daniel_evans4

<p>Hi all,<br>

When meeting with wedding coordinators and venue managers, what type of book do you think makes the most impact? One that showcases a single wedding, or a best-of book? Thanks for your help.<br>

<br /> Daniel Evans</p>

Hello all,

I've been asked to shoot a Bat Mitzvahs. In addition to the albums, prints and

the like, I've been asked if I can help wrangle the following:

- A photo and video montage, projected during the event

- A videographer

I told my client I would try and do this, but I'm wondering if it's worth the

hassle... Would it be better to point her in the right direction and leave it at

that, or try and book everything and charge a markup? If its the latter, how

much would it be reasonable to charge?

Thanks for your help.

Dan

I have to agree, unfortunately. I spent about six months with them, and I just had to give up. It was very expensive for what you got, confusing statements (it never seemed clear to me when I owed them money, or when I was due the reprint sales), and friendly, but dense, customer service.

The marketing angle does seem fairly good, and the PUG meetings are useful for networking. But, I do have to agree with earlier comments stating that the PUG meetings are mostly getting people to purchase more Pictage products. That's OK, to a point, but there really ought to be more value.

Deb is not, I might add, a bitch. I've found her to be fairly helpful, but there's a limit to what she can do with such a broken system. I doubt I'll be going back. I signed up with Collages.net and have made nearly twice what I did with Pictage... Collages has much better customer service, and a better looking site, in my opinion.

I've been with Pictage about six months now and I have a lot of the same complaints as the above. The thing that keeps me coming back, though, is the auto-email feature (sending out reminders to about photo purchases) and the album designer.

At the moment, I don't have time to learn how to do designs, and framing that work out looks to cost between $15-$30 a side, putting the price point of my albums outside of my target market. (I'm relatively new to this, doing it part-time, around 6-8 yr/base cost (no prints/albums) about $1,600.)

Pictage does, to my mind, decent work with the albums, which makes it worth it for me. Collages, for me, was too expensive for what you got, and they don't provide album service. Smugmug seems like the way to go if you want to take care of the marketing yourself, and don't need the album design service.

But, damnit, I would switch in a minute if there was some other service out there. Pictage is sorely limited in a number of ways, but once you get hooked on their exculsive products (i.e. Willowbook), you're sunk... Or have to start over. Ugh.

Yeah, your milage with BluDomain may vary. I just found them to be slow, rude and unhelpful. Maybe they just had a bad day. Or month. But, in answer to the questions above (I thought I was pretty clear), I want to upgrade my site. I firmly believe there is something for me that isn't cheapo but ain't a full custom job either.

Thanks to those who provided suggestions.

Hey there...

I wanted to update my website (www.danevans.org), as I think it looks a bit

amature (feel free to critque/fire at will). I created it with the iWeb

software, and host it as part of my .Mac service. It has worked well for a

time, but it's getting to the point where I need to step up.

Based on comments I saw here and from fellow photogs, I checked out BluDomain.

The sites look great, it seems about what I'm looking for, etc. However, I was

warned that their customer service is subpar.

Unfortunately, that warning turned out to be correct. I had to wait about two

weeks to get a welcome message (and only after emailing several times), was

told that I could host a BluDomain site on my .Mac server (you can't), and was

actively lied to (told only one person answers a particular email account when

I had signed reply emails from at least two different people). Brother, it's

just not worth it.

However, I'm now stuck. I like the BluDomain sites, and I would be crushed if

they are the only cheaper option between that and the $5K (at a minimum)

serious photographers should pay for an outstanding site.

Any thoughts? Am I ready for this? Should I stop asking questions?