USA shipping costs too expensive?

LisaMarieGal

I find that my customers are not ordering from my smug mug albums because the shipping costs are too expensive compared to other printers and they take so much longer to be delivered. Another professional printer I deal with charges a flat shipping fee of $4 per order and it is always fedexed next day delivery! I just don't understand why smug mug couldn't offer something similar. It's hard to make much profit from photo sales when the shipping is so high! Any ideas on how we can get around this?

AceCo55

I would also love smugmug to have a printing service in Australia. The people who regularly visit my website will NEVER order a print from the US so this is a feature that is virtually useless to me. Instead I have to arrange printing here myself.

Light_prod

I keep getting burned by this. I've tried to give out free shipping coupons to get sales but then end up loosing my profit to pay for their shipping. Made a $100 sale today to only make $10 profit because of the shipping. I'm sure they are looking into Australian labs at some stage as they have finally come good on the currency issue. Lets hope its sooner rather than later especially with both Queensberry and VSCO coming out with their flavour of online website/ordering.

Andy

Light_prod wrote: »

I keep getting burned by this. I've tried to give out free shipping coupons to get sales but then end up loosing my profit to pay for their shipping. Made a $100 sale today to only make $10 profit because of the shipping. I'm sure they are looking into Australian labs at some stage as they have finally come good on the currency issue. Lets hope its sooner rather than later especially with both Queensberry and VSCO coming out with their flavour of online website/ordering.

I hope we can address this with some stuff coming soon

Light_prod

I have no doubt its on the books.

Art Scott

For those of you down under .. might look at RED Bubble...they are in Australia ... more of a fine art site but at least it is country local... at least until SM partners with other labs throughout the world ... imho that would be the only reason to add another lab ... I see no reason to have 3 or 4 different US labs unless that extra lab(s) has something really fantastic over the other 2 partners ... I could have seen partnering with one of the SPORTS / SCHOOL specialty labs but WHCC really has nothing over BAY in offerings except being more centrally located ... ...

ADMIT Photography

I agree shipping can be high through SM. Depending on what your profits are set to, how about offering a coupon giving them $2-3 off shipping to help with lower that cost?

smurfy

US shipping rates are really high even within the states. The rates for state to state shipping are, at times, astronomical for some items; especially lightweight ones or those that could be sent in priority mail (flat rate) boxes.

I'd e mailed Smugmug about it a few years ago when a hundred flat thank you cards from Georgia to NY cost me over $20 to ship, and I swore I'd never order cards from Smugmug again. Confession: Broke that promise just once since then when we had a death in the family. But other than emergencies, I buy cards and smaller print orders elsewhere. Like Lisa said, there are some excellent labs that ship for a low flat rate. It would be wonderful if Smugmug would work something out with their labs to do something similar. There is no doubt that print sales would increase, and fewer pros would self-fullfill (through other labs) their clients' cards and smaller print orders.

Light_prod

yeah, setting up even a $5 off shipping isn't going to help when we are looking at $30+ shipping costs. People prepare themselves for how much they are going to spend then get to the shipping page, have a heart attach and back out of the sale all together.

As far as redbubble is concerned, they let the ball drop on quality years ago. Not to mention that they are not set up for the kind of thing that smugmug is for. You can have proof galleries. Using redbubble for orders would be tedious and add so much time to the ordering process its just not worth it.

Adding self fulfilment would at least give us a short term fix for this. Why its so difficult to implement is beyond me.

Even allowing other labs the ability to create widgets that we can install into our galleries that hits their shopping carts would be great. Opening that up would open up the ability to use any lab in the world of our choosing as long as that lab is willing to create the code to do it.

paulbrock

I *know* they're on the case, but it's not just the shipping costs. It's the time as well - 3 weeks!

Hope in the next few weeks they'll announce a Euro lab with significantly lower postage and time; if not, I would guess that Smugmug has enough global demand that they could combine shipping to a regional centre and distribute from there. e.g 10 individual print orders to Europe could be sent by courier together for the same price as 10 separate packages by airmail, in a fraction of the time.

Something like these guys offer.
https://bongous.com/

Andy

paulbrock wrote: »

I *know* they're on the case, but it's not just the shipping costs. It's the time as well - 3 weeks!

Hope in the next few weeks they'll announce a Euro lab with significantly lower postage and time; if not, I would guess that Smugmug has enough global demand that they could combine shipping to a regional centre and distribute from there. e.g 10 individual print orders to Europe could be sent by courier together for the same price as 10 separate packages by airmail, in a fraction of the time.

Something like these guys offer.
https://bongous.com/

See you at FOCUS on Imaging? We're here now... show runs Sun - Wed

Sheaf

paulbrock wrote: »

I *know* they're on the case, but it's not just the shipping costs. It's the time as well - 3 weeks!

Hope in the next few weeks they'll announce a Euro lab with significantly lower postage and time; if not, I would guess that Smugmug has enough global demand that they could combine shipping to a regional centre and distribute from there. e.g 10 individual print orders to Europe could be sent by courier together for the same price as 10 separate packages by airmail, in a fraction of the time.

Something like these guys offer.
https://bongous.com/

http://news.smugmug.com/2012/03/04/coming-soon-uk-print-lab-loxley-colour/

Light_prod

Zenfolio just teamed up with an Australian lab.

Just saying.... if smugmug doesn't outwardly act quicker and give us a real timeline many Australian/NZ smuggers (including me) will be jumping ship.

Edited to ad: I'd be happy with a self fulfilment option at this stage, I just dont understand why that's still not an option.

photocat

cards and shipping
Hello all, I might not be in the right place to post my question, but maybe it is. I started selling or wanting to sell cards. Smugmug had flat cards and folded cards, and I can implement my online photographs towards those cards. My problem is that I am a Belgian living in UK, married to an AMerican so therefore I use a lot of American companies.
Some of my customers did let me know that they really like my cards, but they do not want to pay 6 or more dollar shipping fee on a card that costs 4 dollar. Which is reasonable from their point of view.
Is there a Smugmug UK or what would be a nice way for me to make cards from my photographs to sell, if smugmug can not be more profitable for me... I know Zazzle, but I get 25 cent per sold card from them, which seems ridiculous after a while... I really really like the smugmug card option, but the prices, the prices!!!!
What also bothers me a little is that flat cards have to be bought in packs of 20, which makes it harder, as not a lot of people want 20 cards with the same print. 5x7 can be bought individually.
I know Moo delivers flat and folded cards, but they too are expensive beyond words. I ordered a pack of 50 business cards with Moo, and while the quality is outstanding, I can not keep up with that price range.
Any fellow card makers or sellers here who have some ideas for me?