EZPrints charges less than smugmug?

marlinspike

EZPrints charges 85 cents for a 5x7 now, so why does smugmug still charge 99 cents? It seems just about everything other than 4x6 is now cheaper from ezprints than smugmug.
Richard

Khaos

Making profit is the goal of any business?

GREAPER

Of course...?

How could smugmug use them as a supplier and charge less? I dont think they are here to subsidize my prints. Even charging the same price would have them opperating at a loss. Of course they charge more.

tmlphoto

I think Marlin may have a point here. If I'm not mistaken, Smugmug must contract with EZprints for a "wholesale" print price that allows them a profit even if their retail price is the same as EZprints "retail" price. If EZprints has lowered their "retail" price then its possibel a lower "wholesale" price could be negotiated and some of the difference passed on....Or maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about .

Andy

marlinspike wrote:

EZPrints charges 85 cents for a 5x7 now, so why does smugmug still charge 99 cents? It seems just about everything other than 4x6 is now cheaper from ezprints than smugmug.
Richard

and why not? smugmug offers about 1000 features that ezprints doesn't.

marlinspike

Well, because IIRC (which to be fair doesn't mean much), smugmug used to match the print prices to ezprints, then ezprints dropped the prices and smugmug didn't. Plus, if smugmug does have a wholesale contract with ezprints, then they charge on top of that, then they take a commission, and charge $100/year for the pro, which a recent post indicated will be moving to $200/year...well then it gets way to expensive for me and I'm going to have to come up with some other way.
Richard

BenA2

This has already been discussed here...
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=10091&highlight=ezprints

What it comes down to is that smugmug (even though they probably pay a wholesale price to EZprints) needs to add a markup for profit and to cover the additional costs of their superior customer service and ordering options. If you have a problem with your EZprints ordered through smugmug, you're basically going to get a free new set of "corrected" prints, whether the problem was yours, smugmug's, or EZprints'. If things go wrong with an EZprints direct order... well good luck with that.

Rember smugmug also provides additional/different ordering features compared to EZprints (i.e. cropping, color correction, etc.)

Lastly, if you're a pro, smugmug offers that same customer service to your clients--which saves you money if they have any problems.

You get what you pay for, and many of us feel it's worth paying smugmug for their service. For others, that may not be as important.

Hope that helps,
Ben

marlinspike

Yeah, I'm going to do some market analysis, and if enough people have paypal accounts, I'm just going to downgrade to a power account when it's time to renew (of course the prices on those were rising too, though I don't think it was by as much) and start handling my own orders (which were few last year, but I think I made a name for myself). I was fine with the commission rate, though that was kinda pushing it for me (10% would have been comfortable for me). This I think may have taken me over the edge, especially since I never saw anywhere mentioning that smugmug adds on top.
Richard

Baldy

marlinspike wrote:

smugmug used to match the print prices to ezprints

Actually, they've always been cheaper. Their other partners -- Webshots, Printroom, etc. -- all seem to be more expensive than them too.

marlinspike

Hmm, I just realized without a pro account I won't be able to watermark or protect the photos....I may just have to go to a totally different set up...just use someone to host thumbnails and list prices, have people e-mail me and then I take care of the printing and shipping, of course that makes it less convenient for the purchaser, and I'd have to download all my files that are on smugmug, get a new website name....well I've got some time before the account needs renewing...I suppose I'll see what happens.

marlinspike

While I was showering I just thought of something...
smugmug people, do you care if I offer my customers a discount if they buy direct through me?

And with that, instead of going to bed so I can wake up in 5.5hours for work, I go to adjust my banner on the top of my smugmug site.
Richard

jfriend

You pay for what you get

marlinspike wrote:

EZPrints charges 85 cents for a 5x7 now, so why does smugmug still charge 99 cents? It seems just about everything other than 4x6 is now cheaper from ezprints than smugmug.
Richard

This whole thread surprises me. You choose Smugmug of your own free will. If you don't like their prices or policies, you are free to find a different solution more to your liking.

Smugmug offers many different services than EZPrints does, including a shopping cart for you or your viewers to use, customer service when prints don't come out right, hosting of your prints for others to view, pro-pricing, storage, ton's of photo management features, zero-touch fullfillment when people order prints (you have to do nothing), etc...

If you don't want or need them to do those services, then by all means stop using Smugmug and do the work yourself. But, if you want those services, then Smugmug has the right to set their prices however they feel is appropriate for their audience and for the services/benefits they offer to that audience. You can decide whether that's a good deal for you or not. You are NOT entitled to get the same print prices from EZPrints as SmugMug when there is so much difference in the services offered.

If you want to save a few bucks and do all the work yourself, then that is your choice.

--John

marlinspike

Well, I very much like smugmug, but I also very much like to cut overhead, and I really think they would still be quite profitable just charging a percentage, rather than charging a percentage and adding costs to the prints. Personally, I mainly am disappointed because 1 - I didn't realize this when I first signed up and 2 - I'd like to pass on the savings. Anywho, I think I've got a solution. My banner looks like crap, but this is just for now with a little tweaking it will be good.

jfriend

Looks fine to me

marlinspike wrote:

Well, I very much like smugmug, but I also very much like to cut overhead, and I really think they would still be quite profitable just charging a percentage, rather than charging a percentage and adding costs to the prints. Personally, I mainly am disappointed because 1 - I didn't realize this when I first signed up and 2 - I'd like to pass on the savings. Anywho, I think I've got a solution. My banner looks like crap, but this is just for now with a little tweaking it will be good.

What you're doing seems perfectly fine. If you want to do all the work of ordering, fullfillment, money processing, shipping and support for free in order to save your customers 10%, that's probably fine with everyone. For friends and family, I just enable download of originals and let them do that work themselves if they want to.

--John

Andy

marlinspike wrote:

Well, because IIRC (which to be fair doesn't mean much), smugmug used to match the print prices to ezprints, then ezprints dropped the prices and smugmug didn't. Plus, if smugmug does have a wholesale contract with ezprints, then they charge on top of that, then they take a commission, and charge $100/year for the pro, which a recent post indicated will be moving to $200/year...well then it gets way to expensive for me and I'm going to have to come up with some other way.
Richard

sounds like you don't appreciate all of those 1000 things that smugmug does and ezprints doesn't.

cheers

marlinspike

andy wrote:

sounds like you don't appreciate all of those 1000 things that smugmug does and ezprints doesn't.

cheers

I admittedly don't use smugmug to it's fullest potential.
Richard