Photoshelter

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kieranmcmanus

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Just after a bit of feedback from people using Photoshelter, in particular to those selling prints. Is it easy and quick, and is there an alternative? And does it offer you value for money?
 
I'd say its as good as you're going to get at the moment without a custom e-commerce site. It's fairly simple to set up and use too. The biggest drawback for me is payment can only be taken through paypal so theres fees involved there, and not everyone has paypal / is comfortable signing up. SmugMug is an alternative. As for prints, its american so the built in print fulfilment companies are US based. In the UK you have to do self-fulfilled orders, so get the printing done and shipping done yourself. Not an issue for me.
 
Agree with rogan, not much to add. It's extremely feature packed, great customer support, easy to set-up and fairly cheap given what you're getting for your money.

Buying though can be a bit clunky but there are plenty of options on how to deliver pics to your clients. But again, the amount of features and customisation truly is excellent.
 
If you use viewbook (or even if you don't) Fotomoto is an option. Especially good because it integrates directly with viewbook. Suffers from same 'US based' issues as above though. I just have it set to only allow people to purchase downloads. Pretty full featured, options for licencing etc too

Not sure I'd recommend it over anything else. I use it just because it works directly with my Viewbook site but other than that it's not exactly exceptional.
 
I love it. Great guys running it.

You can order prints from US providers in the UK and postage is very reasonable. However they have recently added a UK based printer who does almost all the print options of the US printers.

My only gripe, my Wordpress/Photoshelter integrated site suffers from poor SEO. I have asked both parties and neither can find the answer. However they are very proactive at trying to explain how to improve this.
 
What option have you guys gone for? Does the basic have enough room for your needs, and was the $50 fee for setting up print sales worth it?
 
Lee and I use a standard photoshelter account linked to a wordpress blog. Contrary to other views, I find the SEO for the blog to be amazing. The secret appears to be putting good tags on each post. I often find our site on the first page of google only an hour or two after putting a post up.

The main reason we use photoshelter is because it offers excellent facilities to get pics to clients and editors, and also because it provides good instant fulfilment of jpegs as well. For printing I usually use my Smugmug site to take orders for event pics using PayPal.

If you want a look to compare, my Smugmug is www.tobinators.com and the wordpress/photoshelter is http://slikimages.com.
 
Tobers said:
Lee and I use a standard photoshelter account linked to a wordpress blog. Contrary to other views, I find the SEO for the blog to be amazing. The secret appears to be putting good tags on each post. I often find our site on the first page of google only an hour or two after putting a post up.

The main reason we use photoshelter is because it offers excellent facilities to get pics to clients and editors, and also because it provides good instant fulfilment of jpegs as well. For printing I usually use my Smugmug site to take orders for event pics using PayPal.

If you want a look to compare, my Smugmug is www.tobinators.com and the wordpress/photoshelter is http://slikimages.com.
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Thanks for that Tobers, I've looked at both options today. Photoshelter definitely comes across more professional but like you say paypal isn't ideal for everyone. How have you managed to have your smugmug stuff in UK prices? I only have options for using US printers in dollars?
 
mjukphoto said:
Clearly Fotomoto ain't getting much love then.... it's free though!
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I had a little look at Fotomoto...it looks ok actually, but I would be happier with something that allows me to self fulfill orders...i have ability for printing any size, any finish so not an issue. Had a play with photoshelter tonight...looks good, although the $50 fee for setting up a selling feature is a bit frustrating...guess it pays for itself though.
 
I assume from reading the thread that you can integrate photoshelter with your wordpress site?
 
kieranmcmanus said:
I had a little look at Fotomoto...it looks ok actually, but I would be happier with something that allows me to self fulfill orders...i have ability for printing any size, any finish so not an issue. Had a play with photoshelter tonight...looks good, although the $50 fee for setting up a selling feature is a bit frustrating...guess it pays for itself though.
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i never paid a fee to set up selling. Just the monthly one.
 
duncolm said:
Is anyone using Photobox as a non-American alternative? How good is it?
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The few print orders I get, I self-fulfill using Loxley.

I've not really got much to add...there was a big thing recently about integrating the option to invoice clients rather than getting them to use paypal, however I've not seen that yet.

If they did that then I suspect there would be a lot more sales made.
 
I used to use PhotoReflect which is an American based system which interfaces fantastically well with Express Digital Darkroom. Unfortunately when there were issues across the pond the support was heavily lacking...As a lot of my sales come from the internet/websales, I did not want to be controlled by a company with a time difference and who do not move the earth to get you back up and running. Especially when they are charging 15% commision and approx 3% for card transactions.

I therefore moved to Photocart....I cannot praise this software enough...It does all I want and 50 times more. It was a one off payment of approx £225 and then obviously your own webspace costs. It has a built in cart which allows you to take all sorts of payment methods and also has the most comprehensive control panel for monitoring the state of all your selling, access control, sales and just about everything else you could possibly need.

I had a customer complaining that they could not get access the other day, he wanted to see the email which asked him to confirm his email address....(ie, Click this link to confirm etc etc ) I went into the system and searched the date of his registration and quickly found the email which was sentto him, I quickly copied and pasted the details into his reply email....he quickly wound his neck in !!!

I'm still learning all the time as it does so much....Highly recomended

Tug
 
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