Trouble changing prices

tmlphoto · March 31, 2004

When I change the prices in a particular gallery it seems to work fine, but when I go to buy the pictures the prices are not changed. I have tried this several times to no avail. What am I doing wrong.

Also, it would be nice the have a Catagory level price scale so that I could keep all my personal pictures for myself and buy prints at the basic smugmug price and keep other catagories for pictures to sell. Without this feature I have to reset prices for each gallery for myself or upload them all into one large gallery.

TML

tmlphoto · April 15, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

When I change the prices in a particular gallery it seems to work fine, but when I go to buy the pictures the prices are not changed. I have tried this several times to no avail. What am I doing wrong.

Also, it would be nice the have a Catagory level price scale so that I could keep all my personal pictures for myself and buy prints at the basic smugmug price and keep other catagories for pictures to sell. Without this feature I have to reset prices for each gallery for myself or upload them all into one large gallery.

TML

I am told this is a known problem , but only when trying to change prices back to the default smugmug prices for a gallery or picture when your portfolio prices are in place. I found that changing the price to .30 cents for 4x6 works, but not .29 cents.

HighLightPhotos · April 19, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

I am told this is a known problem , but only when trying to change prices back to the default smugmug prices for a gallery or picture when your portfolio prices are in place. I found that changing the price to .30 cents for 4x6 works, but not .29 cents.

I had the same exact experience. My conclusion was that the new price would show only if set price was Image > gallery > portfolio ???
But I am not sure if this is correct.
would love to hear how others have gotten around this problem (besides paying 0.01 more per pic) and if there is a fix in the works.

Erik Olsen · April 19, 2004

It may seem you are paying .01 dollars more, but you actually get that penny back in your sales comissions. Yes it would be nice for the host to regognize your cookies to be as of a member, and switch to base prices when you buy pix for yourself. It will be possible in the near future (according to smugmug) to have alias on your pictures in different galleries. Have these galleries prices set to base prices for you and family to buy pix @ cost.

:baldy
Erik Olsen
www.manevideo.com

tmlphoto · April 19, 2004

Erik Olsen wrote:

It may seem you are paying .01 dollars more, but you actually get that penny back in your sales comissions. Yes it would be nice for the host to regognize your cookies to be as of a member, and switch to base prices when you buy pix for yourself. It will be possible in the near future (according to smugmug) to have alias on your pictures in different galleries. Have these galleries prices set to base prices for you and family to buy pix @ cost.

:baldy
Erik Olsen
www.manevideo.com

Technically you only get 85% of the one cent back in comissions

, not a big deal. By the way Erik, I checked out your web site and it is really great. I wonder if you are selling alot of larger prints. The 15% commission doesn't seem too high, but if your prices are substantially higher than smugmugs, then it would seem that they are getting an unfair share of your profits. Perhaps a 15% share up to a certain amount and then a lower percentage or none on higher amounts. Does this make any sense?
Thomas

Erik Olsen · April 19, 2004

The 4 x 6 prints sell the best... cheapest, but highest profit margin. 8 x 10 is the largest print sold so far. But if one wants to by a 20 x 30 for 135 bucks and smugmug makes 15%, that's great...

let them (smugmug) make money... that what we are here for, to have a great time and make a ton of money.

-Erik-

tmlphoto · April 19, 2004

Erik Olsen wrote:

The 4 x 6 prints sell the best... cheapest, but highest profit margin. 8 x 10 is the largest print sold so far. But if one wants to by a 20 x 30 for 135 bucks and smugmug makes 15%, that's great... let them (smugmug) make money... that what we are here for, to have a great time and make a ton of money.

-Erik-

Changing the subject, are you able to post that many great pictures without any software tweaking? Do you feel that it is better to upload only quality pictures ready for printing rather than uploading rough proofs? It takes me a considerable amount of time to tweak many images that are never purchased. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

Erik Olsen · April 20, 2004

tmlphoto wrote:

Changing the subject, are you able to post that many great pictures without any software tweaking? Do you feel that it is better to upload only quality pictures ready for printing rather than uploading rough proofs? It takes me a considerable amount of time to tweak many images that are never purchased. Your thoughts would be appreciated.

With event photography it is very time consuming to tweak every single shot... so I try to frame everything right in the field. Some color corrections I do. As you may have noticed in the steeplechase gallery there are 325 pictures... I came home with 645 pictures... so most of my time spent is editing the shots for u/l.

Erik

scrooks · April 20, 2004

Erik Olsen wrote:

With event photography it is very time consuming to tweak every single shot... so I try to frame everything right in the field.

I'll second that. I take event shots also, of school events (hence my galleries are all passworded, sorry). I try to get everything right from the start. I shoot in RAW and will go through picture by picture if I have to, quickly changing color balance and exposure, but it's much easier if I can set all the shots at once because everything was consistent at the time I shot.

Good workflow tools are essential for this!

I've taken several hundred shots of a school show where I actually did go through and correct red eye on every single shot. I got into a rhythm and it only took me a few hours. That was still pretty painful. So now I've invested a bunch of money in light stands and lighting equipment and remote flash units, just so I don't have to go through that pain again.

Does it pay off? Depends on how you look at it. My margins are much, much lower than Erik's. I've found that even though this is a private school, parents really won't pay more than about $2 for a 4x6. 5x7's are popular at $3. This is for pictures that are far, far better than anything they're getting with their point and shoots in the audience -- it doesn't matter, they don't want to cough up much money for a print. That's a low profit margin, yes. But if I make enough to pay for the Smugmug site I'm happy enough. I'm really shooting for fun, and any profit at this point is just gravy. And it certainly is fun!

And maybe at some point it will lead to some more personal commissions where I can make something closer to what my shots are really worth.

Trouble changing prices

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