On Demand Printing & Mailing

coldclimb

Hey all, I'm one of the head photo editors of a large website, and I've got a few questions. We have a massive database of user-submitted photos, many of which are incredible quality. We'd like to provide services to users to buy and sell prints through this database. What we'd do is accept a high-res upload, and display a lower res to viewers. Then when someone wants to order a print, the high-res would be sent to a print shop, printed, and shipped to the buyer.

My problem is I don't know any print shops that will print up photos on demand and ship them. Do any of you have any good recommendations for places to do this? I appreciate any help in this matter.

Thanks!

Seamus

coldclimb wrote:

Hey all, I'm one of the head photo editors of a large website, and I've got a few questions. We have a massive database of user-submitted photos, many of which are incredible quality. We'd like to provide services to users to buy and sell prints through this database. What we'd do is accept a high-res upload, and display a lower res to viewers. Then when someone wants to order a print, the high-res would be sent to a print shop, printed, and shipped to the buyer.

My problem is I don't know any print shops that will print up photos on demand and ship them. Do any of you have any good recommendations for places to do this? I appreciate any help in this matter.

Thanks!

Smugmug? isn't this what smugmug does best, upload hi res pics, display lower res and order prints. and the printing and handling of credit cards is done for you.

I'm sure that you can link your web site to a smugmug pro account.

coldclimb

Seamus wrote:

Smugmug? isn't this what smugmug does best, upload hi res pics, display lower res and order prints. and the printing and handling of credit cards is done for you.

I'm sure that you can link your web site to a smugmug pro account.

Could the site interface with smugmug and yet be entirely independant? This would be quite a good option if that were the case.

Seamus

coldclimb wrote:

Could the site interface with smugmug and yet be entirely independant? This would be quite a good option if that were the case.

I don't know anything about web design but couldn't you have a link from your site to a smugmug site. Can a web site have a gallery link that directs people to a smugmug a/c?

I am curious myself and i'm sure the web design experts will answer soon.

Shay.

coldclimb

Seamus wrote:

I don't know anything about web design but couldn't you have a link from your site to a smugmug site. Can a web site have a gallery link that directs people to a smugmug a/c?

I am curious myself and i'm sure the web design experts will answer soon.

Shay.

That's not really feasible as there's almost 60,000 photos uploaded to the database now. Also, we'd want to keep the interface on our own site. They're all hosted and displayed fine, we just need a way to sell prints easily. Smugmug is a great site and a good option if it fits what we need, which is basically just someone to print photos and ship them to the buyers, without us in the picture.

tmlphoto

coldclimb wrote:

That's not really feasible as there's almost 60,000 photos uploaded to the database now. Also, we'd want to keep the interface on our own site. They're all hosted and displayed fine, we just need a way to sell prints easily. Smugmug is a great site and a good option if it fits what we need, which is basically just someone to print photos and ship them to the buyers, without us in the picture.

You might want to contact EZprints. They are the lab that smugmug uses. They should be able to provide the service you want I would expect.