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Hello, and welcome to the Photo Seller’s Foundations series.
It’s simple, straightforward, and built to help you make more photo sales. Four articles, four tasks, and a handful of helpful tools will lay the groundwork for your best sales yet.
For the overachievers who’d like to get it all done at once, head over to our Photo Seller’s Foundations page for all the goodies.
For the academics who prefer a book to a blog series, check out our comprehensive Marketing for Photographers ebook, published in collaboration with leading photography educator Phlearn.
Lastly, for everyone who’s along with us for this ride, read on for part 1: Products, pricelists, and packages.
Pricelists are the key to selling photos on SmugMug. They let you manage all your print and download pricing in one place. Think of your pricelist like a template you can apply to any gallery or specific images you like: choose what products you’d like to sell, set your profit, and watch the sales roll in.
Portfolio and Pro subscribers can find the pricelists manager on the Selling Tools page in the navigation bar when logged into SmugMug. Click the “Manage” button under the Pricelists section and you’re in.
Note that SmugMug Portfolio accounts can only have one pricelist active at a time, while Pro accounts get the option to manage multiple active pricelists at once.
Prefer to learn by watching? Check out Episode 75 of SmugMug Live! for a start-to-finish walkthrough of pricelists, plus some helpful tips and tricks to get you started.
To prep for a sale, you’ll first want to check in on your pricelists and make sure your products and profits are set how you like them.
On the Manage Pricelists page, the white star indicates your default active pricelist. This pricelist is applied to all galleries where the shopping cart is turned ON, with the exception of Pro accounts running multiple pricelists. Click it, and you’ll be able to see more details, including your print lab, currency, preferences, and all the product categories you currently have for sale. Light-grey items can be purchased, dark-grey items can’t.
Around the holidays, our fantastic print partners introduce seasonal products like greeting cards and ornaments. If it’s been a while since you’ve updated your pricelists, there might also be new products we’ve added, like epic prints, that you’ll want to enable.
To add these items, click “edit list” in the bottom-right of the screen. On this page, you can enable greeting cards from the right-hand toolbar. By default, your base profit for greeting cards will be set at 30%, but you can change this manually.
Pro tip: Final pricing on items like greeting cards will change based on your customers’ choice of paper, design, and more. To check the final price of gift cards or other items for your customers, navigate to your SmugMug site in a logged-out or incognito tab in your browser, then add your desired items to your cart, where their final prices will be listed. If you check while you’re logged in, you’ll see *your* cost, not the cost-plus-markup your customers will see.
To add or remove other items from your pricelist, click “choose products” in the upper right of your Edit Pricelist screen. Here you’ll find a full list of possible products to choose from. Click each category to see specific sizes, and check/uncheck the boxes to select the products you’d like to sell this season.
If you’re not sure which products to choose, or want to know more about your various print options, take a walk in your customer’s shoes and browse through your (or another photographer’s) SmugMug site to get a better idea of what these various print products look like.
Want to see what your photos will look like as some of this season’s best sellers? Download these free PSDs of greeting cards, ornaments, and metal prints and drop your photos in to show your clients and customers.
Preparing for a sales push is a great time to revisit your profit margins and make sure everything is in order. There are three ways to set your profits on SmugMug.
Suggested pricing: The first (and easiest) way to set your profits is by selecting the “suggested pricing” option when you create a new pricelist. This will populate your pricelist with a data-driven variety of print products, plus markups for each one that will net you a fair sum no matter what you sell.
Default base profit: You can also customize a default base profit in the right-hand toolbar of the Edit Pricelist page. This will apply the same percentage profit to every item you sell — but be aware that a several-hundred-percent markup on paper prints that seems reasonable can produce a shocking price tag on larger, more expensive items. Be sure to review the price and profit for your products before applying and saving your pricelist.
Individually: Setting your profits individually gives you complete control over each and every product you offer. To set your profits individually, select your product category and item in the Edit Pricelist page, then enter your desired profit amount (e.g., $1 per small print) or your desired final price (e.g., $3 per small print). Whichever you choose, the other will be automatically calculated based on your preferences.
For SmugMug Pro subscribers, packages are an easy way to encourage bulk purchases, often at a discount.
From your Selling Tools page, click “Manage” under the Packages section to get started. If you have existing packages, click the one you’d like to edit. Otherwise, click “New Package” and you’ll be whisked to the package-creation page.
Here you can add items to your package, adjust options like color correction and single- or multiple-image packages (think school photos vs. wedding photos), and, of course, set your desired profit. We suggest choosing your print lab to match the print lab on your default active pricelist.
Pro tip: The most successful packages encourage customers to buy more photos for a sweet discount, so be sure to price your packages slightly lower than the cost of the packaged items sold individually.
At this time, packages are limited to physical products only, but you can use coupons to create digital-download “packages” with a few simple tricks. More on that tomorrow, when we dive into Photo Seller’s Foundations Part 2: Promotions, coupons, and discounts.
Do you have a few photos that outsell the rest? Or maybe you’re particularly proud of your latest photoshoot and would like to see it in the spotlight? Now is a great time to make a new gallery in your photo site. This will come in handy later on, so check out our step-by-step guide here: Create a gallery.
(Not sure about your sales numbers? We’ll cover downloading these details in part 3, but you can get a head start at our Help Center.)
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Still perplexed about pricelists and products? Reach out to one of our sales specialists for help.
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As a SmugMug Pro subscriber, you have access to some game-changing features that help you run your business. One valuable feature we’d like to highlight today can revolutionize your client photography sessions: client downloads. This feature is designed to simplify and enhance the photo download experience for both you and your clients. If you haven't explored it yet, we’ll walk you through it.
Client downloads are a feature that allow you to offer a specific number of photo downloads to your clients as part of your photography packages. This means you can provide your clients with a convenient and efficient way to select and receive their favorite photos, all within the limits of the package they've chosen.
1. Streamlined selection process: With client downloads, your clients can easily choose their preferred photos from the session, saving both you and them valuable time. No more sifting through hundreds of photos—they can focus on their favorites.
2. Customized experience: It enhances the client experience by giving them control over which photos they want to download. Clients appreciate this level of customization, making them happier with your service.
3. Clear communication: Offering a set number of downloads helps set clear expectations from the start. Clients know exactly what they're getting, reducing misunderstandings and potential disputes. Also, No longer will you have to send them galleries with downloads disabled, communicate back and forth about the images they want to choose, and then send them only those photos.
4. Value addition: Including a specific number of downloads in your packages adds perceived value to your services. Clients see it as an extra benefit, which can influence their decision to choose your photography services over competitors.
5. Efficiency: For you, it simplifies the delivery process. You don't have to manually send each selected photo; clients can download them directly from their account.
Picture this—You photograph family portrait sessions. Typically, you book a session for a flat fee. This session fee not only includes the portrait session, but also includes the ability for customers to download 20 of their favorite photos after you edit and deliver them. On SmugMug, here’s how client downloads help:
1. Set the limit: Decide how many photos you want to allow this particular client to download. In this case, 20.
2. Inform your clients: Generate a dedicated one-time link for your client from your SmugMug gallery and send it to them.
3. Client selection: Your clients follow the link to your gallery and choose their favorite photos up to the agreed-upon limit of 20.
4. Effortless delivery: Once they've made their selections, they can immediately download their chosen photos (and only their chosen photos), simplifying the delivery process for you.
Don't miss out on the opportunity to improve your client experience and add value to your photography services. Client downloads are a feature that can make your client delivery workflow easier than ever.
To get started with client downloads and see the impact it can have on your photography business, simply log in to your account and explore this feature today. Watch this quick video to see it in action.
Available only for SmugMug Pro subscribers. Not on the Pro plan? Learn more about how the Pro plan can help you elevate your photography business.
Offering coupons is a powerful strategy that can provide numerous benefits for you and your clients. SmugMug makes offering coupons a snap, so let’s learn more about how this feature can benefit your business.
Coupons can create a sense of urgency and excitement around purchasing. When customers know they have a limited time to use a discount, they are more likely to make a decision quickly. This can lead to increased sales as clients are motivated to take action before the coupon expires.
Coupons are not only attractive to existing clients, but they also entice new customers to make their first purchase. People often try out products or services they've been curious about if there's a discount involved. This can help you expand your customer base.
Coupons are a fantastic way to show appreciation to loyal customers. By offering exclusive discounts to repeat clients, you can strengthen your relationship with these customers and encourage them to return for more business in the future.
When clients receive discounts, they are more likely to feel a connection to you. This sense of goodwill can lead to increased customer loyalty as clients remember the positive experience and are more likely to return for future photography needs.
You can utilize coupons to align with specific seasons, holidays, or events. For instance, a discount offered for holiday family photos or back-to-school portraits can drive targeted sales during those periods.
SmugMug coupons offer various types of discounts like "percent off," "amount off," or "free shipping." This allows you to tailor your offers to what resonates best with your audience.
Promoting coupons through various channels—social media, email newsletters, or your website—can generate buzz and engagement. This not only leads to immediate sales but also increases the visibility of the your brand.
Through the use of coupons, you can gather valuable data on customer behavior. You can analyze which coupons were most effective, which customer segments responded best, and adjust your marketing strategies accordingly.
In a competitive photography market, offering coupons can set you apart from your competitors. Clients are more likely to choose a photographer who provides additional value through discounts.
After a successful purchase using a coupon, clients are more likely to return for future photography needs, even without a discount. This can establish a long-term relationship between you and your clients.
SmugMug coupons are a powerful tool that can help you boost sales, attract and retain customers, and strengthen your brand's presence. By using coupons effectively, you can create a win–win situation for both yourself and your clients. Haven’t tried coupons on SmugMug? Learn more about this feature today!
Available only for SmugMug Pro subscribers. Not on the Pro plan? Learn more about how the Pro plan can help you elevate your photography business.
The SmugMug Pro plan offers an "Assistant" feature which can be a game-changer for busy photographers. Let’s learn more about this feature and the value it provides.
By using the "Assistant" feature, you can delegate time-consuming tasks like uploading and organizing photos to your trusted associates. This means less time spent on administrative duties and more time focused on what you do best—capturing stunning images.
Utilizing an “Assistant” password enables you to work seamlessly with your assistants, ensuring a smooth workflow and organized photo management. This can lead to enhanced productivity and better outcomes for their photography projects.
Delegating tasks to your assistant does not mean relinquishing control or sharing sensitive account information. You define a separate password for your assistant to use. When logged in, assistants will only have access to important workflow features (like uploading, organizing, keywording, etc). They will not be able to take any destructive actions like deleting content or changing prices on your photos.
The "Assistant" feature can directly contribute to the growth of your photography business. By delegating tasks, you can take on more clients and projects, expand your portfolio, and increase your overall business capacity.
Utilizing an assistant gives you the potential for a better work–life balance. With the help of an assistant, you can free up more of your personal time, reducing burnout and stress.
Assistants often have specific strengths. For example, if an assistant has expertise in photo editing or culling, they can handle those aspects while you focus on shooting.
By streamlining your workflow with an assistant, you might discover hidden opportunities for innovation and growth within your business. Freed from routine tasks, you can explore new creative avenues or expand into areas you previously didn't have time for.
The "Assistant" feature is designed to be user-friendly and intuitive. Your assistants have access to the key parts of your same SmugMug account and can quickly learn how to navigate the system and contribute effectively to your workflow.
The "Assistant" feature on SmugMug isn't just a time-saver; it's a strategic tool that empowers you to leverage your strengths, grow your businesses, and achieve a healthier work-life balance. By utilizing this feature, you can shift your focus from administrative tasks to your true passion – capturing breathtaking moments through your lens. Learn more about this feature today!
Available only for SmugMug Pro subscribers. Not on the Pro plan? Learn more about how the Pro plan can help you elevate your photography business.
Have you ever wondered what else you could be doing to get more sales for your landscape photography? Our friend Varina Patel has offered us great info about how to mix business and photography when you’re out and about. Here's what she says about keeping the customer at the forefront of your mind the next time you're out shooting.
You never know what a buyer will want—and each buyer is different. But, over the past several years, we’ve learned a few things about maximizing the potential of our portfolios. Here are a few tips for making sales.
When we’re in the field, we usually find that a composition works best in either horizontal or vertical orientation. But in most cases, after capturing the most visually appealing image, we’ll work to find another shot that works with the camera turned 90 degrees. Why? Because sometimes the buyer needs an image that works in a particular orientation. Are they looking for a collection of calendar images? They’ll probably need horizontal images. Photos for a magazine? They’ll need a vertical shot to grace the cover
Since you never know who might want to purchase your images in the future, you can’t know which orientation will work best for their needs. Shoot in both orientations, and you’ll be ready no matter what they ask for.
Not too long ago, Jay sold a shot of Cedar Falls (titled, The Looking Glass) as part of a collection of fine-art images. He has many shots of waterfalls, and it wasn’t one of his favorites. The image lacks the vibrant colors or grand vistas you typically find in Jay’s more popular landscape photographs. When the client asked about waterfalls, his first instinct was to send them samples of the most popular waterfall images in his portfolio. One of the first shots he sent was Arizona Dreaming, this brilliantly colorful “icon shot” from Havasu Falls in Arizona.
But the client passed on all those brilliant-color and famous locations. Instead, she chose the quieter image…one he’d never sold before. He was curious about her choice, and he asked her about it. The answer was simple: she wanted images of local places, no matter how ordinary they looked in comparison with those famous, iconic locations.
When you approach a potential buyer, make sure you have plenty of local images. Colorful photographs capture the eye of the viewer, but familiar places capture their hearts.
When you present your images for sale, consider using gallery features that allow you to group your images into categories based upon similarities. For example, I have a gallery that’s dedicated only to black-and-white images and another that’s just for mountains. You can set up a gallery for images with a dominant blue-color theme or for photographs from a specific location. Your options are wide open.
SmugMug’s smart galleries feature lets you use keywords to create collections so potential buyers view images with shared characteristics. When a buyer wants more than one image, they often have a theme in mind. One buyer asked me for 30 detail shots she could sell as a wallpaper collection. Another wanted several waterfall photographs for decorating a newly opened hospital. In Cleveland, a buyer wanted images of local parks and iconic locations for the walls in an office building.
As you build your portfolio, keep an eye out for images that work well together, and be sure to present them as potential groupings.
Would you be surprised if I told you that giclée canvas prints are some of our biggest sellers? There’s just nothing like a really BIG print that makes a statement or ties a room together. In most cases, I don’t get to see a print after it’s hung, so it was a real treat to be able to see this one in its place of honor over the fireplace. This canvas print is hanging in a beautifully decorated home near Atlanta, Ga.. The colors in the room were actually chosen to match the print—the entire room is coordinated to match the colors in the photograph. I wish I could give you a tour of the whole house, which is a work of art itself.
Canvas prints are more expensive—especially really big ones—but most people hang them without a frame since they stand alone so well. They avoid the expense of matting and framing, making the price much easier to swallow.
Offer your prints for sale on canvas at the largest size available. A photo printed at that size packs a whole lot of punch!
The simple formula for profitability is revenue - expense = profit. But if success were that easy, why do most new small businesses fail? And what more should you be thinking about when starting your new photography business?
First off, where will your revenue come from? For photographers this is typically from one or both of two sources:
And secondly, where will your profit come from? There are many pricing models available to photographers, but these are two of the most popular:
Whether you decide to use a cost-plus pricing model or a strategic pricing model based on the value of your service, you need to have a good understanding of your actual costs of doing business. This is more than an hourly rate or the cost of the products you’ll provide.
Consider the following:
Hot tip: The National Press Photographers Association has a handy cost calculator that might help you figure out your cost of doing business.
How you value your work is more than material cost and time spent, it’s about the time, experience, and artistry it takes to capture the images uniquely as you and only you can. If customers could take the photos themselves, they wouldn't be hiring you.
Every business owner will battle pricing pressure at some point. It can come from price wars with a competitor or a persistent customer who won't buy anything without a discount. That being said, starting low is bad for business.
Low prices set low expectations from your clients. If you’re a cheap photographer, clients might immediately question your reliability or the quality of your work.
Being “cheap” also means you can’t afford to invest in your business or use more effective marketing strategies like coupons and special sales. These tools are invaluable for creating urgency and closing sales. Also, placing a fair (higher) monetary value on your work will inspire confidence in yourself and your clients.
"Moms and young kids out of college are opening up shop down the street. The new freelancer charging $50 per session has taken some of my clientele," Susan Sidoriak of Silverbox Creative Studio said. “Yet I have raised my prices throughout the recession, and the economy hasn’t really hit my business." Sidoriak got a bit of pushback when she raised her prices on 4×6 and 5×7 holiday photos last fall, but not one customer jumped ship.
SmugMug's pricing tool allows you to create different pricelists for different products and event types: weddings versus senior photos, limited-edition prints versus stock photos, etc. You can then apply each pricelist to galleries or individual photos.
Every new SmugMug Pro should set up pricing. You’ll have some important decisions to make:
Offer clients discounts with a built-in coupon tool to sweeten the deal. Who doesn’t love a sale? Incentivize your customers to make their purchase quickly by setting expiration dates on your coupons.
“Print credits are vital to my business model,” said Meghan MacAskill of Wild Bloom Studio. “[I noticed] that many clients weren’t actually pulling the trigger and getting prints. I decided to model photo sessions differently and include a print credit in every package to guide clients into purchasing prints. It has been very successful, and SmugMug's coupon feature is vital for it to work without me filling those orders myself.”
Packages are also a popular tool for school and sport photographers. With packages, you can bundle a set of prints together for a single price, creating a value incentive for your customer...and a simpler buying experience.
Printmarks allow you to “sign” prints and photo downloads. They can be used as an artist's signature, to add value to a print product, or as advertising, which then allows you to offer the product at a reduced price compared to a non-printmarked version.
Pick the strategy—or mix and match several—that makes the most sense for your business!
This tip is brought to you by cabbey, landscape and fine-art photographer, and one of SmugMug's backend engineers. He's usually up to his elbows in the code that sends your orders to the labs and your profits to the bank, but now he's sharing some tips for photographers who want to be sure they’re getting the best possible prints.
Let's say you take a picture of your son and the camera does everything perfectly in terms of white balance and exposure. You made sure the image was properly exposed, something akin to the image on the left below.
Next, you downloaded that image and loaded it onto your computer. But your computer's monitor isn’t calibrated, so your photo suddenly looks too red and too bright, like the middle image below.
To correct this, you fixed it in Photoshop until it looked like the original image. When you were done, you uploaded it to SmugMug and ordered a print, then received something that looks dark and weirdly tinted green:
They didn't! The problem is that monitors are generally made for office tasks, not photography. Manufacturers give you the brightest display possible with the punchiest red they can produce.
As a result, any time you process your photos on an uncalibrated display, you're making your image considerably darker and turning down the red cast, skewing everything toward cyan. The third image above is what your finished photo actually looks like, and the lab faithfully printed what you sent them.
By calibrating your monitor, you'll get better prints and happier customers without having to fall back on SmugMug's 100% print guarantee. The top three correctable problems that land on our help desk are
We have a great help page about return rates that shows what gets returned and why. The top six reasons are all solvable by using a properly color-managed workflow.
Exactly how you do it depends on what gear you buy. There are a number of different choices, but the leaders of the pack are Datacolor's Spyder and X-Rite's lines.
In general, you'll need a colorimeter or spectrophotometer (fancy words, but they basically mean a special device you can put on your screen and plug in to a USB port) and a piece of software that usually comes bundled with it. The software will put your monitor through its paces while you have the meter on it, then it uses that information to build an output profile for your screen.
With that resulting profile, any software that cares about a properly color-managed workflow can properly display accurate colors on your screen. Since monitors' color accuracy varies over the lifetime of the display, it's important to update the profile periodically, at least every month or two. Most of the above programs will remind you when it's time to re-profile your display.
You can also get a calibration print with SmugMug. With that in hand, you can bring the calibration image up in your editor of choice and see how much closer a calibrated workflow makes it look on your monitor. The closer it is, the closer your images will be when you're editing them.
Portfolio and Pro account holders can always print through Bay Photo, WHCC, or Loxley Colour, whose color-correction services are always done by hand. It costs a little more, but it can save you time at your desk, or headaches if you don't feel like fiddling with your computer.
You can find this option when editing your pricelists.
Most operating systems have an "eyeball" calibration you can do that will at least get you started. They aren't as accurate, and they depend on your eyes making decisions, so be aware that this may not work for everyone.
On a Mac, use Spotlight to launch Display Calibrator Assistant. Once it opens, just follow the steps.
On Windows, search in the control panel for "display calibration" and, again, follow the steps.
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