website builder with job lot

Cardifftomo

Cardifftomo

Messages
30
Name
Craig
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi All, looking to make a website with all the things below. looking to make a website to sell my work and people to see.
1. easy set up
2. sell the photos
3. cheap year deals
4. domain name if possible (if not i will just get my own and link to the site)

think i have cover the main points. my mind has gone blank now lol.
 
I use zenfolio, which works for me and would appear to fit points 1,2 and possibly 3 depending how cheap cheap is - plus you can use your domain or theirs

Let me know if you need a discount code if you do decide to go with them

Another to look at is smugmug
 
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I've not tried Zenfolio, but I also think you should take a look at Photoshelter.
 
Ok thanks all for your help. Zenfolio wins hands down. Better start this free trial. Too the both who wanted to share codes for discount I'll use the first person who let me know.
Once again thanks all
 
photoshelter is so expensive

zenfolio is £100 per year, the other plans make no sense at all
smugmug is the worlds ugliest website and reminds me of angelfish sites from the late 90's

and selling prints through zenfolio/smugmug they take a commission (15%)

best thing would be to have your own site and sell via paypal- 100% profit and you can choose your own labs

i'm not convinced that the community aspect of zenfolio is enough to bring in sales, after all, photographers are the only people using zenfolio- and photographers are notorious for not buying other photographers work
 
I know you said easy to set up,but just in case you are interested in building your own site. I built this using SiteSpiner(there is a free trail available) it is a lot easier to use than most other website building applications.
UK cheapest can supply domain name and will do you hosting for about £25 per year.Paypal buttons are provided by paypal copy and pate.You can have the photos any size you like and have what you want on the site. My website is here. http://iwantpics.co.uk/index.html. Good luck what ever you do.:cool:
 
kestral said:
I know you said easy to set up,but just in case you are interested in building your own site. I built this using SiteSpiner(there is a free trail available) it is a lot easier to use than most other website building applications.
UK cheapest can supply domain name and will do you hosting for about £25 per year.Paypal buttons are provided by paypal copy and pate.You can have the photos any size you like and have what you want on the site. My website is here. http://iwantpics.co.uk/index.html. Good luck what ever you do.:cool:
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If you enjoy a challenge and want your site to look amateurish then sure, go for it. At least with zenfolio etc the templates have been made by professional designers, but templates never fully cater to a clients needs so a service I offer is custom CSS/HTML templates for people using content management systems like zenfolio. There's no point building from scratch as there's so much coding that has to be done just to make a site functional
 
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mrjames said:
If you enjoy a challenge and want your site to look amateurish then sure, go for it. At least with zenfolio etc the templates have been made by professional designers, but templates never fully cater to a clients needs so a service I offer is custom CSS/HTML templates for people using content management systems like zenfolio. There's no point building from scratch as there's so much coding that has to be done just to make a site functional

For £150 I can build you a custom site with integrated paypal/social media sharing- on a cms (not through zenfolio but a better host IMO) with lifetime free hosting (not unlimited but 6gb should be enough for anyone!)

And what could be easier than getting someone else to do all the set up! Pay £100 a year for a zenfolio page that 1,000,000 other photographers have or pay £150 for a one off lifetime payment and a completely custom site, it makes perfect sense
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...but you aren't advertising your services, are you? Because that would be very naughty.

Btw, Photoshelter isn't particularly expensive, if you use it for what it was designed for-editorial photography.

Also 6Gb is not a particularly large amount of storage if you need to upload full res files or are doing event work.

Generalisations are dangerous.
 
mrjames said:
For £150 I can build you a custom site with integrated paypal/social media sharing- on a cms (not through zenfolio but a better host IMO) with lifetime free hosting (not unlimited but 6gb should be enough for anyone!)
Click to expand...

6Gb isn't that much if you're uploading full resolution files for customers to order prints from, I've got 210 photos online and it comes to 1.92Gb so far, and I'm uploading one-offs, not a whole wedding / event etc.
 
mrjames said:
and selling prints through zenfolio/smugmug they take a commission (15%)

best thing would be to have your own site and sell via paypal- 100% profit and you can choose your own labs
Click to expand...
That's exactly what I do on Zenfolio. THere is no commission on the top package and I self fulfil orders.

mrjames said:
i'm not convinced that the community aspect of zenfolio is enough to bring in sales, after all, photographers are the only people using zenfolio- and photographers are notorious for not buying other photographers work
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?? Most people who visit my Zenfolio site are clients - and even though I've not really been pushing sales, its easily paid for itself.
 
ShoeQueen said:
That's exactly what I do on Zenfolio. THere is no commission on the top package and I self fulfil orders.

?? Most people who visit my Zenfolio site are clients - and even though I've not really been pushing sales, its easily paid for itself.
Click to expand...

also I thought the whole advantage of zenfolio was that they do your orders, but skim 15%? The price of convenience. By doing it yourself and paying £100 a year for the privileged if it's paid for it'self but not made any extra money then that still doesn't really make much business sense, and if your site cost £0 per year then that's a minimum of £100 extra in your pocket each year

I still think most zenfolio sites look pretty rubbish, but I was trained as a graphic designer so I care about this stuff when probably no one else does.

And do you drive those clients to your site? Say my mum wants a photo for her wall, I can't imagine she'd stumble across your site randomly, maybe through word of mouth referrals, but how are you getting your traffic?



@demilion
6gb hosting is fine for those who fulfil their own orders, as the full rez images don't even need to be stored on the server, and 6gb is still a lot of full rez tiffs (and even more full rez jpeg's) if you do want them on there

and i'm not advertising my services- I haven't posted a link have I? I'm just showing that there are other options, options that people might have otherwise ignored seeing as being are so mad into zenfolio here and probably would actually really like a more custom site that worked how they wanted it to and looked better, but think it will cost £1000's for something like that.
 
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mrjames said:
And do you drive those clients to your site? Say my mum wants a photo for her wall, I can't imagine she'd stumble across your site randomly, maybe through word of mouth referrals, but how are you getting your traffic?
Click to expand...
I don't sell images for your mum's wall - I do people photography. If I do a shoot with a client I tell them where the images are (and password protect their set). Or if I'm at an event I have cards to give people, and I put some images on FB, link them to the event organisers page, tag people and that drives traffic to my site and leads to more bookings etc.

I went with Zenfolio for ease of use. I'm sure there are cheaper options for someone with some knowledge and understanding of how these things work, but I wanted something easy to set up and quick to upload and manage content. with password protected galleries, blog, shopping cart etc all in the one package. I'm not saying its the only option but it works for me.
 
mrjames said:
also I thought the whole advantage of zenfolio was that they do your orders, but skim 15%? The price of convenience. By doing it yourself and paying £100 a year for the privileged if it's paid for it'self but not made any extra money then that still doesn't really make much business sense, and if your site cost £0 per year then that's a minimum of £100 extra in your pocket each year

I still think most zenfolio sites look pretty rubbish, but I was trained as a graphic designer so I care about this stuff when probably no one else does.

And do you drive those clients to your site? Say my mum wants a photo for her wall, I can't imagine she'd stumble across your site randomly, maybe through word of mouth referrals, but how are you getting your traffic?

@demilion
6gb hosting is fine for those who fulfil their own orders, as the full rez images don't even need to be stored on the server, and 6gb is still a lot of full rez tiffs (and even more full rez jpeg's) if you do want them on there

and i'm not advertising my services- I haven't posted a link have I? I'm just showing that there are other options, options that people might have otherwise ignored seeing as being are so mad into zenfolio here and probably would actually really like a more custom site that worked how they wanted it to and looked better, but think it will cost £1000's for something like that.
Click to expand...

No you're right- you aren't advertising any more, now that your post has been edited. The link is in your sig block btw.

6Gb is nothing. How do you offer digital downloads if you don't upload the full size/high res file?

I'm guessing that at £150 you're offering some form of WP skin or similar; otherwise what you offer wouldn't be economically viable. Sites like Zen and PS offer high level SEO, a commercial back end and continual web development.

If someone wants to self host their best bet would be to look at Photocart or One of it's alternatives.

Btw Zenfolio is 5% max for self fulfilment.
 
ShoeQueen said:
I don't sell images for your mum's wall - I do people photography. If I do a shoot with a client I tell them where the images are (and password protect their set). Or if I'm at an event I have cards to give people, and I put some images on FB, link them to the event organisers page, tag people and that drives traffic to my site and leads to more bookings etc.
Click to expand...

so yeah, I mean that the people you are directing to your site are going there due to you sending them there directly, and they go there with intent- that's a very different market to trying to sell a product or service to someone you've never met or spoke to who just happened to find your site when searching for photos. But hey I get the advantage of zenfolio, I'm not trying to convince you, I was really aiming for the OP



DemiLion said:
No you're right- you aren't advertising any more, now that your post has been edited. The link is in your sig block btw.

6Gb is nothing. How do you offer digital downloads if you don't upload the full size/high res file?

I'm guessing that at £150 you're offering some form of WP skin or similar; otherwise what you offer wouldn't be economically viable. Sites like Zen and PS offer high level SEO, a commercial back end and continual web development.

If someone wants to self host their best bet would be to look at Photocart or One of it's alternatives.

Btw Zenfolio is 5% max for self fulfilment.
Click to expand...

hey everyone has a link to their website in their sig, it just so happens that my website contains photos and web design and am commenting on this post to give helpful information, maybe that counts as advertisement by proxy...

the majority of the clients I do work for are artists/designers/photographers- people who really care about how their site looks, and maybe even have an idea of how they want their site to look, but don't know the code skills to make it happen, and then also want a wordpress/tumblr blog and a portfolio/website and for them to all look consistent, like they're cut from the same cloth- anyone can find a nice wordpress template, and a nice tumblr template but what people pay me for is a) to translate their vision across different platforms and b) so they can get on with designing/photographing/painting instead of spending time learning CSS- it's a convenience thing I guess.
The clients I work with are not selling 100's of photos from events or portrait sessions, they are typically selling a0 handmade screenprints for £200/£300, and the OP does not seem like someone who is wanting to sell the former, he seems more like to want to sell the latter- landscapes, macro's, street photography, that sort of thing.
The clients I work with (the one's who care about graphic design) are selling to customers who also care about graphic design, so the quality of interface that the customer buys their prints from is as important as the quality of the work itself.

and wordpress with the yoast plugin is one of the best platforms for SEO, but I don't always use wordpress as it's not always appropriate but there are ways (and by ways I mean white hat ways!) to get good SEO strategies into anything

anyway this is getting off topic, OP do what you feel is best for you :)
 
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