Best approach for alternate licenses?
ChrisN
Registered Users Posts: 25 Big grins
I have shot professionally for a number of years and am looking at the best way to offer digital downloads. I love SmugMug but am underwhelmed by the lack of options available in regards to licenses.
Like many photographers the scope of my work varies widely and find that I often need something between the personal and commercial license that SmugMug offers.
Up until now I have mainly used SmugMug for galleries for clients to view and conducted the transactions offline, but I would really also like to offer stock photos and streamline the business as much as possible.
I started looking at ZenFolio this week after the discussion about them and really like the options they have regarding digital downloads. They offer several licenses and you can also completely customize the license how you see fit and can even specify custom image sizes. They also have a much lower fee for digital downloads (8%). While I loved those options I was overall not impressed with the sites and the lack of customization available on the site inself so I am exploring options to still make SmugMug work for this.
I have come up with 2 approaches and would like feedback on them. The first approach would be to use the paypal shopping cart and integrate it into my galleries. The benefit would be that I could offer any custom product and the fees are very low (around 3%). The downside is that it is not fully integrated so I am still dealing with manual processing of orders and either emailing the file or posting it in a special protected gallery for the customer.
The second option I am considering is offering the the personal license and including text in the description expanding the license on some galleries to include other rights such as editorial but non-commercial use on news photos or the right to use it on a commercial web page (but not print publications) and of course price it accordingly. They would then have an option to purchase an expanded license directly from me via PayPal (or being invoiced for certain regular clients) if they need to use it in a print publication for example. The benefit would be that they would receive the file immediately and the most common uses would be covered by the license and paid for at the time of purchase. The disadvantage is that it is a somewhat clunky workaround. I realize that once they get the file they could misuse it but that doesn't overly concern me because most publications know that they would fairly easily get caught if it was in a print publication (and other uses would be built into the base cost). Also, as far as I know SmugMug still doesn't give the pros info on buyers which makes it a bit harder to monitor compliance.
I am also open to any other options someone may have. Ideally SmugMug will simply offer more license types or customizability to the digital downloads but they haven't said much when others have brought it up.
Like many photographers the scope of my work varies widely and find that I often need something between the personal and commercial license that SmugMug offers.
Up until now I have mainly used SmugMug for galleries for clients to view and conducted the transactions offline, but I would really also like to offer stock photos and streamline the business as much as possible.
I started looking at ZenFolio this week after the discussion about them and really like the options they have regarding digital downloads. They offer several licenses and you can also completely customize the license how you see fit and can even specify custom image sizes. They also have a much lower fee for digital downloads (8%). While I loved those options I was overall not impressed with the sites and the lack of customization available on the site inself so I am exploring options to still make SmugMug work for this.
I have come up with 2 approaches and would like feedback on them. The first approach would be to use the paypal shopping cart and integrate it into my galleries. The benefit would be that I could offer any custom product and the fees are very low (around 3%). The downside is that it is not fully integrated so I am still dealing with manual processing of orders and either emailing the file or posting it in a special protected gallery for the customer.
The second option I am considering is offering the the personal license and including text in the description expanding the license on some galleries to include other rights such as editorial but non-commercial use on news photos or the right to use it on a commercial web page (but not print publications) and of course price it accordingly. They would then have an option to purchase an expanded license directly from me via PayPal (or being invoiced for certain regular clients) if they need to use it in a print publication for example. The benefit would be that they would receive the file immediately and the most common uses would be covered by the license and paid for at the time of purchase. The disadvantage is that it is a somewhat clunky workaround. I realize that once they get the file they could misuse it but that doesn't overly concern me because most publications know that they would fairly easily get caught if it was in a print publication (and other uses would be built into the base cost). Also, as far as I know SmugMug still doesn't give the pros info on buyers which makes it a bit harder to monitor compliance.
I am also open to any other options someone may have. Ideally SmugMug will simply offer more license types or customizability to the digital downloads but they haven't said much when others have brought it up.
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