Sales Workflow

[DanPorter]

I've just made some of my first sales and am hoping that some of the more experienced folks here can help me improve my workflow. My end goal, from the customers perspective, is that they see a watermarked proof in the gallery to begin with. If they purchase a photo it is made available for download and the watermark is removed. To accomplish the selective downloading, I've created a seperate hidden gallery where I place 2nd copies of the photos that have been purchased. Having to have a 2nd gallery isn't ideal, but it seems to be working okay. My problem is the process I go through to get the photos into that gallery. The steps I follow are below. Please let me know if you've figured out a smarter way to do this.

1) Notice new order in the sales report
2) Click on each picture in the order and add "purchased" as a keyword
3) Click on each picture in the order and select "Make 2nd Copy"
4) Select "Watermarking"
5) Browse through all the photos and remove the watermark of any photo that is duplicated
6) Select "Move Photos"
7) Browse through all photos and select any photo that is duplicated, then move to a private gallery that allows originals
8) Search for "purchased" within the original gallery
9) Add a link to the hidden gallery in the caption of any photo that has been purchased

Sorry for being overly-detailed. The process works okay for small orders, but I just went through this for 16 pictures and it must have taken atleast half an hour. It also leaves a lot of room for mistakes. Is there anyway to see the actual filename in the sales order? That way I could atleast re-upload the file from my computer instead of having to do deal with all the additional copies. Thanks in advance for any help or advice.
Dan

[bham]

A couple of observations, questions, suggestions,etc

So they are buying a print of the pic through smugmug and then you are giving them the file? So if person A purchases the picture then person B could see the link to the file in the caption and get it without purchasing it?

Maybe a couple of suggestions.

I think the process that you use is pretty much good, I would probably copy, then move then remove all watermarks but that's me. Also since you have the email address of the purchaser I might email them then link instead of putting the link in the caption of the photo. Another person who then goes to the photo gets the link for free.

What are you having them purchase through smugmug? You could always setup a paypal account and get a flat amount for the file. Then they would necessarily have to pay for a print and you don't lose the 15%. Just a couple of thoughts.

[DanPorter]

Thanks for the input. The pictures that people are buying are snapshots at parties so pretty much the only person interested in the photo will be the person in it. I think I'll need a lot more practice before anyone would buy one of my pictures just for artistic value, so I'll leave those customers for the good photographers ;-) The part I'm trying to get around is the round about way of clicking, copying, clicking. By the time all is said and done I've had to visit each picture and then find it in a bulk menu several times. I'd really like to find a way to connect the sales report to the actual file name. Any thoughts on how to accomplish that?

[marlinspike]

Dan, how are party pic sales? One of the frats on campus had contacted me about it, though they got shut down (pretty much overnight and out of the blue too...a funny store for non-greeks such as myself). I'm wondering how lucrative it is.
Thanks,
Richard

[Angelo]

Why are you doing any of this if your visitors can just order from smugmug? :scratch

[DanPorter]

I'm not sure how lucrative party pics would be as an actual business. I'm still an undergrad, so for me it's just a way to recover some of the costs of my smugmug account. The guys in my fraternity don't order that many, but the sororities order a good bit.

Angelo, They do order prints from smugmug. I offer the original file after they've purchased a print as an additional incentive.

[Frog Lady]

1) Notice new order in the sales report
2) Click on each picture in the order and add "purchased" as a keyword
3) Click on each picture in the order and select "Make 2nd Copy"
4) Select "Watermarking"
5) Browse through all the photos and remove the watermark of any photo that is duplicated
6) Select "Move Photos"
7) Browse through all photos and select any photo that is duplicated, then move to a private gallery that allows originals
8) Search for "purchased" within the original gallery
9) Add a link to the hidden gallery in the caption of any photo that has been purchased

Dan

Hi Dan,

I think I might have a suggestion that might help reduce the time looking through all the pictures... since you open up each ordered picture, instead of making a 2nd copy, do a "save as" and include a distinctive # or letter at the beginning of the file name. Then, when you're done w/ all the pictures, sort by name and all the pictures you now want appear clustered together. This should save a lot of time browsing.

hope it helps,

Colleen