Originally Posted by Matthew Saville Again, if you are a hobbyist who would like to sell, but won't ever approach making $300 in a single year, then I honestly just don't know is there is a sustainable long-term option for you. Like I said, MAYBE others like Zenfolio can offer you a better deal, at present, but in the long run I believe you are going to find that your low-overhead business model just isn't possible. Maybe get a PayPal business account, those are free! You can insert payment buttons into your SmugMug galleries and customers can purchase items that way. I do this myself actually, when I need to accept payments for products that SmugMug doesn't offer... To be blunt, I think you are asking for a free lunch. If you sell less than $300 in prints per year, that's less than $45 that goes back to SmugMug from the 15% cut. There is no way that SmugMug can offer you unlimited storage and bandwidth, and all it's professional services and other front-end options, for just $145 / $195 per year.

If you store 100GB of images, don't sell much and expect cheap ecommerce hosting, you're probably right.

But, if storage or support costs are what is causing Smugmug issues, then there's no reason why they couldn't profitably continue to offer an ecommerce-capable account that allows 20-40GB of storage (or some amount of storage that Smugmug considers profitable) and most of the other ecommerce features that the old Smugmug pro account had. Smugmug seems to be saying that packages and coupons cause a lot of support costs so maybe hold those out of the $150 account level too. Then, make sure that print sales are priced accordingly so that any commerce that happens in the account more than pays for itself (including the print guarantee and support costs).

If storage and high support features are managed, there absolutely could be a $150 commerce-capable account that could be profitable. Development for this account level wouldn't be unique (it would be a subset of the higher level) so you can't really count specific development costs for this account level. It's mostly a matter of managing the costs that users at this account level can cause (support, storage, bandwidth).

Originally Posted by Bob_A I agree, they need to do what it takes to turn a profit. And part of that should be to start charging anyone that has over a few hundred GB of data the going rate per GB. If the going rate is $0.10/GB per month and they were storing a TB of data they should be paying an extra $960/year. It seems to me that Basic, Power, Portfolio and Pro users that store a reasonable amount of data on SM are greatly subsidizing a much smaller number of users uploading a huge volume of data each month while never cleaning house to keep their total amount stored constant. Those are the ones SM needs to get rid of since they're the ones getting a free lunch. IMO "unlimited" results in lazy data management by users.

Say what? 1.0 TB of data should only cost $100 per year to host, at $0.1 per GB. Or am I doing something wrong?

=Matt=

Originally Posted by Bob_A I agree, they need to do what it takes to turn a profit. And part of that should be to start charging anyone that has over a few hundred GB of data the going rate per GB. If the going rate is $0.10/GB per month and they were storing a TB of data they should be paying an extra $960/year. It seems to me that Basic, Power, Portfolio and Pro users that store a reasonable amount of data on SM are greatly subsidizing a much smaller number of users uploading a huge volume of data each month while never cleaning house to keep their total amount stored constant. Those are the ones SM needs to get rid of since they're the ones getting a free lunch. IMO "unlimited" results in lazy data management by users.

It's not a matter of users being lazy. It's a matter of Smugmug promoting the use of unlimited storage and providing zero incentive for anyone to ever manage your storage. When you have an unlimited resource that's specifically advertised and promoted as unlimited and you are never encouraged to conserve it's use, you're going to use as much as seems convenient and spend no optional time trimming your use of that resource. That's not being lazy. That's just doing what is easy and is encouraged. Lazy implies you have some responsibility to do something and you're avoiding that responsibility. There currently is no such responsibility.

If I look at my account, I have kid's sports galleries from 8 years ago that are rarely looked at. They are occasionally interesting for historical looks at what kids used to look like, but I don't need originals there as nobody is ordering prints from them and I have originals in Lightroom if we really need to get back to originals. But, it would be a lot of work for me to trim those galleries down to web-display only. Why should I do that work? There's zero incentive for me to. If Smugmug wants me to do that work, they need to find a way to encourage/incent me to do so.

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville Say what? 1.0 TB of data should only cost $100 per year to host, at $0.1 per GB. Or am I doing something wrong? =Matt=

He was saying $0.1 per GB per MONTH. That would be ~$100/mo for a TB or $1200/yr.

Originally Posted by jfriend If you store 100GB of images, don't sell much and expect cheap ecommerce hosting, you're probably right. But, if storage or support costs are what is causing Smugmug issues, then there's no reason why they couldn't profitably continue to offer an ecommerce-capable account that allows 20-40GB of storage (or some amount of storage that Smugmug considers profitable) and most of the other ecommerce features that the old Smugmug pro account had. Smugmug seems to be saying that packages and coupons cause a lot of support costs so maybe hold those out of the $150 account level too. Then, make sure that print sales are priced accordingly so that any commerce that happens in the account more than pays for itself (including the print guarantee and support costs). If storage and high support features are managed, there absolutely could be a $150 commerce-capable account that could be profitable. Development for this account level wouldn't be unique (it would be a subset of the higher level) so you can't really count specific development costs for this account level. It's mostly a matter of managing the costs that users at this account level can cause (support, storage, bandwidth).

This, in my opinion, is by far the best solution yet. A "Pro Lite" and a "Pro Unlimited" account. Pro like being say, a couple / few hundred GB of storage, and minimal product sales options.

Dear SmugMug friends, I hope you guys get this message. The crux of all this frustration, in my opinion, lies in the thought that a few high-volume "bad apples" are ruining the party for the rest of the reasonable folks out there. (BTW my personal account, which I have had for almost nine years, has "only" 200 GB of images online. It is the high-volume studio business model that I speak of when I refer to uploading a dozen or more GB every single week...)

It sucks to break your long-standing tradition, but I think the absolute best solution is to offer a capped / throttled account, but with nearly full Pro functionality. I'm sure that at first glance this sounded like it went against everything you've always stood for, but I'm betting that in the next generation of this digital imaging future, such a solution will be one of your most lucrative models... Don't separate the "pros" from the "wanabe pros", separate the storage hogs from the conservative folks...


Respectfully,
=Matt=

Originally Posted by jfriend It's not a matter of users being lazy. It's a matter of Smugmug promoting the use of unlimited storage and providing zero incentive for anyone to ever manage your storage. When you have an unlimited resource that's specifically advertised and promoted as unlimited and you are never encouraged to conserve it's use, you're going to use as much as seems convenient and spend no optional time trimming your use of that resource. That's not being lazy. That's just doing what is easy and is encouraged. Lazy implies you have some responsibility to do something and you're avoiding that responsibility. There currently is no such responsibility. If I look at my account, I have kid's sports galleries from 8 years ago that are rarely looked at. They are occasionally interesting for historical looks at what kids used to look like, but I don't need originals there as nobody is ordering prints from them and I have originals in Lightroom if we really need to get back to originals. But, it would be a lot of work for me to trim those galleries down to web-display only. Why should I do that work? There's zero incentive for me to. If Smugmug wants me to do that work, they need to find a way to encourage/incent me to do so.

Agree, my "lazy" label wasn't correct. Smugmug needs to have an incentive for users to cull images and keep the amount they store down. And to me the incentive would be for the serious storage hogs to pay much, much more.

Originally Posted by Bob_A Agree, my "lazy" label wasn't correct. Smugmug needs to have an incentive for users to cull images and keep the amount they store down. And to me the incentive would be for the serious storage hogs to pay much, much more.

Yep - the only way that works in the long run.

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville This, in my opinion, is by far the best solution yet. A "Pro Lite" and a "Pro Unlimited" account. Pro like being say, a couple / few hundred GB of storage, and minimal product sales options.

Or how about just a Pro account (no "lite") that comes with 200GB as the base amount and you get charged $0.10/GB per month (or whatever the going industry rate is) for every GB stored over that amount?

And place similar caps on the non-pro accounts ...

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville The crux of all this frustration, in my opinion, lies in the thought that a few high-volume "bad apples" are ruining the party for the rest of the reasonable folks out there.

Maybe... I think a great deal of it is fear and dashed expectations. Remember the apologist video, where they showed a chart of storage costs rising exponentially? The storage in 2012 is about double the size of storage in 2011. Everyone can guess what that chart would look like if it included 2013, '14, '15, etc.

Smugmug offered no solutions to the rising storage, so people fear that they will invest in Smugmug and once again be hit with a price hike (or the loss of their stored photos, either through financial trouble or a smugmig rescinding unlimited storage).

The odd behavior by the company doesn't help either. Andy is pretty close with the community here, and letting him resign right around the price hike was a bad idea. He said he's staying on as head of Dgrin, then saying that's been changed, but staying around and arguing with the angry customers... all while the official Smugmug staff stays largely silent on the matter. It's a really bad way to handle things.


Anyways, if anyone important reads this, Jfriend made a great point - Many photographers, particularly professional photographers, are not particularly attached to hosting files from 2004. You can incentivize them to get rid of their old work through other means than a storage limit or per/GB fee. And there are plenty more revenue streams you could exploit to subsidize the storage cost. You should attack the problem from multiple angles and, more importantly, let your customers know what you're doing so they don't just think you're taking their money to vacation in Maui.


BTW Smug... on the odd chance you're using some of that new money to hire PR... I'm available ;)

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville This, in my opinion, is by far the best solution yet. A "Pro Lite" and a "Pro Unlimited" account. Pro like being say, a couple / few hundred GB of storage, and minimal product sales options. Dear SmugMug friends, I hope you guys get this message. The crux of all this frustration, in my opinion, lies in the thought that a few high-volume "bad apples" are ruining the party for the rest of the reasonable folks out there. (BTW my personal account, which I have had for almost nine years, has "only" 200 GB of images online. It is the high-volume studio business model that I speak of when I refer to uploading a dozen or more GB every single week...) It sucks to break your long-standing tradition, but I think the absolute best solution is to offer a capped / throttled account, but with nearly full Pro functionality. I'm sure that at first glance this sounded like it went against everything you've always stood for, but I'm betting that in the next generation of this digital imaging future, such a solution will be one of your most lucrative models... Don't separate the "pros" from the "wanabe pros", separate the storage hogs from the conservative folks... Respectfully, =Matt=

So much commonsense and good reasoning going on here in this thread - thank you guys for your input. Let's hope Smugmug will take some of the advice here and put an end to the speculation

I'm getting impatient for some positive response from Smugmug. For over a year we've been waiting for the forthcoming changes much vaunted in the 'sneak preview', I've held back from doing much with my site because of this, and now even more uncertainty.

The blog post now has well over 1000 comments and Facebook is rife also. It's time a further announcement was made, not in the middle of a Facebook thread or comment on the blog, let's have a real response Baldy or are you hiding away somewhere?

Caroline

Originally Posted by jfriend He was saying $0.1 per GB per MONTH. That would be ~$100/mo for a TB or $1200/yr.

And yet it was smart to switch to S3, where they can pay the cost of a 1TB drive every month forever, rather than just buy a 1 TB drive (or 2-3, whatever they need for their backup scheme). Of course this is a simplification and it ignores some of the related costs, that are constant over time, but the principle holds. Paying $100 per month in perpetuity for a terabyte of storage is silly.

Unrelated: If smugmug goes tiered, which is fine, they need to provide the option to use the archive thingy they have setup to allow people to move old galleries off of smugmug and into their archive, so the users can pay to keep things online, and can "hot swap" galleries if they need to.

S3 is not just a simple a TB drive. It's geographically replicated and managed. It's more reliable than a TB drive. The TB drive you buy will fail, have to be replaced and managed. Even a TB drive sitting in drawer not in use can fail. Even going forward drive technology may change and you will have to replace the drive just get get software to support. A TB drive is not "on the net" so that pictures can be viewed.

So S3 isn't the same thing as a TB drive. Whether the increased cost of S3 is worth the extra reliability and having it managed for you is a choice someone using it for storage can make.

Originally Posted by renstar And yet it was smart to switch to S3, where they can pay the cost of a 1TB drive every month forever, rather than just buy a 1 TB drive (or 2-3, whatever they need for their backup scheme). Of course this is a simplification and it ignores some of the related costs, that are constant over time, but the principle holds. Paying $100 per month in perpetuity for a terabyte of storage is silly. Unrelated: If smugmug goes tiered, which is fine, they need to provide the option to use the archive thingy they have setup to allow people to move old galleries off of smugmug and into their archive, so the users can pay to keep things online, and can "hot swap" galleries if they need to.

Well I just got the email about the price hikes this weekend (after reading about it on a photo news site). I was not happy to hear about it second hand. I am not a regular user of this site. I have used it for the smugmug support. Quite frankly I feel lost and angry about this price hike. I just signed up over the summer. I spent the whole summer making my website and setting up my business. I am fairly happy with it. I have not made a dime yet on my site and now I am getting hit with a price hike! I am angry about that, but really I feel lost and trapped. I spent so much time building my site ( I am not computer savvy ) and now I either have to stop using it or pay more. I don't really want to rebuild my site through another provider but I do not feel that a price hike is warranted. I have to think long and hard about what I want to do. I do like the idea that someone made about a beginner pro account. I think it would be beneficial to someone in my situation who is just starting out. I chose smugmug because it was cheaper that others but I felt you got a decent product. For someone just starting a business that is important. I guess I chose wrong.

Originally Posted by Dan7312 S3 is not just a simple a TB drive. It's geographically replicated and managed. It's more reliable than a TB drive. The TB drive you buy will fail, have to be replaced and managed. Even a TB drive sitting in drawer not in use can fail. Even going forward drive technology may change and you will have to replace the drive just get get software to support. A TB drive is not "on the net" so that pictures can be viewed. So S3 isn't the same thing as a TB drive. Whether the increased cost of S3 is worth the extra reliability and having it managed for you is a choice someone using it for storage can make.

Originally Posted by renstar Of course this is a simplification...

Originally Posted by renstar ...(or 2-3, whatever they need for their backup scheme).

That $1200 per TB per year (which will go down with time, as Amazon lowers prices as disk gets cheaper) is much more expensive in the long run. In the short run there can be savings, that is for sure, and that is what Smugmug experienced for a while. But 10 years out? 20 years out? These time frames are not absurd, I'm not a heavy user by any measure, but I've subscribed for almost 9 years now. 22TB guy was a year or two after me I think. There is no way you can convince me that S3 is a winner over rolling your own, in the long run. I could be convinced that a hybrid approach is sensible and cost effective, but relying on a 3rd party is risky business.

I think smugmug was hoping for some sort of technological silver bullet to help them manage data growth, and it just never happened. Also keep in mind that TB drives were not common at all when they switched to S3, so the physical space costs have gone down, as data density has gone up with time. Im sure the thousands of 100-250GB enterprise drives that smugmug used were really costly, just because they took up so much space. But now, perhaps not so much.

Originally Posted by renstar That $1200 per TB per year (which will go down with time, as Amazon lowers prices as disk gets cheaper) is much more expensive in the long run. In the short run there can be savings, that is for sure, and that is what Smugmug experienced for a while. But 10 years out? 20 years out? These time frames are not absurd, I'm not a heavy user by any measure, but I've subscribed for almost 9 years now. 22TB guy was a year or two after me I think. There is no way you can convince me that S3 is a winner over rolling your own, in the long run. I could be convinced that a hybrid approach is sensible and cost effective, but relying on a 3rd party is risky business. I think smugmug was hoping for some sort of technological silver bullet to help them manage data growth, and it just never happened. Also keep in mind that TB drives were not common at all when they switched to S3, so the physical space costs have gone down, as data density has gone up with time. Im sure the thousands of 100-250GB enterprise drives that smugmug used were really costly, just because they took up so much space. But now, perhaps not so much.

I have no idea whether it makes more sense for Smugmug to use S3 or build their own storage, but here's what a company who's made a business out of storing stuff (BackBlaze cloud backup service) does: http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01...cloud-storage/ and http://blog.backblaze.com/2011/07/20...-more-secrets/

Originally Posted by onethumb We're not in hot water, we just blew it by not raising prices periodically over the last 7 years, and needed to get our prices back in line with the rest of the industry.

Thank you for clarifying this Baldy. I've been with you guys for better part of a decade and was wondering how there was only a single price increase during that time.

Originally Posted by Dreadnote Wow! Now that doesn't sound elitist at all. It seems to me that given that the overwhelming number of smugmug users are not full time professionals, and if the given reasons for the price increase are truly related to storage costs, then it is the users like yourself that are uploading 20 GB a week that are the ones "peeing in the pool". Perhaps if mega users like yourself, who I have to imagine are a very small percentage of smugmug customers, were the ones to leave smugmug then the company would be still be profitable at their lower price levels, could still offer "unlimited" storage, and the rest of us poor slobs who don't deserve to own cameras would be fine. Something to think about perhaps?

I don't think he was trying to be elitist, but just factual. There are a hundred thousand hobbyists right now that are gobbling up the commercial work, and that means there's less money being spent on full-time pros. These are two different types of business models, and unfortunately it's starting to strain the services like SM as they try to cater to both. Should SM cater to the growing number of hobbyists who are doing pro work 'on the side' that could disappear any day or with a mood swing? Or should they cater to the dwindling full-time pros who are working every day and producing income every day? I don't think it's possible to have a business model that caters to both anymore.

Originally Posted by kenski hahaha, What I love is this guy is actually threatened!! I can call my photography a "HOBBY" right now because I do work a full time job right now. I will be retired in 5 years at the age of 39 and will be making photography my full time gig. I currently pay insurance, pay for my website, pay for my gear. What I do not get is WHY do photographers charge SOOOO much for their fees. I get alot of hate mail from local photographers because I "STEAL" their customers. Well, I do not feel you need to charge $5000 for a wedding. Explain to me WHY you need to charge so much to shoot a wedding. I understand you need to buy your equipment, overhead, blah blah blah, If you choose only to work a certain # of days a year and depend on that for your yearly salary, tough shit... I will be glad to undercut anyone else. This is how the United States was founded, competition. So, you can call me a hobbist all you want. I will just laugh and say "THANKS".

And it's the full-time job that supports your business in ways you don't consider. If you lost your job, you'd quickly see how these expenses come into play as a full-time pro.

Case in point, when someone undercuts you and just gives away work better than your own just because they 'only shoot for fun'. Been there? So have I.

Originally Posted by Dreadnote The point is this: if you or someone in a similar position is uploading 10-20 GB a week, then using the lower number that works out to 520 GB per year. Multiply that times ¢10 GB/month storage costs and your account is costing SM $624/year for year one. Add that legacy storage to the following year, and so on and so on. How many years have you been with SM? Your account and the accounts of others like you is a net loss for SM. So the idea that you are happy to pay another $100 is a bit obvious. Most of us are happy to buy things we need and use for below cost. But for the rest of us, those who have accounts that contain maybe a total of 10 or 20 or even perhaps 50 GB of storage accumulated through the years, the accounts that SM actually funds its daily operations with as they are actually still profitable, the idea of a giant price hike (67-100%) to subsidize the growing storage and bandwidth costs is just outrageous. Whereas I am glad you agree that a per GB charge would be the most equitable solution, I think you would find that your annual fee might be more like $2000 or $3000 a year. I'd be curious to see who was whining then.

He's not the only one uploading 10-20gb a week. I do 10gb a week in heavy weekends and my SM online storage is 1TB+. I do this because SM fits my business model well and within budget, even with the price increase. I may no longer have a profit at the end of the year, but alleviating hosting costs, and having the ability for my visitors to purchase prints was the goal.

If my SM fees ever jumped to $2000-3000/yr, I'd simply have to shop around again. It wouldn't be anything person, just business. In fact, I thoroughly checked out Zenfolios offerings to see if a switch made sense. And when I factored in the cost of moving, it wasn't worth it.

Originally Posted by Dreadnote Perhaps that is what is motivating their desire to stay private. I can't really see anyone investing in a company that won't tell you what it is doing.

Uhhh...ever heard of this company called Facebook? They're the only company in the history of the NYSE that went public without any financial data. And people bought the stock.

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville I foresee that in 5-10 years, much of the consumer-based photography industry will be "consumed" (no pun intended) by the hobbyist / amateur photographer. Those who make / made enough money by some other means, and only need to profit enough at photography so they can buy the next big camera, or pay for that African safari...

I think you're so totally dead-on with this prediction. I've already seen most of the publications in my genre drop their full-time photography staff for pro-level hobbyist free submissions. And I've even seen pixelation on cover shots. Photography is well on it's way to becoming a commodity. Paid pros will soon be like like pro atheletes or musical artists--in the right place at the right time to make it happen.

Originally Posted by Dan7312 S3 is not just a simple a TB drive. It's geographically replicated and managed. It's more reliable than a TB drive. The TB drive you buy will fail, have to be replaced and managed. Even a TB drive sitting in drawer not in use can fail. Even going forward drive technology may change and you will have to replace the drive just get get software to support. A TB drive is not "on the net" so that pictures can be viewed. So S3 isn't the same thing as a TB drive. Whether the increased cost of S3 is worth the extra reliability and having it managed for you is a choice someone using it for storage can make.

Very, very important point. I have 3 drives I manage locally. And every year I have to compare the data between them to find what I call 'bit-rot' or the statistically small percentage of non-destructive data errors that affects files. I have to keep the drives in good physical condition--temperature, humidity, shock, power, and more. And even then just one good tornado can wipe them out. The costs in replication of the data onto these 3 drives and the labor to maintain them isn't cheap as just buying a 1TB drive. And yes, a drive that isn't used regularly will fail more often than one that is. I've got half a dozen drives that I have to send for data recovery that were on for less than a thousand hours.

Originally Posted by renstar That $1200 per TB per year (which will go down with time, as Amazon lowers prices as disk gets cheaper) is much more expensive in the long run. In the short run there can be savings, that is for sure, and that is what Smugmug experienced for a while. But 10 years out? 20 years out? These time frames are not absurd, I'm not a heavy user by any measure, but I've subscribed for almost 9 years now. 22TB guy was a year or two after me I think. There is no way you can convince me that S3 is a winner over rolling your own, in the long run. I could be convinced that a hybrid approach is sensible and cost effective, but relying on a 3rd party is risky business. I think smugmug was hoping for some sort of technological silver bullet to help them manage data growth, and it just never happened. Also keep in mind that TB drives were not common at all when they switched to S3, so the physical space costs have gone down, as data density has gone up with time. Im sure the thousands of 100-250GB enterprise drives that smugmug used were really costly, just because they took up so much space. But now, perhaps not so much.

I have to disagree. Just as a pro providing a service knows his business inside and out, so does a company that's providing storage. The Amazon S3 service is second to none. I've never seen anything so resiliant, reliable, and at a decent cost. To give you some idea, I've uploaded and then downloaded over 250GB via SM and compared these files bit-by-bit to their originals without a single error. That's as reliable as it gets in my book.

Originally Posted by SamirD [biiiiig snip]The Amazon S3 service is second to none. I've never seen anything so resiliant, reliable, and at a decent cost. To give you some idea, I've uploaded and then downloaded over 250GB via SM and compared these files bit-by-bit to their originals without a single error. That's as reliable as it gets in my book.

That is without a doubt the worst definition I have ever seen for resiliency or reliability. And I have at various times in my career been in the enterprise data storage business - including building and testing enterprise storage systems for government departments and the NZ secret service back when drive sizes were topping out at 2.1GB.

Cheers - N

Originally Posted by TalkieT That is without a doubt the worst definition I have ever seen for resiliency or reliability. And I have at various times in my career been in the enterprise data storage business - including building and testing enterprise storage systems for government departments and the NZ secret service back when drive sizes were topping out at 2.1GB. Cheers - N

Reminds me of this image that went around the net recently...

http://gizmodo.com/302856/this-is-wh...d-20-years-ago

Originally Posted by SamirD ...I don't think he was trying to be elitist, but just factual. There are a hundred thousand hobbyists right now that are gobbling up the commercial work, and that means there's less money being spent on full-time pros. These are two different types of business models, and unfortunately it's starting to strain the services like SM as they try to cater to both. Should SM cater to the growing number of hobbyists who are doing pro work 'on the side' that could disappear any day or with a mood swing? Or should they cater to the dwindling full-time pros who are working every day and producing income every day? I don't think it's possible to have a business model that caters to both anymore......

Indeed. Let's be open here about who we are and what we do- I've been a full-time photographer for 5-6 years now, and have been shooting "for money" (I refuse to call it "professionally") since 2004. I live in Orange County, which seems to be the hub of the "photography community" revolution. I have been to innumerable local GTG's, and plenty of small, medium and large workshops where aspiring pros get together and discuss everything under the sun.

What I see happening to the industry, well, it's not very lucrative for companies like SmugMug. Tons of people uploading WAY more photos than they will ever turn a profit on. Either they're so small that they simply won't ever crack a few hundred bucks in print sales per year, or they're so big that they consider SmugMug to be "too consumer" for a front-end sales tool, and simply use a basic account for infinite backup. It is ONLY the middle market that SmugMug is currently turning a huge profit on; the ones whose print sales make up for the uploads.

And in an economy like this, post-shoot print sales are probably diminished, while storage costs haven't dropped thanks to last year's Thailand floods, ...and yet new cameras come out with 20-30+ megapixels, and things like FIOS allow uploads at 5+ megabits. OUCH.

I just don't know how "unlimited" is going to be sustainable without an incredible drop in storage costs. Maybe SmugMug should look into what BackBlaze is doing? That blog post about their storage costs was pretty informative, although I'm sure SmugMug has already considered such options and has decided that S3 is safer.

Anyways, that's what I think. The industry is changing way too fast for business models like SmugMug's. Plain and simple. If you don't like it you can take your business elsewhere, but make no mistake there are big changes coming on all fronts and you may need to seriously re-think your "pro" tactics / aspirations over the next few years...

=Matt=

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville To be blunt, I think you are asking for a free lunch. If you sell less than $300 in prints per year, that's less than $45 that goes back to SmugMug from the 15% cut. There is no way that SmugMug can offer you unlimited storage and bandwidth, and all it's professional services and other front-end options, for just $145 / $195 per year.

Lol, the funny thing about this is that they are about to lose even more money on me. Because I will not pay for the top level account, I wil drop down to Power. So now I will be using the EXACT SAME amount of bandwidth and storage. And they will be making $90 a year LESS from me...and $0 dollars in sales!!!!

Please explain how changing their business model to one that drives people to a lower cost tier where they will make less but retain the same costs for that user makes any sense? Please!! If there is any rational to this I would love to hear it!!!

I don't expect a free lunch, and if Smugmug needs to drop the bandwidth or storage allotment for people like me that I would completely understand! This is NOT what they are doing. They are pushing me to give them even less money but still use the same amount of resources.

Care to explain?

Originally Posted by TalkieT That is without a doubt the worst definition I have ever seen for resiliency or reliability. And I have at various times in my career been in the enterprise data storage business - including building and testing enterprise storage systems for government departments and the NZ secret service back when drive sizes were topping out at 2.1GB. Cheers - N

Awesome. Let's hear your definition then. If something being preserved at a bit level is a 'the worst definition ever', then I can't wait to hear yours.

Originally Posted by Matthew Saville Indeed. Let's be open here about who we are and what we do- I've been a full-time photographer for 5-6 years now, and have been shooting "for money" (I refuse to call it "professionally") since 2004. I live in Orange County, which seems to be the hub of the "photography community" revolution. I have been to innumerable local GTG's, and plenty of small, medium and large workshops where aspiring pros get together and discuss everything under the sun.

I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum, using SM has a inexpensive alternative to upping my web hosting package by offloading all photo storage and hosting to SM. And the bonus is the ability to sell products at a profit, which I was only hoping to recover the cost of the account, which it does. SM works for me because hosting the images through a traditional web host is 10x the cost. Most web hosts don't leverage S3 storage or anything like that, but I know SM's storage costs can't be 10x less.

Hosting costs have come down in recent years, so they also offer unlimited storage packages as well. But these are $150+/mo, not per year.