Blog

The “What should we call it?” Poll

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 10:55 pm

We’re about to launch a brand new feature which internally we have been referring to as “Direct Fulfillment“. Direct Fulfillment is the process by which print orders will be automatically sent to our partner print labs where the prints will be printed and shipped directly to the customer or photographer. It’s a very exciting feature with huge benefits for the photographer and their customers.

Processing orders within PhotoMerchant is currently a manual process whereby the photographer organises the printing and shipping themselves. We refer to this option as “Self Fulfillment” as the photographer can choose to use any print lab that they choose.

The big question is: are the terms “Direct Fulfillment” and “Self Fulfillment” self explanatory and intuitive to understand from a photographers point of view, and if not, what terms should we use in their place? We’ve got a couple ideas that we’d like to run past you, but we’re also open to suggestions. Vote now or forever hold your peace…

Take the “What should we call it?” Poll

Born in the USA

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 11:15 pm

Today marks a very large milestone in the development of the PhotoMerchant service. Not only have we launched a brand new website with a greatly simplified sign up process, we have also launched our service offering into the United States of America. This means that American photographers can now take full advantage of our Free 14 Day Trial and start selling photos online through their PhotoMerchant portfolio, website and store.

1. New Plans & Pricing
2. Free Photographers SEO Book
3. New Features

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New features to build your perfect portfolio website

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 9:54 pm

Our November 09 release saw a slew of new features to help you customize your portfolio and website design including: use your own website domain, new gallery and portfolio layouts, custom page assets and a slew of customization features.

The best thing to do is log in to your account and check out the revised tabs under Website, or if you’ve been sitting on the fence, our free trial is now completely risk free.

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Lessons learned launching a start up

Posted by Elmar Platzer at 11:00 pm

Are we there yet? How many times must I have put this question to my very talented partners in crime, Derek (co-founder and CTO) and Kain (Creative and Marketing Director)? Wind back the clock to September 2007. It was two years ago when Derek and I met at my home to discuss a number of start up ideas. After some discussion we settled on pursuing two opportunities. Opportunity one was to develop an online sales tool for photographers, a project Derek had been toying with for almost a year, and opportunity number two isn’t even worth mentioning as it lasted a mere three weeks. We learned very quickly that a) you need focus and b) things generally require a lot more time and effort than you think.

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Alpha: Tips to customising your site

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 4:29 pm

So how is the Alpha testing going? We’re furiously working away getting the product ready for the beta launch in mid-late August 2009. This means you will be able to use PhotoMerchant to host your own professional photograph website and sell your photos online, instead of just playing pretend. If you’re new to PhotoMerchant, visit our website and register to receive an invitation to join our beta program.

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Photography marketing tips // planning your website (part 2)

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 8:36 pm

Any serious business book will tell you that Goals are an essential part of any good business plan. The same is true when planning your online marketing strategy. Goals should be ambitious, realistic, inspiring and should represent where you want your business to be heading to. Goals should be SMART (learn more about SMART Goals), meaning they need to be specific, measurable and have a target date in which the need to be achieved.

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Photography marketing tips // planning overview (part 1)

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 8:58 pm

Your photography website is the most essential piece of your digital marketing strategy. A great website will enable you to capture new sales leads, improve your production workflow, enable you to understand your customers and increase your profitability. An ordinary website will just tell people who you are and what you do, and a bad website will only ever be seen by the people you tell directly and at worst, may present the wrong first impression. The success or failure of your online marketing depends upon a range of variables but you can save yourself a lot pain and effort by investing in some thinking time up front and plan your online strategy first.

All to often, photographers start their online marketing efforts by jumping into Photoshop and attempt to design a web page. In other circumstances, the photographer may have some coding skills and start building their own website in something like Dreamweaver. Or, the photographer uses an online gallery service and realises that their options are limited. Pretty quickly, the photographer ends up scouring photography forums and communities asking for recommendations on flash galleries, web hosting, JavaScript/Ajax libraries, “the best photo sharing sites” and such…

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Promoting your Photography Business using Digital Marketing Tactics

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 11:22 pm

I’ve been spending a lot of time looking at the websites of professional photographers and reading a lot of community discussions about how to market photography businesses online. If you take the time to look around, there is a lot of great information out there, but a lot of it is either grounded in the language of self-proclaimed digital marketing experts or it is full of nonsensical waffle. It is my goal (with these posts) to try and make the business of digital media marketing simple, accessible and open for discussion.

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Introducing the new guy

Posted by Kain Tietzel at 9:53 pm

I’ve been hazed and initiated into PhotoMerchant over the past couple of months and am now an accepted member of the PMCrew. Now that the emotional scars have healed and the physical ones are less visible,  I can begin to get stuck into my role as the Creative and Marketing Director.

To date i’ve been working on the “Member Interface”, and without giving too much away, it’s going to look similar to the PhotoMerchant registration page. The Member Interface is where you can manage your online photography business, and within half an hour of registering, you’ll be able to sell your photo’s online. But i’m getting ahead of myself – we’ll be posting details of the product feature set in another post coming soon. Keep Reading…

Selling photos online

Posted by Derek Clapham at 9:24 pm

The Statistics

It is safe to say that we live in an online world. In 2007 nearly 15 million households (61%) in the UK had internet access (source) and in 2003 62 million households (55%) in the US had web connected computers (source).

Selling your photos online is a great idea. It provides your existing customers with an easy way of browsing their prints and purchasing them. However whilst expanding your business online can offer many opportunities and benefits, it can also provide headaches, pitfalls and risks.

Potential Benefits

• The web offers a “potential” world wide audience
• The web is a convenient, no pressure medium for your customers to browse and purchase your photos
• Being able to receive payment more quickly from online transactions.
• Inexpensive way to reach new markets and interact with them
• A sign of professionalism

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