemble the modern tools and plugins (such as shopping carts) for a strongly "image" oriented site, you'll easily be out $1000+.<br>

Even worse, it would take weeks/months to program everything to the same level as somewhere like zenfolio (esp initially) which has many "image" oriented features (cropping, visual displays of different mounting/framing options based on user selections, multiple paper stock options, "custom" products the photographer could define & fulfill, Mpix printing and imaging products, etc). In the long run, I may still do one on my own, but right now I have more worries about setting up bank accounts, getting ready to take credit cards, etc etc rather than tweak html 8 hrs a day.<br>

I went to watermark route which seems to be reasonable. Anything larger than a thumbnail has the business abbreviation FY & site domain www.foreveryoungpix.com site blazened across the image in semi-transparent mode. </p>

[rcyoung]

<p>Oh, and the price of the prints is easy to explain. Prints are a major source of income for many photographers. Many do spend considerable time to get those bits of paper...setting up for a shoot, travel, image processing, printing, etc etc. Certainly more time is spent than the $$$ per print would indicate. Consequently, even in this area (which is relatively cheap by most standards), I see markups of 250-400%.<br>

Now if you are a pro you have expenses that are ridiculous....even as an "advanced" amateur, I had to have a $30K insurance rider just to cover ( almost!) my photo equipment (and that was with everything being "used" before I bought it). I already have more computing power (15+ cpus in the house ranging from Windows->Mac->Sun->OpenVMS->AIX->HP/UX->Linux) than most small towns due to my other consulting business, but most people have to purchase at least 1-2 business/image processing systems.<br>

If you start new, I figure it is easy to go $100K+ on startup expenses, and that is not counting mundane stuff like insurance & monthly rent (if you have a brick-n-mortar studio) etc. That is an AWFUL lot of 8x10s just to break even. </p>

[mike_gendimenico]

<p>I use ifp3.com. I'm not a web person at all and had a website up and running very quickly. It has templates, transactions, private galleries, stats and search functions all included. It's all Flash based so harder to hijack images and is also mobile device compatible. It's $20/mo but have found it would cost much much more to have someone design and maintain a custom website. It looks professional and most folks think it's a custom built site.<br>

My site is here if you want to take a look: www.faultlinedigital.com</p>