How good do Medium prints look?

DodgeV83

I recently took some sports pics of my old team (just graduated last year). I have the pics on my Smugmug site, and I’m hoping to get some sales from them. My instinct says to not PROOF or right-click protect the pictures. I have, however, disabled the Large size. I want people to be able to save the web-sized pictures so they can use them for their profile/facebook picture/desktop background…etc, but I do NOT want them to be able to get good prints from them. I figure if they see the pic often, and their family members see it, they will be enticed to buy a high-quality print from my site.



This will not work if they can get satisfactory results from printing it for free! The 600x400 Medium prints will be 100DPI if printed at 4x6. Do the pictures look REALLY blocky at this setting? Couldn’t they upscale the picture with some good software to get a good-quality print?



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colourbox

Quality is relative to the use. Friends and family might be perfectly happy with a 100dpi print uprezzed and resharpened in software: piracy could approach 100%. But a discerning national magazine is likely to reject such an image right away: piracy could approach 0%. Yet a low-budget web site might try to snag an image knowing it's perfect web resolution and maybe nobody notices: Chance of piracy could be significant but neither 0% nor 100%.

You'll never find a way to prevent downloading and printing; someone can always take a screen shot, so unless you're going to put only thumbnails on the web it's a lost cause catching the cheapskates. But, anyone who still wants a decent quality enlargement is still going to have to hit your Buy button.

mercphoto

DodgeV83 wrote:

I recently took some sports pics of my old team (just graduated last year). I have the pics on my Smugmug site, and I’m hoping to get some sales from them. My instinct says to not PROOF or right-click protect the pictures.

Big mistake. Been there, done that. Do not trust people. Watermark the images. Right-click protect the images.

This will not work if they can get satisfactory results from printing it for free! The 600x400 Medium prints will be 100DPI if printed at 4x6. Do the pictures look REALLY blocky at this setting? Couldn’t they upscale the picture with some good software to get a good-quality print?

Well, have you tried printing it yourself to make your own call? You will be surprised just how good a 100dpi 4x6 print can look. Many will not mind it at 8x10 either. Without up-sampling. Especially if it is free.

gluwater

I agree with mercphoto. If you do a search here you will find previous threads about this subject. I used to work at a copy shop and you would really be surprised with the quality that some people are happy with. People will be happy with low res files printed at 4x6 or even larger, you would really be surprised with the quality you can get from them on home photo printers these days. Are they as good as prints ordered from smugmug? Of course not but realistically a lot of people don't care, they are happy with the picture because they or a loved one are in it. I would say go with the watermark and reasonable pricing. Good luck!

DodgeV83

gluwater wrote:

I agree with mercphoto. If you do a search here you will find previous threads about this subject. I used to work at a copy shop and you would really be surprised with the quality that some people are happy with. People will be happy with low res files printed at 4x6 or even larger, you would really be surprised with the quality you can get from them on home photo printers these days. Are they as good as prints ordered from smugmug? Of course not but realistically a lot of people don't care, they are happy with the picture because they or a loved one are in it. I would say go with the watermark and reasonable pricing. Good luck!

Any more opinions? less than 1 day after putting some pictures up I get this...

"I can't see the pictures even if I wanted to buy them because of the big PROOF!"

I've decided to take off the PROOF when it really takes away from the picture, but to keep it on for everything else. How are you guys handling it when people say the PROOF is too big?

marlinspike

Take off the proof but right click protect and don't allow larges. 100dpi does look acceptable, but right click protection does keep the honest man honest, and the dishonest man can go....I can't say it on a family oriented forum. The proof does bother people I think.

DodgeV83

marlinspike wrote:

Take off the proof but right click protect and don't allow larges. 100dpi does look acceptable, but right click protection does keep the honest man honest, and the dishonest man can go....I can't say it on a family oriented forum. The proof does bother people I think.

The people I'm selling these pictures to are mostly my friends. I am very close to the whole team I am working with, but theres still a chance they will steal my pics! I already got a complaint about the PROOF...and someone already said "AH! COPYRIGHT PROTECTION CRAP!"...

They will probably get the pic anyway, and I'd rather they get the PROOF version. When I was on the team there were a few events where a camera person took pictures and posted them online...NOBODY EVER bought the pictures! They alwyas right-clicked and saved them, even with a small watermark on the bottom with the site address. Sometimes they even cropped the watermark out!

AH! So many decisions!

marlinspike

Being close to the team doesn't mean there aren't dishonest amongst them. The proof complaint is a valid point, because it is kinda intrusive, but the people who say "AHH copyright protection crap" can go themselves with a 10 foot clown pole...in fact I'd probably tell him that. Business is business and you only have a few friends in business: a handful of select dead presidents, Benjamin Franklin, and if you're honest Johnny Law. A thief is a thief whether you know him or not. You know what though, now that I think about what your market base is based on the comments, leave the PROOF up. Parents won't care about the proof as much as kids, and it sounds like the kids won't buy them no matter what you do.

DodgeV83

marlinspike wrote:

Being close to the team doesn't mean there aren't dishonest amongst them. The proof complaint is a valid point, because it is kinda intrusive, but the people who say "AHH copyright protection crap" can go themselves with a 10 foot clown pole...in fact I'd probably tell him that. Business is business and you only have a few friends in business: a handful of select dead presidents, Benjamin Franklin, and if you're honest Johnny Law. A thief is a thief whether you know him or not. You know what though, now that I think about what your market base is based on the comments, leave the PROOF up. Parents won't care about the proof as much as kids, and it sounds like the kids won't buy them no matter what you do.

Yea I agree with you! I only took off the PROOF when it is completely covering a person's body (you can't really tell who it is!), besides that, its staying in!

binghott

altought i would love to watermark and right-click protect my images, i know that i would lose throngs of visitors to my website if i did so. i even allow people to view the larges too. i understand that people will steal my images, but i want people to be more satisfied with my website to keep going back to see updates.

i didn't mind people stealing my images too much because this strategy used to be (very well) supported by revenue from google ads, which benefited from the insane number of page views. however, now i no longer run the google ads because i didn't think they were very professional looking. i've found that keeping the customer happy and building a trust with most of the visitors can sell more prints.

talking to parents at sports games about pictures usually generates sales. they understand that they can download the images and print them themselves, but they want to help support me because if i wasn't making money from the prints i wouldn't continue taking excellent pictures of their children.

you need to explain to people that they're not just paying for the prints, they're paying for the equipment, and expertise that went into taking and working on the pictures.

that's how i feel and what i've had success with.

DodgeV83

binghott wrote:

altought i would love to watermark and right-click protect my images, i know that i would lose throngs of visitors to my website if i did so. i even allow people to view the larges too. i understand that people will steal my images, but i want people to be more satisfied with my website to keep going back to see updates.

i didn't mind people stealing my images too much because this strategy used to be (very well) supported by revenue from google ads, which benefited from the insane number of page views. however, now i no longer run the google ads because i didn't think they were very professional looking. i've found that keeping the customer happy and building a trust with most of the visitors can sell more prints.

talking to parents at sports games about pictures usually generates sales. they understand that they can download the images and print them themselves, but they want to help support me because if i wasn't making money from the prints i wouldn't continue taking excellent pictures of their children.

you need to explain to people that they're not just paying for the prints, they're paying for the equipment, and expertise that went into taking and working on the pictures.

that's how i feel and what i've had success with.

I just printed out a Medium picture without a watermark...and honestly I think I've seen prints of this quality tacked to some of my friend's walls on campus!

...We'll see how many prints I get. How much would YOU guys price your 4x6's in a market like this? Keep in mind I had to go 2 hours away, leaving for the event at 10am, and returning at 12:30am ...Uploading 1GB worth of pictures then compressing and uploading 15 videos to my Smugmug site...

Correction: Leaving at 9:30 am :cry

marlinspike

$4.25. The ones who buy will buy. The ones who dont wouldnt even if you charged $1.

mercphoto

DodgeV83 wrote:

...We'll see how many prints I get. How much would YOU guys price your 4x6's in a market like this? Keep in mind I had to go 2 hours away, leaving for the event at 10am, and returning at 12:30am

I charge $6 for a 4x6. I know a local sports photographer who does it for a living and gets $8.50 for a 4x6.

By the way, he is well known, talks to customers, etc. and refuses to NOT watermark his images. Its just giving away business otherwise. Now his watermark is a LOT less intrusive than Smugmug's. (with all the complaints about the watermark will they ever change it?). His is red lettering, a very thin letter but about as large, centered and at an angle.

I take the pragmatic approach to right-click protection and watermarking. I don't buy into the theory that "those who won't pay for a photo might as well give it them". The theory is correct that the honest person will buy, watermark or not. But I have zero desire to reward illegal activity. Doing so does not generate goodwill, it does not generate sales or leads, all it does is offer positive reinforcement to a bad behavior. That is never good.

marlinspike

mercphoto wrote:

I take the pragmatic approach to right-click protection and watermarking. I don't buy into the theory that "those who won't pay for a photo might as well give it them". The theory is correct that the honest person will buy, watermark or not. But I have zero desire to reward illegal activity. Doing so does not generate goodwill, it does not generate sales or leads, all it does is offer positive reinforcement to a bad behavior. That is never good.

No disagreement here, what I meant is no matter how low you charge those people won't buy, so don't bother trying to add them in to your price setting equation. $8.50 for a 4x6? None of the sports guys I know charge that much. Most of them are around $5,

binghott

mercphoto wrote:

I charge $6 for a 4x6. I know a local sports photographer who does it for a living and gets $8.50 for a 4x6.

i charge $0.50 per 4x6, that way people won't go to get them printed at other places when the price is so close. maybe i should raise my prices. a lot.

mercphoto

binghott wrote:

i charge $0.50 per 4x6, that way people won't go to get them printed at other places when the price is so close. maybe i should raise my prices. a lot.

Yes.

marlinspike

Yes you should, but be ready for some fall out. Raising prices is a lot harder than starting out high. Still though, you can just point to other websites to show that your prices are fair market.

mercphoto

marlinspike wrote:

No disagreement here, what I meant is no matter how low you charge those people won't buy, so don't bother trying to add them in to your price setting equation.

Gotcha. And good point, don't try to find a magical low price that convinces the thieves to buy.

$8.50 for a 4x6? None of the sports guys I know charge that much. Most of them are around $5,

Granted the guy getting $8.50 is very good. And he hand-crops every single photo to improve the composition. It is a lot of work for sure, but I've found the cropping can make a big difference. I'm trying to decide if I will do that with my racing pictures next year or not.

binghott

although i have always liked the philosophy of don't be evil, don't be greedy, i drastically increased prices of my prints today. my glossy/matte 4x6's are now $2, 5x7's are $5, 8x10's are $14.99. thanks for the idea guys, hopefully it will be the lifestyle of the rich and famous from now on for me. . .

DodgeV83

binghott wrote:

although i have always liked the philosophy of don't be evil, don't be greedy, i drastically increased prices of my prints today. my glossy/matte 4x6's are now $2, 5x7's are $5, 8x10's are $14.99. thanks for the idea guys, hopefully it will be the lifestyle of the rich and famous from now on for me. . .

My 4x6's are $2.50, 5x7's $3.50, 8x10's, $9.99, 11x14's $12, 16x20's $30, 20x30's $40.

I'm even offering a FREE 12x18 poster print if you order 10 4x6's!

0 orders so far :cry, I guess my pictures suck.

binghott

how long have you been selling for? it took me some time to make my first sale, even at $0.49 for a 4x6. i get a lot of return customers, which means they like the quality. i should probably make some sort of offer to first time customers to get them hooked.

DodgeV83

binghott wrote:

how long have you been selling for? it took me some time to make my first sale, even at $0.49 for a 4x6. i get a lot of return customers, which means they like the quality. i should probably make some sort of offer to first time customers to get them hooked.

Well I'm holding out hope that I will sell some prints. They have only been up since Sunday, and I don't think the whole team has the link yet. Hopefully someone sent the link to everyone today so we'll see

I've been getting a monsterous amount of visitors though...so I dunno.

BTW, if there is a Costco's near you their 12x18's are only $2.99! Giving away a free poster to all of your local buyers won't hurt your wallet much

mercphoto

DodgeV83 wrote:

Well I'm holding out hope that I will sell some prints. They have only been up since Sunday,

In my experience is too soon to get sales. YMMV.

BTW, if there is a Costco's near you their 12x18's are only $2.99! Giving away a free poster to all of your local buyers won't hurt your wallet much

You gotta be careful with freebies. They can hurt your wallet more than you think. Don't get your customers addicted to the heroine of freebies and cheap prices.

DodgeV83

mercphoto wrote:

In my experience is too soon to get sales. YMMV.


You gotta be careful with freebies. They can hurt your wallet more than you think. Don't get your customers addicted to the heroine of freebies and cheap prices.

Well I did say at the bottom of the page that you can only use the free poster special ONCE. I want to get them hooked to the heroine if AMAZING PRINTS, not freebies

And is cheap prices REALLY that bad? It all depends on the thought process of the customer. As price goes down, demand goes up. If they wanna spend $25 for pictures, they'd be more inclined to buy 10 4x6's and a free poster than 5, 4x6's at $5 each. Sans the free poster, the profit is almost the same. Then, once they see their amazing poster on the wall everyday, they'd want more posters!

If, on the other hand, they just say "I'll buy every picture that looks good" then I'd definately lose by having the lower prices.

In your experience, are most customers like the first example, or like the second example?

marlinspike

What's your website? Though, in my experience, orders are hard to come by unless its like U14 soccer tournament or something (i.e. young people and once in a lifetime opportunity). Also, just about every photographer tells me "you can't make money doing even photography"

mercphoto

DodgeV83 wrote:

Well I did say at the bottom of the page that you can only use the free poster special ONCE.

Ah. Missed that.

And is cheap prices REALLY that bad? It all depends on the thought process of the customer. As price goes down, demand goes up. If they wanna spend $25 for pictures, they'd be more inclined to buy 10 4x6's and a free poster than 5, 4x6's at $5 each. Sans the free poster, the profit is almost the same. Then, once they see their amazing poster on the wall everyday, they'd want more posters!

If, on the other hand, they just say "I'll buy every picture that looks good" then I'd definately lose by having the lower prices.

In your experience, are most customers like the first example, or like the second example?

You are assuming that supply and demand are linear. They are not linear. Hence if you drop the price by half the purchases will not double. That is why cheap prices are bad. People will only buy so many photos. Just because they are half the price does not entice them to buy twice as many photos. Therefore, people are like the second example. They do not set out saying "I'm going to buy $25 worth of photos today".

DodgeV83

marlinspike wrote:

What's your website? Though, in my experience, orders are hard to come by unless its like U14 soccer tournament or something (i.e. young people and once in a lifetime opportunity). Also, just about every photographer tells me "you can't make money doing even photography"

Home Page

Here is a direct link to Saturday's event.

Link

marlinspike

DodgeV83 wrote:

And is cheap prices REALLY that bad? It all depends on the thought process of the customer. As price goes down, demand goes up. If they wanna spend $25 for pictures, they'd be more inclined to buy 10 4x6's and a free poster than 5, 4x6's at $5 each. Sans the free poster, the profit is almost the same. Then, once they see their amazing poster on the wall everyday, they'd want more posters!

If, on the other hand, they just say "I'll buy every picture that looks good" then I'd definately lose by having the lower prices.

In your experience, are most customers like the first example, or like the second example?

Elasticity of demand is the key. Heroine is a good example. An addict will rob a liquor store to get the money if the price of heroine goes up. People won't do that for photos, but they will go fairly high before they cut back on buying. I don't think anybody says I'll buy $25 in pictures. I think there are people that say I'll buy everything that looks good and there are people who say I might buy something if it looks great, and there are the people who say I won't buy anything never. So, I'd say the demand curve for photos is a nearly verticle line where $ is on the y axis.
The evil in low prices is people do get hooked. The second you raise them people ask why, so you better have a good reason (like I did: bought much better equipment and photos became of a higher quality). The fact that I offered a person who asked a bulk discount and they basically said no, raising the prices makes sense in that instance, and then they went and ordered some photos seems to me that people rather pay high than pay highER, if that makes sense.

marlinspike

You go to College Park? Do you get to shoot terps basketball games???!!! (if so I envy you).

They look good to me...how do you do the page with no pictures just text thing? And where did you enter those links to the free poster print and such in the customization so that it appears above the photos?

DodgeV83

marlinspike wrote:

You go to College Park? Do you get to shoot terps basketball games???!!! (if so I envy you).

They look good to me...how do you do the page with no pictures just text thing? And where did you enter those links to the free poster print and such in the customization so that it appears above the photos?

Haha, I WISH I coudl shoot the basketball games! I'm strictly Track and Field for now.

Thanks for saying my pics look good! I used the HTML ONLY theme for those pages, and forced the JOURNAL style to center the text. I found it on this thread.

http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=21442&highlight=html+theme

In order to get those links to be directly above the pictures I used "&nbsp" a BUNCH of times! Try it out, its a pain cause after you save it and leave the page, all fo the &nbsp's you put in go away, so it pays to get it right the first time!

I'll copy and paste the code I used for that when I get home, but really its simple.

mercphoto

marlinspike wrote:

Elasticity of demand is the key. Heroine is a good example. An addict will rob a liquor store to get the money if the price of heroine goes up. People won't do that for photos, but they will go fairly high before they cut back on buying.

I was at a "breakfast club" for local small businesses a few months back chatting with someone who does seminars for small business marketing. Basically a "this is how you spend a small amount of money and make a lot more in sales". Sometimes I think I should really go. Back to topic I had mentioned how this other guy was getting $8.50 for a 4x6 and I was only getting $6. She asked if I knew why that was the case. Her answer was simply "because he asked for $8.50". It is surprisingly simple and probably rather accurate.

I forget who said this above but it went along the lines of "if prices go down then demand goes up". I think the fundamental flaw in this argument is that there is a certain demand for event photos (which appears to be rather small). That demand doesn't seem to have any rational tie to the price, from what I can tell. In other words, cheap prices do NOT increase the demand for photos from what I can tell. There is obviously a point where a price too high keeps people from buying and demand plummets. But the "sweet spot" that people are willing to pay seems to be a rather wide and flat spot of the curve. You can ride far to the right (i.e. higher price) of that curve before it takes a steep plunge towards fewer sales. If that observation is true then there is little reason to not raise prices.

Just my observations and they could be flawed.