Download low res for free, higher res for $$

dotshutter

Hi - not sure how or if I can do this with SmugMug but ...

I want to giveaway the low res pictures (with watermark) in some galleries while at the same time charging for the higher res pics.
So if I have S, M, L, XL, X2, X3, Original of an image, I would like people to be able to download the small and medium images for free using the save feature rather than going thru the shopping cart.

If I make the original photo available then anyone can download any of the images - but that is not what I want entirely :wink

If I dont make the original available, then you cannot download any of the images unless you go through the shopping cart - but then you get the issue that people dont want to enter a credit card number for something that is zero cost as they suspect a scam of some sort.

Any ideas

SamirD

Pretty easy to implement. Set the maximum gallery size to Medium. Turn off right-click protection. The only images that will display in the gallery are up to the medium size. These images can be easily saved by your visitors. I'd be sure to put a watermark on them.

At the same time, your visitors can click on the buy button and purchase higher resolutions downloads/prints/gifts.

Hope this helps!

denisegoldberg

SamirD wrote: »

Set the maximum gallery size to Medium. Turn off right-click protection. The only images that will display in the gallery are up to the medium size. These images can be easily saved by your visitors. I'd be sure to put a watermark on them.

That's a good solution for free downloads, but using medium as the largest viewing size is pretty restrictive. I think that's too small and my home computer is a laptop. On my work large panel monitor, mediums are tiny.

--- Denise

SamirD

Most people are still using 1024x768 screen resolutions, so Medium usually works out okay. Besides, any higher resolution and you can start making decent prints.

denisegoldberg

SamirD wrote: »

Most people are still using 1024x768 screen resolutions, so Medium usually works out okay. Besides, any higher resolution and you can start making decent prints.

That may be, but I can tell you that I often walk away from sites that choose Medium as the largest viewing style. I prefer viewing the larger sizes.

I think it depends on the market you are in. Certainly if you are selling photos where the target market is going to grab screen prints, you're right about limiting to medium.

--- Denise

SamirD

denisegoldberg wrote: »

I think it depends on the market you are in. Certainly if you are selling photos where the target market is going to grab screen prints, you're right about limiting to medium.

--- Denise

I think you said it best--it does depend on the market. Car enthusiasts looking at event shots are apt to steal something as opposed to pay for it. Whereas a bride that has paid for a wedding wouldn't necessarily do that.

wmcaldera

Coupon work around?
I would also like to make low res images with my logo on them available for a free download also but I don't want to have to deal with trying to explain to clients how to right click each image to save it. I would like for it to work with the shopping cart the same as it would as buying the high res galleries.

If i set the price to $1.00 and then make a coupon for $1.00 off, will that work since my "profit" on the download is $0.85 or will I be charged every time a client downloads the web sized gallery?

And it might be a turn off if my client has to enter their credit card to get something free.

gluwater

wmcaldera wrote: »

I would also like to make low res images with my logo on them available for a free download also but I don't want to have to deal with trying to explain to clients how to right click each image to save it. I would like for it to work with the shopping cart the same as it would as buying the high res galleries.

If i set the price to $1.00 and then make a coupon for $1.00 off, will that work since my "profit" on the download is $0.85 or will I be charged every time a client downloads the web sized gallery?

And it might be a turn off if my client has to enter their credit card to get something free.

Since you cannot price a Digital Download for free you would have to use a coupon in order to use the shopping cart to get the files to your customer. The problems with this are that you cannot specify a Coupon for a particular product. If you give them a Coupon for $1, per your example, they can use that on any product available in that gallery.

The only way to have Downloads only be affected by a Coupon would be to only have Downloads available for purchase in the gallery and have the Coupon only be valid in that gallery. This doesn't sound like something you want to do though.

There is a hack somewhere on Dgrin that I have seen in the past that let you add a Download Button outside of the photobar. I'm not sure if you can change that to be for a display size or not though. Try searching Dgrin for that hack, it might be what you're looking for to bypass the cart.