Exposure Manager's new CD option

[Ralpho]

This new feature seems to be fatally flawed, at least for the kind of pictures I sell (sports action).

Two basic versions are available. With one a customer can (if he wants to take the time) order every image on your site as a .jpg on a CD. And the price of the CD is fixed. So even if you charge $100 for a CD, it's hardly worth it if someone orders 1,000 or more pictures.

The other version limits customers to choices within a single gallery. That's a little better, at least from the standpoint of the risk of getting a humongous order. But the problem remains that you have to set a single fixed price for the CD no matter how many images the customer puts on it.

Hopefully, EM is working on a way to charge people on a per-image basis for the CD option.

My site is http://rodcannon.com if anyone is interested in looking at it.

[TAZorich]

I'm still in the evaluation phase with Exposure Manager (and it's not looking good for them, but more on that in a second)...

The option I'm interested in is this one (text from EM's website):

2. For the Customer who has only provided one selected photo and left you, the photographer to identify the rest, you would then be prompted to upload the 'ordered' photo. You would simply gather the image files as you normally would, place them in a single zip file, and upload it. We will unzip it and place the photos on the CD automatically!

I would simply make available an option called "Order CD with all images of this participant", with a fixed price, regardless of the number of images. This works for me because I typically get 25-45 images of each participant on a given day.

For those participants whom only have a couple images, I make a downloadable high-resolution image file available.

Sure, potential customers whom only have a handful of images - say 5-10 - might not like the fixed pricing. But I give them the option to not buy... ;)

MY question about Exposure Manager:
I do event photography, and often have 80-500 sub-galleries per event. I already have the subfolders created on my local media, and there is no way in hell I'm going to manually create and populate each sub-gallery. Don't they have a way (as do Printroom and Photo Reflect) to do batch gallery creation, using an existing folder structure? If they don't, I'm out.

[Dennis_Hammer]

You can use the ftp system which lets you upload the folders and turn them into galleries automatically check out their info on the ftp and it should have instructions. If they aren't clear enough call them they are the most helpful people I have come across.

As far as the CD option I haven't yet looked at it closely but as long as it's customizable I think you can adjust to make your self happy. Personally not sure I'll offer it as of yet.

[wyofizz]

I think they have an tool that will simplify batch uploads I haven't took the time to learn it. I should though.

Ref. the CD of x# of images. That surely isn't going to fly if we have to do PP on large quantities of images and upload for only $100. I guess if a guy didn't care much about the quality of product that was being distributed it could be an easy $100.

[TAZorich]

You can use the ftp system which lets you upload the folders and turn them into galleries automatically check out their info on the ftp and it should have instructions. If they aren't clear enough call them they are the most helpful people I have come across.

My average event yields 3000+ image files. There is no way I'm going to all of the full-res images over FTP...and I'm not interested in resizing them first. Not when there are other companies out there that offer software that resizes and uploads for me.

Sorry, EM. Looks like it's a no-go...

[Tigershark]

We're proud to announce the availability of a new service: CD fulfillment. With more and more of your clients requesting a CD with their images, we decided that it made sense to enable you to sell CDs directly through EM, and let us handle the fulfillment. We have created two different types of CD products: the Photo CD and the Gallery CD. Below we'll outline the differences as well as try to answer your most likely questions.
The Photo CD:
This product will allow the customer to add multiple images from different galleries to a single CD through an easy-to-use interface. After they have selected the CD option, there will be an 'add image to cd' button on every page thereafter.


Before building this option, we looked at all the different ways photographers are currently offering a CD. We noticed that a few tried to make it very easy for a customer to order by only requiring the customer to select one photo and/or fill out a product questionnaire with their name, bib number or some other identifying factor (it's all in how you've set up your product). The photographer would then use the information to find the rest of the images for that customer and include them in the CD; this was possible because the photographer was 'self-fulfilling' the CD order. We have tried to mimic this behavior in this CD ordering system. As such, we have implemented two different alternatives for fulfillment based upon order style:


1. If all of the images are selected by the purchaser, once the order is placed, we will send you a normal upload request and you can upload the photos like any other product.

or

2. For the Customer who has only provided one selected photo and left you, the photographer to identify the rest, you would then be prompted to upload the 'ordered' photo. You would simply gather the image files as you normally would, place them in a single zip file, and upload it. We will unzip it and place the photos on the CD automatically!

The Gallery CD:
The name of this CD says it all! This product allows a customer to order an entire gallery on a CD with the click of a button. There's no need to add each photo individually by the purchaser. Once the order is placed, we will send you a normal upload request and you can upload the photos like any other product (no zip file).

Labeling and Packaging:
Each CD has a professional looking high gloss finish that features your logo (in color when applicable) and gallery name. You have a choice of using a normal 'mailer' or a DVD case that also features your logo and gallery name. At this time it is not yet possible to use your own CD label but we're looking into that possibility for a future update. Below is a sample of the current labeling. The 'ExposureManager' logo will be replaced by your logo.



I think I will pass