my new gallery

[Mitchell]

I just signed up for my smugmug gallery today i only got 13 photos on there but its pretty cool

tell me what yah think

[oTTer]

I've never heard of that site, is it free? One thing, and it's more of a grammatical thing, flowers would not have an apostrophe in it since that shows ownership, rather than there being more than one flower (I have a degree in writing) and it's things like that I'll see before anything else... other than that, it looks like a decent enough place to have your pictures. Can you link them here? Some sites won't let you link to other pages.

[Mitchell]

lol i always thought that there was a ' in flowers so thanks!
and nope its not free i just have a 14 day trial but im goin to upgrade to pro acount, its 149.00 a year.
they also have to other types and there $40 and $80 (I think) a year..
i really like it becuase people can buy the prints off of it..

[gldiana]

I have been thinking for a while about getting an account at SmugMug because I could address there my clients and they can purchase their action shots from that site without me having to do anything other than uploading the photos and providing the URL. I'd like to know your opinion on how well SmugMug performs.

[Pokie]

I am also interested in comments and experience with smugmug.
I, and another soccer parent (a real photographer), have been asked to help out the high school soccer team through team photos, game photos, etc.
First game tomorrow!!
She uses smugmug for order fulfillment for her wedding, portrait, and other paid shoots.
One idea is to use this system and use the funds generated to support the soccer boosters.
I don't know much more about it than this, but should know more in the next several days.

Pokie

[Bonish Photo]

Hey Guys and girls, I've been using smugmug now for the entire summer and made a few hundred off of sales from various events. I'll say they have the best customer service and are a joy to work with.

The galleries are very easy to work with, and easier to use for selling photos than anything else I've found to date. I'm actually kicking myself for how long I've wasted with watermarking my images in photochop, resizing them so I could upload them to my galleries and then have to keep track of where they are incase someone wanted to purchase one.

Now, I shoot an event, edit the shots and upload everything full size to smugmug. You can, or I did in my case, make a custom watermark and upload it to their site. Then on the back end, you just click the option to have your work watermarked, and smugmug places the watermark over the image. This was if a customer was to purchase a photo, the watermark isnt on the print, and smugmug takes care of all the work of billing, printing and mailing.

This has worked beautifully for a few weddings where I uploaded the galleries to my smugmug account, password protected them and gave the password to the bride/groom. If they wanted to give the password out to various family members, they could do it at their own discretion and I didnt have to worry about printing or doing any mailing at a later date.

If anyone is going to get an account, Goggle 'smugmug discount code' as there are some floating around the web when they might be offering different specials. I got the pro account for $75 . It was worth every penny of the $149, but getting it for $75 was icing on the cake. It's so worth it, and another great option is you can link to your pictures with multiple sizes (Photobucket you had to pick one size only) and this way I have everything backed up offsite at full rez. as an added security.

You can probably figure out I was pretty excited about finding this site. It probably took me a month or two to transfer all my galleries from my past site to the smugmug site, but boy am I glad I did.

[gldiana]

Thanks Pat, that's the kind of feedback I was looking for.

[hw771230]

Pat,

Thanks for all the info on smugmug. I have been looking into doing something like this with some of my photos. Now I am really excited to give it a try.

Caleb

[Bonish Photo]

Hey Sharing info on ways to improve our photography and workflow is what we're all here for right!

I'm happy to share any info I can

[davearnoldphoto]

Before you go running off and paying $150 to smugmug, do some research on what is available out there. Frankly, I would just as soon put that $150 toward traveling to a photo shoot. Here's my way of doing things.

I use a place called www.fotki.com for just about everything. It costs $30 per year (or so) and provides unlimited storage for that price. You have full and easy control over your galleries/portfolio/albums including titling, sequencing, etc. You can also store and use video there. The site features a slide show for any of your albums and although you can't embed the slide show on your own site, you can link it to open in a new window, leaving your customers or visitors still on your site. You can also sell prints there, customizing your pricing. They also allow "hosting" wherein you can place all of your photos on your own site via linking so that your site visitors see them without going to the fotki site.

The second subscription service I use is www.jalbum.net. It is a little more difficult to use but provides a very nice "drop in" of your gallery to your web site. It runs about $30 per year as well and I'm not sure about the amount of space you get for that. The big drawback for me is that any time you want to add or remove a photo from your gallery, you have to reload the entire gallery after making changes. Being on Hughes satellite, which is almost as slow as AOL and very limited bandwidth, it becomes very tedious just to make changes (friends don't let friends join Hughes.net). While I love the look of the jalbum gallery on my own site, I'm not sure I will re-subscribe. I have about a month to decide.

Here's an example of a jalbum embedded in my web site: http://davearnoldphoto.com/bisti.htm

and an example of how a fotki slide show would be linked to my web site. Unfortunately you cannot embed it like jalbum, you have to click on the word "slide show". http://davearnoldphoto.com/recent.htm

[gldiana]

I use a place called http://www.fotki.com for just about everything. It costs $30 per year (or so) and provides unlimited storage for that price.

The reason why Smugmug is interesting to me is because they sell my images and print them and ship them to the client. It's not the space I care for, I already have my own server. Does Fotki offer that kind of service?

[davearnoldphoto]

You can also sell prints there, customizing your pricing.

The reason why Smugmug is interesting to me is because they sell my images and print them and ship them to the client. It's not the space I care for, I already have my own server. Does Fotki offer that kind of service?

Yup, as I said in my original post... and they allow you to set your own markup. For instance, they sell a small print for a base charge of 9 cents so you can easily make an astronomical markup if you so desire. They handle it all, shipping, printing, etc. I do have my prints marked up very high so have never actually had somebody order from me through there. I prefer they come to me so I can print it for them and sign the print. But you can also use them as your own lab for prints, if you like. I have done that but still prefer my own printing methods and style. They also offer a no-questions-asked refund if you are not happy with a print.

[gldiana]

Good to know, thanks.