Subscription for downloads?

Biffbradford

I've been asked this by a number of people, but unsure if this is possible: To sell a seasonal password or something for unlimited downloads for the year / season? It seems that many athletes and some teams would love to have the photos I take of the bike racing scene for use on their web pages, but are turned off by having to order them one by one (live is so hard some times, I know :cry ) Can I set up some sort of 'subscription service' where a password gets you unlimited downloads or a method of buying credits that can be used towards photos? It seems that riders and teams like the small resolution images for their blogs, but don't want to buy them one by one, however they would be willing to pay up front for the privilege of picking them out later on.

Comments? Ideas?

Thanks!

jfriend

You could have a viewing gallery that only made small versions of the images accessible on the web and/or had a tastefully done watermark.

Then, you could have a second gallery with the same images, but that is password protected and makes whatever sizes you want to be available. You sell this password and then they can download any images they want. If you want an easy download button in that gallery, then you make the upload size whatever you want them to be able to download and you can add a download button with this customization.

Biffbradford

jfriend wrote:

You could have a viewing gallery that only made small versions of the images accessible on the web and/or had a tastefully done watermark.

Then, you could have a second gallery with the same images, but that is password protected and makes whatever sizes you want to be available. You sell this password and then they can download any images they want. If you want an easy download button in that gallery, then you make the upload size whatever you want them to be able to download and you can add a download button with this customization.

Hmmmm. Just thinking out loud now ... can the code for that button be modified so that it promps for a password and have that on the original gallery?

mercphoto

Biffbradford wrote:

I've been asked this by a number of people, but unsure if this is possible: To sell a seasonal password or something for unlimited downloads for the year / season? It seems that many athletes and some teams would love to have the photos I take of the bike racing scene for use on their web pages, but are turned off by having to order them one by one (live is so hard some times, I know :cry ) Can I set up some sort of 'subscription service' where a password gets you unlimited downloads or a method of buying credits that can be used towards photos? It seems that riders and teams like the small resolution images for their blogs, but don't want to buy them one by one, however they would be willing to pay up front for the privilege of picking them out later on.

Comments? Ideas?

Thanks!

Hmmmm.... sounds like a disaster waiting to happen for your sales and profits. Unlimited downloads??? No. You could offer to sell all images of one particular person for some flat fee, or some set number, resize them to 600 pixles on a side for blog use, and put a credit to you in the bottom right corner. But unlimited? You'll find yourself making a sale to one person only and everyone getting the images.

Sounds like their wanting a Napster model for photography. And I really hate Napster.

jfriend

Biffbradford wrote:

Hmmmm. Just thinking out loud now ... can the code for that button be modified so that it promps for a password and have that on the original gallery?

No, not securely.

mercphoto

Biffbradford wrote:

It seems that riders and teams like the small resolution images for their blogs, but don't want to buy them one by one, however they would be willing to pay up front for the privilege of picking them out later on.

Are they willing to pay a premium for that flexibility? Seriously, you're giving them a lot of flexibility and a lot of access to a lot of your content. My first concern is will you get a good compensation for that?

I know that SM doesn't really have a feature to allow you to do this correctly. Neither does Exposure Manager, my other site-of-choice. What you're really looking for is a Napster or an iTunes for photography. But personally I would be very leary of offering a subscription model. It can work for music and movies for one simple reason: the same song has appeal to lots of potential subcsribers. This often NOT true of event photography -- the photo has value to one person, not to lots of people. So the subscription model tends to fall apart.

Offer to sell them a bulk of photos at a discounted price instead.