Switching from Flickr - A Few Questions

ShutterscriptShutterscript Registered Users Posts: 17 Big grins
edited November 6, 2007 in SmugMug Support
Hello, I have had a Smugmug Pro account for a while, but I have been using Flickr exclusively for most of the last year. After reading about the new digital download sales service and seeing the improved quality of the browsing and purchase windows I have been swayed to return. It matches *almost* perfectly with the strategy I'd like to adopt for my photography / writing web site: http://www.shutterscript.com

I have a few questions though. The first is about the buy page. I am able to link to the javascript popup of a single photo, but not the page the user sees when they click on the cart. I want the steps to purchase to be as few as possible so that I can get more conversions. Is there any way to link directly to the buy page for a photo?

I also noticed that Smugmug takes a cut of the profit from digital download files sold. Why is this? We are already paying for the bandwidth required to transfer the files. This seems like a "double counting" of sorts, unless the files downloaded do not count against our bandiwdth limit... in which case the percentage still seems rather high, at least more so than it would be to have it count against our bandwidth limit.

Next is cropping - it looks like all my photos require cropping on the part of the user before checkout. This is something I want to avoid as it will complicate the process for prospective buyers and they won't understand why they must crop. I suspect it has to do with the aspect ratio of the print not matching that of my camera (I shoot with a Nikon D200). Is there an autocropping feature or a way to remove the need to crop?

And last... for now, is the categorization sceme. It is very different from Flickr and perhaps the thing I miss the most is the ability to display galleries (categories, really) only and the ability to put a single photo in multiple categories. As far as I can tell, the only way to do this now is to create a duplicate of the image and place it in the categories desired. This seems like a space waste to me and makes tracking statistics for a given photo more difficult.

Thanks in advance for the help and nice work improving Smugmug.

Comments

  • AndyAndy Registered Users Posts: 50,016 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2007
    wave.gif hi and welcome!
    Thanks for joining us :)
    Shutterscript wrote:

    I also noticed that Smugmug takes a cut of the profit from digital download files sold. Why is this? We are already paying for the bandwidth required to transfer the files. This seems like a "double counting" of sorts, unless the files downloaded do not count against our bandiwdth limit... in which case the percentage still seems rather high, at least more so than it would be to have it count against our bandwidth limit.
    We charge for the transaction, the credit card, the service. Same as with the prints :)
    Next is cropping - it looks like all my photos require cropping on the part of the user before checkout. This is something I want to avoid as it will complicate the process for prospective buyers and they won't understand why they must crop. I suspect it has to do with the aspect ratio of the print not matching that of my camera (I shoot with a Nikon D200). Is there an autocropping feature or a way to remove the need to crop?

    It's really best to let the customer have the knife, and then with Proof Delay, you can clean up any problems or issues :)

    We very highly recommend our Pros make use of our Proof Delay feature.
    Proof Delay allows you to review the order before it's sent to print,
    make corrections and changes to the cropping as well as auto versus true
    color. Best of all, you have the opportunity to totally replace any
    image that is ordered, with your choice of a replacement, still allowing
    you to adjust the crop and color setting after replacing it. For more
    info on this, please see the links below which would eliminate any
    problems in the future:

    http://www.smugmug.com/help/proof-retouch-replace
    http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/ProofDelayForHappyCustomers
    http://smugmug.jot.com/WikiHome/ProofDelaySolveCroppingWoes
    Andy

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  • jfriendjfriend Registered Users Posts: 8,097 Major grins
    edited November 6, 2007
    Shutterscript wrote:
    I also noticed that Smugmug takes a cut of the profit from digital download files sold. Why is this? We are already paying for the bandwidth required to transfer the files. This seems like a "double counting" of sorts, unless the files downloaded do not count against our bandiwdth limit... in which case the percentage still seems rather high, at least more so than it would be to have it count against our bandwidth limit.

    To add to what Andy said, Smugmug only takes a cut when you are collecting money which necessarily runs credit cards through their system, incurs fees from the credit card institution and can involve support issues. Digital downloads as Smumug calls them are, by design, only available when selling and collecting money so thus Smugmug charges you for that service. If they didn't, they would be offering a credit card service for businesses with no transaction fees and they would be eating the credit card transaction fee on every purchase. That obviously wouldn't be a very good business.

    You can offer images to people for free by enabling originals or letting people right-click download other sizes and there is no additional fee for those "digital downloads".
    --John
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  • ShutterscriptShutterscript Registered Users Posts: 17 Big grins
    edited November 6, 2007
    jfriend wrote:
    To add to what Andy said, Smugmug only takes a cut when you are collecting money which necessarily runs credit cards through their system, incurs fees from the credit card institution and can involve support issues. Digital downloads as Smumug calls them are, by design, only available when selling and collecting money so thus Smugmug charges you for that service. If they didn't, they would be offering a credit card service for businesses with no transaction fees and they would be eating the credit card transaction fee on every purchase. That obviously wouldn't be a very good business.

    You can offer images to people for free by enabling originals or letting people right-click download other sizes and there is no additional fee for those "digital downloads".

    Fair enough... I was just curious. Do we also get bandwidth deducted for the sold downloads? The pay for digital download service is the primary reason I am returning to Smugmug as it allows me to sell both prints and digital copies (for which there is much more interst among "casual" browsers who want a good wallpaper).

    Does anyone have any input about the direct buy page linking or multiple category listings for photos I mentioned in my first post?

    Thanks again.
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