Setting up simple Paypal digital photo purchasing

Hey guys,

I'm just beginning my business of event portraits online. My plan is pretty much do everything manually right now and see what the response is like. I will be posting race photos online where racers can view the shots and may request the digital print (with which they may do whatever they please). When I receive a request, I'll send a PayPal invoice, receive payment and send the photo. I know there's a lot of work required in this method but I am starting out slow to gauge the response.

Any thoughts, suggestions, etc?

Thanks!

What will you use to display the images? Sounds a bit disjoint to me. I suggest Photocart

I did this with a flickr account, almost the same thing you are doing. Worked good and flickr is cheap $25 a year. About 2 months ago I set up a Zenfolio account. Now people can go to my site and buy the digitals right there. No more emails back and forth. It is working out great, also ties in with paypal. The Zenfolio accout is $100 a year, I used a code for $10 off so it was only $90 for a full year.

Looking at your flickr page must be the bike racing pictures. Just something to think about, people will download them and use them even if you ask them not to. Put a watermark across the center of them. Even if you watermark them people will still use them. I take RC Racing photos and people download mine with the watermark on them and use them for their avatars all the time.

Why not use Jalbum? It is free and has a paypal cart built in. Go to my website.... www.43northphotography​.com and click on the "Event Galleries" tab. Pull up one of the races and then click on one of the thumbnail photos. At the bottom of the page is the integrated paypal cart that is linked to your account. Works wonderful and free!!!

Thanks for the comments/suggestions. I am planning on watermarking and posting through Flickr. The plan is to manually handle each transaction right now. If it proves successful, I think I will move up to something like Zenfolio.

43 North wrote in post #10351665
Why not use Jalbum? It is free and has a paypal cart built in. Go to my website.... www.43northphotography​.com and click on the "Event Galleries" tab. Pull up one of the races and then click on one of the thumbnail photos. At the bottom of the page is the integrated paypal cart that is linked to your account. Works wonderful and free!!!

I have a Jalbum and haven't seen the paypal shopping cart with mine? is that something you get with the upgrade?

I figured it out....but sent you a PM with some additional questions.

I use Lightroom with "LRG One Paypal" plugin. It ROCKS. I do my basic edits in lightroom and take out the photos I don't want posted, hit web, upload, DONE. Check it out, this one is for a fundraiser. http://www.phodographe​r.ca/personal/spring_c​leaning/

I just don't have the time to mess around (at one point I was adding a paypal button manually to each photo in dreamweaver). Once I actually start making a decent living, LRG will be getting a massive donation from me.