Online Photo Hosting and Selling
Last week I signed up for the 2 week trial memberships on the Zenfolio and Smugmug websites. I have been looking for something a little more professional than my Flickr account to showcase my work. Also, being able to price and sell prints is something that is becoming a bit more interesting.
Both sites have the benefit of unlimited space to upload work, creation and management of galleries, and custom sizing and pricing for selling prints. The Premium Membership to Zenfolio will run you $100 a year (You can save $5 by using my referral code : DVM-6J8-PTA) and the Professional Membership costs $149 a year (You can save 30% by using the code JPG).
I decided to go with Zenfolio for my own use. The features, layout, and presentation of the site are a lot nicer, easier to use, and professional in appearance to me. Also, setting up private galleries is easy to do when wanting to share personal photos with friends or for showing proofs to a client.
I have created a link to my gallery on the main page here. When you click the “Buy Prints” button on the top right of the page, you will be linked to my Zenfolio page.
did you consider Exposure Manager. I use them, but I’m not plugging them. I haven’t revisited the options in a while and was curious if you ruled them out and why.
No, I did not. This is the first that I have heard of them. I did not do an exhaustive search for hosts. A lot of people on Flickr and Twitter have talked about Smugmug and Zenfolio. That is why I looked into those two.
Paul,
I am testing SmugMug and Zenfolio as well. Zenfolio has a better UI. The two things I don’t like is when you want to check out, it goes to all Zenfolio branding which I think is confusing. I want it to be completely branded by my website and SmugMug does that. Also, the home page is limited to three styles, all of which I do not like.
How are your sales? What are your customer’s reactions to the checkout process?
Tanya,
At this point I am using Zenfolio as more of a portfolio site than anything. On a few occasions I have set up some proof galleries for events that I have shot so that the client could choose which photographs they were interested in so tha tI could edit them.
I have not sold any photographs through Zenfolio to date so I cannot comment on customer reaction.
I have been making more of a push to sell matted prints on Etsy (http://paulgiunta.etsy.com) with some success.
Thank you for your comment.