online sales resource for photographers

clemensphoto's

I'm conducting additional research on other online sales resources for photographers (i.e. SmugMug) and would like to know if any others have any preferences. I have looked at Exposure Manager and Zenfolio but have been able to look at their photographer's websites through them. Does anyone know of any others that are professional grade resources?

mercphoto

clemensphoto's wrote:

I'm conducting additional research on other online sales resources for photographers (i.e. SmugMug) and would like to know if any others have any preferences. I have looked at Exposure Manager and Zenfolio but have been able to look at their photographer's websites through them. Does anyone know of any others that are professional grade resources?

Depends on the type of photography you do. Exposure Manager kicks butt for event type photography (and still will, even after SM gets packages and coupons done). I used to have an account with them, but no longer, so I can't point you to it. Do you have any specific needs? Questions?

clemensphoto's

I do most of my business online. For example I do High School sports of our local school and just post them online for the parents to purchase. I have been asked about discounts on 50 and 100+ picture orders and I need a coupons option to do that.

JohnBiggs

clemensphoto's wrote:

I do most of my business online. For example I do High School sports of our local school and just post them online for the parents to purchase. I have been asked about discounts on 50 and 100+ picture orders and I need a coupons option to do that.

Exposure manager seems to be the leader for sports/event shooting. The EM galleries I've seen look basic/old so that is a big negative to me. However here are some things they do:

Packages
Coupons
They don't put their own branding on the mailings/checkout
Custom 'advertisement/thank you' you can ship with your orders
10% commision versus the 15% at SM
Buying options on the veiwing page
$99/yr

I've been thinking very hard about switching. Cost doesn't matter as much to me, but the other features above are huge. I don't get why SM couldn't offer the same 4x6 custom advertisement with orders. It's just printing a spare 4x6 with every order. And we all know about SM and coupons.

mercphoto

JohnBiggs wrote:

Exposure manager seems to be the leader for sports/event shooting. The EM galleries I've seen look basic/old so that is a big negative to me. However here are some things they do:

Packages
Coupons
They don't put their own branding on the mailings/checkout
Custom 'advertisement/thank you' you can ship with your orders
10% commision versus the 15% at SM
Buying options on the veiwing page
$99/yr

Don't forget custom products (for example, I created an "event CD" product, it goes into the shopping cart at my price, and they can order it just like a print), or the ability to self-fulfill any product, or the fact that digital downloads plus proof delay actually works (does not on SM). And many more useful features for the event/sports shooter.

Don't get me wrong, SM is great at what it does. But for sports/event photography, even when coupons and packages come online, is still a long way from EM. They may look old and basic, but there is a ton of substance at EM to make up for the lack of style of SM.

mercphoto

clemensphoto's wrote:

I do most of my business online. For example I do High School sports of our local school and just post them online for the parents to purchase. I have been asked about discounts on 50 and 100+ picture orders and I need a coupons option to do that.

In my opinion you need to ditch SM and switch over to Exposure Manager for this type of work.

JohnBiggs

mercphoto wrote:

Don't forget custom products (for example, I created an "event CD" product, it goes into the shopping cart at my price, and they can order it just like a print), or the ability to self-fulfill any product, or the fact that digital downloads plus proof delay actually works (does not on SM). And many more useful features for the event/sports shooter.

I didn't know about the custom products... Wow. Right now I have to put a note at the top of the gallery on SM to tell them to contact me directly if they want a CD... yuck.

Proof delay on digital downloads is also important if you want to post proofs and not process every single image.

EM says they are working on new site templates. So now we'll see if EM will finish their new site templates before SM finishes coupons.:duel

clemensphoto's

I was comparing the profit margin between SmugMug, Zenfolio, and ExposureManager; it would seem that with EM you get more money back with them.

I took a small recent order through SM of 11 4x6 and 6 5x7 where I made 46.53 with SM, while Zen I would have made 47.41, however, I would have made 49.78 through EM on the exact order. That is a pretty substantial when you look at larger orders and EM offers a great deal more.


"Don't get me wrong, SM is great at what it does. But for sports/event photography, even when coupons and packages come online, is still a long way from EM. They may look old and basic, but there is a ton of substance at EM to make up for the lack of style of SM."

- I have a feeling that even if the coupons do show themselves "SOON" in SM there will most likely be bugs to work out I'm afraid that EM will have a new member here very shortly!!!!

squiddy

just browsing their forum i found this website...

http://snapme.exposuremanager.com/

JohnBiggs

squiddy wrote:

just browsing their forum i found this website...

http://snapme.exposuremanager.com/

I'm sorry, but why did you share this link?

bendruckerphoto

JohnBiggs wrote:

I'm sorry, but why did you share this link?

The OP asked to see other photogs' EM sites.

squiddy

bendruckerphoto wrote:

The OP asked to see other photogs' EM sites.

Thank you!!

Clemensphoto's mentioned in the first post that he wasn't able to find any EM galleries. I found one website with galleries and provided a link... I guess I was trying to be, i dunno, HELPFUL.

clemensphoto's

Thanks squiddy. I was looking to see how their options looked.

JohnBiggs

bendruckerphoto wrote:

The OP asked to see other photogs' EM sites.

Sorry, the only question I saw in the OP was for other professional online services, no where did I see a request for sample EM sites. But maybe I'm blind.

mercphoto

JohnBiggs wrote:

Sorry, the only question I saw in the OP was for other professional online services, no where did I see a request for sample EM sites. But maybe I'm blind.

Second sentence of the original post.

SamirD

www.printroom.com is another company I've looked at.

EM also has FTP uploading. This alone almost made me switch until SM added video.

And that's the disadvantage of the other services for me. I need video.

bloomphotog

Took a look at exposure manager and was less than impressed. It looks WAY too outdated and clunky to be the face for my print sales. I came to Smugmug from Nextproof and have been extremely happy with everything. Coupons and packages are a big one though, and I hope to see them before X-mas.

However I do LOVE the idea of a 4x6 promo piece...Andy, can you chime in on this?

JohnBiggs

bloomphotog wrote:

However I do LOVE the idea of a 4x6 promo piece...Andy, can you chime in on this?

Yeah, seriously, we could pick the 4x6 similar to how we pick a watermark. The 4x6 costs what, 20 cents to print? Any sale should cover that.

jbakerphoto

Yall are evil! I shot a horse show last week and got a smugmug trial account. Got that setup. It took me long long time to upload 8700 pics. (2 day event) (To be expected) and now you tell me that EM can keep my folder structure that I shot into AND offer custom products like cds and they take less off the top. What the heck. Now I have to make a decision with 5 days left and everybody used to looking at the photos in smugmug.

mercphoto

unclejon wrote:

Yall are evil! I shot a horse show last week and got a smugmug trial account. Got that setup. It took me long long time to upload 8700 pics. (2 day event) (To be expected) and now you tell me that EM can keep my folder structure that I shot into AND offer custom products like cds and they take less off the top. What the heck. Now I have to make a decision with 5 days left and everybody used to looking at the photos in smugmug.

I'll be more evil than that. You could have uploaded much smaller JPG's, lets say 600x900 pixels, in much less time than the full-res versions. Set your SM site to proof delay on the prints, allowing you to upload the full res files of only those that sell.

Now, that won't work if you offer digital downloads, as SM does not acknowledge the proof delay for downloads. But EM will. If you have a gallery as proof-only and someone orders a digital download that download will be delayed until you upload the proper hi-res image. Very cool. And its been that way at EM since at least 2006...

It was great to see SM add both print delay and digital downloads. Too bad they dropped the ball and the connection between the two.

By the way, when I was heavy into motocross and kart photography I switched over to EM. I would FTP upload small 600x900 JPG's and they would go up FAST. Put all the galleries as proof-only, and would upload only those images that sold. It actually allowed me to only hand-edit those files that actually sold, further freeing up time for me. If I was still doing event photography I'd still be at EM. Its a no-brainer.

jbakerphoto

mercphoto wrote:

I'll be more evil than that. You could have uploaded much smaller JPG's, lets say 600x900 pixels, in much less time than the full-res versions. Set your SM site to proof delay on the prints, allowing you to upload the full res files of only those that sell.

Now, that won't work if you offer digital downloads, as SM does not acknowledge the proof delay for downloads. But EM will. If you have a gallery as proof-only and someone orders a digital download that download will be delayed until you upload the proper hi-res image. Very cool. And its been that way at EM since at least 2006...

It was great to see SM add both print delay and digital downloads. Too bad they dropped the ball and the connection between the two.

By the way, when I was heavy into motocross and kart photography I switched over to EM. I would FTP upload small 600x900 JPG's and they would go up FAST. Put all the galleries as proof-only, and would upload only those images that sold. It actually allowed me to only hand-edit those files that actually sold, further freeing up time for me. If I was still doing event photography I'd still be at EM. Its a no-brainer.

Ohh it was going to take a while to upload the full res. So I down sized with jpg quality. I ended up at 3 in the end which was giving a 500k file or so. It still took me a week. I turned on proof delay and disabled file download. and told them to email with cd orders. We will see how that goes.

The bad thing is the programs I own only looks in one folder so I had to go to each seperate folders to down size.

Somewhat off topic ... Is there a program that will take a handful of folders and copy the same folder structure and downsize the jpgs? or am i dreaming...


So I guess with the folder structure at EM so would I be able to have folder for the horse show then say riening and then under that have the number of the horse?

horse show -> seperate events during the day -> horse number

I lost the last level with sm....

SamirD

Irfanview has good batch conversion capability. I think it may also be able to keep directory structures.

As far as losing that last level of organization, you could put in keywords for the horse number, and then have a gallery based on the keyword.

LauraBacher

I've been eyeing Photoreflect for a few days..they have a few features that SM doesn't have yet.

aaronbrown

LauraBacher wrote:

I've been eyeing Photoreflect for a few days..they have a few features that SM doesn't have yet.

Which are... ?

LauraBacher

aaronbrown wrote:

Which are... ?

Packages, cards, calendars..the option for my customers to order all of this vice me ordering it all for them.

timk519

What about Canada?
Does anyone have experience with shops that support shooters in Canada? I've read some of the struggles others have had with SM and non-US shooters, and while I like what SM does in terms of presentation, I'd like to find a shop that'll do order placement / fulfillment on the northern side of the border.

PupWeb

Ok This has been racking my brain for like 2 weeks
Been w/ SM for couple years -- love em for everything but event photography, coupons and packages. Didn't matter to me in the past but I have several opportunities to shoot events of around 150 or so subjects and I have about 20 seniors in wanting me to do their Senior portraits.

SOO00ooo I have been researching this to see what services I can use, software tools I can leverage to make the workflow efficient and seamless as much as possible to get high product out fast. I shoot in RAW so I have to deal with that too.

OK here's what I'm looking at so far:

Raw processsing --Bibble 5
Greater efficiency than lightroom you can really do some work with this software
Performance of the program with Win 7 better than LR. I'm still testing so the verdict is still out but good googly moogly Grandma will finaly get her family reunion pics (you know your family always gets pushed to the back of teh queue).

Event large order workflow

I'm looking at Exposure manager or Photoreflect.
Currently leaning torward photoreflect b/c of the digital darkroom incorporation. They have 4 levels from free web included with photoreflect, Core, Pro and assembly. go here for more details http://www.darkroomsoftware.com/index.html.

A client/server based kiosk would be cool where customers could order at the shoot but all the software is either too expensive or like EM a gui built in 1999. Might build this myself if I feel I need it. It's just a intranet site where people pick there packages.

Do any of you have any experience that could help me? Thanks

mercphoto

PupWeb wrote:

I'm looking at Exposure manager or Photoreflect.

Do any of you have any experience that could help me? Thanks

Yes, I do. I worked with Exposure Manager back in 2006 when I was doing 2 to 4 races per month. And Smugmug is currently down and has pushed me over the edge. I'm back with Exposure Manager as of 30 minutes ago. I have a track day coming up this Saturday. I have a private client from two weekends ago who has had issues with getting to his images. I already have a pricelist with two volume discounts and one reprint discount setup. It was that easy.

Here is my referral to you:
http://www.exposuremanager.com/aff/mercphoto

PupWeb

mercphoto wrote:

Yes, I do. I worked with Exposure Manager back in 2006 when I was doing 2 to 4 races per month. And Smugmug is currently down and has pushed me over the edge. I'm back with Exposure Manager as of 30 minutes ago. I have a track day coming up this Saturday. I have a private client from two weekends ago who has had issues with getting to his images. I already have a pricelist with two volume discounts and one reprint discount setup. It was that easy.

Here is my referral to you:
http://www.exposuremanager.com/aff/mercphoto

Hey Bill thanks for your advice. Checked your site and man you take Hot Photos nice art work!

EM was easy.. and fast for you. From what I hear EM is pretty reliable even though the interface is not as sexy as SM's.

I plan on keeping SM for small volume stuff and personal photo's.

I will prob. try both EM and photoreflect. A rep from express digital (people at photoreflect.com and digital dark room) did contact me and is going to get back to me with a solution for my workflow.

I'll keep ya posted.

mercphoto

PupWeb wrote:

EM was easy.. and fast for you. From what I hear EM is pretty reliable even though the interface is not as sexy as SM's.

Its not, that's for sure. But when I look at the sales tools they have, the lower commission, the lower print costs, how often SM has been down on me the last few weeks. That's really been bad timing actually. My car biz is starting to ramp up finally, and my first commissioned client has had issues getting to see photos, let alone buy photos.

SamirD

mercphoto wrote:

Its not, that's for sure. But when I look at the sales tools they have, the lower commission, the lower print costs, how often SM has been down on me the last few weeks. That's really been bad timing actually. My car biz is starting to ramp up finally, and my first commissioned client has had issues getting to see photos, let alone buy photos.

I just looked at your EM site and it's actually not bad at all. I was really impressed by the fact that I was able to look at the entire gallery faster than I usually get two pages of the smugmug style gallery to come up. Oh yeah, and the Lambo was hot!