Canon_Bob
20th of November 2006 (Mon), 11:10
Hi All,
First, I did run a search before posting this, and didn't reveal a lot of variance.
My situation is simple: I'm a part time Pro, who makes money by shooting Real Estate (yawn - boring). It takes 30 minutes to do an average shoot, and very little talent to do it right. Easy money if you can get connected with enough Realtors to make it work for you. My day job is Systems Engineering.
My passion is in nature/scenic/wildlife, and I've been shooting quite a bit when I have time. I'm finally amassing quite a portfolio, and now need to put it up somewhere for people to shop through it. I show my work to a lot of people through my personal website, but it doesn't have any capability to manage sales or requests (and no, I don't have time to code my own and maintain it).
I'm looking for high quality professional hosting options. SmugMug is currently the one that looks like the best option to me, but I believe in being thorough. I do NOT expect the hosting site to bring me traffic (I have more than enough demand already). I just want a place to organize and host large artistic galleries, offer print options, offer download options that include varying sizes (up to very large - like 4900 x 3500 if that's what the camera shot and the client wants). Most importanly, I don't want to spend a lot of time in site maintenence. It needs to be canned, easy, well organized, and artistic. I want to spend my time shooting nature, and not coding websites.
Am I looking for a pie in the sky, or can SmugMug (or some other company) deliver? I'm not terribly concerned about cost (within reason), but I'd like to find something at $500.00 a year or less. If it winds up being more, It might be easier to just build my own system, and toss it up in a Co-Lo facility.
Any thoughts or opinions are welcome, and appreciated.
First, I did run a search before posting this, and didn't reveal a lot of variance.
My situation is simple: I'm a part time Pro, who makes money by shooting Real Estate (yawn - boring). It takes 30 minutes to do an average shoot, and very little talent to do it right. Easy money if you can get connected with enough Realtors to make it work for you. My day job is Systems Engineering.
My passion is in nature/scenic/wildlife, and I've been shooting quite a bit when I have time. I'm finally amassing quite a portfolio, and now need to put it up somewhere for people to shop through it. I show my work to a lot of people through my personal website, but it doesn't have any capability to manage sales or requests (and no, I don't have time to code my own and maintain it).
I'm looking for high quality professional hosting options. SmugMug is currently the one that looks like the best option to me, but I believe in being thorough. I do NOT expect the hosting site to bring me traffic (I have more than enough demand already). I just want a place to organize and host large artistic galleries, offer print options, offer download options that include varying sizes (up to very large - like 4900 x 3500 if that's what the camera shot and the client wants). Most importanly, I don't want to spend a lot of time in site maintenence. It needs to be canned, easy, well organized, and artistic. I want to spend my time shooting nature, and not coding websites.
Am I looking for a pie in the sky, or can SmugMug (or some other company) deliver? I'm not terribly concerned about cost (within reason), but I'd like to find something at $500.00 a year or less. If it winds up being more, It might be easier to just build my own system, and toss it up in a Co-Lo facility.
Any thoughts or opinions are welcome, and appreciated.