I aim to not make any less than $100/hour, so meeting with customers for in-person consults takes away from my profits.
I'm not trying to start an arguement or be mean but any good sales pro will tell you that direct person to person sales creates the MOST profit of anything you can do. Perhaps you need to hire a sales pro before you ditch the idea. That way, you are with your family while they are making money for you.
Doug
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
While online sales account for about 30% of our business, I've grown weary of finding my work, watermarks and all, on MySpace, and online advertisements.
I'd love to find a remedy, but so far have not.
Two suggestions:
1) The kids who rip off your work to put on MySpace were never going to pay for it in the first place, so they do not represent lost revenue.
2) Online ads are a different story. People running ads have money and a business to promote. If you are registering copyright of your images with the Library of Congress, then any good IP attorney will glady sue them on your behalf.
What exactly are you looking to do online?
I use instaproofs.com and they're great for what I need - unlimited upload and space, etc, at no charge.
Lots of ability to customize the look, pricing, shipping, products, etc. Some of it is not as easy to understand as I might like, but it's better than other places i've used in the past.
THey charge a flat 15% on any orders, and that includes the CC fee. You get a check for the net...often...I've gotten $70 checks and checks 2 weeks apart...some places have minimums or pay only once a month.
They don't print or mail. BUT the orders are easy to deal with - click a clink and get abox with the file names - cut and paste into windows explorer search window and voila, the files. Edit or print or send to your lab. Pretty easy IMO. Depends on your volume too - I get 3 or 4 orders a week.
I like being the one that packs the box - i know what's in there and can put in my marketing effluent as I see fit. My return address is on the envelope. If they say it ain't there I know it is - no third party involved.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I have been using Photoshelter for over a year now and it is very easy to use and the printing service that they use (ezprints.com) is very good also. I have had no complaints with the printing quality. I usually set up photoshelter pricing for self fulfillment that way I can make my pics that I upload smaller file size for faster upload, then when my orders come in I can go to the original file and photoshop them and crop them to the desired picture size and upload to my ezprints account and then they mail directly to the customer.
Wow! congratulations Jodie on your large on-line sales. 95% of the pros and web shopping carte hosts I've talked with are seeing very poor on-line sales. My sense is whatever you are doing, I and my pro colleagues need to know about, because what we're doing is registering traffic on the shopping carte side of our websites, but not sales. Our host for many years "Photo Previews" provides fantastic tech support. We can accept multiple forms of payment, we receive a notice of a sale and then a separate email with the payment info, client info is hidden from the second email, and payment info is left off the the first notice. The only common denominator is a sales #. We are registering hundreds of visits, but few and small sales. Would you be willing to detail your sales system to us or at least privately to me. Also anyone else who's on this discussion who's seeing success at on-line sales, would you please jump in and share what's working. Most of us already know what's not.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
Chris, on InstaPrints, have you had any resistance o the web site requesting email addresses to view an event, or is that something you can turn off? I know I'd use a bogus email address the first time I checked it out! But I like the idea of someone handling the CC orders and me fulfilling the order, it gives the option of offering art prints as well as typical lab prints.
Jodie, I think everyone here wants to know how you manage to pump that much in online sales. That product looks pretty good from the demo on the site, do you have any suggestions on where someone could look at it in action on a real site?
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I don't sell that many prints these days, but I used Printroom.com successfully for several years. They have changed their membership levels and prices recently (I remained unchanged as a "classic" user) so I can't comment on their current workings.
.
Linear Mode
