Building Your Photography Site

 One of the big challenges you will face in your decision to become a professional photographer is building your business website. In order to better market yourself, you need to have one to showcase your work and have portfolios available for potential clients to view.

In this day and age, Social Media is king, it’s true, but without a proper website to go hand in hand with your Social Media efforts, you can be left out in the cold. When choosing your platform for hosting you photography site, you need to consider a few things.

1. Do they offer unlimited storage?
2. Do they offer unlimited bandwidth?
3. Do they have eCommerce capabilities?
4. Do they offer lab integration?
5. How much do they charge?
6. How do they stack up to the industry?

These 6 items are the main ones you should be concerned with when choosing your photography website platform for your new business. I am going to cover a few of them in this week’s post and the Pros and Cons.

SmugMug - SmugMug is without a doubt one of the big boys out there in the photography web hosting business. They have powerful servers and great uptime. They allow you unlimited storage and bandwidth, but only for the full one business accounts. They offer lab integration for selling prints without hassle and all the big labs are available. They offer price lists and you can make coupon codes for your clients. They also have the ability to create password protected or hidden galleries for your clients to view your work and they offer a wide selection of templates that you can customize. On the down side, SmugMug is not cheap at close to $400 per         year. The other big down side I saw as someone who used to use them is they also take a percentage of the money you make when you sell either prints or digital downloads.

Zenfolio - Zenfolio is similar to SmugMug, but to me their site looks a bit cheesy and needs a serious overhaul. They too offer pretty much all of the same features as SmugMug and like SmugMug, they cost close to $400 per year and take a percentage of the money you make when selling your work. Zenfolio offers an assortment of templates as well, but from what I have heard, they are harder to tweak and customize for non-web developers.

SquareSpace - SquareSpace is another of the heavy-weights when it comes to photography hosting, and they are extremely popular. They offer lots of customization that is easy to do and to my knowledge, unlimited bandwidth and storage as well. The downside I see to SquareSpace is they offer eCommerce, but it’s limited. I believe you can sell digital downloads easily, but they still do not offer lab integration and probably never will, and they cost as much as SmugMug and Zenfolio, both of which offer both digital and lab sales.

500px.com - 500px.com is a nice one as well, they offer unlimited uploads, storage and bandwidth if you are a paid member. Their plans are $25 and $75 per year, but they do take a good chunk of the profits to offset their cost. If you sell a Royalty-Free download, which is $250, set by them, you get $175 and they keep the other $75. The nice thing is, someone of their clients are major magazines and publishers, the downside of that is when you images sell, they will not tell you who bought them so you can see the final product.

WIX - WIX is a newer contender in this arena and they are free, but I am not sure if there is a catch as far as storage and bandwidth. I have a few friends that use them and like them, but they don’t offer any eCommerce at all, neither lab integration nor digital download sales. This one is a good option if you are short on funds and just need something to show clients to get started. Their templates are highly customizable and friends that I know that use them say they are easy to work with. Now WIX offers paid plans as well, and on the free ones, you have to put up with them running ads on your site.

This is just a small collection of photography site hosting providers, there is also FineArt America, and many others, but these 5 are some of the best known ones. When it comes to choosing your hosting provider you really need to do your research and compare them before pulling the trigger. I was using SmugMug for quite a while but didn’t like that they charge me monthly and take a portion of all of my sales, so I dropped them this week, as for me, I found a better option.

I personally already have a regular web hosting account with GoDaddy for my other personal sites and some non-profits I help out and I have moved my photography hosting to GoDaddy and built my new site using WordPress. WordPress is well known and been around for quite some time. I coupled that with a company that makes an awesome WordPress theme called Photocratic, that has eCommerce built in. Now, it’s not full blown yet, currently you can sell downloads or prints, but have to do the work yourself, but you don’t lose any of the money to them. Their theme is $59, one time purchase, on sale right now, down from $89. The theme is easy to install and customize and they offer awesome support as well. The plus side is they are rolling out the fully automated digital download eCommerce update next month and then following that up with FULL lab integration a couple months after that, so once both of those happen, I will be GOLDEN!

Now, I don’t recommend this option for everyone as WordPress and the theme system does require some coding abilities, but if you know someone well versed in WordPress, it might be the way to go. For me personally, I have been a developer for 35 years and am fluent in around 20 computer languages including HTML and PHP so the WordPress option was a no brainer for me.

Sorry this week’s post is so long, but this is both a large and important topic to cover. If you have any questions, please comment and I will do my best to answer them for you!

Comments/Questions

Consider/Re-Consider Your Product Delivery

If only being a photographer was as easy as people tend to think it is; we are glorified button-pushers or something of the like so it comes as no surprise that clients would rather receive their images on a disc thinking that this is the cheaper route, especially because it should be "inexpensive" for us photographers to put it all together, plus, "anyone can do it".  It's unfair for people to use that expression though because most of them will probably pay for dining, cleaning, and entertainment services that can also be done by "anyone".  The real deal though is getting what you pay for.   

No matter what kind of photographer you are you have probably had to consider the type of media to deliver to your client.  

I have read that the DVD-R is the better choice for delivering large files and large quantities of images especially because it has less compatibility complaints.  Many of us provide this product exclusively as an option to our clients because it's generally fast, easy, and they want to be able upload them to a device for social media and send them via email.  High-resolution digital files are not the answer for this situation/solution.  Also, with the rise in popularity in devices such as iPads, a disc is not the best option for delivering files; this is where USB flash drives are becoming a more popular method--it is also my preferred method.  Nonetheless, who's to say where technology will take us in 10 years, 50 years, even 100 years?  Discs and USB's will inevitably become obsolete as well as misplaced, broken, and damaged over time but a high quality print will last indefinitely.  

There is a stunning difference between what we see on a computer screen and what we see in a high quality professional print.  With the right steps and consideration taken during output and how it will be rendered, a photograph can impress your clients beyond technical proficiency.  They can actually hold and closely inspect the photo and have it in their immediate physical possession.  Oftentimes, those who only want a disc will have good intentions of printing off the photos at the lab of their choice but more than likely the images will end up on social media and sitting in a forgotten computer folder. 

 

This is why it is important to consider, or, re-consider your product delivery.  A disc, in my opinion, should be a separate product for low-resolution files that clients can use for sharing on the Web, high-resolution images on a disc or USB can be purchased a la carte, and print packages should be your biggest service product.  I would even suggest helping them choose the best printing options, help them put together and design an album or photo book, and even go so far as to help them get it framed as part of your service package price because, as a professional, you should still make the effort to ensure the quality of your work.

Recently I had an experience where someone wanted to hire me to take a few photographs and go get them printed off at Wal-mart for them since they wanted these in a rush.  I flat out told them that I would love to be their photographer but I will not voluntarily print any photos from anywhere that is not one of my trusted professional printing labs.  If they wanted a disc to take and print off themselves I would have been happy to do that.  Needless to say they went with a "cheaper" photographer and although this situation upset me a little, I can look back and be proud that I am not a "cheap" photographer.  I want my work to be cherish, relished, and displayed with pride, don't you?  There is a difference between a good photo and a great photo, strive to always be great.

So, does any of this change the way you will delivery your product?  What is your current method or what do you anticipate doing?  Do you need advice?  Leave me some feedback in the comments and thanks for reading today!  You can read the whole article here.

Works Cited

"Compact disc in a computer CD-ROM disc drive." Photograph. Encyclopedia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 25 Aug 2014. <http://quest.eb.com/#/search/132_1311364/1/132_1311364/cite>

"Couple signing mortgage paperwork." Photograph. Encyclopedia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 25 Aug 2014. <http://quest.eb.com/#/search/154_2880728/1/154_2880728/cite>

Fitzpatrick, Alethea Cheng. "Please Don’t Just Give Your Clients The CD or DVD!" tiffinbox. Tiffinbox, 9 Sept. 2010. Web. 25 Aug. 2014. <http://tiffinbox.org/please-dont-just-give-your-clients-the-cd-or-dvd/ >

"Girl taking picture of three girls." Photograph. Encyclopedia Britannica ImageQuest. Web. 25 Aug 2014. <http://quest.eb.com/#/search/154_2883658/1/154_2883658/cite>