A place for you to learn, get inspired, and keep up to date with all things SmugMug and photography
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.)
----------
Still perplexed about pricelists and products? Reach out to one of our sales specialists for help.
.jpg)
These days, everyone has a website. But how do you know what your friends, family, and fans really think when they see it? And if you're a pro making money from your craft, are you sure your site is doing everything it can to get you clients and seal the deal? After browsing tons of sites and hearing the advice from our team of Support Heroes, we've compiled a list of tips to help you get the best, most effective, and appealing website you possibly can.
Omitting or hiding ways for people to reach you is a grave mistake, one you may not even know you're making. If someone finds your site and wants to talk with you, how would they do it? Yes, putting your email address or phone number out in public can be risky. But there are other ways to let your potential clients and fans reach out to you without throwing the door open to everyone who walks by.
Also, it may be obvious to you that your town of Springfield is in New Jersey, but potential Googlers in Massachusetts, Illinois, Oregon, and Missouri may not be so sympathetic. Be specific about the areas you serve so you'll score top search results by clients looking to hire locals like you.
To do: Include a way to contact you either at the top, bottom, or in the navigation bar of your website. Add your contact email address in your SmugMug profile. Take it one step further and connect your SmugMug site’s contact form to your navigation menu by choosing the pre-built contact link in the menu bar builder.
If you talk about your location on your homepage or About page, be specific about the state or country where you're willing to work. You can also add those terms and keywords in your Account Settings > Discovery > Search section so Google and other search engines pick you up ASAP.
The great thing is everyone has a website these days. But the downside is...everyone has a website these days. How will you stand out? The answer is: Be yourself! You have a personality, and it's completely unique. Use your own language, unique selfies, or whatever it takes to show the world that you're more than another link on the web. Talk about what drives you and why you're passionate about your work. Give visitors a taste of what it’s like to meet you in your studio or at your next gallery show.
To do: It's difficult to talk about yourself, and it's even harder to figure out what strangers want to hear, but don't be afraid to browse through some of your favorite websites and see what sticks in your mind about their bios—the good and the bad.
Nothing looks worse than a super-slow website with broken images and dead links. Even if you aren't looking to make money through your website, you still want to look as polished as any pro. So do a regular audit of your site, click your links, and update them regularly to make sure they work every time. When you're logged out of your site and viewing it like a guest, what do you see?
To do: On SmugMug, we already give you warp-speed page loads and unlimited traffic and sharing. So you never have to worry about slow load times. Our Share button will generate handy links for all your photos, so you can be sure your images look beautiful every time.
Your gorgeous photos may speak for themselves, but if your site's a mess the message will get lost. When you’re expecting house guests you tidy up, so extend the same courtesy to your online space. No one needs to see the photographic equivalent of your laundry pile.
To do: Curate a few examples of your best work and make them easy to find via a slideshow, featured content on your homepage, or a straightforward link in your navigation bar. Keep this gallery updated with new photos as you take them. Choose images that really show what you love to do and show the full breadth of your abilities. It can be difficult, but you can use SmugMug’s Collect Photo feature to add a virtual copy to a best-of gallery, and easily remove the ones you don't think make the cut.
Love to archive? That's OK. Just keep the rest of your photos neatly organized, too, so leisurely browsers can find their way around.
Even if you aren’t a working professional, it's important to give your viewers a unified look and feel that translates to a cohesive experience. Simply using the same colors and font size from page to page can keep your fans feeling grounded and sure that you've got your stuff together. If you're a pro, having your company's name, logo, and a simple set of colors can be all you need to say, "Yeah, I’ve got this."
To do: SmugMug makes it easier than ever to give your site a unified brand. Our pre-built designs have all the details of color scheme, font, and layout baked right in. We've done the heavy lifting for you.
Personalize any of the designs by adding your own logo, changing up the colors by changing the theme, and optimizing the page layout to best reflect your brand. Pro account owners can add order branding, too.
The key to making great sales is to do the thinking for potential customers so they don't have to. The most basic way to do this is to be crystal clear about what your specialties are and which services you offer. Whether you shoot BMX, babies, or brides, making it obvious in your brand and portfolio is the best way to ensure the right customers are finding you.
A happy customer is a return customer. Your clients chose you over others because they knew you could meet their specific needs, but your job is much more than creating a few good photos: you need to deliver a quality experience from first contact to getting those prints into their hands.
All websites have some basic, common elements: a landing page, header, footer, content boxes, and a way to navigate from page to page. You can change all these elements using customization on your SmugMug Power, Portfolio, and Pro sites.
In addition to the above, you should include the following:
You can also spice your website up with
Make use of your built-in SmugMug profile. Add your name or business name, an image of yourself, and a background image to take full advantage. You want this info to be easy to find, either on your homepage or in an “About Me” page.
All SmugMug accounts also get a contact email address to fill in on their profile. That, in turn, creates a contact request form available from the contact link in the footer or in your navigation menu.
While galleries are the building blocks of your site, they can be categorized into higher-level folders up to seven levels deep. Keep your site organized to make things easier on your visitors. Then build a navigation menu to help them get around your site.
A navigation menu is a row of links at the top or side of every page, best used when you link to specific galleries, pages, or folders on your site. For extra assistance navigating your site, consider adding breadcrumbs. These additional links at the top of each gallery easily take your viewers back to a gallery’s category or to your homepage. Nothing's worse than a digital dead-end.
Limit choices and don’t overwhelm the viewer. Cull your shoot down to the best of the best. Limit the products that you sell as well—price only those that best suit your photos' and your clients' needs.
Then organize your photos to provide a great customer experience in a meaningful and easy-to-navigate way. Your viewer will have an easier time browsing their wedding photos if you take the time to organize them into galleries rather than showing them one gallery with all 1,200 photos.
SmugMug smart galleries can be a real timesaver. Create your galleries and define rules based on keywords, then upload all your photos into a single Unlisted gallery. The smart gallery settings will automatically pull in photos that match your rules based on your keywords.
Take this one step further by making use of events and favorites so customers can pick and choose their favorite photos. Favorites are put into a separate gallery that both you and your customer can see, providing a great way to discuss their choices.
Giving clients incentive to buy sooner than later can make all the difference. Try these tips:
Creating an easy and user-friendly site will encourage customers to linger on your site: clear, organized navigation, easy-to-find galleries, and a simple list of products they can buy are all incredibly helpful. Try these tips to keep your bounce rate down and your sale rate up.
.jpg)
Friends, photographers, storytellers: Send us your originals!
We know you've got lots of choices for places to trust with your precious photos, from cloud-based storage services to free social-media sites. But we believe many of those choices come with risk.
At SmugMug we're dedicated to secure storage, and we'll keep every pixel of your photos safe and sound. We want you to trust us with your original, full-resolution files, so we'll never crunch, squish, resize, or compromise your photos.
We also won’t limit the number of photos and videos you can upload, nor the number of times you can access them. Your files are yours, and we'll never hold them hostage.
Once you upload your full-res file, SmugMug maintains it carefully in all its glory, and also creates a series of custom display sizes for easy viewing and sharing.
You don't need to do a thing. We take your file and optimize your images for web display, all in the background. We resize images on the fly so your viewers get the perfect size photo no matter how big (or small) a browser window they're using.
This means your images will look great on any device, on any connection, anywhere in the world.
What does this mean for you?
SmugMug is your photo archive. All your memories are safely stored in the cloud, letting you access them from any computer at any time. With folders and galleries, you can organize everything in an easy-to-understand way, and arrange your files using our easy drag-and-drop system.
Your untouched, full-resolution originals are always available to be retrieved by you (at no extra charge). In fact, you can get them back individually, or we'll zip up the whole gallery for you. And if you use SmugMug Source, you can upload all your RAW files.
SmugMug provides you with easy access to high-quality print labs. Upload once to your SmugMug site and make prints, gifts, and merchandise at any time.
Gone are the days of having to deal with lost CDs, corrupt files, or the tedium of having to upload your photos to a second website just to buy prints.
You can also let your loved ones buy prints and gifts from your photos, too. Set your gallery settings' Shop View option to ON to reveal the shopping cart to your fans. They buy from the comfort of their couch, and we deliver the prints to their doorstep.
After you upload your full-size photos, you can still share any size photo from your site with whomever you choose:
There are as many ways to share your photos as there are photos to share.
Don't want to share? No problem. There's no need to reveal your originals to your guests. Keep them tucked safely away for your eyes only by restricting the largest display size your viewers can see.
Our Portfolio and Business accounts have extra image-protection tools, including non-destructive watermarks.
A note about upload speeds: How fast you can upload photos is determined by your internet service provider (ISP) and the size of your files. Digital cameras keep producing larger and larger file sizes, but in reality, printing doesn't require all that data. You can help speed up your uploads with a tiny bit of image compression when you edit your photos. Here's how: Save your files at Lightroom quality of 85% (or Photoshop quality 10) to give you great prints and reduce your upload time. Getting proofs to your clients quickly: Are you a photography pro with lots of event photos to upload for sale? Use image compression to get your proofs uploaded in record speed, and use SmugMug's proof-delay feature to replace only the ones that sell.
You take beautiful photos. You’ve perfected your elevator pitch, and you’ve got business cards to match. You've built a beautiful website just waiting to be discovered by potential customers. What's next?
It’s time to promote your business.
It's one thing to have a website. It's another thing to drive traffic to it. Without a marketing plan, it's like putting a sign out at the end of your driveway and hoping for walk-ins. You wouldn’t build a brick-and-mortar studio without advertising your business, so don’t fall into the trap of thinking you'll make sales simply because you have a website.
Your marketing plan should have specific goals, which in turn will guide you toward the right tools for your business. For example, are you a wedding photographer? If so, then you want to draw in brides and book engagement and wedding shoots. Are you a landscape photographer? You want exposure for your fine-art images and your stunning, wall-sized prints.
There are more marketing tools out there than ever before, from traditional print ads to social media and everything in between. Many of them cost nothing more than your time; if you do it yourself, make sure you create relevant and meaningful content. And don't shy away from hiring an expert: Think about the impression you'll make with a polished presentation to match the polished product you'll deliver to your customer.
Tip: Make sure your site gets found among the hundreds of thousands of sites that potential clients will find in Internet searches.
For Awais Yaqub, photography is ultimately about sharing—sharing images, sharing views, sharing knowledge. SmugMug’s one-click sharing to social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter helps him fulfill that mission. “For me, there is absolutely no reason to create a photograph and keep it in cold storage. What good would it do if I was not able to spread the message, inspire someone, or help someone in their learning process?” he says.
You've finished a shoot for a client and uploaded the finished product into a gallery on your SmugMug site. How do you let the client know you’re ready for them to come buy your work? There are a multitude of sharing tools built right into your SmugMug galleries, including good, old-fashioned email right from the Share button. Or send people straight to the shopping cart from a blog post by embedding shopping-cart links.
Referrals and word of mouth are powerful ways to build your business. Give clients postcards or business cards with a code they can give a friend. When that friend books an appointment with you and references the code, give the referring customer a discount coupon, like a print credit.
Social media is a powerful marketing tool for photographers. SmugMug’s sharing options allow your fans to post images to Facebook and Twitter with ease.
Tip: Create a Facebook business page and start posting meaningful and relevant content. Link your blog posts, announce any large events you’re photographing, share any special promotions you’re offering, post portfolio-worthy photos. Your content needs to be beautiful and exciting so your visitors will love sharing it with their friends.
Don’t be afraid to solicit sales! Pitch your local news media, post samples of your work on the Facebook pages of agencies, make sure your SEO is rock solid. It's imperative that all your images link back to your SmugMug website so potential clients can see more.
Once you've established the basics of your business, you may want to consider advanced options, such as the following:
Think about what works best for you and your business, then get the word out! Your photography deserves to be seen.
A brand is the essence or promise of what will be delivered or experienced when people interact with your business. A unified brand that’s consistent through all the customer-facing elements of your business will reinforce who you are and why customers would want to work with you. That extends to more than just a few aspects of your business:
Your brand should tell your potential customers who you are at a glance, and it should enable you to stand out in a crowd.
Studio KYK used SmugMug to help establish and grow her brand. She maximized SmugMug’s customizability, first working with a designer to develop her logo, then later designing her SmugMug website to best represent her brand, whimsical attitude, and individual style. Her SmugMug hub showcases her gorgeous photography and shows how much fun it would be to work with her.
Advertising is everywhere. Look through magazines; perhaps your favorite fashion label or auto manufacturer’s logo catches your eye. Pay attention to the commercials on television and even on radio. What taglines grab your attention? What’s your elevator pitch?
Does your logo say sports photographer? Is your color scheme appealing to brides? Is your tagline going to grab the attention of a publisher?
Make sure your brand is clearly reflected in your portfolio, in your website, and in your messaging so your prospective customer can get a good sense of you, your work, and whether or not you’re a good fit for their needs.
SmugMug's customization tools let you establish your brand through the use of color schemes, fonts, and your own logos with only a few mouse clicks. Start with a design, upload your photos, and add your own brand elements all without writing one line of code.
As you work in the Customizer, we’ll show you a preview of your changes as you make them. You can save those changes to publish later or, if you like what you've done, you can publish immediately so your changes are live. There's a start-over button, too. Tweaking the look of your site is quick and easy with this tool.
Want something more uniquely you? Enjoy messing with code? Willing to hire an expert? SmugMug’s deep customization ensures that with a little CSS and HTML, you’ll have a completely unique look and feel across your whole website. The sky’s the limit.
You don’t need your own domain to share and sell, but it does make a great impression. Most custom domains cost under $20 per year, which is less than you make in an hour of shooting. And if that isn’t enough, you can usually get a custom email address wrapped up in the deal. SmugMug allows you to easily use both on your site.
Your customer’s experience doesn’t end after clicking “Buy.” Stay in touch and keep them thinking of you by adding a 4×6 thank-you print in the delivery box. You can customize it with any image or message you wish (like a coupon code toward their next purchase), and we’ll pack it up and send it along with their order.
Your watermark does double duty when your images are shared on social media: image protection becomes free advertising if your watermark includes your branding. A watermark needs to be obtrusive enough to prevent image theft, and yet be subtle enough to provide your customers with a clear view of the details in the photo. A large and centered, yet translucent, logo as a watermark is a great way to accomplish this.
Similar to a watermark, a printmark is your logo or other design printed on the items purchased by your customers. Add your studio logo or artist signature to the prints you sell so there’s never any doubt who took those gorgeous prints.
Your SmugMug galleries automatically appear on mobile devices looking smooth, slick, and beautiful. All SmugMug sites are responsive to the size of any device they’re being viewed on, so they’re mobile friendly right out of the box.
These are just a few ways SmugMug can help your brand kick off in style. You can dive deeper with packages, coupons, seasonal designs, and more to uniquely express everything that makes your business stand out.
