Congrats to Kathleen D., the January winner of a $50 gift certificate to my online art gallery. She was selected at random from all of the fans of my Facebook page. More contests are coming, so become a fan today and you will automatically be entered to win.
My experience so far with shooting video and putting it online is 7 indoor skydiving videos I put on YouTube – 4 of my son, 2 of me, and one of an instructor. I haven’t been impressed with YouTube quality at all. And while I have learned to do a couple of things via online video, by and large it feels more like a novelty than anything else. I can honestly say I haven’t made any purchase decisions based on video I have seen online.
But that isn’t true for everyone apparently. In another excellent post at Photography for Real Estate, Larry Lohrman talks about Fred Light in Nashua, New Hampshire. He has built a successful business producing videos for real estate. The best part is, he is willing to share his secrets for success with the rest of us (for a nominal fee of course). This might sound like an infomercial, but I don’t get anything for it. I am just a believer. So much so, that I haven’t even received my copy yet (just ordered it this morning). But based on the sample videos I have seen on his site, I think my $20 was well spent. I still don’t have my real estate photo business going yet, but this is another element I plan to add. I have the equipment and software, I just need to find some time to get the ball rolling.
Trying to determine where to host an online gallery is a pretty big deal. There are a plethora of choices, from software to host your own on your own website, to full fledged service offerings that will host all your images, maybe do some marketing for them, and offer a shopping cart system. It seems that every day a new one crops up, and one or two fold. It’s pretty difficult to keep up with them. On top of that, they all have different pricing, which factors into decisions as well.
So, what is an up and coming photographer to do? I have sat back for as long as I could and watched how other people built their sites and learned from them regarding what they did and didn’t like about certain sites. And then I decided to wait until I had to make a decision. For normal hosting of my photos, along with the community features, I really like Flickr. But Flickr doesn’t offer any ecommerce capabilities, and that site isn’t really geared towards sales at all.
Then I stumbled across Imagekind (via Flickr). They have an entry level offering that is free, so I put some pictures on it to see what happened. I linked to it from this site (“Prints For Sale“). I have 16 images there, and they have garnered 96 views, 3 comments, and 0 sales. Certainly I was hoping something would sell, but so far, nada.
Then I did the Lakewood High School cheerleader shoot last weekend, and I needed substantially more capacity, along with some other features. I took this as an opportunity to try out another service – Zenfolio. They have a two week free trial offer that gives you all of the features of the top level account, but limits you to 1GB of storage. There are some pro’s and con’s to the service, but all in all I am happy with it. So much so, that I have subscribed to it for a year. I am not 100% sure how I am going to market my prints on this site, but it definitely made it easy for me to keep the cheerleader pictures private for each girl. Additionally, I was commissioned earlier this week (at the last minute) to do a corporate headshot. I was able to quickly setup a “gallery” for the headshot proofs to go into. After the shoot, I uploaded the pics, my watermark was automatically applied, and the company was able to choose which image they wanted to buy. The bonus? That commission covered the cost of the Zenfolio site for the year. Now, anything I make off of print sales from the cheerleaders will be profit. Not too bad a deal at all.
I am aware that Smugmug is the heavy hitter in this industry, but for some reason I didn’t like what I saw there. I certainly have some issues with the Zenfolio people, but I have taken it up with them and it sounds like they are working on things. I’ll continue on there for the duration of my subscription, but I will also keep an eye out on the competition. If someone clearly does it better, at a similar price point, it would make sense to move. But if Zenfolio proves they can meet my needs, I’ll stay on, and likely become a strong advocate (for whatever that is worth). I work in a customer service type of industry too, and I know what my standards are. Let’s see if Zenfolio can keep up.
BTW – I am probably giving up on Imagekind for now. I’ll still keep the WordPress plugin for Imagekind up and running. I don’t know for sure if anyone is using it, but I suspect some are. Let me know if you do.
Also, I am going to stop writing posts on Saturdays. 5 days a week of my random thoughts, experiences, rants, raves and reviews ought to be plenty for everyone. 
Why I Continue to be a Smugmug Pro User
I have now been a SmugMug Pro user since November. Prior to that, I used a competing site called Zenfolio (for one year). I fully intend to renew my Smugmug Pro site once it comes up for renewal. The key features they were lacking versus their competitors are now available (namely coupons and packages), but this is not the only reason I’ll still be here.
The one thing that continues to set SmugMug apart from the rest of the serious image hosting companies is their commitment to their customers. Sure, they are privately held with no debt load, so sometimes features are slower to appear than at a VC funded competitor. However, this creates an environment where they are only adding things that are essential to the Pro user, and they only do it if it really makes sense. No knee jerk reactions to odd requests, or doing things just because they can. The end result is an ongoing financially viable service that won’t disappear out of the blue someday (without warning no doubt). In fact, they also provide an easy to use and democratic method to submit feature requests.
The commitment to customers is carried over to customer support as well. They truly are fanatical about this. In fact, I think the only other company I have dealt with that is comparable is ExactTarget (an email service provider). SmugMug will respond to you extremely quickly via email for any support requests you might have. And they are actually pretty quick to respond on their message forums as well, although that is not the official channel (seriously, if you have an immediate support need, email, don’t go to the forum). The General Manager, Andy Williams, is generally the first person to respond to posts in the forum, and provides great insight for why items are or are not possible.
The last place that this commitment to customers is so evident is the creation of the SmugMug User Groups (SMUGs). These events are actually open to any photographer or videographer, but the conversations at times can be of direct benefit to SmugMug users (such as in the Denver meeting last December when feedback was solicited about the coupon and package systems). So many companies toss up a forum or a Facebook page and call it done. I love that SmugMug is sponsoring these in person gatherings. Paralleling my experiences with ExactTarget at Connections (I cannot sing their praises enough), a SMUG meeting is a great way to get feedback on your thoughts, as well as make your voice heard to the people who are really involved with this company. That in itself is priceless.
Customer service isn’t the only reason to stay with a company of course. The whole reason for having images hosted by a site like SmugMug is the ability to sell them. People who have purchased my prints have been quite pleased by the final product quality. Fulfillment by Bay Photo (one of two choices SmugMug Pro users have) has been flawless. When you couple this fact with the customer service commitment I see, that is the reason I do not need to look anywhere else – nor should you.
If you have been looking at similar services, or if you belong to one and have been thinking about moving, I would encourage you to take the SmugMug 14 day free trial. All features are active during the trial, so you will be able to get a real feel for how it will fit with your needs. You won’t be sorry you did.