This is very exciting. We've all been waiting for a better way to manage prices. I like the bucket idea.
But one short sight here.... As all people making money selling photos we care about profit. But I already know what I want my retail prices to be. Now I have to plug numbers in the profit field to get to the price I want. It's become a bit of a guessing game.
2) Once I create the price list I want, I am frustrated on the managed price list page about moving a gallery found in the migrated price list to one of my new ones. My goal is to clean that up, get rid of all the migrated price lists by moving galleries from that migrated list to one of the new ones I create. It appears that the only way to put a gallery in a price list bucket is to have the new price list bucket open and select the gallery. I would like to select the gallery in the migrated price list and then be allowed to move it to a different price list.
3) The new price list function builds upon the base price from the printer (ie if they raise prices, ours will go up too–nice!). But it would be really helpful if we could print out our price lists to see what is in them and the results. Working through all the pricing screens is tedious. I would like a spreadsheet-like dump showing base price, markup or markup percentage, results and profit (profit percentage). Option to print only those items we have priced and an option to show everything so we find those new things you add that we might want to price.
a printable pricelist is something we would like to add
4) I have maintained a few concise price lists printed for potential clients and when the prices change on out SmugMugPRO – how are we alerted to it? I would prefer not to have my printed list different from what the customer might use.
lab prices change very very rarely, if ever. But i'll pass this concern on.
While I have neither Migrated or left alone at this point this post brings to mind an interesting argument. Why is it called a price list when it is a % of Profit list. I have a very distinct clientele and have set my print Prices accordingly and am I correct in assuming that I now have to figure out how to price a 4x6 at % of Profit to equal 2.99? As well as every other price of my photos?? I want to price them at X.XX dollars plain and simple, is that still possible?? Buckets and all the ways to apply pricing look great but not sure how this works..
Playing around with the feature, you have to plug in a percent markup, or you can go into each individual item and then play around with the actual amount of profit you want, and then see how it affects the final price. I want even pricing on pics of say $4 or %5 on a 4x6. I set the round off to .00 and then just kept plugging in numbers in the profit until I got the price I wanted.
It would be much more simpler to just set the price. I am so happy we have this feature, but from an execution point, I would have started with letting the user set the prices, and then work with implementing the pricing based on percentage of profit, or profit wanted. I want control over pricing, not amount of profit. Controlling pricing takes care of the profit. I also want to still be able to control pricing within a gallery for any kind of tweaks without creating another profile. Just seems more complicated than it should be. KUDOS for the feature thought as it is something I have wanted for awhile now.
Help needed
I created a default list then applied to a test account. In creating the new list where do I see the final price of the product? What does 400% and rounding look like? What is the final price of each product? In the past I was able to price my smaller prints higher to push to customers to larger prints (higher dollar profit per print), how do I do that now? One can price a group higher, but how do I price a 4x6 higher as a percentage then a 5x7?
I also noticed that my old galleries have been changed too. Now every product is selected and priced. I don't do every product as I feel it is overwhelming to my customers and I have never been asked for some odd sizes. How do I fix this?
In my old galleries my digital downloads are all messed up. I would offer the 640 photo for 99 cents and then 4.99 for a 4m, but now it is the same odd percentage.
This is harder than it should be. Smugmug is my business partner and right now it doesn't feel this way. Its more about future customers than the ones they have today. This is a mess for me. With 451 galleries for all my sports I need clean, easy and it needs to work. This isn't doing it. And why I am spending all this time (which is money) on something that wasn't broken.
Playing around with the feature, you have to plug in a percent markup, or you can go into each individual item and then play around with the actual amount of profit you want, and then see how it affects the final price. I want even pricing on pics of say $4 or %5 on a 4x6. I set the round off to .00 and then just kept plugging in numbers in the profit until I got the price I wanted.
It would be much more simpler to just set the price. I am so happy we have this feature, but from an execution point, I would have started with letting the user set the prices, and then work with implementing the pricing based on percentage of profit, or profit wanted. I want control over pricing, not amount of profit. Controlling pricing takes care of the profit. I also want to still be able to control pricing within a gallery for any kind of tweaks without creating another profile. Just seems more complicated than it should be. KUDOS for the feature thought as it is something I have wanted for awhile now.
We completely understand. While some of our customers wanted to set profits instead of final prices, others like you prefer to set the final price. The flexibility afforded by a profit-based system is really important for many of our upcoming features though. Allowing Pros to set a minimum profit and be protected from currency fluctuation will be really nice. Support for things like lab sales, changing base costs, other more complex products, etc. will be useful.
Part of it also came down to confusion. We feel it would be confusing for a Pro to set a final price, but only have the profit be locked down.
In creating the new list where do I see the final price of the product
That's the last column in the product field, "Price". "Base" is the base cost of each item. "Profit" is the minimum profit you will make.
What does 400% and rounding look like?
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but the percentage there refers to how much profit is set as compared to the base cost. So 0% is selling with no profit, 100% is selling for as much profit as the base cost, etc. Rounding allows you to make your final prices uniform and customer-friendly. Instead of $2.76, it can be $2.99.
You can also override the values by manually entering whatever minimum profit you want.
What is the final price of each product? In the past I was able to price my smaller prints higher to push to customers to larger prints (higher dollar profit per print), how do I do that now? One can price a group higher, but how do I price a 4x6 higher as a percentage then a 5x7?
Manually enter a higher value into the profit field for those products.
I also noticed that my old galleries have been changed too. Now every product is selected and priced. I don't do every product as I feel it is overwhelming to my customers and I have never been asked for some odd sizes. How do I fix this?
Did you migrate or start over from scratch? If you migrated your pricing, nothing should have changed for your customers. Regardless, you can remove any products either by the 'x' on the Edit page (one at a time), the "Delete" button for any product group (multiple), or even faster by using the "Choose Products" button and the resulting interface.
In my old galleries my digital downloads are all messed up. I would offer the 640 photo for 99 cents and then 4.99 for a 4m, but now it is the same odd percentage.
We used to offer digital downloads, including bulk gallery downloads and videos, at a base cost of $0.00. Unfortunately, that simply wasn't something we could maintain. Many Pros were selling them at $0.00 or $0.01, which means we lost money on every one of those transactions. Credit card fees, zip file creation/storage/distribution, and customer support are not insignificant for those orders, unfortunately. You would be hard-pressed to find digital content on the web for sale for anything less than $0.79, whether it is iOS Apps or MP3's.
So single digital downloads, like a single photo or video, now have a base cost of $0.49. Bulk gallery downloads now have a base cost of $0.99.
This is harder than it should be. Smugmug is my business partner and right now it doesn't feel this way. Its more about future customers than the ones they have today. This is a mess for me. With 451 galleries for all my sports I need clean, easy and it needs to work. This isn't doing it. And why I am spending all this time (which is money) on something that wasn't broken.
I realize change is hard, but I'm hoping you'll give it a chance. I believe that the new system is far more efficient, adaptable, and scalable. It's going to give us a lot more flexibility to improve the variety of products available for sale.
We completely understand. While some of our customers wanted to set profits instead of final prices, others like you prefer to set the final price. The flexibility afforded by a profit-based system is really important for many of our upcoming features though. Allowing Pros to set a minimum profit and be protected from currency fluctuation will be really nice. Support for things like lab sales, changing base costs, other more complex products, etc. will be useful.
Part of it also came down to confusion. We feel it would be confusing for a Pro to set a final price, but only have the profit be locked down.
I appreciate the response but your implementation has created more confusion. I don't want my prices based on the amount of profit I want. For many pros, we set the prices of our prints, and advertise those prices whether on blogs, adds, or even on the smugmug website. I have my default 4x6 priced at $4 for sports and I had to get that number fooling around with the amount of profit. I also have a price of $8 for a 4x6 wedding and portrait sessions. If I understand you correctly, if the base cost goes up, my price could go up without me knowing it? If so, are we going to have to monitor our galleries and prices more closely?
I appreciate the response but your implementation has created more confusion. I don't want my prices based on the amount of profit I want. For many pros, we set the prices of our prints, and advertise those prices whether on blogs, adds, or even on the smugmug website. I have my default 4x6 priced at $4 for sports and I had to get that number fooling around with the amount of profit. I also have a price of $8 for a 4x6 wedding and portrait sessions. If I understand you correctly, if the base cost goes up, my price could go up without me knowing it? If so, are we going to have to monitor our galleries and prices more closely?
Are we going to be able to set prices manually?
Same here. There are certain items I want to be able to set explicit prices on and to have to sit there and calculate the profit for each one to hit my price.. not gonna happen..
...
Did you migrate or start over from scratch? If you migrated your pricing, nothing should have changed for your customers. Regardless, you can remove any products either by the 'x' on the Edit page (one at a time), the "Delete" button for any product group (multiple), or even faster by using the "Choose Products" button and the resulting interface.
...
Looks like that will remove the product from the list. I'd rather still see all products especially
deleted/not offered ones so I can reactive it if need be. Maybe just show them grayed/zero'ed out.
I also noticed that my old galleries have been changed too. Now every product is selected and priced. I don't do every product as I feel it is overwhelming to my customers and I have never been asked for some odd sizes. How do I fix this?
I had this problem too. I will concede I could have done something wrong, but I thought I chose migrate. When it was said and done, I got an email the migration was complete. I checked the pricelists and just about everything went to a default price, with products and pricing I didn't check. My wedding and portrait galleries had the default prices, not the one I was using for just those type of galleries. I had print galleries whith special pricing on 20x30's and that was all that could have been selected, but after the migration those prices were gone and the selection of products increased.
One good news is making bulk changes are easier now so I think i have my galleries priced the way I want them before any customers saw the changes.
Maybe I was not clear in my previous post that I had my pricing for small digital downloads at 99 cents. I made migration the yesterday afternoon, then I got an order last night and it was at 1.49. Since then the "Heros" changed my pricing back to the "old" way and now those prices are back to 99 cents.
My 4.99 4mp download was changed to $2 somethig. Its back to 4.99 now. If you do the migration, your old prices will change.
I wasn't aruging over Smumug's SG&A expense of offering the service.
That's the last column in the product field, "Price". "Base" is the base cost of each item. "Profit" is the minimum profit you will make.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but the percentage there refers to how much profit is set as compared to the base cost. So 0% is selling with no profit, 100% is selling for as much profit as the base cost, etc. Rounding allows you to make your final prices uniform and customer-friendly. Instead of $2.76, it can be $2.99.
You can also override the values by manually entering whatever minimum profit you want.
Manually enter a higher value into the profit field for those products.
Did you migrate or start over from scratch? If you migrated your pricing, nothing should have changed for your customers. Regardless, you can remove any products either by the 'x' on the Edit page (one at a time), the "Delete" button for any product group (multiple), or even faster by using the "Choose Products" button and the resulting interface.
We used to offer digital downloads, including bulk gallery downloads and videos, at a base cost of $0.00. Unfortunately, that simply wasn't something we could maintain. Many Pros were selling them at $0.00 or $0.01, which means we lost money on every one of those transactions. Credit card fees, zip file creation/storage/distribution, and customer support are not insignificant for those orders, unfortunately. You would be hard-pressed to find digital content on the web for sale for anything less than $0.79, whether it is iOS Apps or MP3's.
So single digital downloads, like a single photo or video, now have a base cost of $0.49. Bulk gallery downloads now have a base cost of $0.99.
I realize change is hard, but I'm hoping you'll give it a chance. I believe that the new system is far more efficient, adaptable, and scalable. It's going to give us a lot more flexibility to improve the variety of products available for sale.
The screen shot above is not the screen I had when I created my list.
I take some offense to your comment "Change is hard". This is a business, not a third grade pep talk. Change should be profitable. Your customers will tell you if your change is good by the amount they spend with you. Their dollar will have the final say.
The screen shot above is not the screen I had when I created my list.
I take some offense to your comment "Change is hard". This is a business, not a third grade pep talk. Change should be profitable. Your customers will tell you if your change is good by the amount they spend with you. Their dollar will have the final say.
Hi Haslam, we certainly don't mean to offend - and there's no pressure to change now. If you want us to revert you, we can - just holler to our heroes http://help.smugmug.com and we can do that for you.
Hi Haslam, we certainly don't mean to offend - and there's no pressure to change now. If you want us to revert you, we can - just holler to our heroes http://help.smugmug.com and we can do that for you.
Thanks for your post!
Thanks. They changed it back as my previous posts says. What happened to the pricing? It obviously changed.
Thanks. They changed it back as my previous posts says. What happened to the pricing? It obviously changed.
I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood you.
When we migrate someone, we are focused on maintaining the same profit per item sold. Since the base cost of digital downloads increased, the only way to make sure you got the same profit per item sold was to increase the total price.
Many Pros have digital downloads at $0.01 for various reasons. Obviously, we had to bump that up to $0.50 or $1.00. For a download previously priced at $0.50, it was bumped to $0.99 or $1.49.
If a product previously priced at $4.99 was lowered to something around $2, that sounds like a bug.
So are we ever going to be able to set a price without fooling with the profit, or be able to tweak an individual gallery without having to create a whole new price list?
So are we ever going to be able to set a price without fooling with the profit, or be able to tweak an individual gallery without having to create a whole new price list?
I second this question, never saw on any of the sites to request features ever have a I need to base my pictures based on Profit not price. What pros did you ask Chris?? I am not trying be rude but I want to price my 4x6 at 9.45 why can't I type that in. I have to jiggle around with Rounding and this and that and it will affect new enhancements like what?? Can we please get some clarification??
Who did you ask? I am trying to get Goodyear of my back, feeling Pro's got thrown under the bus, I was never asked about this, not that I have too but it was emphasized emphatically in the video Pro;s where asked. Only Rockstar Pros's asked?? I am just a Pro trying to pay my kids Dance bill's who feels left out..
When we migrate someone, we are focused on maintaining the same profit per item sold. Since the base cost of digital downloads increased, the only way to make sure you got the same profit per item sold was to increase the total price.
Many Pros have digital downloads at $0.01 for various reasons. Obviously, we had to bump that up to $0.50 or $1.00. For a download previously priced at $0.50, it was bumped to $0.99 or $1.49.
If a product previously priced at $4.99 was lowered to something around $2, that sounds like a bug.
I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
This is also a question, is Smugmug now taking 50 Cents of ever digital download if I set those in addition to the 15% on checkout?
Wow... while I _IN PRINCIPLE_ approve of Smugmug making some moves to prepare for foreign currency transactions... In _PRACTICE_ I am extraordinarily happy I have a very smoothly working Paypal integration up and running.
This seriously looks like a feature designed, developed and tested by developers, for the convenience and benefit of Smugmug - not your customers.
I love the customisation and support of Smugmug. I love the community support and the quality of the images, plus the fact you really do store an unlimited amount, in original quality (mostly).
But everything to do with the sales and ecommerce side just looks so badly thought out - or looks to be thought out from the view of someone trying to imagine what customers want, instead of really asking them.
How many people asked to have the ability to easily directly set prices taken away from them? I rest my case.
I second this question, never saw on any of the sites to request features ever have a I need to base my pictures based on Profit not price. What pros did you ask Chris?? I am not trying be rude but I want to price my 4x6 at 9.45 why can't I type that in. I have to jiggle around with Rounding and this and that and it will affect new enhancements like what?? Can we please get some clarification??
Who did you ask? I am trying to get Goodyear of my back, feeling Pro's got thrown under the bus, I was never asked about this, not that I have too but it was emphasized emphatically in the video Pro;s where asked. Only Rockstar Pros's asked?? I am just a Pro trying to pay my kids Dance bill's who feels left out..
Foreign pros were the largest contingent and they pointed to sites who do it that way. They said they didn't want to have to constantly monitor currency fluctuations.
Also, many pros who want to opt in to lab promotions like when they have a sale on metal prints or whatever, said they'd love a way to automatically opt in but not make less per print. When we went over the options, they felt that the inconvenience of pricing by profit was worth being able to take advantage of lab sales. That feature is not part of this release and hence our hesitancy to mention it, but pricing this way does lay the groundwork for it.
We knew that not everyone would love this option because we'd hear them disagree with each other when the topic came up. It was a tough call.
Wow... while I _IN PRINCIPLE_ approve of Smugmug making some moves to prepare for foreign currency transactions... In _PRACTICE_ I am extraordinarily happy I have a very smoothly working Paypal integration up and running.
This seriously looks like a feature designed, developed and tested by developers, for the convenience and benefit of Smugmug - not your customers.
I love the customisation and support of Smugmug. I love the community support and the quality of the images, plus the fact you really do store an unlimited amount, in original quality (mostly).
But everything to do with the sales and ecommerce side just looks so badly thought out - or looks to be thought out from the view of someone trying to imagine what customers want, instead of really asking them.
How many people asked to have the ability to easily directly set prices taken away from them? I rest my case.
Cheers - N
Here is a reply from Smugmug Support on a simple question.
This is my question..
Do you need to know algebra to set pricing?
This is Smugmug's response.
Nah - but it does require a little trial and error.
Why as a Pro am I reduced to "A little trial and error" to set prices?? Are you kidding me??
Foreign pros were the largest contingent and they pointed to sites who do it that way. They said they didn't want to have to constantly monitor currency fluctuations.
Also, many pros who want to opt in to lab promotions like when they have a sale on metal prints or whatever, said they'd love a way to automatically opt in but not make less per print. When we went over the options, they felt that the inconvenience of pricing by profit was worth being able to take advantage of lab sales. That feature is not part of this release and hence our hesitancy to mention it, but pricing this way does lay the groundwork for it.
We knew that not everyone would love this option because we'd hear them disagree with each other when the topic came up. It was a tough call.
Could you tell me the percentage of Foreign Pros to US Pros at Smugmug so I can see where I stack up with my Photo Provider? Also was this ever on USERVOICE that I keep getting directed to for features. I have put up with so much in the past then to see this post. I see that Smugmug is no longer for US Pro's anymore, I am really upset..
Let me try and give one example that will hopefully help clear up why the flexibility of setting a profit is so important.
Let's say you're a Canadian Pro and SmugMug lets you fix final prices. You want to manage your pricelist in Canadian dollars because that's the currency you know and understand.
Since SmugMug doesn't yet have a Canadian lab, the base costs of all the products are in US dollars. We at SmugMug have two choices: we can (1) use the exchange rate to calculate on the fly the base cost whenever a customer wants to purchase a print or we can (2) attempt to translate the base costs into CAD and fix them for you to price off of.
Option 1 means that either your profit or your final price (or both) fluctuate with the exchange rates. If the profit fluctuates, you could end up making significantly less if the value of the Canadian dollar goes down significantly in relation to the value of the US dollar. If the final price fluctuates, you can't advertise your print prices because it could be $1.87 one day and $1.96 the next.
Option 2 means that SmugMug is at risk for the currency fluctuation. If the value of the Canadian dollar drops, we're suddenly taking a loss on each of those prints sold (and you're making significantly less profit too). Since we're a business just like you guys, we would eventually be forced to change the base price, thereby changing your final prices.
That second option could be somewhat alleviated by fixing the base costs in currencies other than the lab significantly higher than the equivalent value in the lab's currency. But then you're losing out on your profit by having significantly higher base costs.
The flexibility of setting your desired minimum profit, accompanied by the rounding tool, allows you to have customer-friendly price points and still have your profit protected from currency fluctuation. That same flexibility will eventually allow us to offer you things like temporary lab sales, a vastly increased product offering, etc.
I want to just say this much. I appreciate a lot the fact that everything is found in one place and I can access all the galleries and price them from that panel instead of having to browse to each gallery every time I wanted to make changes. Yes I had to make some hard decisions and yes it took a while but It sure took less time than it did before. I did however chose to start from scratch. I agree that it needs improvement but it is way better than what we had before. I don't love that there is only the option for percentage increments.
I want to just say this much. I appreciate a lot the fact that everything is found in one place and I can access all the galleries and price them from that panel instead of having to browse to each gallery every time I wanted to make changes. Yes I had to make some hard decisions and yes it took a while but It sure took less time than it did before. I did however chose to start from scratch. I agree that it needs improvement but it is way better than what we had before. I don't love that there is only the option for percentage increments.
I look forward to more changes coming soon.
Omar, I'm sorry if the interface isn't clear enough, but you can also manually edit every profit field. You aren't limited just by the percentage increments. They are essentially just a quick launching point for deciding what each profit should be.
SmugMug Product Manager
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BaldyRegistered Users, Super ModeratorsPosts: 2,853moderator
Could you tell me the percentage of Foreign Pros to US Pros at Smugmug so I can see where I stack up with my Photo Provider? Also was this ever on USERVOICE that I keep getting directed to for features. I have put up with so much in the past then to see this post. I see that Smugmug is no longer for US Pro's anymore, I am really upset..
Hey David,
You probably saw this, but in case not, did you see the rounding tool? I ask because we might not have made it obvious enough and we've seen people write the heroes to say hitting psychological price points was hard and when we asked about the rounding tool, they hadn't seen it.
To answer your questions, less than a quarter of our pros are international, but our sense is the majority of pros want to opt in to sales at the labs when they have them and protect their profits, but like you they want an easy way to hit psychological price points. We had thought the rounding tool was the answer, but if it's not working for you, maybe we need to think of something else.
I created a default list then applied to a test account. In creating the new list where do I see the final price of the product? What does 400% and rounding look like? What is the final price of each product? In the past I was able to price my smaller prints higher to push to customers to larger prints (higher dollar profit per print), how do I do that now? One can price a group higher, but how do I price a 4x6 higher as a percentage then a 5x7?
I also noticed that my old galleries have been changed too. Now every product is selected and priced. I don't do every product as I feel it is overwhelming to my customers and I have never been asked for some odd sizes. How do I fix this?
In my old galleries my digital downloads are all messed up. I would offer the 640 photo for 99 cents and then 4.99 for a 4m, but now it is the same odd percentage.
This is harder than it should be. Smugmug is my business partner and right now it doesn't feel this way. Its more about future customers than the ones they have today. This is a mess for me. With 451 galleries for all my sports I need clean, easy and it needs to work. This isn't doing it. And why I am spending all this time (which is money) on something that wasn't broken.
Foreign pros were the largest contingent and they pointed to sites who do it that way. They said they didn't want to have to constantly monitor currency fluctuations.
Also, many pros who want to opt in to lab promotions like when they have a sale on metal prints or whatever, said they'd love a way to automatically opt in but not make less per print. When we went over the options, they felt that the inconvenience of pricing by profit was worth being able to take advantage of lab sales. That feature is not part of this release and hence our hesitancy to mention it, but pricing this way does lay the groundwork for it.
We knew that not everyone would love this option because we'd hear them disagree with each other when the topic came up. It was a tough call.
Ok, for the third time, are we going to have the ability to set prices without having to put in numbers in the amount of profit until we get the price we want?
We haven't been asking a reason why you did this, we are asking if we will have the ability to set our prices. So far, we have been told it would be confusing for the pro to set their own price. What? How is it complicated if want a price of $5 for a 5x7? I am only getting frustrated because I really like smugmug and I have wanted a price list like this. However, how hard would it be to have the option to set the price? If it is difficult, then your whole system is flawed because one of the basics of business is setting the price of the products you sell. It is not that difficult of a concept that if I want more profit, I adjust my price.
We shouldn't have to keep plugging in numbers until we get the price we want. I want control of the price. I DO NOT want it to change automatically if the base price changes.
Great job sorcerers! Working beautifully for me... I understand and appreciate all the concern being voiced in this thread and I do not mean to diminish it at all by posting a positive experience. Be that as it may, I have had a positive experience with this, taken the time to knock out a couple of pricelists that work really well to cover all my galleries (almost 200).
I do think it would be nice to have some of the mass-change options from the old system. Increase or Decrease by $n dollars or n% for Canvas prints, or for Merchandise only; be able to remove all 'glossy' prints. There was a lot more flexibility to make mass adjustments to specific segments in the prints and merchandise- would like that flexibility back... Maybe tucked away under an "Advanced Pricing" button at the top of each pricelist?
IMHO it's a great improvement with room for more improvement- definitely moving in the right direction--- thanks again Smugmug for being so cool!
We shouldn't have to keep plugging in numbers until we get the price we want. I want control of the price. I DO NOT want it to change automatically if the base price changes.
That is essentially the problem. If you enter a value for the final price, you don't want us changing it. That model simply isn't flexible enough for foreign currency, lab sales, and easy adaptation to some of the item-dependent products we're adding.
It is not that difficult of a concept that if I want more profit, I adjust my price.
I'm genuinely curious, but why is it a difficult concept to adjust your profit if you want a different price? I have used pricelists hundreds of times now and targeting price points with the rounding tool as an assistant doesn't feel onerous or like trial and error. Granted, I view it personally as setting the profit I want to make off that particular product/size and then rounding to a customer-friendly price point.
Comments
But one short sight here.... As all people making money selling photos we care about profit. But I already know what I want my retail prices to be. Now I have to plug numbers in the profit field to get to the price I want. It's become a bit of a guessing game.
we agree.
Playing around with the feature, you have to plug in a percent markup, or you can go into each individual item and then play around with the actual amount of profit you want, and then see how it affects the final price. I want even pricing on pics of say $4 or %5 on a 4x6. I set the round off to .00 and then just kept plugging in numbers in the profit until I got the price I wanted.
It would be much more simpler to just set the price. I am so happy we have this feature, but from an execution point, I would have started with letting the user set the prices, and then work with implementing the pricing based on percentage of profit, or profit wanted. I want control over pricing, not amount of profit. Controlling pricing takes care of the profit. I also want to still be able to control pricing within a gallery for any kind of tweaks without creating another profile. Just seems more complicated than it should be. KUDOS for the feature thought as it is something I have wanted for awhile now.
I created a default list then applied to a test account. In creating the new list where do I see the final price of the product? What does 400% and rounding look like? What is the final price of each product? In the past I was able to price my smaller prints higher to push to customers to larger prints (higher dollar profit per print), how do I do that now? One can price a group higher, but how do I price a 4x6 higher as a percentage then a 5x7?
I also noticed that my old galleries have been changed too. Now every product is selected and priced. I don't do every product as I feel it is overwhelming to my customers and I have never been asked for some odd sizes. How do I fix this?
In my old galleries my digital downloads are all messed up. I would offer the 640 photo for 99 cents and then 4.99 for a 4m, but now it is the same odd percentage.
This is harder than it should be. Smugmug is my business partner and right now it doesn't feel this way. Its more about future customers than the ones they have today. This is a mess for me. With 451 galleries for all my sports I need clean, easy and it needs to work. This isn't doing it. And why I am spending all this time (which is money) on something that wasn't broken.
We completely understand. While some of our customers wanted to set profits instead of final prices, others like you prefer to set the final price. The flexibility afforded by a profit-based system is really important for many of our upcoming features though. Allowing Pros to set a minimum profit and be protected from currency fluctuation will be really nice. Support for things like lab sales, changing base costs, other more complex products, etc. will be useful.
Part of it also came down to confusion. We feel it would be confusing for a Pro to set a final price, but only have the profit be locked down.
That's the last column in the product field, "Price". "Base" is the base cost of each item. "Profit" is the minimum profit you will make.
I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but the percentage there refers to how much profit is set as compared to the base cost. So 0% is selling with no profit, 100% is selling for as much profit as the base cost, etc. Rounding allows you to make your final prices uniform and customer-friendly. Instead of $2.76, it can be $2.99.
You can also override the values by manually entering whatever minimum profit you want.
Manually enter a higher value into the profit field for those products.
Did you migrate or start over from scratch? If you migrated your pricing, nothing should have changed for your customers. Regardless, you can remove any products either by the 'x' on the Edit page (one at a time), the "Delete" button for any product group (multiple), or even faster by using the "Choose Products" button and the resulting interface.
We used to offer digital downloads, including bulk gallery downloads and videos, at a base cost of $0.00. Unfortunately, that simply wasn't something we could maintain. Many Pros were selling them at $0.00 or $0.01, which means we lost money on every one of those transactions. Credit card fees, zip file creation/storage/distribution, and customer support are not insignificant for those orders, unfortunately. You would be hard-pressed to find digital content on the web for sale for anything less than $0.79, whether it is iOS Apps or MP3's.
So single digital downloads, like a single photo or video, now have a base cost of $0.49. Bulk gallery downloads now have a base cost of $0.99.
I realize change is hard, but I'm hoping you'll give it a chance. I believe that the new system is far more efficient, adaptable, and scalable. It's going to give us a lot more flexibility to improve the variety of products available for sale.
I appreciate the response but your implementation has created more confusion. I don't want my prices based on the amount of profit I want. For many pros, we set the prices of our prints, and advertise those prices whether on blogs, adds, or even on the smugmug website. I have my default 4x6 priced at $4 for sports and I had to get that number fooling around with the amount of profit. I also have a price of $8 for a 4x6 wedding and portrait sessions. If I understand you correctly, if the base cost goes up, my price could go up without me knowing it? If so, are we going to have to monitor our galleries and prices more closely?
Are we going to be able to set prices manually?
Same here. There are certain items I want to be able to set explicit prices on and to have to sit there and calculate the profit for each one to hit my price.. not gonna happen..
deleted/not offered ones so I can reactive it if need be. Maybe just show them grayed/zero'ed out.
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I had this problem too. I will concede I could have done something wrong, but I thought I chose migrate. When it was said and done, I got an email the migration was complete. I checked the pricelists and just about everything went to a default price, with products and pricing I didn't check. My wedding and portrait galleries had the default prices, not the one I was using for just those type of galleries. I had print galleries whith special pricing on 20x30's and that was all that could have been selected, but after the migration those prices were gone and the selection of products increased.
One good news is making bulk changes are easier now so I think i have my galleries priced the way I want them before any customers saw the changes.
My 4.99 4mp download was changed to $2 somethig. Its back to 4.99 now. If you do the migration, your old prices will change.
I wasn't aruging over Smumug's SG&A expense of offering the service.
The screen shot above is not the screen I had when I created my list.
I take some offense to your comment "Change is hard". This is a business, not a third grade pep talk. Change should be profitable. Your customers will tell you if your change is good by the amount they spend with you. Their dollar will have the final say.
Hi Haslam, we certainly don't mean to offend - and there's no pressure to change now. If you want us to revert you, we can - just holler to our heroes http://help.smugmug.com and we can do that for you.
Thanks for your post!
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Thanks. They changed it back as my previous posts says. What happened to the pricing? It obviously changed.
I'm sorry, I must have misunderstood you.
When we migrate someone, we are focused on maintaining the same profit per item sold. Since the base cost of digital downloads increased, the only way to make sure you got the same profit per item sold was to increase the total price.
Many Pros have digital downloads at $0.01 for various reasons. Obviously, we had to bump that up to $0.50 or $1.00. For a download previously priced at $0.50, it was bumped to $0.99 or $1.49.
If a product previously priced at $4.99 was lowered to something around $2, that sounds like a bug.
I'm sorry if that wasn't clear.
I second this question, never saw on any of the sites to request features ever have a I need to base my pictures based on Profit not price. What pros did you ask Chris?? I am not trying be rude but I want to price my 4x6 at 9.45 why can't I type that in. I have to jiggle around with Rounding and this and that and it will affect new enhancements like what?? Can we please get some clarification??
Who did you ask? I am trying to get Goodyear of my back, feeling Pro's got thrown under the bus, I was never asked about this, not that I have too but it was emphasized emphatically in the video Pro;s where asked. Only Rockstar Pros's asked?? I am just a Pro trying to pay my kids Dance bill's who feels left out..
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=10162
This is also a question, is Smugmug now taking 50 Cents of ever digital download if I set those in addition to the 15% on checkout?
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
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This seriously looks like a feature designed, developed and tested by developers, for the convenience and benefit of Smugmug - not your customers.
I love the customisation and support of Smugmug. I love the community support and the quality of the images, plus the fact you really do store an unlimited amount, in original quality (mostly).
But everything to do with the sales and ecommerce side just looks so badly thought out - or looks to be thought out from the view of someone trying to imagine what customers want, instead of really asking them.
How many people asked to have the ability to easily directly set prices taken away from them? I rest my case.
Cheers - N
http://www.nzsnaps.com (talkiet.smugmug.com)
Also, many pros who want to opt in to lab promotions like when they have a sale on metal prints or whatever, said they'd love a way to automatically opt in but not make less per print. When we went over the options, they felt that the inconvenience of pricing by profit was worth being able to take advantage of lab sales. That feature is not part of this release and hence our hesitancy to mention it, but pricing this way does lay the groundwork for it.
We knew that not everyone would love this option because we'd hear them disagree with each other when the topic came up. It was a tough call.
Here is a reply from Smugmug Support on a simple question.
This is my question..
Do you need to know algebra to set pricing?
This is Smugmug's response.
Nah - but it does require a little trial and error.
Why as a Pro am I reduced to "A little trial and error" to set prices?? Are you kidding me??
Strike 2...
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
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Could you tell me the percentage of Foreign Pros to US Pros at Smugmug so I can see where I stack up with my Photo Provider? Also was this ever on USERVOICE that I keep getting directed to for features. I have put up with so much in the past then to see this post. I see that Smugmug is no longer for US Pro's anymore, I am really upset..
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
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Let's say you're a Canadian Pro and SmugMug lets you fix final prices. You want to manage your pricelist in Canadian dollars because that's the currency you know and understand.
Since SmugMug doesn't yet have a Canadian lab, the base costs of all the products are in US dollars. We at SmugMug have two choices: we can (1) use the exchange rate to calculate on the fly the base cost whenever a customer wants to purchase a print or we can (2) attempt to translate the base costs into CAD and fix them for you to price off of.
Option 1 means that either your profit or your final price (or both) fluctuate with the exchange rates. If the profit fluctuates, you could end up making significantly less if the value of the Canadian dollar goes down significantly in relation to the value of the US dollar. If the final price fluctuates, you can't advertise your print prices because it could be $1.87 one day and $1.96 the next.
Option 2 means that SmugMug is at risk for the currency fluctuation. If the value of the Canadian dollar drops, we're suddenly taking a loss on each of those prints sold (and you're making significantly less profit too). Since we're a business just like you guys, we would eventually be forced to change the base price, thereby changing your final prices.
That second option could be somewhat alleviated by fixing the base costs in currencies other than the lab significantly higher than the equivalent value in the lab's currency. But then you're losing out on your profit by having significantly higher base costs.
The flexibility of setting your desired minimum profit, accompanied by the rounding tool, allows you to have customer-friendly price points and still have your profit protected from currency fluctuation. That same flexibility will eventually allow us to offer you things like temporary lab sales, a vastly increased product offering, etc.
I look forward to more changes coming soon.
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Omar, I'm sorry if the interface isn't clear enough, but you can also manually edit every profit field. You aren't limited just by the percentage increments. They are essentially just a quick launching point for deciding what each profit should be.
You probably saw this, but in case not, did you see the rounding tool? I ask because we might not have made it obvious enough and we've seen people write the heroes to say hitting psychological price points was hard and when we asked about the rounding tool, they hadn't seen it.
To answer your questions, less than a quarter of our pros are international, but our sense is the majority of pros want to opt in to sales at the labs when they have them and protect their profits, but like you they want an easy way to hit psychological price points. We had thought the rounding tool was the answer, but if it's not working for you, maybe we need to think of something else.
Ok, for the third time, are we going to have the ability to set prices without having to put in numbers in the amount of profit until we get the price we want?
We haven't been asking a reason why you did this, we are asking if we will have the ability to set our prices. So far, we have been told it would be confusing for the pro to set their own price. What? How is it complicated if want a price of $5 for a 5x7? I am only getting frustrated because I really like smugmug and I have wanted a price list like this. However, how hard would it be to have the option to set the price? If it is difficult, then your whole system is flawed because one of the basics of business is setting the price of the products you sell. It is not that difficult of a concept that if I want more profit, I adjust my price.
We shouldn't have to keep plugging in numbers until we get the price we want. I want control of the price. I DO NOT want it to change automatically if the base price changes.
I do think it would be nice to have some of the mass-change options from the old system. Increase or Decrease by $n dollars or n% for Canvas prints, or for Merchandise only; be able to remove all 'glossy' prints. There was a lot more flexibility to make mass adjustments to specific segments in the prints and merchandise- would like that flexibility back... Maybe tucked away under an "Advanced Pricing" button at the top of each pricelist?
IMHO it's a great improvement with room for more improvement- definitely moving in the right direction--- thanks again Smugmug for being so cool!
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That is essentially the problem. If you enter a value for the final price, you don't want us changing it. That model simply isn't flexible enough for foreign currency, lab sales, and easy adaptation to some of the item-dependent products we're adding.
I'm genuinely curious, but why is it a difficult concept to adjust your profit if you want a different price? I have used pricelists hundreds of times now and targeting price points with the rounding tool as an assistant doesn't feel onerous or like trial and error. Granted, I view it personally as setting the profit I want to make off that particular product/size and then rounding to a customer-friendly price point.