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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
what is a "fair price" to pay for an image hosting service?
Phillip Davies, Photographer
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Garden City | NY | US | Posted: 3:49 PM on 05.17.07 |
->> Fixed monthly fee
Commission on sales
e-commerce fee
credit card processing fee
Bandwidth Fee
Additional storage fee
and numerous combinations of all of the above...
Every image hosting service seems to have a different fee structure. Fees are necessary for these businesses to survive and grow, but as a photographer using these service, what would you consider to be the ideal fee structure for your needs? Is that a particular fee structure that annoys the hell out of you?
PhilD |
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Jeffery Patch, Student/Intern, Photographer
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Huntington Beach | CA | USA | Posted: 5:47 PM on 05.17.07 |
| ->> Photoshelter is a great deal for all that you get. |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | US | Posted: 9:20 PM on 05.17.07 |
->> You know what annoys me? Commission on sales!!! If I sell a print for $10 or $1000 why should (PhotoReflect or anyone else) make more money? Their cost is fixed and is completely unrelated to what I charge my customers...I HATE...H-A-T-E...paying a commission to companies like them.
-dbr |
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John Harrington, Photographer
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Washington | DC | USA | Posted: 10:16 PM on 05.17.07 |
->> While I agree with Delane about this, consider the workaround:
It costs me $2.25 for a print from, say, Pictage.
I WANT to charge $25 for an 8x10.
Pictage will take, say, 10% of that, so their take is $2.25 + $2.50, or $4.75. Grrr. I wish it wasn't, but it is.
So, instead, charge $30, and then it's $2.25 + $3, or $5.25 to Pictage, and I am getting as near as round numbers will allow me to get to $25, or, $24.75.
In the end, while I too hate it, if you are targeting a specific profit figure per print, adjusting accordingly is the best workaround. |
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William Jurasz, Photographer, Assistant
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Cedar Park | TX | USA | Posted: 2:56 AM on 05.18.07 |
->> Smugmug and Exposure Manager both have an annual fee and a commission on sales. While I can understand Delane's beef on the commission end you have to ask yourself if you get anything for that commission. I have more experience with Smugmug so I'll comment on that. With Smugmug I get excellent back-end customer service. A print got damaged or lost in the mail? No problem, no questions, they pay to re-print and re-ship and do so very quickly. Etc. You get the idea.
So, what is a "fair price"? It all depends on what you get in return for that price and whether you need what you are getting in the first place. Photo Shelter might be a great service for all you get, but I don't need nor want all they offer, so for me its not a "fair" price. Etc. You get the idea. |
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Gary Brittain, Photographer
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Richmond | VA | USA | Posted: 7:56 AM on 05.18.07 |
->> I work with a great company out of North Carolina called proofcast.com.
They only charge a monthly fee for the number of pictures that you post. There are no commissions or other fees.
If you take credit cards, then you will need to have a merchant account. For credit card orders, they will email you the credit card info and you will need to process it.
I used to be with collages.net, but got tired of them taking about 15% off the top for doing the same thing. Sending me an email. And that is after spending $70/month for the service.
With proofcast, you can also sort yur images into seperate folders. All of one team in one folder, the other team in a seperate folder or even seperate by player number or position and label the folders however you want.
If you have a problem, then Jeff Burton will either answer the phone, call you right back or sometimes just fix the problem for you and then email/call you that it has been fixed. He is great to work with.
Gary |
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Dave Rossman, Photographer
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Houston | TX | USA | Posted: 8:43 AM on 05.18.07 |
->> What kills me Delane is commission on sales of digital rights managed files. You could use one of the sites mentioned above and pay 10% or more or simply email the client a paypal invoice and only pay the 3%. I know which makes more sense to me.
And to answer you question Phillip Photoshelter is a great place to store images. |
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Phillip Davies, Photographer
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Garden City | NY | US | Posted: 1:30 PM on 05.18.07 |
->> I have no problem paying a commission on a sale, if the site actually marketed and sold the image for me. If I am doing the marketing and all the work to sell the image, it does not make sense to me that the hosting company should receive anything but a fixed hosting fee for their services. To me, a commission on the sale implies that the hosting company actually sold the image, when all they actually did was give me the resources to display it on the Web, so that customers that I sent to the site could buy it.
I was using photoreflect just over a year ago. Their 15% sales commission plus the 3% credit card transaction fee were taking an 18% chunk out of each transaction. I can understand the credit card transaction fee, but the 15% got to be quite a bit of money as my sales increased and the business grew.
For me, the ideal situation would be a fixed fee based on the amount of resources (bandwidth, storage, credit card transactions) that I use with the hosting company. If the hosting company actually brings me a sale like a photo agency, I would have no problem paying them a commission on that sale. |
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Phil Hawkins, Photographer
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Fresno | ca | usa | Posted: 9:37 PM on 05.18.07 |
->> Hey, you guys, let me clue you in on something, especially you, Delane...
I also run a very small web hosting company on the side and there is TONS of risk taking credit cards on the web. When I first started I almost went out of business w/ chargeback fees, people challenging charges, and argument which the merchant NEVER wins...
On-line hosting or proofing companies earn every cent. I asked the company I use about chargeback fees, and they said they are not charged to the photog. Nor am I assessed a "recapture" when a payment is chargedback. They assume ALL of the card processing risk, and the 3% my company charges is more than fair for assuming this risk.
Don't bitch about proofing and CC fees and commissions; these guys are earning every cent and they save you much more than that in frustration and real monetary damage that can come from e-commerce.
Phil |
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Delane B. Rouse, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Washington | DC | US | Posted: 9:50 PM on 05.18.07 |
->> Phil...you took one aspect of what I said and ran with it didn't you? Since the company I use has NOTHING to do with processing my credit cards, they have NO RISK at all. My customers deal with ME.
We've been in business since 2000, literally running thousands of credit cards a year and we've only had (1) charge back in all that time.
Phil...please explain this to me (since you failed to clue me in with your last post)...why is it that at 15%, XYZ Company makes $1.50 when I sell (1) print for $10.00 but they would make $15 if I sold that same print for $100...you can't be seriously telling me that XYZ Company's expenses are any greater because I decided to raise my prices...
Phillip asked a question "Is that a particular fee structure that annoys the hell out of you?"...I answered it...
Delane |
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Phil Hawkins, Photographer
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Fresno | ca | usa | Posted: 12:20 PM on 05.19.07 |
->> Delane,
Point well taken, I stand corrected.
Thousands of xactions and only one chargeback? Wow, that's got to be some kind of record! More power to you, but after looking at your web site, and with all due respect, I think you do most of your business with local people whom you shoot, if I'm guaging this correctly. For folks selling fine art (or anything) on the internet to the world population there is a very real CC risk. I just received a "cashiers check" for $6,000 from Australia that the bank said was counterfeit. If I were processing payments through my own merchant account I would not accept orders from overseas. Plus, I would do a verbal confirmation of every order.
As for the proofing fees being a percentage of your sales, they are paying for bandwidth, again, if I am reading this right, an expense that does increase with an increase in bandwidth used. So, the more business you do, the more bandwidth expense they have, not to mention server wear and tear... You are right when you say on a per-transaction basis their cost is static, but the macro and long-term situation is somewhat different.
I guess I am saying that I do not begrudge these people what are, in my mind, most definitely reasonable fees for the services they provide. Plus, they relieve me of the burden of jumping myriad hoops to fill an order, allowing me more time to shoot.
Your obvious solution is to set up your own servers and host your proofing internally if it bothers you that much.
Phil |
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Bryce Vickmark, Photographer
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Boston | MA | USA | Posted: 11:09 AM on 05.20.07 |
| ->> Has anyone considered using Pickpic, http://www.pickpic.com, and hosting your photos yourself? I am in the process of having the Pickpic cart added to my site. If it works as well as I hope it will, it will be the best alternative to all of the other options. There is a one time fee which is roughly the equivalent to the annual fee to Pictage or Digilabs to have the cart built for you and that is it. The only other fee I will ever pay will be to the credit card companies for processing. Does anyone have experience with Pickpic or like services? |
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Phillip Davies, Photographer
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Garden City | NY | US | Posted: 11:10 AM on 05.20.07 |
->> Phil,
You mentioned...
"As for the proofing fees being a percentage of your sales, they are paying for bandwidth, again, if I am reading this right, an expense that does increase with an increase in bandwidth used. So, the more business you do, the more bandwidth expense they have, not to mention server wear and tear... You are right when you say on a per-transaction basis their cost is static, but the macro and long-term situation is somewhat different."
I don't see this as the case. When I was using photoreflect, I had to pay an 18% commission on the $6 sale of one 4"X6" and the same 18% was charged on the $70 sale of one 20"X30" print. I did all the fulfullment. So photoreflect just displayed the image to the customer. There was no increase in bandwidth or increase in resources used by photoreflect because the customer ordered a larger print, so what is the justification for the massive difference in the commission paid to them?
In my view the ideal payment structure would be based on bandwidth and storage.
I would gladly pay a commission if the service actually directed a sale to me like an agency, but most of the image hosting sites don't actually market your images, they leave the marketing to the photographer.
PhilD |
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