Selling 3rd party products

Hey guys,

I've had a dilema for some time. I shoot events and take orders on site for things Smugmug (EZ Prints) doesn't sell. That's fine for on site, since people prepay, and you get their customer info with their order, but it made online ordering/reordering a real problem.

Here's one solution/workaround I've come up with which you may or may not be able to apply to a situation you may have.

If you visit http://www.downriverphotography.com/gallery/2260683 you'll see that I sell custom posters, 20x30" and 30x40" for an unbelievably reasonable price. However, these prints if purchased through Smugmug (EZ Prints) are around $50 EACH, our cost. None of my customers would be willing to pay $65+ for one poster of thier kid, so I go through a third party lab (which I love dearly) to keep prices low and still make some gas money. So what I've done is placed my proofs online and set the custom pro pricing for 4x6"s to my 20x30" price, plus shipping (minus $1.25 Smugmug will charge to ship the one 4x6" "proof"), and provided instructions to the customer in the gallery. This way, the order is placed, the transaction is online and through Smugmug, the customer will receive a 4x6" proof from Smugmug, and I will fulfill the actual order. The gotcha is, they have to contact you with their shipping address. But, Smugmug gets their 15%, the customer gets online, secure ordering, and we get more sales, convenience, and are able to market more broadly.

This could conceivably be worked out to include portrait packages and self-issued gift certificates as well, but some customer correspondence is always going to be required, which is fine by me, until Smugmug is able to implement these things for us. I do foresee the occasional problem where an order is placed, no email is forthcoming, and they don't respond to the email provided in the Smugmug order, but Smugmug is great about hiccups.
I was originally going to try to use the Digital Download feature to accomplish this so nothing would need be shipped, having them purchase an image file of a text screenshot describing the item/package, etc., but soon realized they could order only ONE of these, not multiples.

Welp, hope this provided another alternative to Paypal for some situations as well as a nudge in the bum for Smugmug. :wink