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sweetness34

Website decision help

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Hey guys.... it's been far too long, school and football have me cooped up and not posting, but we did win our third straight conference championship (yay)

 

so I've run into a bit of a dilemma and was hoping for some advice

 

Well I'm thinking of an overhaul on the peakphotography brand.. doing things more professional ya dig?

 

I've got a new logo that I'm a pretty big fan of:

 

39511_PeakPhotography_rev1%2520%25281%2529.jpg

 

And I'm thinking of a sleek new web set up.. here's my problem. I like where I'm at now, I pay only 3% of my profits to paypal, the rest is mine (minus the cost of prints and shipping). But I do everything on my own, something I don't overly have time for. Some prints I get through Bay Photo, so I have to create each order after they come in (they drop ship for me which is nice).. it's the same for canvas orders. Some orders I do through costco, which involves me picking up prints and shipping them myself here in town.

 

Now comes the big daddy of photo selling, smugmug. Smugmug is an amazing site that has a billion features for selling prints. The one I like the most is when customers buy a print, smugmug sends it right to BayPhoto for me and everything is taken care of. This would be huge for when I'm traveling, the last thing I want to worry about when I'm traveling is to have to put in orders.The site also acts a huge online cloud for my photos, each photo is uploaded full resolution and in case of emergency, I can batch download any set I need. It also adds a lot of facebook integration which is nice. The ordering is so smooth and beautiful compared to mine.

 

Alright, now here's some things I don't like, they take a 15% commission, add that on to at some point I'll be commercialy licensed by the NCAA and will have to pay another 10% royalty to the school for football pictures. It also costs between $150-300 a year to use as well. Another big thing, I love my canvas provider, they are super cheap and have an amazing quality product. But smugmug doesn't allow outside sale, so my canvas would have to be through BayPhoto as well (and theirs is ridiculously expensive). They told me I could set up a separate paypal cart on my site for canvas prints if I wanted.. but that might really confuse my client. So I may be forced to just bump prices on my shit (something I really didn't want to do)..

 

 

And this is reallllllly long.. so sorry

 

 

Any advice would be great

 

Andy

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I really love the new logo. Really slick.

 

And I am not really understand why you can't keep your canvas sales separately. It seems like a convoluted mess, so I apologize for not really getting it. If you have to do everything through one site, which then makes you raise prices on everything because of one product... That just seems really silly.

 

Personally, I am a huge fan of canvas prints. Have a few in my place already and they are not cheap. I have been to your site a few times, and like a lot of your work.. Can't say I am familiar with your pricing, but to raise prices on what I am assuming is your already most expensive product might not be the greatest idea.

 

What are the disadvantages of keeping the canvas stuff separate?!

Edited by Favre4Ever

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I really love the new logo. Really slick.

 

And I am not really understand why you can't keep your canvas sales separately. It seems like a convoluted mess, so I apologize for not really getting it. If you have to do everything through one site, which then makes you raise prices on everything because of one product... That just seems really silly.

 

Personally, I am a huge fan of canvas prints. Have a few in my place already and they are not cheap. I have been to your site a few times, and like a lot of your work.. Can't say I am familiar with your pricing, but to raise prices on what I am assuming is your already most expensive product might not be the greatest idea.

 

What are the disadvantages of keeping the canvas stuff separate?!

Well jumping to the new site would call for a slight bump in prices, simply because they have a 15% royalty on every order. So I would lose 13% more of the profits that I'm getting now. My prices are already insanely low compared to my competitors. But I always prided myself on having some unheard of canvas prices. For a 20x30 canvas I only charge currently $140 I believe. Which for canvas is insanely cheap. Especially when I use the highest quality canvas I've ever seen.

 

The new site would either force me to create a separate page with a paypal cart to just do canvas if I wanted to keep with my current provider. Now this isn't out of the question.. basically in the menu I would have a spot for all of my galleries, and then a menu link for "canvas". I wouldn't want to put all of my prints there.. maybe just like 30 of my favorite shots with the option to buy on canvas... and if somebody wanted a different shot on canvas.. just to email me.

 

If I wanted to do canvas through Bay Photo my canvas prices would almost double. The cost of canvas for a 20x30 is $137 through bay. Which is what I'm selling them at now. My cost currently is $50 for a 20x30 canvas, making canvas my biggest profit maker actually.

 

And I'm with you... most of the prints in my house are canvas.. I love it. I'd cut you a killer deal on one of my canvases if you want. The quality almost looks like a print, it's that good.

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I dunno. I think I would just go with that option. Of doing it separately. I am not sure the convenience is worth the price (for the customer).

 

And thanks for the offer, but man. I would feel like I am robbing you taking a look at your prices. I bought a 24x30 for about 250... lmao. I am just going to bring photos to you and have you print them off for me. :laugh:

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I dunno. I think I would just go with that option. Of doing it separately. I am not sure the convenience is worth the price (for the customer).

 

And thanks for the offer, but man. I would feel like I am robbing you taking a look at your prices. I bought a 24x30 for about 250... lmao. I am just going to bring photos to you and have you print them off for me. :laugh:

Haha I told you I offer crazy prices! I'm in contact with smugmug (who has amazing customer service)... they told me it's actually pretty easy to setup a paypal cart plugin with a gallery and recommended I do that. So I'll probably just make a gallery for canvas prints. So I'll probably end up doing that.. I don't plan on making the site until i finish up finals in a few weeks. So I'll have some time to think about it.

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