Best way to allow a client to download their files

Oakley

Hi,

As part of my portrait package, I offer my clients full-rez photos. Obviously I don't want to do something old school like create a CD or DVD's.....I want to be able to just the images onto their gallery on my smugmug site and then have my clients grab the images from there.

I only see 2 ways to do this and both have flaws.

1. Use a app like AlbumFetcher. Problems include having to walk people through the process to download the program and use it. Normally this is a 30 minute phone call. And even if they login as a "geust" they will be able to grab photos from my other clients. Not good.

2. Temporarly put a price of 1 cent for Hi-Rez Origional download. I would have to send an email to my client letting them know that I was going to leave it like this for x hours or days. But this requires them to have to go through the "paying" process in smugmug. Not exacatly painful, but pointless.

Any other ideas??

Thanks,

Ryan

Andy

DO NOT 1 CENT IT.
It's very costly for SmugMug (I want us to make a min price of at least $.99 cents)... and it's time consuming for your customer.

Put them in a private passworded gallery and let them download them with the save button?

Oakley

Andy wrote:

DO NOT 1 CENT IT.
It's very costly for SmugMug (I want us to make a min price of at least $.99 cents)... and it's time consuming for your customer.

Put them in a private passworded gallery and let them download them with the save button?

A wedding can have 300+ photos. They will not want to save each one individually. Plus, I often link client galleries to facebook.....can't do that if the gallery is private and password protected.

Any other thoughts?

And regaridng the 1 cent idea - isn't that what smugmug advices pros to do if they want to sell their photos for (pretty much) the base price but still be able to track the purchases?? What's the difference with what I'm thinking of doing?

Andy

we don't yet have a bulk downloader for your client. Burn a DVD and send it to them, that's the best way, I'm sorry.

Andy

Oakley wrote:

And regaridng the 1 cent idea - isn't that what smugmug advices pros to do if they want to sell their photos for (pretty much) the base price but still be able to track the purchases?? What's the difference with what I'm thinking of doing?

NO

http://www.smugmug.com/help/coupon-codes

Oakley

Andy wrote:

NO

http://www.smugmug.com/help/coupon-codes

So if I have set my portfolio prices so that a origional file download is $500. How would I set up a coupon for my clients to download a gallery of 300 photos for free? And would they have to go through checkout and all that?

Andy

Oakley wrote:

So if I have set my portfolio prices so that a origional file download is $500. How would I set up a coupon for my clients to download a gallery of 300 photos for free? And would they have to go through checkout and all that?

charge them $500 for one and give them access to the full gallery, is one way.

- Andy

Oakley

Andy wrote:

charge them $500 for one and give them access to the full gallery, is one way.

- Andy

1. I've already built the price of supplying them with the digital images in the price of the photo shoot.

2. So how would that work with your idea to charge for one and then give them access to the full gallery??

Andy

Ryan, if they've already paid, then either:

1) upload the files to a private gallery and enable originals and give them the link

2) burn them a disk

Photometric

For a wedding portfolio, even if you set it to $.01 you would be charging the client $3.00 for 300 photos. It would also require them to download 300 individual files, either by saving or downloading from their 'purchase'.

I personally think a CD/DVD is your best option and best for your client's convenience. How long does it really take to burn a DVD anyway?

jmho

HoofClix

When someone buys a "gallery" from me, that is, they buy all of the shots I take of them at one horse show, I just unlock the gallery, remove the watermark, and put some instructions on how to download the images in the header of the gallery. As these folks don't generally then go buy images from my site, I don't usually bother repricing them. I figure they've paid me for the originals. Of course, they pay me independently from Smugmug. I do occasionally reset price for the gallery at cost, as a convenience for the customer. If they want a disc or dvd of the images for their hands, I charge them for it, $25..