Online print selling services

Hi. I have been looking into a way to be able to sell prints online from my website. At this point with my limited exposure and audience I do not feel it is worthwhile to go through the effort to set up my own online shopping cart on my website because I would need to first off design and code the shopping cart. Then I would need to pay for an SSL certificate to encrypt credit card info and sign up with a credit card merchant service such as authorize.net. It just seems like too much of a headache to bother with right now when I may only be selling a print once every couple months at the most.

I'm afraid that if I require that people email me if they are interested in buying a print so I can take their payment and ship the print to them it will deter potential customers. It isn't as convenient as them just being able to order online not to mention a hassle for me to have to properly pack the print for shipping.

I've decided that using an online print selling service that gives me a storefront and sets a base price for the print and lets me mark it up and keep the difference is the best way for me to go at the moment until my selling volume increases. I know some people use redbubble but I'm really put off by the base price of their prints which are so high that when I mark it up to what I feel is a reasonable price for the print they will be making the majority of the profit from the sale. It should be the other way around, the photographer should make the majority of the sale price and the print service should make a fair and decent commission off of it. I've also noticed that redbubble print sizes are not ordinary sizes which would make it more difficult for the buyer to find a frame for it if they decided to buy the print only.

While doing some research on some other services I came across Imagekind which is owned by CafePress, a company which does a similar thing with customized storefronts for t-shirts, mugs and other miscellaneous items. Their base prices are far more reasonable and about a third of what redbubble's base prices. In fact the base price of their larger prints are similar to what I would expect to pay a local print shop to do the job if I were to do it myself. This means that instead of redbubble where I would be making about 40% of the sale price I would be making closer to 85% of the sale price through Imagekind. From the gallery on my website I would link to the image on my imagekind store and I think this would be direct enough not to deter most customers.

I was just wondering if anyone else uses Imagekind and has any experience with the quality of their prints and how satisfied they are with the service? Are there any other similar services that any of you would recommend? Thank you.

I have used Zenfoilo for about a year and have been happy with it. I was familiar with preparing images for M-pix and that is one they use to print from. I have over 5000 images uploaded but only about 1800 for non-invited viewers at this time. http://jameshersey.zenfolio.com/

Sounds like it would be worth it if I was selling a lot of prints. I really don't know how many prints I would be selling because I haven't really gotten my name out there yet and I don't have a huge following. I don't think the $100/year fee of zenfolio would be worth it because I may only sell 3 or 4 prints in a year and that would take a huge chunk out of the profits. That is why I was looking at a free service such as Imagekind which just sets a reasonable base price and i keep the profits on the mark up.

I'm experimenting with a PotM (Print of the Month) deal on my website. I already have a business license so that didn't take any time to set up, nor did the business bank account (because I already had that too). I set up a Google Checkout account (very easy to do) and I'm going to try this experiment out with a single print offering (with 2 sizes) each month. Once I get a feel for how it is going, I will consider expanding it to other prints. I may also opt away from that concept for multiple prints, and instead go with my PhotoShelter stock photography/print sales site that I still haven't set up
Hope this helps. If you want to see how it looks so far, here's a link to my "PotM" offering page.
http://sixtyonenorth.com/wp/print-of-the-month/

Austin,
maybe I'm not getting it right: can't you just use PayPal to receive payments ?
It is what I do here: www.allievi-photography.com
No credit card stuff burden for you and just a tiny amount of code for the shopping cart.

Hope it helps.
Giovanni

I use the paypal shopping cart and fulfill the orders myself. Once an order is submitted paypal sends me an email with the image name/number and shipping info. You can check it out at http://www.limitededitionphotographs.com/


Cheers,

Duane

I spent the better part of 2 months finding a shopping cart, integrating it into my website, deciding I didn't want to mess with payment processing , deciding I wanted product customization, signing up in a partnership with a vendor who provides it all, finding out that implementing all the XML API stuff was a PITA, and after throwing my hands up in exasperation, I finally stumbled upon Fotomoto.com on one of the blogs I frequent.

It took me 30 minutes to read about their service, 2 minutes to sign up, 1 minute to add the necessary code to my website, and about an hour to configure the backend on their website.

No sales yet, but then I haven't been marketing myself yet either. I have noted that they're used by some big-name bloggers though.

Al, that one looks great, even better than imagekind...thanks!