SportsShooter.com - How to sell prints, Event work

SportsShooter.com: The Online Resource for Sports Photography

Contents:

Contests:

Newsletter:

Members:

About Us:

Members log in here with your user name and password to access the your admin page and other special features.

|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board

How to sell prints, Event work

Simon Wheeler, Photo Editor, Photographer

	Ithaca \| NY \| USA \| Posted: 10:58 PM on 11.08.06
	->> I photographed a youth swimming meet today. My daughter was swimming and other parents are looking for photos. Can any one reccomend a company that can host web galleries and provide print making/order fulfillment. At work we use Pictopia. I will contact them in the a.m. All help appreciated. Event work is not my usual gig. Thanks Simon Wheeler

Brad Mangin, Photographer

	Pleasanton \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 11:03 PM on 11.08.06
	->> Good evening Simon. You will get a one word answer from me: PhotoShelter The brilliant people who wrote the code for this site (Jason and Grover) joined up with some other smart and cool folks to build the best online archiving, marketing and distribution site for pros that is out there today. Check'em out: http://www.PhotoShelter.com Good luck with your decision!

Les Stukenberg, Photographer, Photo Editor

Prescott Valley | AZ | USA | Posted: 11:03 PM on 11.08.06

->> Printroom.com has worked well for me. Set up a pro account, create a storefront, set your own prices and products, upload thumbnails and then when the orders come in upload your full size image. Doesn't get much easier and hassle free than this.. Oh yes forgot to mention middle of the next month you get a check in the mail... Just so Grover knows I still think of him, Photo Shelter has the same options I believe with a different fulfillment company...

Simon Wheeler, Photo Editor, Photographer

	Ithaca \| NY \| USA \| Posted: 11:13 PM on 11.08.06
	->> Brad, Les, Thanks for your quick responses. I haven't paid much attention to this side of the biz as a staff shooter. Simon

Kevin M. Cox, Photographer, Assistant

	Galveston / Houston \| TX \| US \| Posted: 12:36 AM on 11.09.06
	->> I've also been using PrintRoom.com for selling reprints. They ran a special a couple years ago where SportsShooter.com members could get a free Pro account so I signed up. Granted I don't do a huge volumes of reprint sales (just occasional photos that ran in the paper at my old job) but it is super easy to use and I've never had any problems or complaints from buyers.

Rich Pettigrew, Photographer

	Portsmouth \| NH \| USA \| Posted: 7:49 AM on 11.09.06
	->> Photoshelter.com Brad is correct. Photoshelter is great. You can even have the pictures printed at your local printer if you like. Once someone places the order you get an email with the order to fullfill. Very easy to setup with Paypal. Good luck, Rich

Mike Brice, Photographer

	Toledo \| OH \| USA \| Posted: 8:13 AM on 11.09.06
	->> www.exposuremanager.com

Bill Akin, Photographer

Athens (Watkinsville) | GA | USA | Posted: 10:55 AM on 11.09.06

->> I am currently using Exposure Manager. However, I don't recommend them. I plan to change just as soon as I can find a seemless time to do it. The customer support has slipped greatly in the past 6 months. Many functions that are supposed to be available with their system don't work, and I am constantly having problems with slow, slow service for orders that they fulfill.

It's NOT the program that was presented to me when I signed up. Apologies are always being made with promises to improve, but improvement never happens.

Jody Gomez, Photographer

	Murrieta \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 11:05 AM on 11.09.06
	->> Exposure Manager has been great for me. Mike already gave you the link. :~) Jody

Tom Sperduto, Photographer

	Piscataway \| NJ \| USA \| Posted: 11:06 AM on 11.09.06
	->> I third PhotoShelter. Not only can you sell, you can archive and even send lightboxes to editors, clients etc. Also, they just keep getting better and better and if you ever need to call you always get a person and I have never had to wait.

Ron Hawkes, Photographer

Camden | ME | USA | Posted: 1:27 PM on 11.09.06

->> Simon, selling online is a matter of choice. The big three as I call them all have their good points and their bad points. The fourth up and coming company being Photoshelter, has many things going right, but If you have a problem with paypal, and many buyers do, then that presents a problem.

I currently use Exposure Manager and of the big three, which I have used all of, it is the best for me.

Photoreflect and Printroom both have good and bad about them as well.

Most of these companies have trial periods, I know Exposure Manager is offering a free trial right now through Digital Photo Pro magazine.

Photoreflect cost nothing to sign up and use their service so if you are not going to be doing a lot that may be your bets bet.

If someone could take all the good things about all the companies and make one we would all be very happy. In my opinion Exposure Manager has come the closest so far, with Photoshelter gaining fast.

Hope that helps a little.
Ron

Ramses Moya, Photographer

	Toronto \| ON \| Canada \| Posted: 1:31 PM on 11.09.06
	->> I fourth PhotoShelter. I create galleries prior to the event, print the URL on a sticker on buss cards and hand them out at the event. I can upload and price them easily... Great support so far...

Brad Mangin, Photographer

Pleasanton | CA | USA | Posted: 3:25 PM on 11.09.06

->> Good afternoon Ron, Simon and everyone else...

I thought I would point out that if you do not like to deal with PayPal then it is super easy to set up your own merchant account with PhotoShelter so you can collect cash from credit cards all by yourself without having to go through a third party.

ALSO: PhotoShelter now has a cool FREE account that allows you to sign up quick and easy without using a credit card.

PLUS: As a SportsShooter.com member, it gives you an easy way to export images directly to your member page with drag-and-drop sequencing though your PhotoShelter account - all for free.

Kyle Edwards, Photographer

	Orinda \| Ca \| USA \| Posted: 3:44 PM on 11.09.06
	->> I use exposure manager too! I haven't had any problems with their service. If you're starting out I think exposuremanager.com is a great way to go.

Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer

	Urbana \| IL \| USA \| Posted: 3:57 PM on 11.09.06
	->> If you don't want to invest in a lot of time and money, go with PhotoShelter. If I was just getting into selling online that would be my number one choice today. There are just way too many advantages not to choose them over the competition.

William Jurasz, Photographer, Assistant

Cedar Park | TX | USA | Posted: 5:10 PM on 11.09.06

->> I'm not sure how one can suggest PhotoShelter if one does not have a lot of money. I'm not saying its not a great service, but I am saying (the last time I checked) it was considerably more expensive than a service like Exposure Manager or Smugug, especially considering both those services offer unlimited storage at one low price. I'd be paying $50 per month on Photoshelter to hold the size archive I have at Smugmug for $150 per year. As an archive gets bigger the Photo Shelter fee goes up, Smugmug does not.

There are a lot of nice things about Photo Shelter, many of which Smugmug and even Exposure Manager cannot supply you. I'm simply saying Photo Shelter, in my mind, is NOT a service to use if cost is an option. Its a service to use if features are a necessity. You can't beat it for a rich set of features.

Simon Wheeler, Photo Editor, Photographer

	Ithaca \| NY \| USA \| Posted: 6:29 PM on 11.09.06
	->> Thanks to all for the input. I will try to make a decision this evening. Simon

Les Stukenberg, Photographer, Photo Editor

	Prescott Valley \| AZ \| USA \| Posted: 6:36 PM on 11.09.06
	->> Hey Simon I was born in Ithaca... My parents are hotelies from Cornell... Best of luck making your choice...

Ron Hawkes, Photographer

Camden | ME | USA | Posted: 7:53 PM on 11.09.06

->> Brad, thanks for the response and information, I was not saying I did not like Paypal, many of my customers do not. I have used Pay Pal in a shopping cart before and many people did not want to use it.

The monthly cost of accepting your own credit cards can be cost prohibitive for many of us at this point. I looked into it when I first signed up for my Photo Shelter Account.

I have a Photo Shelter account and have had it almost since the very beginning.

I think if you are a sought after, freelance photographer, with connections all over the country and even the world, selling to magazines, commercial, etc, like yourself, Photo Shelter is the best thing going.

If you shoot local youth sports, schools, portraits, and a few weddings, like myself, Exposure Manager, Photoreflect or any of the other services may be a better fit. Certainly less expensive from the hosting side as William pointed out.

I think all of the major services have there strong points and weak points and I'm glad we can openly discuss them here on SS

Thanks
Ron

Erin Schrad, Photographer, Assistant

Glen Allen | VA | United States | Posted: 9:34 PM on 11.09.06

->> I have used Printroom and Smugmug.

Printroom has been great... great quality, great customer support, and they are often upgrading the features of their pro accounts. And they have been great supporters of SportsShooters. My main problem with them is the limited hosting space. I liked being able to upload just web-size images and then upon notice of an order for prints, I would upload the full-size images for printing. But 300MB goes fast... I bought an additional 100MB for a one-time fee of $20, but I have hit my limit there, too. Most photogs post galleries for limited time periods and then remove them for more space, but I like to keep things up longer. I shoot for the parents and players of the baseball team my dad coaches and also for the players and families of my brother's college football team. So they like to have access to images for a longer period of time.

Smugmug... I had been checking out Smugmug for a while, but just opened an account with them a couple months ago. The reason why now and not before is that they recently added the feature of proof-delayed printing. Before, when someone ordered an image, the order went to print immediately. I had no opportunity to perfect the image in Photoshop first like I did with Printroom. Now I can set a delay before images are printed and I have a chance to upload a new image for printing. If I don't upload within the time period, then smugmug uses the existing image. This is good in case I am traveling for work or something... the customer's order is not delayed indefinitely. At the very least, the image will go through smugmug's auto-correction, which should take care of most exposure issues.

Another reason I switched was the unlimited storage space. I am not the best about file management, since this sports photo stuff is a side-gig for me and my day job is more than a full-time commitment, and so I liked the fact that this essentially gives me an off-site backup system that is redundantly backed up by smugmug.

Finally, my customers really like the smugmug interface better than Printroom's. On smugmug, they can choose one of 8 different ways to view images. There is also the ability to view the images in a slideshow mode, which they really enjoy. Another nice feature is that smugmug remembers what is in your cart even if you leave the site and come back. I lost a couple sales on Printroom because someone's connection broke while at the site. They had spent like an hour going through images and putting prints in their cart and then they lost their connection. When they came back, the cart was cleared out. They didn't want to go through all of that again, so they gave up.

There are a lot of options out there, but smugmug works for me and I am happy with it.

Ron Mason, Photographer

	East Setauket \| NY \| US \| Posted: 11:24 PM on 11.09.06
	->> Another vote for Exposure Manager. I find their customer service to be very prompt and helpful. They do a good job, they aren't perfect but then who is? Ron

Simon Wheeler, Photo Editor, Photographer

Ithaca | NY | USA | Posted: 10:00 AM on 11.10.06

->> I went for an an annual membership with Exposure Manager last night. Getting started was relatively easy. Only one hang up when I couldn't figure out how to make my pricing structure apply to the gallery. They were prompt with e-mail help as it was before 6 p.m. PST, although I figured it out right as they responded.

This will be a small sideline of work for me I imagine. I am on vacation this week, that is the only way I have time to deal with it. It looked like the least upfront cost to get in. Printroom and Photo Shelter both looked like they offered a good service but more than I wanted to pay at this point to get started. I want to thank everyone who has contributed their thoughts and advice. This is what I joinned Sportsshooter for.

Les, Ithaca is like Brooklyn. We seem to have a connection to every corner of the earth, often via Cornell. I love living and working here.

Simon

John Howley, Photographer

	Circleville \| OH \| USA \| Posted: 10:15 AM on 11.10.06
	->> Though no one has mentioned it yet, I've been using dotphoto.com for the last two years with no problems. No up front costs and they handle credit cards, prints, shipping and all that stuff.

Christopher Koutsis, Photographer

	huntington \| ny \| USA \| Posted: 12:15 AM on 11.11.06
	->> Quick question here....does photoshelter take a percentage of your sales costs? If not, do they handle collections?

Clark Brooks, Photo Editor, Photographer

Urbana | IL | USA | Posted: 12:42 AM on 11.11.06

->> William J. >>>

I don't know what the other services charge(d) when I wrote my recommendation above and I based my comments on building your own site and ecom sys from scratch as I did. PhotoShelter is the closet alternative out of the three structure-wise to what we currently have and we pay more than what P-Shelter's rate sheet indicates. If I had to start over considering what I know now and the image delivery needs, I would go P-Shelter.

Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor

	Washington \| DC \| US \| Posted: 1:23 AM on 11.11.06
	->> Christopher: http://www.photoshelter.com/tour/feature/price

Allen Lester, Photographer

Norfolk | VA | USA | Posted: 10:38 AM on 11.17.06

->> Bill,
Unfortunate that you have had a bad experience with Exposure Manager. Our experience had been quite the opposite – First class service and support. They have even provided us specialized routines to enhance our image processing. Our profits have tripled since we shifted over to Exposure Manager from another printing service. I highly recommend Exposure Manage as they have bent over backwards for us.
Allen

Chad McCan, Photographer

	Kansas City \| MO \| USA \| Posted: 3:48 PM on 11.17.06
	->> I am looking for a print house that can print an order that I either email to them, or can provide me with an API to submit print orders. They would then ship the prints for me as well. Any recommendations?

Ed J. Szalajeski, Photographer

	Portland \| ME \| USA \| Posted: 11:44 AM on 12.01.06
	->> Thought I would share what I found out yesterday while I was talking to my printroom rep. I asked if they were doing the SS December special again, he said they are. Any ss member can get their first account free account if they sign up this month. Sign up for an account and use the same coupon code as last year in the PromoCode. sportsshooterpromo Expires end of December. Ed

Jim Leary, Photographer

Island | NY | USA | Posted: 3:31 PM on 12.01.06

->> Simon,

The easiest to get you going and to work with from my experience and discussions with others is Photoreflect. You can be up and running within the hour. The major drawback to Photoreflect is the percentage they take. With credit card processing you lose 18% of the sale before paying for the prints themselves. There are other companies that charge monthly or annual fees to use them and after that you keep the rest. I would think those are good for very high volume but for your needs I'd go with Photoreflect. Its very user friendly on the consumer side and easy to set up on the photographer's side.

Drew Broadley, Photographer

Wellington | NZ | New Zealand | Posted: 3:54 PM on 12.01.06

->> I'm going against the norm, I'm not going to sell prints at an event as I had previously planned.

I'm going to lock down a laptop with Unix on it (this way if anyone by-passes the browser they will get confused) and have an internal web server running on there.

The wife will index photos at the event, and upload them as per she would on our live website. I will make a snapshot of my live website before hte weekend and place it on there.

This way, I get the impulse buyers, they can come up and search for their rider and not have to worry about having a sub-lab standard printer to worry about as well as paper, ink/dye, sitting there retouching photos.

Doug Holleman, Photographer

Temple | TX | USA | Posted: 7:28 PM on 12.01.06

->> Kevin said: "I've also been using PrintRoom.com for selling reprints. They ran a special a couple years ago where SportsShooter.com members could get a free Pro account so I signed up."

Yep, Printroom ran the same December Sportsshooter deal the last two years. I would suggest anyone here who is interested in joining Printroom send them an email and see if they can get the same deal they offered before.

I don't do a whole lot of event stuff, but when I do I use Printroom. It's reliable and pretty easy to manage. Lots of products to offer, and flexible pricing. Good folks there at Printroom.

Doug Holleman, Photographer

	Temple \| TX \| USA \| Posted: 7:30 PM on 12.01.06
	->> I guess I should have read all the posts first. See Ed's post on Printroom above.

Steve King, Photographer

Ann Arbor | MI | USA | Posted: 11:53 AM on 12.03.06

->> Since I'm just getting online for sales too just one more question, has anyone used BOTH Smugmug & Photoshelter and can tell me the difference in user experience AND my cost? I see that PS charges 10% for each sale and is more expensive in per year costs too. I can't seem to find this detail about the costs on Smugmug. On Smugmug it makes me think that they DON'T charge a % on each sale, is this true?

Mark Tassoni, Photographer

	Bryn Mawr \| PA \| US \| Posted: 7:55 PM on 12.03.06
	->> I just started a deal with Spitfire Pro. I like their interface, slideshow features for clients... Pricing seems fair. I guess we'll see what happens over the next few weeks. I'd like a storefront site, though, that will allow the prints to be sent to my local lab. That way, I can leverage soem discounts on cameras, lenses.

Mitchell Clinton, Photographer

	Carlsbad \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 9:29 PM on 12.03.06
	->> printroom.com I signed up for the sportsshooter special 2 years ago. minimal problems and when there was a problem is was solved very fast. Checks always come on time. I would advise giving them a try since the sportsshooter special is back, you cant loose (paste the folowing into your browser https://www.printroom.com/proRegisterUser.asp?Reseller=sportsshooterpromo )

Mitchell Clinton, Photographer

	Carlsbad \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 1:24 PM on 12.06.06
	->> Details about the sportsshooter December deal from printroom can be found in this old post. It is 2 years old but the deal remains the same: http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=13260

Mark Scheuern, Photographer

	Grand Blanc \| MI \| USA \| Posted: 3:24 PM on 12.06.06
	->> The Printroom guys definitely are nice people to work with. I'm not generally a big print seller but they still find time to call me up once in a while and check in to see how they can help. And free is a pretty good deal! Mark

Louis Lopez, Photographer

	Fontana \| CA \| USA \| Posted: 4:10 PM on 12.06.06
	->> Great success with Printroom. My clients love the ease of use, and I have full control of my galleries as to what I wish to offer.

Doug Holleman, Photographer

	Temple \| TX \| USA \| Posted: 7:08 PM on 12.06.06
	->> The Printroom December deal is one that no sportsshooter member should pass up, if they don't already have an online print store or are looking for a new one. For anyone who has been wanting to get into online sales, this is a great way to go, and you certainly can't beat the price. Another of the many benefits of sportsshooter membership.

Return to --> Message Board Main Index