What is the best website/service to sell pictures to customers, and for hosting my site?
A frequently-asked query:
Just getting into photography, and wanted to know the best websites or services to use to sell pictures to my customers. So I’m looking for one that displays them well, but doesn’t allow people to save and use the pictures themselves. I want to be able to make money on the prints that people order, so I’d like to be able to control the pricing.
Secondly, what is the best website hosting service out there. Something with easy to use interfaces and a site builder maybe. I really want to make a good looking and easy to navigate and easy to build and maintain website for photography.
What I’m thinking at the moment is that I set up on my website some packages for prints and sitting fees for sessions, and have a cart that people can buy from me like through paypal or something. I already have a domain name, I just need to figure out the best place to host and how to do the cart and ordering system.
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Feel free to leave a comment in the box below.
You need to buy hosting with ecommerce option (for setting up web store / shopping cart with paypal) and a domain name (like yourwebsite.com).
I recommend one of these: http://www.webhostingtable.com/
Fatcow has the best value right now.
Their standard price is $88/year
but they have the 40% sale right now.
Disk space: Unlimited
Bandwidth: Unlimited
A Free domain name
Price: $4.67/month ($56/year)
They’re one of the oldest hosting companies, founded 1998, they’re also one of the largest, currently hosting about 500,000 websites.
They include a free point & click online site builder so you can create a website without any programming (easily, just by drag and drop) or you could install WordPress (they include easy, one click install from their control panel), so you can just choose a theme that you like, and start adding content.
They also have a great custom control panel with OneClick installs of all the popular software like WordPress, Joomla, Forums, Chat, Galleries, Online stores and a lot more.
There is absolutely no way to keep people from taking and using your work if they want to. Some sites don’t allow download, but it’s easy to take a screenshot and then crop out what they don’t want. So as far as that goes, the only way to keep anybody ever from taking your work is not to put it online.
Otherwise, there are plenty of sites that will allow you to sell your work, originals and prints. Many people like http://deviantart.com which is easy to use, and you can elect to sell prints of your work and get profit from it. Membership is free and comes with a portfolio and print account as well as a gallery to post your work, paid membership has some additional perks and a better deal on the profit you get from prints.
There are a lot of sites that will let your build a page for free, try searching "free artist webpage" and you’ll get a ton. You can choose one (or many, the more pages you have the better) depending on what level you want to get into as far as design goes.
Portfoliositez, blu, photobiz, smug mug pro, exposure manager sr all options. Ps and blu are the two most popular. It is really hard to make much these days in photography. Every person who buys a Dale tries to go into business these days, good Luck and make sure your skills and your editing are well developed before you charge people.
Use Ultimate Web Builder. It has a built-in photos app, easy to create photo galleries and slideshows, photos management – you can even batch watermark your photos and only have your original images available after purchase. It also has an app where you can control which pages can be accessed by which member(s) and/or group(s) of members. Also comes with built-in e-commerce/PayPal – you can create coupons too for store promotions. And mailing list app and built-in SEO tool…plus lots more.
The web hosting there is also very good.