upset Smugmug customer

I do High volume and handle it all myself, Including printing. I think the higher the volume and lower the margin the better off someone would be to do as much themselves as possible. It doesn't take that much time at all once you get your workflow and procedures in place.

The last gig I did for the year was about Triple the number of orders the OP is looking at. My wife and I did all the orders ( printing & packaging) in about 4 hours. If we only had to process the images and burn them to disk, I would guess we could have done that in half the time.

I have actions written in photoshop that take a lot of the "boredom" out of things by automating the repetitive tasks. I would be simple to write an action as I have done in the past that creates the image sizes required and saves them to folders ready for the lot to be burned to disk to take to the lab.

For what I do, I open the required image, Crop it, run an action for levels and sharpening, have a stop for any fine tuning and then the required size images are spat out the printers. Most of the time I bypass the stop now because with having the camera set up and colour balanced at the start of the shoot, the auto levels does a perfect job.

For one off's in ordering I can't see where there would be that much time required to justify the extra expense of Snubmut doing it.
I'd certainly do it myself given the figures above between the DIY and snubmut amount to about a weeks wages. On a job this size, I think that's significant.
Obviously on larger jobs, the difference would be proportional and on smaller ones it would be even more significant with the overall profit to takings ratio.

I know people say they don't have time etc but I don't understand why. Most days I am doing 10+ hours on site and I am still able to come home and do the order fulfilment which would be a lot more than most are doing here and do it on my own.

I find PS actions are an invaluable tool in saving time and frustration on repetitive work and something that is production line like the OP is doing is perfect for this.
On some jobs I set the computer going on a batch of files and just go watch TV while it does the work for me.

I personally think it's important these days for shooters to maximise their profits from each job they get and paying someone 3 times to get prints done is a bit over the top for my liking.

Whether I'm going to automate isn't based on squeezing out every last penny (been there, done that - nobody really wins), it's based on logistics. Can I handle order fulfillment? Will my customer service suffer if I try to do it on my own? Will they get their order accurately and promptly? Will I be able to do more photography if I automate fulfillment, which in turn puts more photos up for people to order and justify the automation even further?

Currently for me the answer is no, the volume isn't there yet for automation of fulfillment but if it was I wouldn't hesitate to do it and pay the piper for the convenience.

cdifoto wrote in post #15396869
I think Smugmug is either getting greedy or sales are way down so they need to milk everyone who's too lazy/incompetent* to move on to keep the same revenue. Could be a mix of both. Granted, part of that extra fee is convenience...you have to actually put the order together yourself if you go to Bay directly (this can be VERY time consuming and error prone if you're the high volume type). Smugmug sends the stuff over on your behalf, and they're not going to provide that kind of integration for free.

Having said that, I think if $1.70 per order is going to break you, your prices are just too damn low to begin with.

*by incompetent I mean incapable of creating or buying and setting up their own solution

I would have thought that SM had already negotiated special deals with the print companies - or the print companies with SM - so that SM would be able to offer printing services without extra cost to their users.

Or maybe SM earlier did have a 20% rebate on all photos and lived on that and now the printing companies have removed that rebate. So SM instead turns to their customers for extra money for prints.

pwm2 wrote in post #15405886
I would have thought that SM had already negotiated special deals with the print companies - or the print companies with SM - so that SM would be able to offer printing services without extra cost to their users.

Or maybe SM earlier did have a 20% rebate on all photos and lived on that and now the printing companies have removed that rebate. So SM instead turns to their customers for extra money for prints.

Yeah I have no idea. I would have thought so too. I'm not saying it isn't sleazy since they do already take a percentage.

Ditto, i was also under that impression.

Not to mention that the SM selection is smaller than the lab's offerings.

The only thing SM has done so far for me is refund my dutie fees, which they are only doing because i have them on file saying they would. When removing the yr/cost + print costs + sale cut, i'd easily pay all the duties out of my own pocket and still come out far ontop.

I'll have to see how to handle Bay's orders by myself in the coming year Shame too because SM was pretty easy to use once it was set-up and i'll have to set-up some sort of personalized system now.