Selling Digital Downloads

presscamera · January 5, 2005

Hello I am a Smugmug member from Australia I am looking for an option to be able to be able to sell Digital Downloads of images.
Can anyone Suggest anything??

Kerry Berrington

gus · January 5, 2005

G'day PC...i often miss the point buuut.. SmugMug has this feature. Did you mean something else ?

presscamera · January 5, 2005

Humungus wrote:

G'day PC...i often miss the point buuut.. SmugMug has this feature. Did you mean something else ?

I know that you can set smugmug for people to be able to download images for free.

What I mean is to be able to charge people money before they get the high res download. Currenty Smugmug offer Professionals the ability to set their own prices for print purchases.

mercphoto · January 5, 2005

DIgital downloads

presscamera wrote:

I know that you can set smugmug for people to be able to download images for free.

What I mean is to be able to charge people money before they get the high res download. Currenty Smugmug offer Professionals the ability to set their own prices for print purchases.

I'd like to be able to do this as well. What would be really cool is the ability to sell small, medium, large, or original files at different prices. Smug charges a fee for the bandwidth, fee collection and bookkeeping and I price-for-profit.

tailchaser · January 5, 2005

I'm also interested in seeing this feature for pro members. It would sure beat the alternatives!

Aaron Wilson · January 5, 2005

why not?
why not upgrade to pro? You want to sell your image files? and not prints? I would never give out my image files... People will take those files and make copies and then sell them for you and not share the profit.

Nikolai · January 5, 2005

I also didn't get this one

Aaron Wilson wrote:

why not upgrade to pro? You want to sell your image files? and not prints? I would never give out my image files... People will take those files and make copies and then sell them for you and not share the profit.

I personally would like to keep my originals, too.

But hey, I have a solution for "image download selling":

open "business" paypal account
make sure all your images have unique names/IDs/tags
let people browse the smaller versions
make sure you let your visitors know they can puchase the original - and direct them to that paypal account
once they have paid - send them an archive or let them know a link to a copy - and you can specify time frame

I'm still not sure why would you let the originals go, but hey, it's your property, not mine..:-)

Good luck!

Aaron Wilson · January 5, 2005

thats a good idea.. 1 thing I do
1 thing that I do is upload to smugmug.com. copy write with the water mark ("proof"). I then use snagit to get a copy of that pic... to lazzy to do it in photoshop. Plus i make it so that right click no longer works. I have a paypal account. I take the proofs and sell pics on ebay. I also include my url to smugmug account so that creats traffic. I have people go there and then ask me to sell them a diffrent picture if they win the bid. It kill's 2 birds with one stone. I get the sale and the traffic to my site. If you want pm me and i'll get the urls for ebay. This may help you... you could do the same but sell the image file.

mercphoto · January 5, 2005

Aaron Wilson wrote:

why not upgrade to pro?

A pro account won't let you sell digital images.

You want to sell your image files? and not prints? I would never give out my image files... People will take those files and make copies and then sell them for you and not share the profit.

Don't be so quick to make such encompassing generalities. I used to race karts and I bought digital images of myself racing. Its not uncommon for racers to ask for digital files, and photographers started offering them because it was an easy sale, did not require them to make an actual print, wear and tear on printers, etc. The profit margin was high with less sales effort.

Also, the few times I've done product photography the client required digital files, not prints. They needed the files for web pages, for magazine photo submissions, catalogs, etc. What I do is proof them over smugmug, then they tell me which files they want to buy, and I burn a disc. How much easier if they could buy the file from smugmug right then?

Besides, what stops someone from ordering a 4x6 from me, scanning it to digital, then selling it in the first place?

mercphoto · January 5, 2005

Selling files not all that bad

Aaron Wilson wrote:

I would never give out my image files... People will take those files and make copies and then sell them for you and not share the profit.

I'll make a caveat to my response to the above. One, I would not offer digital files for purchase of "general" or "stock" photos, somewhat for the reason stated below. But commissioned work (product, portraits, whatever) I would offer that option. I even know that some wedding photographers are starting to offer "digital" wedding packages, where the clients gets files, not albums and prints anymore. Right or wrong depends on your viewpoint and, ultimately, if your pocket gets sufficiently filled during the process.

Aaron Wilson · January 5, 2005

That is a good point. About you being a racer and so on. If I was the one to take the photo's of you I would sell that file to you for a fare price knowing that it's going to be on a web page and all. But if a fan of yours wanted that file I wouldn't sell it to them. For the sole reason as you want it.. they could re-print it on to shirts, mugs, web pages and so on. A scan of a 4x6 is not bad but it will not be that good for a poster size as it would start to blurr.

but like a basick lanscape pic... that can be used in add and who knows what else. I usually tag my photos with some type of copy write.. on the back or small corner in front.

scrooks · January 6, 2005

I'd love to be able to sell digital copies of my event photos. They are very ephemeral so I don't really care that they are likely to take the digital file and make their own prints -- I will price accordingly. From what my clients and potential clients have said, I would guess that a large percentage of people would pay for a download if it were available. There's a growing group of people out there who are learning to deal only with digital image files and make their own prints on demand when they want them. For these people they have very little interest in using some "outmoded old technology" by sending off for a print that they have to wait a week to get.

So I could increase, perhaps drastically, my sales volume by being able to sell downloads. The hard part for me would be deciding how to price the download. I don't sell much above 4x6 (and nothing above 5x7), so I'd probably make a tidy profit simply pricing them a little more than, or even the same as, a 4x6. Event photography is a volume business, I make very little money per print. Remember that we're not all selling exclusively fine art here!

mercphoto · January 6, 2005

Hmmm...

Aaron Wilson wrote:

That is a good point. About you being a racer and so on. If I was the one to take the photo's of you I would sell that file to you for a fare price knowing that it's going to be on a web page and all. But if a fan of yours wanted that file I wouldn't sell it to them.

Good point. The race photogs usually only sell you the files of you, not files for the entire race. Otherwise the profit loss is obvious.

I usually tag my photos with some type of copy write.. on the back or small corner in front.

Come to think of it, my karting photos I bought as digital files have a copyright notice, lower-right, in the JPG.

presscamera · January 6, 2005

I am happy to see the amount of interest in my original post about selling digital downloads.

As others have mentioned There are many types of photography where the ability to sell a digital download would be usefull. ie- Real Estate, Products, Sport Events. Even with Stock Photography you normally supply a digital file after you have agreed on a licence fee. And you could price accordingly.

It would open up Smugmugs appeal to professionals overseas who could use the service. It is not practical for International users to try and get their clients to order prints from U.S.A.

Dot Photo have a system for selling digital downloads but their system only generates a link to one image through a light box.

such as

http://www.dotphoto.com/MemDigiViewImage.asp?AID=0&IID=17113112

However they are working on incorporating it into their main shopping cart
where you can select digital dowload after browsing an album

savannahga · January 7, 2005

I want this feature also!

Baldy · January 7, 2005

Interesting thread! I must admit I buy digital photos all the time from the stock houses to illustrate our help pages, etc. (Ironic that the site with 13,500,000 digital images buys stock photos...

) And I'm trying to buy a shot in digital form from the San Franciso Chronicle for my own personal use.

I have to talk to onethumb about how hard this would be and where it fit's with other priorities.

Thanks,
Baldy

onethumb · January 8, 2005

Would making it an option in the shopping cart be acceptable?

Like in the dropdowns for prints, there was a dropdown for Digital File or Digital Image or something?

And then at the end, on the order complete page, they'd have the option of downloading their image, and we could include a link in the order confirmation email as well?

Would your customers understand that "add to cart" also adds digital downloads?

Thanks,

Don

mercphoto · January 8, 2005

This could work

onethumb wrote:

Would making it an option in the shopping cart be acceptable?

Like in the dropdowns for prints, there was a dropdown for Digital File or Digital Image or something? Would your customers understand that "add to cart" also adds digital downloads?

Yes, I think it should be in the shopping cart, for the sole reason that money is exchanging hands, and anything involving a purchase should go through only one interface - the shopping cart.

You're correct that we need to think out how we'll do this. My gut instinct answer to your question is "yes". Then we had the issue that I had raised a few months ago when my customers didn't know you could get a print above 8x10. (This was when standard prints was 4x6, 5x7 and 8x10 only). We expanded standard prints to include other sizes. Recently we had another person who offered prints mostly in the odd sizes only, and their customers didn't know to look over at "speciality prints".

I'm not sure what the answer to this problem is. Fundamentally, we need to be able to focus the attention of the customer over to the "standard prints" list box so that they can choose the other options. Because having all options in one list box gets rather large.

One thought I had was to have only print sizes in one box, then paper type in another. But this doesn't really work because luster paper is priced differently than glossy or matte. But it would make the list boxes shorter.

So, if we can somehow get people to notice the list box that has standard prints, speciality prints, gift items, and digital downloads, then we can add digital downloads to the list and have sizes of thumbnail, medium, large and original as choices, priced separately.

Does this help?

lynnesite · January 8, 2005

Baldy wrote:

Interesting thread! I must admit I buy digital photos all the time from the stock houses to illustrate our help pages, etc. (Ironic that the site with 13,500,000 digital images buys stock photos... ) And I'm trying to buy a shot in digital form from the San Franciso Chronicle for my own personal use.

I have to talk to onethumb about how hard this would be and where it fit's with other priorities.

Thanks,
Baldy

Why would you buy from the stock houses rather than opening a thread here with what you're looking for?

Especially since you could trade services or do the compensation to those who have the pro accounts as well as others via the referral method so easily?

Unless of course they're way cheaper than we would be!

I do like the option of pricing digital downloads, wouldn't be a frequent flyer for me though. I would have used it this week--a customer asked to be charged for the research fee/web gallery with proof-sized images at delivery. A little unusual, but they want the costs broken up into several chunks. They still have to give me their press runs, sizes, markets etc, then after they make their picks, they'd like to pay right then (suuuuweeeeet, eh?)

My event stuff has "legs", the above example is for sponsored individuals by a national company, I had the images they want in stock. It sells for editorial use besides personal use long after the event itself. YMMV!

Lynne
stock photographer

presscamera · January 8, 2005

onethumb wrote:

Would making it an option in the shopping cart be acceptable?

Like in the dropdowns for prints, there was a dropdown for Digital File or Digital Image or something?

And then at the end, on the order complete page, they'd have the option of downloading their image, and we could include a link in the order confirmation email as well?

Would your customers understand that "add to cart" also adds digital downloads?

Thanks,

Don

Don

I think this would be great and I would upgrade to Pro if you could get this
as it would open up more oportunites to market your work on an International basis.

Cheers

scrooks · January 9, 2005

onethumb wrote:

Would making it an option in the shopping cart be acceptable?

Yes, I agree with others that it should be a shopping cart purchase so that things are consistent. How to make it clear that downloads are available for purchase in the ordering process, I don't know. I haven't given that one too much thought at this point. My users are not terribly computer literate, but the ones who actually want a download may be slightly more so.

It would be nice to offer different sizes of downloads also. I wonder how many people who would order downloads of my stuff would really want a 1.5 megabyte image. I'll bet most would be happier with something with maybe half the resolution and a lower quality on the jpeg settings. That's something I would be fine letting Smugmug do the conversion for, although I imagine others would want to carefully tweak each size on their own.

savannahga · January 15, 2005

I agree

savannahga · January 21, 2005

Image file downloads would be the best for me, being that most of the people
who contact me are for files. I have a very specific nitch site. Savannah is a tourist town & the many websites, tourist businesses, & Chamber of Commerce, Visitors bureau etc. may need my services to promote Savannah. I want to be their go-to guy. I can sell them now (which I already have) but doing it via the "Cart" will make it alot easier for both of us.

Jeff

CelsoDiniz · March 20, 2005

SmugMug vs. DotPhoto vs. ShutterStock vs. iStock vs. DreamsTime vs. BigStockPhoto ?
Hi, I have a couple of questions about SmugMug vs. DotPhoto vs. ShutterStock vs. iStock vs. DreamsTime vs. BigStockPhoto...

You can see on my BLOG that even though I'm an amateur photographer I've been trying to sell my photos on four sites that read IPTC information at upload time and have customers who buy exclusivelly downloads. They are ShutterStock, iStock, DreamsTime and BigStockPhoto . ShutterStock pays 23 cents on the photo downloaded, and the others pays 50 cents on the download. And since January I have sold $25 dollars...

The problem with those sites is that they accept the pictures they like or actually the ones they need. But I'd like to send potencial buyers to a personal web site where I could set my own price and put the pictures I want availabe for downloads. SmugMug does not serve this purpose, but it looks like DotPhoto does. Is that right ?

On the other hand it looks like DotPhoto does not have a set of customers who only buy downloads like ShutterStock, iStock, DreamsTime, BigStockPhoto. Do they ?

And my final question maybe should be sent to SmugMug support: Is SmugMug planning to offer ot its users (like me) the ability to build special galleries with downloadable pictures at my own price ? Because I would rather stick with SmugMug than have to go now signing up for another service provider like DotPhoto... I already have ALL my photos on SmugMug anyway...

I'd love to hear your and other users thoughts about all my questions above.

Thanks,
Celso.

presscamera wrote:

I am happy to see the amount of interest in my original post about selling digital downloads.

As others have mentioned There are many types of photography where the ability to sell a digital download would be usefull. ie- Real Estate, Products, Sport Events. Even with Stock Photography you normally supply a digital file after you have agreed on a licence fee. And you could price accordingly.

It would open up Smugmugs appeal to professionals overseas who could use the service. It is not practical for International users to try and get their clients to order prints from U.S.A.

Dot Photo have a system for selling digital downloads but their system only generates a link to one image through a light box.

such as

http://www.dotphoto.com/MemDigiViewImage.asp?AID=0&IID=17113112

However they are working on incorporating it into their main shopping cart
where you can select digital dowload after browsing an album

mercphoto · March 22, 2005

CelsoDiniz wrote:

You can see on my BLOG that even though I'm an amateur photographer I've been trying to sell my photos on four sites that read IPTC information at upload time and have customers who buy exclusivelly downloads. They are ShutterStock, iStock, DreamsTime and BigStockPhoto . ShutterStock pays 23 cents on the photo downloaded, and the others pays 50 cents on the download. And since January I have sold $25 dollars...

The problem with those sites is that they accept the pictures they like or actually the ones they need. But I'd like to send potencial buyers to a personal web site where I could set my own price and put the pictures I want availabe for downloads.

I occasionally need to sell digital files as well, and I have to handle this outside of Smugmug (usually by mailing a CD, or doing an FTP transfer). But, I get significantly more than 50 cents a file too.

I think that for some users, having a Smugmug digital download would be a great idea. Smug would charge some fee for the download, and pro users could set their own price. Just like with prints. I have no idea how much Smugmug would have to charge to make this worth their while. The other can of worms is though it is simple for them to sell your original file, what if you wanted to offer smaller sizes for sale? Do they do the downsampling or do you? And if you do, it increases Smugmug's storage capacity needs to store multiple versions of the same file.

Smug could certainly say they are in the business of prints and merchandise, not of digital files. And if they say that I am fine with that. The argument could be made that these other sites are so cheap that it is not worth competing with them. While I would like to sell digital files as stock as well, I'm not about to sell files as cheap as these placing are willing to let them go for.

Matthew Saville · March 23, 2005

I still think selling mounted / framed prints would be even cooler... :-D

-matt-

mercphoto · March 23, 2005

Matthew Saville wrote:

I still think selling mounted / framed prints would be even cooler... :-D

Not sure there is a market for that. And the overhead is really high, as well as labor. I don't know if anyone knows about www.usa-pics.com, but I was an agent for them. They didn't last very long, and they tried to do exactly that.

Doug Munn - JLM PHOTO · April 4, 2005

Download Screensavers
It would be nice to be able sell screen savers for download.

We do racing and equine photography. At events people would like to remember their successes with screensavers.

Three sizes could be 640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768 if there was the option whereby we could upload a image file that could be put in the corner with our logo or copyright information, that would be fantastic.

I think that this would be a hot seller, goes along with photo mouse pads.

mercphoto · April 4, 2005

Doug Munn - JLM PHOTO wrote:

It would be nice to be able sell screen savers for download.

Agreed. I'd like to be able to sell digital files as well, and to be able to say which sizes I will allow for sale, and how much for each. Thumbnails, medium, large, and original file options.

Hey guys, the requests are getting more numerous.

Surely Smug can make some money charging some amount for the bandwidth consumed during the download.

SteveLongPhoto · April 5, 2005

I did a track day last year and the photographer wouldn't sell me a disk of the Hi-Res images of me. All he would sell me was a $10 CD of 3 LO-RES images. It even took him extra time to resize the photos. What's he going to do with a bunch of pictures of a middle-aged fart riding a dirt bike around a race track? Who's he going to sell them to if not me? At another event a different photographer sold me a CD of every shot they made of me in Hi-Res for $75. I was happy and he made $65 more than the other guy.

So, yes, I would like to be able to sell hi-res digital files as well. Think about it, you could probably sell the download for close to same price as an 8 x 10 or 11 x 14, and it's all profit. Smugmug takes their 15% and everybody is happy.

System · April 6, 2005

Digital downloads rock and it would make an outstanding extra revenue stream for smugmug and the photographers here. Dd's are here to stay with the micro-sales sites, regular stock sites and scripts that do the Dd popping up everywhere these days. This is a newish wave just hitting and adding this service to smugmugs line-up would easily allow smugmug to wax the rest of the players on the net, hands down, putting smugmug head and shoulders above all of the competition.

Anything will do for me as long as I can sell at least the full size images and everything else would be extra gravy for me. Coupon codes to allow for discounts in the payment stream would be nice as well as the ability to sell smaller images.

Would love to see this one in the near future for sure.

Excellent suggestion.

-don

Selling Digital Downloads

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