Not to offer certain products

JimM

I made a big mistake and I am sure I am paying for it. I made an assumption that if I left the revised "Custom Pro Pricing" blank for certain items, then then they would not be shown.

I think the last two football games I have shot, I probably got a ton of orders, I just wouldn't know, since they found a way to pay my price, not the custom pro price, since these were still choices.

Is there a way to limit what products are being offered? As the photographer, I may not think certain choices show my work the best.

Also, is there a way to find out how many orders my site has generated, if my customers purchased them at the default price, instead of my pro price (as discussed above).

Thanks,

-Jim

Andy

JimM wrote:

I made a big mistake and I am sure I am paying for it. I made an assumption that if I left the revised "Custom Pro Pricing" blank for certain items, then then they would not be shown.

I think the last two football games I have shot, I probably got a ton of orders, I just wouldn't know, since they found a way to pay my price, not the custom pro price, since these were still choices.

Is there a way to limit what products are being offered? As the photographer, I may not think certain choices show my work the best.

Also, is there a way to find out how many orders my site has generated, if my customers purchased them at the default price, instead of my pro price (as discussed above).

Thanks,

-Jim

hiya jim - not to worry! when you leave it blank, the item is not offered for sale. you'll see it when you are logged in, but your clients will not.

$0 sales are not reported - if you wish to offer something "at cost" to a friend, family member, client etc, then mark it up by $0.01 one penny and then it will show in your reporting just as normal.

more info here

and

and here

hope this helps,

JimM

Hi Andy,


That is not what happened, when I left it blank for luste finishes, yet they still showed at .29 for the 4x6, so I believe all of my customers ordered these. It was a customer that pointed it out to me, asking why they were so cheap.

JimM

So now, I have marked up everything. I am very frustrated. Is there a report they can tell me how many .29 4x6 and $1something 8x10s were ordered from my sports galleries?

Andy

JimM wrote:

Hi Andy,


That is not what happened, when I left it blank for luste finishes, yet they still showed at .29 for the 4x6, so I believe all of my customers ordered these. It was a customer that pointed it out to me, asking why they were so cheap.

jim, i just re-verified that system is working as intended. i removed 4x6 gloss and lustre from my sample gallery. please try to buy a 4x6 standard print in gloss or lustre from this sample event gallery. you should only see 4x6 matte.

here's how i do it:
photo tools>custom pro pricing>zero out or blank out the items you don't want to sell.

be absoulutely certain of two things

1) you are working on pricing for at minimum the entire gallery (so as not to only apply your mods to a single photo

and

2) that you click "update pricing" at the very bottom of the page.

JimM

I know this is not the case, I had them priced per gallery as blank. Andy, I just sent you a PM to call me.

Is there any way to know how many were purchased at the default price? I am just starting out here, and it would be nice to know how many people were willing to pay buy, even if they were incredibly cheap.

Thanks,

-jim

JimM

andy wrote:

jim, i just re-verified that system is working as intended. i removed 4x6 gloss and lustre from my sample gallery. please try to buy a 4x6 standard print in gloss or lustre from this sample event gallery. you should only see 4x6 matte.

I do only see the 4x6 matte. This was not the case on my site this morning. When I changed to adding the price this morning it showed as blank. until I made the change to mark up everything. I had a couple hundred hits on this gallery yesterday (the game was Saturday). Would you pay $10 for a 4x6 or $.29?

Andy

jim, take a look i can see that some of your photos have no pro pricing markup on them - didn't look at all but i saw the cars gallery had 4x6 gloss at 25cents but the football gallery was fine..

{JT}

When in doubt, go to the help section - we cover just about everything:
http://smugmug.com/help/print-pricing

"Enter a 0 (zero) for any product you do not want your customers to order (you can override this for any gallery or image later). Products with a zero entered will not be presented to your customers when they purchase prints."

Andy

JimM wrote:

I do only see the 4x6 matte. This was not the case on my site this morning. When I changed to adding the price this morning it showed as blank. until I made the change to mark up everything. I had a couple hundred hits on this gallery yesterday (the game was Saturday). Would you pay $10 for a 4x6 or $.29?

jim, my question stands... after zero-ing the pricing, are you certain that you hit update pricing? i cannot see any other way that this could happen, as the system is working as it's intended to... if you feel it's an error on smugmug's part, please send an email to help@smugmug.com and reference this thread as well...

btw remember you have to be logged out to see the site as your clients will see it. i keep one browser (firefox) open for this purpose, and stay logged in on my other browswr (safari).

hope this helps,

JimM

I think the only galleries I have marked up are the sports. Those are the ones I am trying to upsell. This morning I had lustre marked as blank, yet they were available to purchase at default pricing. Since then, I made the change to mark them up. I became aware or the problem because a customer wrote me asking what the difference was in the pricing.

There was definately a bug in the system. When I logged in this morning to make the change, it was still shown as blank for lustre. I obviously lost some profitable sales because of this. For my own knowledge, is there any way to know how many of my sports galleries shots and which ones have been purchased at default pricing?

I guess I need to re-check the pricing when I am logged out after I upload for every event? All 3 sports galleries were showing the same problem this morning until I made the change.

Thanks.

JimM

andy wrote:

jim, my question stands... after zero-ing the pricing, are you certain that you hit update pricing? i cannot see any other way that this could happen, as the system is working as it's intended to... if you feel it's an error on smugmug's part, please send an email to help@smugmug.com and reference this thread as well...

btw remember you have to be logged out to see the site as your clients will see it. i keep one browser (firefox) open for this purpose, and stay logged in on my other browswr (safari).

hope this helps,

Andy, I am certain. I actually just apply the pricing for the other sports gallery, and this showed them as blank. I am positive that I then hit apply. I did check this. I even had another smugmug user stumble upon this and email me this morning. I have logged out to check. I actually have another computer that I never login with for this reason. I will email help. Thanks.

Andy

JimM wrote:

I think the only galleries I have marked up are the sports.

jim, as i posted above, your car gallery exhibits the same issue. please review it?

JimM wrote:

Those are the ones I am trying to upsell. This morning I had lustre marked as blank, yet they were available to purchase at default pricing. Since then, I made the change to mark them up. I became aware or the problem because a customer wrote me asking what the difference was in the pricing.

There was definately a bug in the system. When I logged in this morning to make the change, it was still shown as blank for lustre. I obviously lost some profitable sales because of this.

there's no bug that i can see. please email help@smugmug.com and verify.

JimM wrote:

For my own knowledge, is there any way to know how many of my sports galleries shots and which ones have been purchased at default pricing?

you'll need to ask help@smugmug.com this question jim....

JimM wrote:

I guess I need to re-check the pricing when I am logged out after I upload for every event?

it's very prudent, don't you think? fire up a 2nd browser, it takes about fifteen seconds to check

JimM

Hi Andy,

I just checked my car gallery, it has the same problem if you are seeing that you can purchase a glossy 4x6 for $.25, this is blank. How do I send you the screen shot?

Andy

JimM wrote:

How do I send you the screen shot?

you simply put it in a gallery in your smugmug account, and then link it here just like i did, above.

jim, did you set "portfolio" pricing at one point?

JimM

This definately demonstrates the same error. I have these as blank, yet they are still offered for sale. I am really not happy about this!!!

JimM

andy wrote:

you simply put it in a gallery in your smugmug account, and then link it here just like i did, above.

jim, did you set "portfolio" pricing at one point?

I don't think I set a portfolio price at one point, but I am not sure.

JimM

Screen Shot of how it is shown now...

JimM

This is what Help told me:

Hi Jim,

I am sorry for the pricing Problem.
But it does sound like there might be some confusion. If you leave the pricing blank for them, that is telling the system to sell them at cost.
If you don't want to sell them at all then you would put a zero in there. If you want to mark them up you have to put an increased price in there.
And when you are logged in, you will be able to purchase all of your prints at default pricing.
So, unless I am misunderstanding what you said, I don't think there is a systems problem here.

Please take a few minutes to read through the pricing Help page again:
http://smugmug.com/help/print-pricing

We do not track any print sales that are not marked up, unfortunately, so I can't tell you how many prints were sold at default prices.

Wish I had better news for you.

All the best,
Toni


Looks like I needed to read the fine print. For everyone reading this a 0 and blank are two different things!!!!!!!! It would have been nice to at least know how many were purchased. Someone should know this.

Cameron

If you don't want a certain item to be available, you set the price as $0. If you leave it blank, it will be available but priced at the default cost (either your portfolio price or the smugmug default, if no portfolio price exists).

As previously mentioned, the help file is great - check it out:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-pricing

*edit - just noticed that Jim and I replied at about the same time but he beat me to it.

Andy

JimM wrote:

Looks like I needed to read the fine print.

jim, in my first response to you in this thread, i directed you to this help page which states, put in 0...

glad this is cleared up for you!

mercphoto

JimM wrote:

I know this is not the case, I had them priced per gallery as blank.

Don't do blank. Do "0". There is a huge difference between blank and 0.

JimM

I guess I learned a very valueable lesson today. I personally think blank and 0 should be the same and you should have to type in the $$ amount if you don't want to mark it up. It is called "Custom Pro Pricing" and if I were marking up some, wouldn't I mark up all?

mercphoto

JimM wrote:

I guess I learned a very valueable lesson today. I personally think blank and 0 should be the same and you should have to type in the $$ amount if you don't want to mark it up. It is called "Custom Pro Pricing" and if I were marking up some, wouldn't I mark up all?

I learned a valuable pricing lesson last week. The problem is, the help page isn't entirely accurate when it comes to pro pricing.

You need to think of blank as being "don't change the price" and 0 as being "make this item unavailable". Pro pricing happens in a sequential fashion, starting with the at-cost price, then image pricing, then gallery pricing, and finally portfolio pricing. A blank means "don't change the price from the prior level". And 0 means "make this item unavailable".

The only remaining confusing part, and this is what bit me, its not mentioned in the help pages and I'm struggling with a way to re-write the help page to address it. If you try to custom pro price something at-cost, its not as simple as putting in the Smugmug default price for an item. This does not work if there is also a price for that same item at a higher price further up the hierarchy, such as at portfolio pricing. This was the problem I had. Andy tried to help me with this, but Andy doesn't set a default portfolio price for anything and I do. And that small change puts a kink in things. In this case you need to put an item at a penny over cost to over-ride the higher portfolio price. Andy truly can offer at-cost because he doesn't have a default price further up the chain to over-ride it. But why a higher cost further up over-rides an explicit request for at-cost lower down confuses me.

Andy

JimM wrote:

I guess I learned a very valueable lesson today. I personally think blank and 0 should be the same and you should have to type in the $$ amount if you don't want to mark it up. It is called "Custom Pro Pricing" and if I were marking up some, wouldn't I mark up all?

please see smugmug pro tips a thread in the "mind your own business" forum...