Hosting my own photos

I'm just getting into photography and have taken enough photos over the last six months that I am looking for a website to host and eventually sell pictures. I am far from a pro and just starting out so looking for good options to start out and I would love some advice on where to start.

If you're just looking for a sales site use the search feature, or the links at the bottom of this thread of related material. There is literally HUNDREDS of threads on hosting to sell images already. If you want an actual site, again search around here because you'll find it.

To sell: Exposure Manager
URL/hosting: 1&1

Hosting your own images, paying with paypal can be done as well - but it's a lot of work on your end if you're doing a lot of photos. There's programs to you can get but hosting is going to get expensive.

Online orders question

MJPhotos24 wrote in post #11292770
Hosting your own images, paying with paypal can be done as well - but it's a lot of work on your end if you're doing a lot of photos. There's programs to you can get but hosting is going to get expensive.

Most decent hosts these days are around $3-$4/month, and a good package like Photocart is a few hundred. Not that expensive, and it will give you essentially unlimited image hosting and a full shopping cart/sales capability. To me, that's a good invesment over paying percentages to the various third-party photo hosting & selling sites.

Dave

tracknut wrote in post #11294013
Most decent hosts these days are around $3-$4/month, and a good package like Photocart is a few hundred. Not that expensive, and it will give you essentially unlimited image hosting and a full shopping cart/sales capability. To me, that's a good invesment over paying percentages to the various third-party photo hosting & selling sites.

Dave

Not a bad point, hosting is getting cheaper - and personally have thought of looking into one of those programs. If you sell a good amount of images a program like that may be better than using any 3rd party, especially if you do self fulfillment.

I use HostGator to host and Photocart to sell. HostGator is $5-$10 per month, the cart software is $329 as a one off payment.

You might be better off with a place that will host, sell, print, and deliver for you though.

Tim, how customizable is it? I.e. can I integrate it with my site layout or is going to be a click and go to a new window service? We're doing something coming up that doesn't matter so taking a look, but for my own usage want something I can integrate all into one like my ExpMan does now...if I were to ever switch. Also, don't seem to see a watermark option, is there one, or ?

Mike, you're welcome to look at my site below if you want to see one implementation of Photocart customization. The section titled "event proofs" is the jump into Photocart, that I tailored to the style of the existing site. It is quite customizable, and does handle watermarks.

Dave

MJPhotos24 wrote in post #11295995
Tim, how customizable is it? I.e. can I integrate it with my site layout or is going to be a click and go to a new window service? We're doing something coming up that doesn't matter so taking a look, but for my own usage want something I can integrate all into one like my ExpMan does now...if I were to ever switch. Also, don't seem to see a watermark option, is there one, or ?

You can set up templates and styles easily enough, but I didn't bother. It watermarks automatically, if you turn that setting on. There are hundreds of settings, and it's very flexible, but luckily you just leave most at the defaults.

Check out my website if you want a demo. Click proofs.

Thanks fellas - I'm totally re-doing my site this off-season, so that's an option to switch. Looking at the math, we're talking a good chunk of change this year alone of not paying that 10%. Things really need to look at though is using coupons, using different price sheets for different galleries, etc.

Right now I'm using 4 different price sheets for a lot of galleries, with different discounts going at times.

If you are concerned with space, consider dreamhost - unlimited space and bandwidth, 9 dollars a month.

PhotoCart lets you define early bird specials, coupon codes, credits, and different sets of pricing which can be applied on a per-gallery basis.

HostGator has plans from $5, I think.

Very interesting, maybe go with it to use on the one site we're building (private, not open to the public, so not a huge deal), and get a good test of how it works.

tracknut wrote in post #11294013
Most decent hosts these days are around $3-$4/month, and a good package like Photocart is a few hundred. Not that expensive, and it will give you essentially unlimited image hosting and a full shopping cart/sales capability. To me, that's a good invesment over paying percentages to the various third-party photo hosting & selling sites.

Dave

Good point..I'm setting up a site soon and this seems like a good start.

Just spent some time looking at photocart a little more in depth. Have checked it out before, but not much - have to say, with the fact I do self fulfill on everything it's almost idiotic not to do it. It does have fully customizable headers and footers so should be able to integrate it perfectly.

Biggest problem, MOVING all the galleries from one to the other.