Need advise on website for selling photos

[Farkle-Mpls]

<p>Hello.</p>

<p>I'm sure this question has been asked in many forms already; however, I've skimmed the past postings and haven't found the specific answer I'm looking for. I hope you can help.</p>

<p>I'd like to begin to sell event photos. After looking at back-postings on PN, I see websites such as PBase, SmugMug and ZenFolio mentioned as potential sites for photo resale. I could get eval accounts on all these sites and get my own answers but I'm hoping your collective experience can save me all that time.</p>

<p>What I'd like in a web service:</p>

<p>- Integrates into an upload feature in Apple's Aperture (via a plugin, I suppose)<br>

- Has a pricing structure for downloads (or prints) which permits me to set the price, including offering free downloads for small images. The bit about a "free" pricing tier is important. THIS IS A REQUIREMENT THAT THE HELP PAGES ON THESE WEBSITES DON'T SPECIFICALLY ADDRESS.<br>

- Offers printing services and other common retailer features (does credit card processing, PayPal, etc)<br>

- Offers custom "branding" via my own logos and permits me to make basic style choices on presentation of my images on the hosting site<br>

- Has a favorable/reasonable policy on ownership rights of photos (e.g. not unduly restrictive in hosting provider maintaining rights to images beyond what can be reasonably expected)</p>

<p>Having looked at some of the sites already I see I huge list of other features, many of which appeal to me. I'm not ignoring those in my posting here, I'm just validating what might be some of the differentiating points which might tip me toward a certain site.</p>

<p>Can you offer any advice? Thank you.</p>

[michaelchadwickphotography]

<p>Zenfolio has a plugin for Apple's Aperture and other programs.</p>

<p>Zenfolio has custom products, custom digital downloads based on rights and on size. You can set the price per item. You can set attributes to allow for downloading of an image (in other words, for free). I am not sure of the logistics there, but it might have to be a separate directory. You could just set the price to zero, but I think they still charge a minimum amount for the sale, even if it's zero dollars. </p>

<p>Zenfolio takes the customer's money, sends it to one of several vendors (such as mPix) for printing, and you get the net proceeds after their charge has been taken. They will also give you sales tax reports (you have to report the sales tax) for your bookkeeping.</p>

<p>You can custom brand the Zenfolio templates and styles, or make your own complete style if you are familiar with a certain amount of web coding.</p>

<p>You own the rights to the images, of course.</p>

<p>I enjoy Zenfolio greatly and recommend it highly.</p>

[fuccisphotos]

<p>I use zenfolio as well. After doing an exhaustive search for info on different online sites, it's what I decided on. I find it has the best deals for the photographer. You can charge zero dollars for downloads and not pay for that. Unlike a zillion other sites, they only take a percentage off of your profit and charge you the fixed cost of the print. So for example, a 4x6 is $0.19, then if I set my price at a dollar, they take a percentage of the $0.81 of profit. Many other places take the percentage off the total amount including the print cost. <br>

I haven't used the plug in for Aperture, but works great with lightroom. <br>

I have embedded slide shows from my zenfolio site onto my main site. It allows me to keep my portfolio really current without having to go in and edit Flash or HTML on my main site.<br>

They have a selection of free music for the slide shows, or you can upload your own MP3s. <br>

Also, it functions as my 3rd back up in addtion to my external drives. With the pro account which is only $100 a year, you get unlimited uploads and space. So as soon as I have color corrected the photos, not only does it serve as a great proofing site, it saves the large files for me as well. Downloading them from the original files from the site is easy as pie.<br>

You can also customize the folder names so that you can make more user friendly URLs.<br>

You can also sell your own products, different than those provided through Mpix, like say albums, etc, and that way people can pay for them with credit cards, rather than checks. This is good for people who are all about getting credit card points. They take a smaller commission on this type of thing, if I recall it's something like 4%.</p>

 

[hfd4177]

<p>I use Smugmug and I love it. You can pretty much do anything with them i totally customized my site the way I want it. Im pretty sure there is a plug in for your needs by Jeffery Friedel. I use his Lightroom plug in and it works great. You can set your own pricing for prints and merchandise as well as offer coupons, credits and client proofing. Smugmug support is really good as well they have regular customer service as well as a huge forum. Check out the forums and ask some questions there Dgrin.com. Cost is 150 per year for a pro account and is well worth it. Check out my site and see what you could do. Keep in mind im not a web designer I did this on my own with a little bit of research and help from the forums. My site is www.bkgphoto.com. Good luck</p>

[allyson_maiolo]

<p>+1 for smugmug. <br>

We use it for our site at www.jasonscottphoto.com<br>

They just recently added some new personal branding features too - you can put an image in the shopping cart, and include thank you prints and a personalized label on packaging.</p>

[brooke_taylor4]

<p>I am in the same boat. To the zenfolio users, are you happy using Mpix for prints and such? Smugmug made them look very questionable as far as print quality goes. <br>

After emailing Smugmug, they made is sound rather difficult to add other products that Bay Photo did not have. <br>

I want to offer some products without being tied to a specific lab, but do want a good lab for standard prints and such. Good luck in your search too (I am beginning my second week of research and ready to pull my hair out). :)</p>