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.
Earlier, you said foreign pros were the largest contingency that wanted prices based on profit, and then state less than a quarter of the pros are international. What did the domestic pros want?
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?
Thanks Daniel! You can do a percentage increase for product categories specifically.
As far as doing things like removing all the 'glossy' prints, are you hoping for a checkbox specifically for that column in the 'Choose Products' tool, or something even more powerful?
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.
When I wanted to set a price of a print, I would have to plug in 2 or 3 numbers until I get the price I wanted. My business model is based on getting paid upfront, and giving out print credits. The profit on prints is irrelevant only to the point it helps me when the base price is low. If I give out a 650 print credit, I have already made 650 dollars. In most cases, the customer is going to order 650 dollars worth of prints. If they go over, that is icing on the cake. For me, being able to control the price of the print is more important than the profit of the print. Taking 2 to 3 more steps in order to set that price is a bit much. My prices are important in the perceived value. If I want more profit, I change the print credit.
So, are we going to be able have direct control of our prices or is playing around with profit numbers going to be the norm from here on out?
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
I am beginning to agree with this assessment, especially after reading the explanation it is easier for smugmug to have a pricing system based on minimum profit, and not offer straight up pricing. Domestic customers should not have to change the way we have being doing things in regards to setting price because smugmug runs into exchange problems. I am all for smugmug expanding and reaching other markets. However, the infrastructure should have been in place to service that market with a lab in Canada.
Thanks Daniel! You can do a percentage increase for product categories specifically.
As far as doing things like removing all the 'glossy' prints, are you hoping for a checkbox specifically for that column in the 'Choose Products' tool, or something even more powerful?
Inre removing all 'glossy' prints--- a single checkbox for that column that impacts all categories would be fantastic! Great idea Sheaf- go for it! :-)
Now, the struggle I'm having is with the blanket percentage over base applying to all sizes in a product category. I can't use percentage over base- makes no sense in my pricing schema.
400% over base would make a 4x6 $1.00... my 4x6's really need to be $9.75 or somewhere close which is equivalent to 3200% over base. But applying 3200% over base puts my 24x30' lustre at over $1,200.00! Now, I would love to sell my 24x30's at $1,200, but, well... probably not going to happen. So, I manually set my 24x30 lustre at much more reasonable $30.82 profit to reach a reasonable price of $62.75, which is actually closer to 100% over base.
So you see, I end up with something more like a sliding percentage over base as my print sizes increase. 3200% for 4x6's is great sliding down to 100% over base for my largest size. This is NOT a feature request... let's not go to sliding scales because that's really going to tweak out the final prices and probably create even more work for us pro's. I'm just explaining and using an example.
One possible solution would be to give us more granularity of control within the product categories.
Consider giving us "Percentage over existing Profit" within either the category and even as a part of the master pricelist. I can go through and set my initial custom profit for each size in each category- it's a bit of a pain, but I'm willing to absorb that pain for the sake of more products (easy decision for me :-) Although, since I'm not using percentage over base, I'm guessing that when we do get new products, I'm going to have to manually go in and set my prices for each and every size within each category... ugh.
However, moving forward, when I want to increase or decrease prices, I really need something more geared toward increasing/decreasing existing Profit rather than a percentage over base.
Percentage over base simply doesn't work for me and if I'm reading right this thread right, it's a pretty major frustration for other Pro's.
Now, here's the Power-Feature request. Give us granularity of control over profit on a print size basis. Dream world would be Percentage increase/decrease over existing profit on a per size per category basis. By doing this, you would effectively create a master list that could immediately apply to new products!
Again, for these types of controls, it may be best to have an "Advanced Pricing" button. The golden ticket for Pro's is to make it easy on the surface but give us lots of control 'underneath the hood.'
On an aside and hopefully not to speak the over-obvious, but it will always hurt your userbase when you take away flexibility; take away features that we once had. It's painful. We are a patient bunch and we love Smugmug... but it's always going to be hard for users when control/features are taken away, even if they are being replaced by something that should be considered 'cooler'... or a set up for future coolness :-)
I still subscribe to this new pricelist as a major improvement, though. Thanks. I do believe there is still room for improvement and we're going to land with something that really rocks.
Now that we have a "Price List", give me an easy way to display it to customers.
What do you think about setting it up so we can get a link to a version of this that is obviously slimmed down that we can provide to our customers in a navbar for instance. Giving a customer access to this these same screens (while allowing us to title them as we wish) and taking out the obvious things such as profit would be a simple and great way to provide a list of my prices to my customers.
What do you think about setting it up so we can get a link to a version of this that is obviously slimmed down that we can provide to our customers in a navbar for instance. Giving a customer access to this these same screens (while allowing us to title them as we wish) and taking out the obvious things such as profit would be a simple and great way to provide a list of my prices to my customers.
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 can completely understand the reasoning for why things where done for international customers which allows them to enjoy many of the things the Pro's in the US have been able to use for years. Being a customer for a while we know that developments like these take time and are really happy when they are improvements and don't take something away.
I just don't understand why the International Currency and all the new stuff had to be wrapped up in improving the pricing model , which we can all agree needed lots of help. I don't want to have to use extra clicks to price my pictures, I can't see why the most basic of principals of picture pricing was taken away and not just allowing us to enter a price. That is what I can't wrap my self around, I just want to enter a price.
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.
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.
So what you are saying is, due to the fact that you are making it easier for you (smugmug) to get new Non-US clients and deal with non-US labs, we have to suffer with bass-ackwards systems that don't allow the same amount of flexibility as we had before this "awesome new" implementation? It all seems like a step back, not forward.
And if someone doesn't, based on their principals, automatically want their profit adjusted, why do you care? It's not your business to be saying you should be making $xxx.xx for this.. We demand it! It really what it sounds like... I can completely understand the rationale behind the original posters idea of not wanting auto price increases...
I can completely understand the reasoning for why things where done for international customers which allows them to enjoy many of the things the Pro's in the US have been able to use for years. Being a customer for a while we know that developments like these take time and are really happy when they are improvements and don't take something away.
I just don't understand why the International Currency and all the new stuff had to be wrapped up in improving the pricing model , which we can all agree needed lots of help. I don't want to have to use extra clicks to price my pictures, I can't see why the most basic of principals of picture pricing was taken away and not just allowing us to enter a price. That is what I can't wrap my self around, I just want to enter a price.
Thanks
Hey David,
Sorry to be daft, but I'm missing a couple of things and just want to make sure I understand.
The first is, does the rounding tool not make it easy enough to hit the pricing you seek? The reason I ask this is we're getting some questions like yours on the desk and we're learning that we didn't make the rounding tool obvious enough, so people are missing it. I've only seen a few of the comments on the desk but the people who found it seem to feel it eases their pain enough to make the benefits of pricing by profit feel worthwhile.
The other thing I'm not clear about is whether participating in lab sales is interesting to you. It's the idea that when a lab discounts prints for a special promotion, if you price by profit, you'll be able to auto opt in to their promotions. This has long been a request from what we thought were the majority of both U.S. and foreign pros.
Do me a favor and tell me you hadn't thought of this idea before I posted it. It doesn't have to be true, I just want to feel like I made a difference.
Do me a favor and tell me you hadn't thought of this idea before I posted it. It doesn't have to be true, I just want to feel like I made a difference.
Nope, hadn't thought of it at all... those eyechart catalog pricing pages at http://www.smugmug.com/prints/catalog/AB ... all manually crafted... nothing pulled from the database at all. Nope, no infrastructure enablement started there for displaying customer pricelists at all.
SmugMug Sorcerer - Engineering Team Champion for Commerce, Finance, Security, and Data Support http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
The other thing I'm not clear about is whether participating in lab sales is interesting to you. It's the idea that when a lab discounts prints for a special promotion, if you price by profit, you'll be able to auto opt in to their promotions. This has long been a request from what we thought were the majority of both U.S. and foreign pros.
Thanks,
Baldy
Auto opt would be a nice option to opt in to, not be forced into.
For the FOURTH time, are we going to be able set our prices directly, or fool with plugging in profit numbers until we get the price we want?
Sorry to be daft, but I'm missing a couple of things and just want to make sure I understand.
The first is, does the rounding tool not make it easy enough to hit the pricing you seek? The reason I ask this is we're getting some questions like yours on the desk and we're learning that we didn't make the rounding tool obvious enough, so people are missing it. I've only seen a few of the comments on the desk but the people who found it seem to feel it eases their pain enough to make the benefits of pricing by profit feel worthwhile.
The other thing I'm not clear about is whether participating in lab sales is interesting to you. It's the idea that when a lab discounts prints for a special promotion, if you price by profit, you'll be able to auto opt in to their promotions. This has long been a request from what we thought were the majority of both U.S. and foreign pros.
Thanks,
Baldy
Baldy,
Thanks for the replies, the Rounding tool is not obvious. I am going to go over the videos again and see if I can wrap my head around it and let you know. I am just afraid that one day I am going to have a customer go to purchase pictures and it is X.xx one and the next it is +X.xx or -X.xx and I don't want that to happen, unless I change it ever.
Sean has also contacted me and will be going over some stuff with me with to help out next week and I will go from there.
As for the lab sales I am not sure about that if you could give me some details that would be cool, I shoot mainly sports and my customers are extremely price conscious and I am not sure the labs sales fit my market.
Thanks for the replies, the Rounding tool is not obvious. I am going to go over the videos again and see if I can wrap my head around it and let you know. I am just afraid that one day I am going to have a customer go to purchase pictures and it is X.xx one and the next it is +X.xx or -X.xx and I don't want that to happen, unless I change it ever.
Sean has also contacted me and will be going over some stuff with me with to help out next week and I will go from there.
As for the lab sales I am not sure about that if you could give me some details that would be cool, I shoot mainly sports and my customers are extremely price conscious and I am not sure the labs sales fit my market.
Thanks very much,
Hi David,
What we had in mind for lab sales (sometimes I cringe talking about features before we have them because as we all know we sometimes have delays...) is one of the labs or us might decide to promote something like cards, 8x10s, etc. The problem is how do we get the word out to the pros, how do they change their prices, etc....
But if there's an opt-in and profits are protected no matter what, pros have told us that's key to making it easy on them and getting them to participate.
What we had in mind for lab sales (sometimes I cringe talking about features before we have them because as we all know we sometimes have delays...) is one of the labs or us might decide to promote something like cards, 8x10s, etc. The problem is how do we get the word out to the pros, how do they change their prices, etc....
But if there's an opt-in and profits are protected no matter what, pros have told us that's key to making it easy on them and getting them to participate.
Baldy,
I can appreciate adding something like that protecting both you and the pro for event type galleries would be cool. Not sure it helps me but, it can't hurt
I have been playing with the videos and learned many things, not trying to kiss up to anyone but there is one thing that really strikes me that has not been brought up. You have allowed Pro's to set a Pricelist for an individual photo in a gallery. I remember reading many a thread about maintaining this was a deal breaker at times when working on overhauling the price list. Many a comment about how this was important to them (Pros), did not affect me but it would many folks, glad you considered them. It might affect me one day as well.
I am going to push the button tonight, convert and play some this weekend, the next two weeks things are slowing down and I am catching up on editing. Let's see what happens.
Everyone knows how much Smugmug does not like to tell customers about future things but to be honest, it builds more goodwill than you realize..
Hi, I've never posted before but this pricing topic has got my full attention. I ended up rather frustrated last night as I tried to work with the pricing. It left me unimpressed and my disappointment only grew as I read through this thread. While I cannot guess as to how value was applied to information gathered through market research, I can assure you that I am among those not interested in several of the features you are touting, and the more I thought about the direction you are going the less confident I am that smugmug is the right hosting service for me and my style of photography (art landscape). I also am particularly concerned that JonH68’s question “are we ever going to be able to set a price without fooling with the profit?” has been ignored 4 times.
I know us non-heroes don't have a view of the grand plan but let me offer this thought: Since print cost, profit/markup, and final price all relate to one another in a formula, I propose changing the system to allow a user to enter a value in either data field, "profit" or "price," and in doing so lock themselves into either a profit based model or a final price model. If I can create a ruff formula in excel, surely the talent at smugmug can implement that type of thing in a website.
A hero wrote: “I'm genuinely curious, but why is it a difficult concept to adjust your profit if you want a different price?” Its not a difficult concept, it’s a difficult practice. Having to account for the 15% commission is frustrating. It really is not simple math for someone whose field of expertise is visual. The rounding button is obvious to me but it only rounds the cents, making it take extra time to get up to a final price of $225 when $223.78 rounds up to $224. Have I missed something?
A hero wrote: “It's the idea that when a lab discounts prints for a special promotion, if you price by profit, you'll be able to auto opt in to their promotions.” To be honest, because I'm a landscape guy, I don't have an interest in letting a lab determine when I will have a sale. I will determine that, they are not my business partners but simply my fulfillment company. Print costs are so much lower than my “art” prices that I can choose to offer 30-40% off my final price anytime I please. It would be nice to make another buck or two but I am not the target market for this feature so I won't value it as much as another photographer might.
It makes sense that landscape artists have different needs than sports photographers and international photographers have different needs than domestic ones. To require them to operate in the same manner requires one of them to give something up. Thats really how I came to the conclusion that the system should change to allow each photographer to choose the pricing model that fits them best. Personally, to be honest, I am starting to evolve towards the school of thought that favors self fulfillment and wide gamut 16 bit inkjet printing. This pricing fiasco has gotten me to re-examine my workflow and seek out what is important to me.
Finally, dare I suggest maybe its as simple as splitting smugmug into different divisions? Smugmug.international.com and smugmug.usa.com for example. Smugmug.weddings.com, and smugmug.sports.com. A monumental task I am sure.
For the FOURTH time, are we going to be able set our prices directly, or fool with plugging in profit numbers until we get the price we want?
We don't know yet, to be honest. Here's what we do know:
We can't build features like lab sales, foreign currency, and certain new products in the best way possible if final prices are set in stone like the old system
The vast majority of people using pricelists, if not every single person so far, is using the same or fewer pricing schemes than before
Most have dramatically reduced the number, thus dramatically reducing the amount of time they need to spend fiddling with profits and prices
One thing we have heard loud and clear is that when they set a value, they absolutely do not want us changing it
It's highly unlikely we will lock down final prices instead of profits. There is a possibility of making the final price field editable, but we would have to make it explicitly clear that the chosen value could change, albeit very rarely if priced in the currency of the lab and opted out of lab sales.
Man after reading this thread I'm just sticking to what works for me. Luckily I set up my proofs gallery early and just copy those prices to whatever new event/gallery that gets uploaded. Granted it may be some new prices missing from new items offered but its not like my customers are buying the new items anyway. Not time consuming either.
We don't know yet, to be honest. Here's what we do know:
We can't build features like lab sales, foreign currency, and certain new products in the best way possible if final prices are set in stone like the old system
The vast majority of people using pricelists, if not every single person so far, is using the same or fewer pricing schemes than before
Most have dramatically reduced the number, thus dramatically reducing the amount of time they need to spend fiddling with profits and prices
One thing we have heard loud and clear is that when they set a value, they absolutely do not want us changing it
It's highly unlikely we will lock down final prices instead of profits. There is a possibility of making the final price field editable, but we would have to make it explicitly clear that the chosen value could change, albeit very rarely if priced in the currency of the lab and opted out of lab sales.
If all these reasons are why we cannot set the price directly, smugmug is getting at a crossroad like Netflix.
IF you want to expand into foreign markets, operate labs in those countries. I shouldn't be affected by foreign concerns. My customers are in my state, or the border states.
I know I am using less pricelists because now you cannot tweak prices withing a gallery. If you do, you have to make a new pricelists if you want to change a price.
The biggest no-no is Smugmug now has the ability to change my prices. I am using smumug to help me with my business. Maybe this isn't a big deal to some, but I just do not like the idea of a third party being able to change my prices. That is crappy. I should make the business decision about increasing or decreasing the price.
I am in the process of pushing my business to the next level and I have mentors in my area who are helping. One asked what lab I am using to fulfill orders and I stated smugmug. He went over the numbers. I am leaving money on the table with using smugmug. The big one is the use of print credit. If I get paid upfront and issue a print credit, smugmug calculates it's profit on the retail price of the pictures. Granted, smugmug does save me time so I don't have to take orders or fulfill prints directly, but on a 650 print credit, it cost me around 70 dollars. I could play the system and offer prints at default, but then that devalues my prints. Spread over a few weddings, this adds up quick. I am now starting to realize why the successful photographers, at least in my area, do not use smugmug.
As it is, Smugmug is becoming Netflix. You had customers sign on for the features they liked. Now that smugmug is trying different things, it is messing with the things that made smugmug great. I like the pricelist as a whole, but then you changed the way we set the price. The reason as stated is because smugmug wants to offer more features and products, ie make it easier for smugmug, not me. I want to be able to fulfill orders without having to take a phone call from the customer, order the prints at a lab, and get those prints to the customer without having to send them out myself. I want to set those prices and I don't want anyone else having the ability to set those prices. If I ever have a 2k plus wedding and issue a 2k print credit, I am going to lose a hunk of money if I use smugmug to fulfill that order. I realize smugmug is providing a service and should be paid for handling the transactions, but having an automatic 15% is too much. When a credit coupon is issued, there should be a flat fee associated with it.
And I am going to say being ignored the way I was, the sarcastic tone of a question put to me like I am stupid because I am not jumping through the rooftops at the new features is off putting. I am a loyal customer and will give smugmug a chance. I will say, instead of trying to get more customers, you should maybe get features that a full time pro would like who will have volume orders. A friend of mine was talking about how it would be worth it for him to have someone else take and fulfill his orders. I told him about smugmug and then the price they take for those orders. He had a order of 3k and 2k to fill that day. Getting $750 taken out of his profit didn't appeal to him.
The biggest no-no is Smugmug now has the ability to change my prices.
How can we change your prices? I'm not sure I understand this part. Can you elaborate, because I'd really like to understand this much better - thanks!
We don't know yet, to be honest. Here's what we do know:
We can't build features like lab sales, foreign currency, and certain new products in the best way possible if final prices are set in stone like the old system
The vast majority of people using pricelists, if not every single person so far, is using the same or fewer pricing schemes than before
Most have dramatically reduced the number, thus dramatically reducing the amount of time they need to spend fiddling with profits and prices
One thing we have heard loud and clear is that when they set a value, they absolutely do not want us changing it
It's highly unlikely we will lock down final prices instead of profits. There is a possibility of making the final price field editable, but we would have to make it explicitly clear that the chosen value could change, albeit very rarely if priced in the currency of the lab and opted out of lab sales.
What is the specific Scenario that would change my price in the US selling from a US Lab?
I like the ease with which I can choose products adding or deleting from the pricelist, thing that was not explained to me in the video with Profit. Profit is Sale Price - cost of product - your 15%, the way my sales history has been shown to me and prices where set before that was new to my thinking and makes it a little bit harder. The constant fiddling with the numbers and rounding makes it just strange adding or subtracting XX cents to the price to get it down so it rounds to the part I want. That was just not fun, I honestly found the % Profit gallery markup tool a huge waste, it was useless on the higher priced products for me still had to fiddle with numbers again and they started of insanely high or out of whack.
There is one thing that has struck me after going through the videos and specifically this thread. At some point Smugmug has decided that it was okay to change the prices of my products after I have set them based on your need with no regard to MY BUSINESS. I don't know any other way to say it, not trying to sound like a jerk but I am not international and I point to the above question.
How can we change your prices? I'm not sure I understand this part. Can you elaborate, because I'd really like to understand this much better - thanks!
I have asked, and been ignored, if our prices we set would change based on the base price of the product changes. I have not had a response clarifying the issue, but I base my question on this:
We can't build features like lab sales, foreign currency, and certain new products in the best way possible if final prices are set in stone like the old system
It's highly unlikely we will lock down final prices instead of profits. There is a possibility of making the final price field editable, but we would have to make it explicitly clear that the chosen value could change, albeit very rarely if priced in the currency of the lab and opted out of lab sales.
Is this new pricing scheme something that's going to FORCED on every Pro Smugger? If so then YES I'm concerned just like everybody else because I NEVER use percentage markup to set my prices. I understand Smug's development needs but the minority should never over-rule the majority. If foreign is that big of an issue is there not a way to split the code-development between US and non-US based Pros?
If the new pricing scheme is NOT being forced then is there an option to opt out if people do not like it? If so then why are people complaining and not going back to what they were previously doing. You're telling me that you set EVERY photo price for every new gallery you create?
Man after reading this thread I'm just sticking to what works for me. Luckily I set up my proofs gallery early and just copy those prices to whatever new event/gallery that gets uploaded. Granted it may be some new prices missing from new items offered but its not like my customers are buying the new items anyway. Not time consuming either.
You should at least create a free trial and play with it some. There are some vocal people on this thread, but the overall feedback so far from all of our sources (help desk, blog, facebook, twitter, etc.) has been mostly positive.
Is this new pricing scheme something that's going to FORCED on every Pro Smugger? If so then YES I'm concerned just like everybody else because I NEVER use percentage markup to set my prices. I understand Smug's development needs but the minority should never over-rule the majority. If foreign is that big of an issue is there not a way to split the code-development between US and non-US based Pros?
If the new pricing scheme is NOT being forced then is there an option to opt out if people do not like it? If so then why are people complaining and not going back to what they were previously doing. You're telling me that you set EVERY photo price for every new gallery you create?
On March 1st, everyone who has not already migrated over will be migrated. We're not going to support both systems going forward.
Please be aware that percentage markup is NOT forced. You can completely override the percentages, they just provide a default starting point.
I know I am using less pricelists because now you cannot tweak prices withing a gallery. If you do, you have to make a new pricelists if you want to change a price.
I'm away for the weekend to celebrate my anniversary, so as much as I want to respond more in-depth, my wife would have my head.
But I think the new system works quite well to modify prices for a specific gallery. Use another pricelist as a starting point, duplicate it, apply that gallery to it, and make your changes.
And I am going to say being ignored the way I was, the sarcastic tone of a question put to me like I am stupid because I am not jumping through the rooftops at the new features is off putting. I am a loyal customer and will give smugmug a chance.
I'm sorry if you felt that way. We have been watching the thread closely, but we didn't have a definitive answer to your question as I explained above.
I will say, instead of trying to get more customers, you should maybe get features that a full time pro would like who will have volume orders.
One of the biggest problems with the old system was that you couldn't get a clear idea of your overall pricing. Volume Pros, the ones who want us to handle the dirty work and have a nice scalable system, were a big factor in driving us to do this feature. And most of the ones we have talked to are very happy about it. They want to set a pricelist for a type of shoot, apply galleries to it as they see fit, and then edit that pricelist if they want to change their profits/prices. By editing just that pricelist, the change can go out to all the galleries applied to it. That was incredibly cumbersome with the old system.
It looks like you had more than 800 galleries using the same exact pricing. If you wanted to raise your prices for those galleries in the old system, there simply wasn't a good method for doing it.
The reason as stated is because smugmug wants to offer more features and products, ie make it easier for smugmug, not me.
I'm not sure how that is just helping us. We build the features for our customers. Foreign currency, lab sales, and increased catalog offerings are all frequently requested features by our own customers.
Okay I read through most of this thread, watched the videos, but I still have questions. (Not like I have sold anything, but hope springs eternal.) Is there a way to have products dynamically assigned? So that I can decide that I do not want to allow selection of prints that need to be cropped. While that could be easy if I only shot with one aspect ration, or never resized images in processing. So is there a way to set all my prices but then limit by smart rules so that I don't have to create a list for images that are at 1:1, 1:4, 2:3, 3:4 ... etc.
The other question is, is there a way to assign the pricelist while creating galleries within LR? I am moving to managing everything in LR and notice that using the online create gallery tool allows for assigning pricelist but LR does not for me.
A follow on to that is there a way to assign a pricelist to the gallery template? So that even if I can't assign the pricelist via LR, if I assign a gallery template via LR it comes through with the pricing.
The other question is, is there a way to assign the pricelist while creating galleries within LR? I am moving to managing everything in LR and notice that using the online create gallery tool allows for assigning pricelist but LR does not for me.
A follow on to that is there a way to assign a pricelist to the gallery template? So that even if I can't assign the pricelist via LR, if I assign a gallery template via LR it comes through with the pricing.
I'm sorry, neither of these are available right now - wish I had a better answer!
Comments
Earlier, you said foreign pros were the largest contingency that wanted prices based on profit, and then state less than a quarter of the pros are international. What did the domestic pros want?
Thanks Daniel! You can do a percentage increase for product categories specifically.
As far as doing things like removing all the 'glossy' prints, are you hoping for a checkbox specifically for that column in the 'Choose Products' tool, or something even more powerful?
When I wanted to set a price of a print, I would have to plug in 2 or 3 numbers until I get the price I wanted. My business model is based on getting paid upfront, and giving out print credits. The profit on prints is irrelevant only to the point it helps me when the base price is low. If I give out a 650 print credit, I have already made 650 dollars. In most cases, the customer is going to order 650 dollars worth of prints. If they go over, that is icing on the cake. For me, being able to control the price of the print is more important than the profit of the print. Taking 2 to 3 more steps in order to set that price is a bit much. My prices are important in the perceived value. If I want more profit, I change the print credit.
So, are we going to be able have direct control of our prices or is playing around with profit numbers going to be the norm from here on out?
I am beginning to agree with this assessment, especially after reading the explanation it is easier for smugmug to have a pricing system based on minimum profit, and not offer straight up pricing. Domestic customers should not have to change the way we have being doing things in regards to setting price because smugmug runs into exchange problems. I am all for smugmug expanding and reaching other markets. However, the infrastructure should have been in place to service that market with a lab in Canada.
Inre removing all 'glossy' prints--- a single checkbox for that column that impacts all categories would be fantastic! Great idea Sheaf- go for it! :-)
Now, the struggle I'm having is with the blanket percentage over base applying to all sizes in a product category. I can't use percentage over base- makes no sense in my pricing schema.
400% over base would make a 4x6 $1.00... my 4x6's really need to be $9.75 or somewhere close which is equivalent to 3200% over base. But applying 3200% over base puts my 24x30' lustre at over $1,200.00! Now, I would love to sell my 24x30's at $1,200, but, well... probably not going to happen. So, I manually set my 24x30 lustre at much more reasonable $30.82 profit to reach a reasonable price of $62.75, which is actually closer to 100% over base.
So you see, I end up with something more like a sliding percentage over base as my print sizes increase. 3200% for 4x6's is great sliding down to 100% over base for my largest size. This is NOT a feature request... let's not go to sliding scales because that's really going to tweak out the final prices and probably create even more work for us pro's. I'm just explaining and using an example.
One possible solution would be to give us more granularity of control within the product categories.
Consider giving us "Percentage over existing Profit" within either the category and even as a part of the master pricelist. I can go through and set my initial custom profit for each size in each category- it's a bit of a pain, but I'm willing to absorb that pain for the sake of more products (easy decision for me :-) Although, since I'm not using percentage over base, I'm guessing that when we do get new products, I'm going to have to manually go in and set my prices for each and every size within each category... ugh.
However, moving forward, when I want to increase or decrease prices, I really need something more geared toward increasing/decreasing existing Profit rather than a percentage over base.
Percentage over base simply doesn't work for me and if I'm reading right this thread right, it's a pretty major frustration for other Pro's.
Now, here's the Power-Feature request. Give us granularity of control over profit on a print size basis. Dream world would be Percentage increase/decrease over existing profit on a per size per category basis. By doing this, you would effectively create a master list that could immediately apply to new products!
Again, for these types of controls, it may be best to have an "Advanced Pricing" button. The golden ticket for Pro's is to make it easy on the surface but give us lots of control 'underneath the hood.'
On an aside and hopefully not to speak the over-obvious, but it will always hurt your userbase when you take away flexibility; take away features that we once had. It's painful. We are a patient bunch and we love Smugmug... but it's always going to be hard for users when control/features are taken away, even if they are being replaced by something that should be considered 'cooler'... or a set up for future coolness :-)
I still subscribe to this new pricelist as a major improvement, though. Thanks. I do believe there is still room for improvement and we're going to land with something that really rocks.
Thanks again Smuggy Sorcerers!
http://www.DanielSoule.com
http://www.DanielSouleGalleries.com/Clients
What do you think about setting it up so we can get a link to a version of this that is obviously slimmed down that we can provide to our customers in a navbar for instance. Giving a customer access to this these same screens (while allowing us to title them as we wish) and taking out the obvious things such as profit would be a simple and great way to provide a list of my prices to my customers.
This is definitely in the works. Thanks!
I can completely understand the reasoning for why things where done for international customers which allows them to enjoy many of the things the Pro's in the US have been able to use for years. Being a customer for a while we know that developments like these take time and are really happy when they are improvements and don't take something away.
I just don't understand why the International Currency and all the new stuff had to be wrapped up in improving the pricing model , which we can all agree needed lots of help. I don't want to have to use extra clicks to price my pictures, I can't see why the most basic of principals of picture pricing was taken away and not just allowing us to enter a price. That is what I can't wrap my self around, I just want to enter a price.
Thanks
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=10162
+1
So what you are saying is, due to the fact that you are making it easier for you (smugmug) to get new Non-US clients and deal with non-US labs, we have to suffer with bass-ackwards systems that don't allow the same amount of flexibility as we had before this "awesome new" implementation? It all seems like a step back, not forward.
And if someone doesn't, based on their principals, automatically want their profit adjusted, why do you care? It's not your business to be saying you should be making $xxx.xx for this.. We demand it! It really what it sounds like... I can completely understand the rationale behind the original posters idea of not wanting auto price increases...
Sorry to be daft, but I'm missing a couple of things and just want to make sure I understand.
The first is, does the rounding tool not make it easy enough to hit the pricing you seek? The reason I ask this is we're getting some questions like yours on the desk and we're learning that we didn't make the rounding tool obvious enough, so people are missing it. I've only seen a few of the comments on the desk but the people who found it seem to feel it eases their pain enough to make the benefits of pricing by profit feel worthwhile.
The other thing I'm not clear about is whether participating in lab sales is interesting to you. It's the idea that when a lab discounts prints for a special promotion, if you price by profit, you'll be able to auto opt in to their promotions. This has long been a request from what we thought were the majority of both U.S. and foreign pros.
Thanks,
Baldy
Do me a favor and tell me you hadn't thought of this idea before I posted it. It doesn't have to be true, I just want to feel like I made a difference.
Nope, hadn't thought of it at all...
http://wall-art.smugmug.com/
Auto opt would be a nice option to opt in to, not be forced into.
For the FOURTH time, are we going to be able set our prices directly, or fool with plugging in profit numbers until we get the price we want?
Baldy,
Thanks for the replies, the Rounding tool is not obvious. I am going to go over the videos again and see if I can wrap my head around it and let you know. I am just afraid that one day I am going to have a customer go to purchase pictures and it is X.xx one and the next it is +X.xx or -X.xx and I don't want that to happen, unless I change it ever.
Sean has also contacted me and will be going over some stuff with me with to help out next week and I will go from there.
As for the lab sales I am not sure about that if you could give me some details that would be cool, I shoot mainly sports and my customers are extremely price conscious and I am not sure the labs sales fit my market.
Thanks very much,
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=10162
What we had in mind for lab sales (sometimes I cringe talking about features before we have them because as we all know we sometimes have delays...) is one of the labs or us might decide to promote something like cards, 8x10s, etc. The problem is how do we get the word out to the pros, how do they change their prices, etc....
But if there's an opt-in and profits are protected no matter what, pros have told us that's key to making it easy on them and getting them to participate.
Baldy,
I can appreciate adding something like that protecting both you and the pro for event type galleries would be cool. Not sure it helps me but, it can't hurt
I have been playing with the videos and learned many things, not trying to kiss up to anyone but there is one thing that really strikes me that has not been brought up. You have allowed Pro's to set a Pricelist for an individual photo in a gallery. I remember reading many a thread about maintaining this was a deal breaker at times when working on overhauling the price list. Many a comment about how this was important to them (Pros), did not affect me but it would many folks, glad you considered them. It might affect me one day as well.
I am going to push the button tonight, convert and play some this weekend, the next two weeks things are slowing down and I am catching up on editing. Let's see what happens.
Everyone knows how much Smugmug does not like to tell customers about future things but to be honest, it builds more goodwill than you realize..
Thanks again,
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=10162
I know us non-heroes don't have a view of the grand plan but let me offer this thought: Since print cost, profit/markup, and final price all relate to one another in a formula, I propose changing the system to allow a user to enter a value in either data field, "profit" or "price," and in doing so lock themselves into either a profit based model or a final price model. If I can create a ruff formula in excel, surely the talent at smugmug can implement that type of thing in a website.
A hero wrote: “I'm genuinely curious, but why is it a difficult concept to adjust your profit if you want a different price?” Its not a difficult concept, it’s a difficult practice. Having to account for the 15% commission is frustrating. It really is not simple math for someone whose field of expertise is visual. The rounding button is obvious to me but it only rounds the cents, making it take extra time to get up to a final price of $225 when $223.78 rounds up to $224. Have I missed something?
A hero wrote: “It's the idea that when a lab discounts prints for a special promotion, if you price by profit, you'll be able to auto opt in to their promotions.” To be honest, because I'm a landscape guy, I don't have an interest in letting a lab determine when I will have a sale. I will determine that, they are not my business partners but simply my fulfillment company. Print costs are so much lower than my “art” prices that I can choose to offer 30-40% off my final price anytime I please. It would be nice to make another buck or two but I am not the target market for this feature so I won't value it as much as another photographer might.
It makes sense that landscape artists have different needs than sports photographers and international photographers have different needs than domestic ones. To require them to operate in the same manner requires one of them to give something up. Thats really how I came to the conclusion that the system should change to allow each photographer to choose the pricing model that fits them best. Personally, to be honest, I am starting to evolve towards the school of thought that favors self fulfillment and wide gamut 16 bit inkjet printing. This pricing fiasco has gotten me to re-examine my workflow and seek out what is important to me.
Finally, dare I suggest maybe its as simple as splitting smugmug into different divisions? Smugmug.international.com and smugmug.usa.com for example. Smugmug.weddings.com, and smugmug.sports.com. A monumental task I am sure.
Thank you for reading and good luck.
Adam Johnson
http://www.apjphotography.com/
We don't know yet, to be honest. Here's what we do know:
It's highly unlikely we will lock down final prices instead of profits. There is a possibility of making the final price field editable, but we would have to make it explicitly clear that the chosen value could change, albeit very rarely if priced in the currency of the lab and opted out of lab sales.
If all these reasons are why we cannot set the price directly, smugmug is getting at a crossroad like Netflix.
IF you want to expand into foreign markets, operate labs in those countries. I shouldn't be affected by foreign concerns. My customers are in my state, or the border states.
I know I am using less pricelists because now you cannot tweak prices withing a gallery. If you do, you have to make a new pricelists if you want to change a price.
The biggest no-no is Smugmug now has the ability to change my prices. I am using smumug to help me with my business. Maybe this isn't a big deal to some, but I just do not like the idea of a third party being able to change my prices. That is crappy. I should make the business decision about increasing or decreasing the price.
I am in the process of pushing my business to the next level and I have mentors in my area who are helping. One asked what lab I am using to fulfill orders and I stated smugmug. He went over the numbers. I am leaving money on the table with using smugmug. The big one is the use of print credit. If I get paid upfront and issue a print credit, smugmug calculates it's profit on the retail price of the pictures. Granted, smugmug does save me time so I don't have to take orders or fulfill prints directly, but on a 650 print credit, it cost me around 70 dollars. I could play the system and offer prints at default, but then that devalues my prints. Spread over a few weddings, this adds up quick. I am now starting to realize why the successful photographers, at least in my area, do not use smugmug.
As it is, Smugmug is becoming Netflix. You had customers sign on for the features they liked. Now that smugmug is trying different things, it is messing with the things that made smugmug great. I like the pricelist as a whole, but then you changed the way we set the price. The reason as stated is because smugmug wants to offer more features and products, ie make it easier for smugmug, not me. I want to be able to fulfill orders without having to take a phone call from the customer, order the prints at a lab, and get those prints to the customer without having to send them out myself. I want to set those prices and I don't want anyone else having the ability to set those prices. If I ever have a 2k plus wedding and issue a 2k print credit, I am going to lose a hunk of money if I use smugmug to fulfill that order. I realize smugmug is providing a service and should be paid for handling the transactions, but having an automatic 15% is too much. When a credit coupon is issued, there should be a flat fee associated with it.
And I am going to say being ignored the way I was, the sarcastic tone of a question put to me like I am stupid because I am not jumping through the rooftops at the new features is off putting. I am a loyal customer and will give smugmug a chance. I will say, instead of trying to get more customers, you should maybe get features that a full time pro would like who will have volume orders. A friend of mine was talking about how it would be worth it for him to have someone else take and fulfill his orders. I told him about smugmug and then the price they take for those orders. He had a order of 3k and 2k to fill that day. Getting $750 taken out of his profit didn't appeal to him.
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What is the specific Scenario that would change my price in the US selling from a US Lab?
I like the ease with which I can choose products adding or deleting from the pricelist, thing that was not explained to me in the video with Profit. Profit is Sale Price - cost of product - your 15%, the way my sales history has been shown to me and prices where set before that was new to my thinking and makes it a little bit harder. The constant fiddling with the numbers and rounding makes it just strange adding or subtracting XX cents to the price to get it down so it rounds to the part I want. That was just not fun, I honestly found the % Profit gallery markup tool a huge waste, it was useless on the higher priced products for me still had to fiddle with numbers again and they started of insanely high or out of whack.
There is one thing that has struck me after going through the videos and specifically this thread. At some point Smugmug has decided that it was okay to change the prices of my products after I have set them based on your need with no regard to MY BUSINESS. I don't know any other way to say it, not trying to sound like a jerk but I am not international and I point to the above question.
Thanks,
www.phabulousphotos.com
Sportsshooter.com Member
http://www.sportsshooter.com/members.html?id=10162
I have asked, and been ignored, if our prices we set would change based on the base price of the product changes. I have not had a response clarifying the issue, but I base my question on this:
Is this new pricing scheme something that's going to FORCED on every Pro Smugger? If so then YES I'm concerned just like everybody else because I NEVER use percentage markup to set my prices. I understand Smug's development needs but the minority should never over-rule the majority. If foreign is that big of an issue is there not a way to split the code-development between US and non-US based Pros?
If the new pricing scheme is NOT being forced then is there an option to opt out if people do not like it? If so then why are people complaining and not going back to what they were previously doing. You're telling me that you set EVERY photo price for every new gallery you create?
You should at least create a free trial and play with it some. There are some vocal people on this thread, but the overall feedback so far from all of our sources (help desk, blog, facebook, twitter, etc.) has been mostly positive.
On March 1st, everyone who has not already migrated over will be migrated. We're not going to support both systems going forward.
Please be aware that percentage markup is NOT forced. You can completely override the percentages, they just provide a default starting point.
I'm away for the weekend to celebrate my anniversary, so as much as I want to respond more in-depth, my wife would have my head.
But I think the new system works quite well to modify prices for a specific gallery. Use another pricelist as a starting point, duplicate it, apply that gallery to it, and make your changes.
I'm sorry if you felt that way. We have been watching the thread closely, but we didn't have a definitive answer to your question as I explained above.
One of the biggest problems with the old system was that you couldn't get a clear idea of your overall pricing. Volume Pros, the ones who want us to handle the dirty work and have a nice scalable system, were a big factor in driving us to do this feature. And most of the ones we have talked to are very happy about it. They want to set a pricelist for a type of shoot, apply galleries to it as they see fit, and then edit that pricelist if they want to change their profits/prices. By editing just that pricelist, the change can go out to all the galleries applied to it. That was incredibly cumbersome with the old system.
It looks like you had more than 800 galleries using the same exact pricing. If you wanted to raise your prices for those galleries in the old system, there simply wasn't a good method for doing it.
I'm not sure how that is just helping us. We build the features for our customers. Foreign currency, lab sales, and increased catalog offerings are all frequently requested features by our own customers.
The other question is, is there a way to assign the pricelist while creating galleries within LR? I am moving to managing everything in LR and notice that using the online create gallery tool allows for assigning pricelist but LR does not for me.
A follow on to that is there a way to assign a pricelist to the gallery template? So that even if I can't assign the pricelist via LR, if I assign a gallery template via LR it comes through with the pricing.
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I'm sorry, neither of these are available right now - wish I had a better answer!
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