Using Smugmug to Sell Images

So my husband wants me to start selling some of my images and I'm currently using smugmug for my website, it claims on their website that 85% of the profit from each sell is the photographer's while smugmug gets 15%. My husband is deadset that they are lying and I would be lucky if I received something like $5 from each sell, and I should focus on building my own company with the intent of owning a quality printer, a framing machine that builds the frame, and do all the work rather than use any website or printing company.
We are arguing, I have no idea about all of that stuff other than shooting the image, editing/post-processing and then uploading on my website - and I am not certain I really want to get in to that mess, plus I'd probably have to charge twice what smugmug charges for the same size and framing.
Can anybody with experience help me out, because I don't know whose right and why one of us is right and the other wrong.

I sell on SmugMug and have for about 8 years. The deal with them is you set the price for each size & type of print and SM gets 15% of that cost. Then they take away the actual price of the print so depending on what price you set you can make anything from 0 to a lot. They have a number of labs you can choose to use (only one at a time, I believe) that offer prints and other products at various price and quality points.

The only way I actually sell anything is through my marketing efforts. SmugMug has never (as far as I can tell) generated a sale for me.

I don't know what you have to sell but testing the market with SM might be a good first step. Fulfilling the order yourself will require a lot of equipment, expertise and time.

bpalermini wrote in post #18712061
I sell on SmugMug and have for about 8 years. The deal with them is you set the price for each size & type of print and SM gets 15% of that cost. Then they take away the actual price of the print so depending on what price you set you can make anything from 0 to a lot. They have a number of labs you can choose to use (only one at a time, I believe) that offer prints and other products at various price and quality points.

The only way I actually sell anything is through my marketing efforts. SmugMug has never (as far as I can tell) generated a sale for me.

I don't know what you have to sell but testing the market with SM might be a good first step. Fulfilling the order yourself will require a lot of equipment, expertise and time.

My husband has been showing a couple of my recent images to friends and customers that come into his manufacturing shop and they've gone crazy over them.
So are you saying that their default price is just based on the print and then they'd get 15% of that? I'm trying my best to get the full picture without doing a test purchase, I was never good at math lol
My husband is looking into the future with intentions of remodeling one of our downstairs rooms and buying a quality photo printer and he has even found the framing machine or whatever it's called to do that. Basically he'd like to see me completely cut out the middle man/men and do it all myself... which scares the crap out of me. Of course he's looking 5-10 years down the road.

No, let's say that you priced an 8x10 print at $25 and sold one. SM would take $3.75 (15%) off the top. Then let's say the print costs $3 to make at the lab you select. That would come off of your take leaving you with $18.75 from the sale.

Plus, of course, you would have already paid SM your annual fee for hosting your website.

bpalermini wrote in post #18712196
... let's say that you priced an 8x10 print at $25 ...

This is the important part. YOU have to go in and set your price for every size print in order to most effectively profit from the print sales. If you just leave it set to the default price, then there won't be any profit at all. This is pretty much the way that all of these places work - there isn't really anything unique to SmugMug when it comes to print order fulfillment.

There isn't any reason for your husband to think that SmugMug is lying. You set the amount of markup that you want for each print size, and then SmugMug gives you 85 percent of that markup. I've sold photos through SmugMug, as well as other similar sites, and they have always paid me the correct commission for each and every sale.

Keep in mind that some similar services, such as Fine Art America, give you 100 percent of the markup, instead of just 85 percent. For instance, if the base price of a 24" by 36" metal print is $150, and I set the markup at $200, then FAA will collect $350 from the customer, keep $150, and pay me the full $200 markup. A similar sale on SmugMug would result in SmugMug keeping the $150 base price PLUS $30 of the markup, which would leave me with just a $170 commission instead of a $200 commission.

i use fine art america...it's pretty easy...you set how much you want to make on each product...and then you don't have to do anything as far as printing, all that...they'll send you an email when someone buys something, and i think every 2 weeks send you a paypal deposit

I believe that on SmugMug you can just use a markup percent and it will calculate the prices for all the products for you. I don't do it that way but I think that is possible. You can also chose the products you want to offer, everything from a 4x6 glossy to big, framed art prints.

I'll give it a few days or so before bringing it back up with my husband as he got pretty frustrated with me yesterday. I'm in no hurry, I don't exactly have a whole lot of people contacting me about my images yet.