I'm using smugmug to sell my nature photography at http://www.naturestocklibrary.com - you can see that I can use my own custom domain, I can completely change the look and feel of the site to look nothing like Smugmug... there are many options for how you can organize yoru galleries, price your work, prints, etc. You can also sell digital downloads (a royalty free license) for any price you like. I pay $150 a year for the professional package (ability to sell my own work). I love Smugmug's service so much that I actually have two accounts (my wedding photography online proofing is at http://photos.christinacraft.com). Prints are handled by Easy Prints out of Georgia and prints are delivered straight to the purchaser's door. If you want to handle your own printing, you could get around this by having people pay as a digital download and then you send them the print. If you don't know HTML and can't afford a web site designer, Smugmug also offers several really nice layouts. For uploading photos, you just drag and drop so no HTML knowledge is needed once your website is created. They also handle the guarantee on prints so if someone is unhappy, they deal with Smugmug rather than you.
Here are downsides:
* Prints are handled by Easy Prints based out of Georgia - they print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper and do a good job of printing... however, the paper is not the very best Crystal Archive Paper (the best is Crystal Archive Supreme). Their paper is a little thinner than this.
* You can customize your site to be google optimized (meaning you keyword load every page to make sure it comes up in Google. Unfortunately (and I've written several letters asking to fix this)... when my site does come up in a google result it looks like this:
Buy Nature Stock Photography - Christina Craft, Nature & Wildlife ...The ultimate in photo sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print.
www.naturestocklibrary.com/ - 452k - Cached - Similar pages
Notice "the ulitimate in photo sharing." I'm actually not photo sharing. I'm selling! This is very irritating and it does nothing to promote Smugmug either so it makes no sense that they would metatag every site listed with them as "photo sharing" without branding their name. Anyway, my suggestion to them would be to metatag their pro sites to say
"This site is powered by smugmug - the best in photo sharing.... etc." It sounds more reasonable and lets someone know I'm selling my work based on the smugmug engine.
Those are the only downsides. Everyone at Smugmug has been very helpful and friendly to me. My nature site has been online for one year and my wedding online proofing account has been up for three years. I've always been happy with their customer service. They also have a dedicated group of people in their forums waiting to help you if you run into trouble customizing your site.
Discussion
2 repliesI've looked at Shutterfly.com and ExpressDigital/Photoreflect.com, but i want to see if anyone has any recommendations.
All thoughts appreciated. Thanks
I'm using smugmug to sell my nature photography at http://www.naturestocklibrary.com - you can see that I can use my own custom domain, I can completely change the look and feel of the site to look nothing like Smugmug... there are many options for how you can organize yoru galleries, price your work, prints, etc. You can also sell digital downloads (a royalty free license) for any price you like. I pay $150 a year for the professional package (ability to sell my own work). I love Smugmug's service so much that I actually have two accounts (my wedding photography online proofing is at http://photos.christinacraft.com). Prints are handled by Easy Prints out of Georgia and prints are delivered straight to the purchaser's door. If you want to handle your own printing, you could get around this by having people pay as a digital download and then you send them the print. If you don't know HTML and can't afford a web site designer, Smugmug also offers several really nice layouts. For uploading photos, you just drag and drop so no HTML knowledge is needed once your website is created. They also handle the guarantee on prints so if someone is unhappy, they deal with Smugmug rather than you.
Here are downsides:
* Prints are handled by Easy Prints based out of Georgia - they print on Fuji Crystal Archive Paper and do a good job of printing... however, the paper is not the very best Crystal Archive Paper (the best is Crystal Archive Supreme). Their paper is a little thinner than this.
* You can customize your site to be google optimized (meaning you keyword load every page to make sure it comes up in Google. Unfortunately (and I've written several letters asking to fix this)... when my site does come up in a google result it looks like this:
Buy Nature Stock Photography - Christina Craft, Nature & Wildlife ...The ultimate in photo sharing. Easily create online photo albums. Share, store, organize and print.
www.naturestocklibrary.com/ - 452k - Cached - Similar pages
Notice "the ulitimate in photo sharing." I'm actually not photo sharing. I'm selling! This is very irritating and it does nothing to promote Smugmug either so it makes no sense that they would metatag every site listed with them as "photo sharing" without branding their name. Anyway, my suggestion to them would be to metatag their pro sites to say
"This site is powered by smugmug - the best in photo sharing.... etc." It sounds more reasonable and lets someone know I'm selling my work based on the smugmug engine.
Those are the only downsides. Everyone at Smugmug has been very helpful and friendly to me. My nature site has been online for one year and my wedding online proofing account has been up for three years. I've always been happy with their customer service. They also have a dedicated group of people in their forums waiting to help you if you run into trouble customizing your site.
I highly recommend them.