New product to chose from

Erik Olsen · April 13, 2004

Pro photographers, beware... there is a new product on the list of prints and gifts: 4 x 6 post cards. The cost is $1.75. Hurry and set your pro prices before folks order up a bunch of them, and you (the phog) get $0.00 profit from your photos.

I wish we (the members) would have been notified of a new product before it ended up in our store front at cost to the public.

I had a customer who ordered pictures from our site, ask when her order is going to be shipped. She wrote to me (e-mail) that she had ordered prints and post cards. Since we (the photographers) don't have the costumer's information, it makes it very difficult to reply to their e-mail if there is a problem with the prints or the service. Again it is very important to us (pro photogs) to know, who is buying our work (photos). Customer's name, address, e-mail, and phone number along with shipping notices of their orders should be made available to the pro members.

Thank you,

Erik Olsen
www.manevideo.com

scrooks · April 14, 2004

Total agreement

Erik Olsen wrote:

Pro photographers, beware... there is a new product on the list of prints and gifts: 4 x 6 post cards. The cost is $1.75. Hurry and set your pro prices before folks order up a bunch of them, and you (the phog) get $0.00 profit from your photos.

I was about to post just the same thing, but Erik beat me to it. I'm now in the process of having to go through every gallery to update the pricing to make sure that 4x6 post cards aren't free. This is not much fun. :nono

I agree with everything Erik said.

Erik Olsen · April 14, 2004

Just set your portfolio prices that'll take care of all your galleries.

Erik

scrooks · April 14, 2004

Erik Olsen wrote:

Just set your portfolio prices that'll take care of all your galleries.

But only if you set every gallery to be the same price, which I don't. If even one gallery is priced differently, then they all must be managed individually. More control over prices (even by category would be a big help) is one of the first enhancements I asked for after signing up for Smugmug.

Baldy · April 15, 2004

It was my mistake to add postcards without thinking through the consequences for pro photographers who set their product prices. Lesson learned, and none too soon because we're looking at adding other products, notably lustre finish for every print size. Before we do, we'll notify our pros.

On the positive side, it looks like the postcards sell well. And quite a number of portrait and wedding photographers have been clamoring for lustre finish.

By the way, the lustre finish costs about 20% more per print so we're going to have to price the 4x6s at .39 instead of .29, but we have decided to leave the other print prices the same as they are for matte and gloss.

We've had requests for buttons, so we're looking at adding 3" and 4" buttons as well.

As far as giving you the customer information, that's something we want & plan to do, and hopefully our new print ordering interface will simplify it.

Thanks,
Baldy

Erik Olsen · April 15, 2004

Baldy wrote:

It was my mistake to add postcards without thinking through the consequences for pro photographers who set their product prices. Lesson learned, and none too soon because we're looking at adding other products, notably lustre finish for every print size. Before we do, we'll notify our pros.

On the positive side, it looks like the postcards sell well. And quite a number of portrait and wedding photographers have been clamoring for lustre finish.

By the way, the lustre finish costs about 20% more per print so we're going to have to price the 4x6s at .39 instead of .29, but we have decided to leave the other print prices the same as they are for matte and gloss.

We've had requests for buttons, so we're looking at adding 3" and 4" buttons as well.

As far as giving you the customer information, that's something we want & plan to do, and hopefully our new print ordering interface will simplify it.

Thanks,
Baldy

Thank you very much. I can't wait for the upcoming improvements. This will put money in the pros pockets as well as yours.

Erik

scrooks · April 15, 2004

Baldy wrote:

It was my mistake to add postcards without thinking through the consequences for pro photographers who set their product prices. Lesson learned, and none too soon because we're looking at adding other products, notably lustre finish for every print size. Before we do, we'll notify our pros.

That's great, thanks. One further step that would be quite helpful would be to test whether custom pro prices have been set (at any of the three levels), and if so, automatically set the price for any new items to $0. That would eliminate any time delay between when you implement the new product and when pricing can be updated. This would also eliminate any need at all to modify pricing if the seller doesn't want to offer the new product.

I'm glad you're adding more products, the lustre finish sounds great! And thanks for the notice about providing customer info soon, that will be much appreciated.

One of the reasons I recently joined Smugmug was because of all the testimonials I found where people said you were quick to respond, and you respond well with improvements, fixes, and additions. So far, so good....

Baldy · April 15, 2004

scrooks wrote:

One of the reasons I recently joined Smugmug was because of all the testimonials I found where people said you were quick to respond, and you respond well with improvements, fixes, and additions. So far, so good....

Thanks!

We're in a somewhat frustrating stage right now where the work we're doing is not very visible to our customers, even though internally we feel good about knocking these things down.

Our biggest time-absorbers right now have to do with the back end: installing a database cluster to get 5 9s uptime on the database, installing a (very expensive) new router that can optimize network access time on the fly to our servers depending on your Internet access point. Also, subscription renewals and pro commission payments (they went out today).

The biggest feature on the plate which we're testing is a much-improved checkout process with print preview and more extensive information about each product.

After those big things, we plan better customization and a lot of pro fixes we've been collecting feedback on. If there's time, we hope to add calendars and Christmas cards in time for the season.

Thanks,
Baldy

scrooks · April 20, 2004

4x6 Postcards back for free
It looks like something somewhere got screwed up since this conversation started. I was looking today and the 4x6 postcards were apparently tweaked in some way by Smugmug such that the pro prices were reset to blank, resulting in them being available to your customers at no profit to you. :yikes

I know for certain I fixed that a few days ago in all of my galleries, and I noticed that they are selling for cost now in Erik Olsen's galleries also, so I'm sure it's something that happened on Smugmugs side.

Pro's, you probably want to go modify that price right away.

Erik Olsen · April 20, 2004

scrooks wrote:

It looks like something somewhere got screwed up since this conversation started. I was looking today and the 4x6 postcards were apparently tweaked in some way by Smugmug such that the pro prices were reset to blank, resulting in them being available to your customers at no profit to you. :yikes

I know for certain I fixed that a few days ago in all of my galleries, and I noticed that they are selling for cost now in Erik Olsen's galleries also, so I'm sure it's something that happened on Smugmugs side.

Pro's, you probably want to go modify that price right away.

Thank you!!!

Erik

Baldy · April 21, 2004

Erik Olsen wrote:

Thank you!!!

Erik

Yikes. That's the second time we had a problem with that.

The issue is the original product i.d. was for offset-printed cards and we ended up having to switch the SKU to a photographic process card.

Toni called or sent email to each pro affected by this and offered to compensate you any loss of revenue.

We're working with EZ Prints to get a schedule for lustre prints. I've seen quite a few test shots and they look beautiful to my eye. I shot a wedding and plan to make every print lustre.

We'll also be adding other products at the same time so we'll post an announcement here and send emails to our pros, much as we hate sending email.

Thanks,
Baldy
(Chris @ smugmug)

scrooks · April 23, 2004

Baldy wrote:

Toni called or sent email to each pro affected by this and offered to compensate you any loss of revenue.

Did Toni only contact the pros who sold a 4x6 postcard at cost? I never got an email, so I suspect that's the case. As much as you hate to send out email, I suspect you really need to blast one out to everyone with a pro account because they're clearly not all reading this board. I jumped around a bit today looking at a few sites that are selling pictures, such as http://www.moonriverphotography.com and http://photos.deanforamerica.com, and there was the 4x6 postcard at cost. I think a lot of people still aren't aware of this problem and should be notified.

The best solution for avoiding this problem in the future is something I commented on before. Write some code to check the pro pricing data and if it exists at any of the three levels -- image, gallery, or site -- specifically set the new product price at that level to $0. This keeps it from showing up until the pro is ready to sell it at their own price. Getting an email about availability of a new product is great, I like that, but I won't like having to immediately go out and modify several galleries' worth of pricing information.

Andy · April 23, 2004

scrooks wrote:

Did Toni only contact the pros who sold a 4x6 postcard at cost? I never got an email, so I suspect that's the case. As much as you hate to send out email, I suspect you really need to blast one out to everyone with a pro account because they're clearly not all reading this board. I jumped around a bit today looking at a few sites that are selling pictures, such as http://www.moonriverphotography.com and http://photos.deanforamerica.com, and there was the 4x6 postcard at cost. I think a lot of people still aren't aware of this problem and should be notified.

The best solution for avoiding this problem in the future is something I commented on before. Write some code to check the pro pricing data and if it exists at any of the three levels -- image, gallery, or site -- specifically set the new product price at that level to $0. This keeps it from showing up until the pro is ready to sell it at their own price. Getting an email about availability of a new product is great, I like that, but I won't like having to immediately go out and modify several galleries' worth of pricing information.

thanks for the heads up. i had just noticed this on my own, quite by accident.

:andy andy

New product to chose from

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