Selling your images online.

[BobH]

I've done enough event photography that I now have a few folks asking to buy copies of my work. The key word here is "a few", we're not talking big numbers, at least not yet. (Hey, a guy can dream, right?)

I'd like to find a way they can select images online and purchase them. I've seen the TTG client response gallery, and that's along the lines of what I'm looking for, but I seem to recall it's limited to a single page.

I'm looking for a simple and easy way to do this, preferably one that integrates with Lightroom. I'd prefer to not hassle with merchant accounts and credit card processing, but on the other hand I don't want the place that prints the photos to get all of the money either.

If you've already set something like this up, I'd like to hear your comments, ideas and suggestions.

 

[Sean McCormack]

I'm talking to Matthew about something like a paginated version of the CRG for stock images. I could write it up myself, but as the FormToEmail code is proprietary, I'll go with him on it.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Bob, I use a company in Texas: www.orderpicture.com

They give you free, more or less unlimited image hosting. They will take care of the credit card processing. They charge fairly high, but not outrageous prices for their prints/products, and then keep 12% of the net. You set your own print/mchdse prices. They produce and ship the final products. Monthly, they send you a check, and a 1'99 yearly.

I've been using them for several years. Print quality is reasonable. One nice thing is their client software u/l's lo-rez samples for the web previews, and then automatically retrieves the hi-rez file at print time for orders. Really cuts down on bandwidth, u/l time. Lots of similar services, but these guys have no sign-up or membership fee. They do have a finite # of skins/templates, so you can't totally customize the look. The client/server software link is homegrown, and a little hokey, but once you figure it out it's relatively efficient.

I have probably 2'k images on there now, and I recently deleted several old events.

Click the 'professional' link in my sig, and when you're done laughing at my original website, click thru to the 'image server' for a quick peek at how I'm setup. You can get to them as a prospective customer at the address above.

I'm relatively happy, selling a couple hundred prints a year. But then, I haven't tried anything else either. There's no LR integration at all, but the process is relatively painless.

 

[davidmknoble]

You can also checkout Lightroom Galleries at

http://www.lightroomgalleries.com

Joe has created a simple web site structure that allows a shopping cart, password protected galleries (if you only want the customer to view it) and if you don't want to use Paypal or Google Checkout, they can email orders directly to you.

It's in a release candidate mode, but Joe makes changes every few days and has responded really well to various requests.

See what you think.

 

[BobH]

I'm talking to Matthew about something like a paginated version of the CRG for stock images. I could write it up myself, but as the FormToEmail code is proprietary, I'll go with him on it.

What would be really cool would be to have it work as a plug-in to any of the TTG galleries. I don't know if that's possible, but if it is, that would be great...