Who has a photography website?

Kev M

Kev M

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Me again,

I've been using the free webspace I get with my broadband account for a while, it is a bit of a pain because I get 5 lots of 30MB which is a pain for linking rather than having 1 lot of 150MB. I covered the last round of the local Auto-X championship yesterday and dragged the wife along to help sell photos while I was out shooting. She sold a few photos from previous rounds and generated a lot of interest in the website. Today I went to upload everything and nothing works. On top of this Orange don't have any form of call centre for the website side of things, you just have to email them and wait for a reply. This is not good for a whole host of reasons I'm sure you'll all appreciate.

Now I'm thinking that I should move my site elsewhere but I don't really know where to start, there is sucha wide choice of host with a wide range of prices. Seeing as the business through website doesn't generate loads of money (especially after paypal and re-posting costs) I need to keep the costs down otherwise I'm going to have to pay for it out of my own pocket.

I'm also finding that I'm rapidly running out of server space and wondered how much you lot use on average. Do you keep galleries from old events available for ever or do you keep a time limit on them and replace them with newer events?

I'm sure there's other questions I've forgotten but these will do as a starter for 10.

Kev
 
Hi Kev,

I hooked Jonny up with the same people I use - servage. Its £5.25 a month (you pay in quarterly, 6 monthly or yearly lots) and its about £60 a year.

If you decide to sign up through this link I get 2 months free hosting and you get some more space.

I've got plenty of sites hosted on mine, including my personal site, sues site and my dads site too.

Using about 3.5GB at the moment.

http://www.servage.net/?coupon=cust13016

hth

Matt
 
This lot seem reasonably priced and it works out about £2.50 a month.

http://www.streamlinenet.co.uk/pu.php

Need to google and see if anyone has anything bad to say though.

Thanks for your help so far guys.
 
My sites total at least 1gb now and hitting nearly 10gb a month in usage. Its taken me by suprise and I've got to sort something as my limit is 1.5gb and 10gb a month in bandwidth. I'm using a company called www.flump.net and their reseller package which allows me to host other peoples sites. £23/month at the moment but that will increase.
 
Can definitely recommend Servage!

The support is also top notch, replies in minutes to their webnote systems ;)

It's also really fast, which sometimes you don't get with these cheaper than chips hosting companies. Seems to be hosted in the UK. Well, it maxes out my connection downloading at least :)

It's also nice to never ever have to worry about bandwidth or space.
 
Kev, I use a site called Clikpic and they have been set up specifically for photographers and artists. The reason I went down this template based design is that my web skills are zero and I have neither the time nor the inclination to learn them. With Clikpic I had built about 95% of my site within about four hours which was a good result for my level of competency.

Seeing as the business through website doesn't generate loads of money (especially after paypal and re-posting costs) I need to keep the costs down otherwise I'm going to have to pay for it out of my own pocket.
Click to expand...

You might want to look at increasing your pricing, if people like the photographs they will usually buy them as long as they are not over the top price wise, for instance my 10x7 prints are £12.95. Remember, you have got to factor in your time and make it worth your while, this is how I've managed to pay for new kit, all funded through selling prints. These are not big events I attend but I try and speak to all the competitiors during the course of the day and hand out cards/flyers and once you have been to a few events people start to remember you. Above all, make sure your prints are good and have been well edited, it does make a difference to repeat sales, recommendations and word of mouth.
 
Hacker said:
You might want to look at increasing your pricing, if people like the photographs they will usually buy them as long as they are not over the top price wise, for instance my 10x7 prints are £12.95. Remember, you have got to factor in your time and make it worth your while, this is how I've managed to pay for new kit, all funded through selling prints. These are not big events I attend but I try and speak to all the competitiors during the course of the day and hand out cards/flyers and once you have been to a few events people start to remember you. Above all, make sure your prints are good and have been well edited, it does make a difference to repeat sales, recommendations and word of mouth.
Click to expand...

Thanks Hacker. Perhaps I'm being a bit of a nobber about the way I'm running things. When I set out I thought that most of my business would come through the website and I use photobox for printing because of the speed or their turn around. I've since found that I'm selling the same amount of photos (still not much) if not more (when I drag the wife along) by getting some printed off using foto.com (much cheaper but slower) in advance and just hoping that people like the pics I've chosen. I never though I'd make a mint out of it, I just wanted people to like my stuff and buy the odd print here and there but the monster has grown as the saying goes. My prices are about the same as what other photographers were charging at motorosport events around here although it seems a lot are printing from home and harly any of them had internet ordering, you had to print off a form, fill it in and post it off. I set my prices in line with what I could find because I'm very much still an amatuer and was scared of people thinking they'd paid too much for my work and becuase it seems at the motorsport events I've been to people spend most of their spare cash on their sport so didn't think they'd be willing to pay too much for photos. Perhaps I'm somewhat nieve (sp) about it all.

Out of interest how many competitors do you normally get at the events you cover?
 
I've probably had the same troubles as fingerz with hosts in the past, I've been using JaguarPC (U.S. based) for 4 or 5 years now and have never had cause to complain. The current package is upgraded slightly from the one I have, 6gb space, 180gb bandwidth (6gb per day) from about £65 per year.

http://www.jaguarpc.com/services/hosting/shared.php
 
Thanks Steep.

I know what I said about price and apart from being a tight wad I don't really need all the bells and whistles some of the packages include. Since I started the site I've only had about 1200 hits and I've no idea what percentage of those are spiders or robots or whatever they're called so bandwidth isn't really an issue I don't think unless my understanding of it is wrong and I guess seeing as I don't even know what PHP, SQL, QWERT, CND and all those other things stand for then I don't really need them. Just somewhere simple to host my simple site.
 
I use a flickr pro account (£13 ish for the year) for my online sharing of photos (basically all my shots and shoots go in there if I'm showing them to friends family and forums).

I will be using my personal website/domain to publicise the best of the best, IE Portfolio shots, so these will only be a handful.

For that, it's hosted with www.catalyst2.com with whom these very forums used to be hosted.
The package I have on there is £14.09 for the year, and includes about 250meg of space and 1GB transfer per month, which is way more than enough.

The thing is, if you're hosting alot of things like I do with my flickr, expect to use alot of bandwidth.

In my experience, the old adage of you get what you pay for always rings true.
To that end, I've always steered clear of the uber cheap american hosting packages, theyve always been unreliable for me in the past.
 
i use topducks.com
a very small host based in america, its run by one bloke who is on my msn list should i have any problems with anything i think it costs me about $40 a year and i get 200mb of space and pretty much any addons i should need, if it isnt supported at the moment he can usually get it sorted for me :)
 
Although I haven't had chance to update my site for a while, I use streamline.net and have had a great service, I'm on their unlimited everything package, £67.99 for 2 years including domian name.
If you look at their site it explains everything including details etc..3 months free trial too. HTH:thumbs:

Its also got web wizards for building your site via free templates and stuff.
 
I use a www.darkenhosting.com Advanced package, 12gb space, 20gb/month bandwidth, a nice suite of preinstalled Apps, php, Sql, a free .com Domain name... all for £15/year.

Ive had 1 day downtime in the last 2.5 years with them.
 
And the magic forum fairy waves his wand, and cleans the thread....(Or rather the cleaner limped in, caked in make up, fag hangin out of her mouth, at 6 in the morning, and she got to work with her margiolds on)
 
I would stay away from streamline.net. Their support is worse than useless. I used to have about 15 sites hosted with them, but they decided one day that I have a "rogue process" from one of my php installations (which I could never get any evidence of from them and was never able to recreate the issue on any of my kit). They blocked 3 of my sites (luckily they were my own sites and not and of my clients sites) without any warning claiming their misuse clause.

I have one site left with them and that will be moving once this year is up. All my stuff now is with hostgator.com in the US. Can't praise hostgator enough, sorted any problem I've had in a few hours.
 
I use a PC converted to a server running Windows 2000 on a wireless card in the loft. Although BT give me a pain as I have DHCP address, it's a bit slow with large images but I do get as much disk space as I want!

Carl.
 
I use Register 1.
VDS Pro - 2GB Disk Storage, 100GB Monthly bandwidth, your own IP Address and only for £66 a year (if you pay for 3 years in advance).

It's always fast, very reliable, support is quick and only an instant message away ;)
 
I can also recommend Register1 if the packagegs suit you :)

These very forums are hosted with them.
 
I use www.tlcwe.com and I have never had a problem. I have the basic package 2 sites and a slideshow proofing section and loads more on my site and don't anticipate ever needing more space or bandwidth.
 
Thanks for everyones help with this matter. It eventually occurred to me that my web address was registered with 1and1 and so I thought the easiest thing was to get web space from them too. The prices were reasonable for what I needed and I thought it would be childsplay to set up seeing as I had the domain registered with them. I was wrong, it might have been childsplay but it wasn't exactly kev's play. It might noy have been any easier going elsewhere but I thought it would have been easier keeping everything in the same place. Anyway touch wood everything is now sorted and running okay. Thanks once again.

Kev
 
Hacker said:
... I try and speak to all the competitiors during the course of the day and hand out cards/flyers and once you have been to a few events people start to remember you. Above all, make sure your prints are good and have been well edited, it does make a difference to repeat sales, recommendations and word of mouth.
Click to expand...
this is very sound advice that I can agree 100% on, meeting people at regattas I attend does help, slip a card in their hand and voila - you're one step ahead of the rest as they've got a permanent reminder of your details. they are likely to forget one said to them...
 
p.s. I use QiQ, 10gb space, £19.99 a year. updated and customer service responses top notch.
not bad in my book
 
I use Smugmug.com too.

I've been with smugmug for two years now and never have any problem, I get the PRO account, and I love it. It's easy to use, no limit of uploads, you can upload hi-res pictures, you can make private galleries, password protected ones, right click protect and watermark your photos, fully customizable and it's all very easy.

This is my site: www.pablopuga.com <- you can personalize it if you have a domain name, or simple use the ppuga.smugmug.com that is the one they give you.

Give it a try, and if you want to stay with smugmug I can save you USD$5, just go here:

http://www.smugmug.com/?referrer=fqN2FHmZ0Spf6

And get a trial account. If you keep your account after the trial, you get the USD$5 of discount, and I get some discount too in my next year payment.

I recommend smugmug because it has really worked for me this two years, they have GREAT customer support, and a Forum for doubts, answers, hacks, customization, etc.

Regards,


ps. Sorry for the ad...
 
I use www.zen.co.uk

They aren't cheap, but I get an 8mb connection, 11 POP3 mailboxes, and 2 x 1GB webspace for £24.99/month. They also have a minimum one month contract, so if you try them out and don't like, you can simply move somewhere else.

EDIT: The hosting they provide with internet packages is very basic. If you need PHP/MySQL support then you can have it, but they charge a few pounds extra per month.
 
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