I had reached a point in my business where I wanted to offer prints to my clients. In order to do this, I needed a good website where clients could view their proofs. I began looking at various web hosting out there for photographers. There are some really awesome hosting plans out there that offer a lot. There are some all-in-ones, where you can have your website, domain, hosting, client proofing, and storefront all through one location. This is the easiest option out there, but really expensive if you are just starting out. Me, being new, not making a lot of money, this was NOT an option for me.
I decided I would take the cheap route. The first thing I did was go to www.godaddy.com and buy my domain, www.snapshotsbyelizabeth.com. It was mine! I had a website. When you buy a domain from them, they ALWAYS have some special pricing. Always.
One thing I noticed a lot of these hosts do, is offer something like "use your own domain". You usually don't get this option unless you get the higher pricing plan. Here's the thing folks, if you own a domain, you can forward it to ANY address. So when I bought snapshotsbyelizabeth.com, I simply logged in to my GoDaddy account and "redirected" it to my free site. Do NOT pay extra for that option! Don't do it!
After ALOT of research, I found a pretty cool looking free site for hosting. Wix.com was who I went with. They had some nice, clean layouts and very few ads. I was able to quickly create a cute website, just enough to have a portfolio and list my pricing. I was happy with it. They also have a blog option, which I never used, but am sure works great. Their builder was simple and easy to use.
After comparing my free site, I decided a website really wasn't what I needed after all. Everyone seemed to be blogging. So I logged into blogger.com and developed a blog. Once I had created the blog to the point I was satisfied, I pointed my domain to redirect there. I liked the blogger layout, it was fresh and clean. However, because it was free, it had a log of bugs and issues. I noticed that when I went to my site, often my pages didn't show up! So if you weren't familiar with what was there, it really was no good for you as a client.
This is about the time I decided I was ready to go with a storefront option. What is a storefront? It's a site where my clients can log in to view their proofs and purchase online. Do you know how many storefront options are out there?! It's insane! And the prices are crazy! Some I've seen require a set up fee of hundreds or thousands even, then most require monthly plans as well. I simply could not afford that.
I tried 2 free trials, that after reading lots of photography blogs, seemed to be the two most popular storefront options among photographers. Smugmug and Zenfolio. I noticed that with both companies, to do the things I needed to do (order prints from a lab or my choice and set my own prices) I was going to spend about $150 - $200 per year. In the big scheme of things, that's not a whole lot I guess, but it was more than I wanted to spend. Keep in mind, at this point, I'm still not sure most of my clients want prints.
I did a LOT of research and found a neat client proofing site with free (YES FREE) storefront. I opted to go with them. My main reason for this company - no upfront, out of pocket expenses. I only pay when I have a sell! I set my account up with a company called Instaproofs. They are not very easy to use, but they do have good customer support. You can set up a basic account for free, with unlimited events. Events can be password protected and you can set your own prices. This is exactly what I needed. The only catch is, they charge a per sale commission. This option is better for me, at this time, because I simply don't sell a lot of prints. I highly recommend this option to anyone unsure of a budget or how it will go for you. If, by some miracle, I start selling thousands of dollars in prints, then I would move to one of the larger companies. But for now, this is all I need
So now that I had my client proofing, I needed a nice, clean website that worked 100% of the time! This is when I went back to my GoDaddy account. My domain was about to expire, so I decided to renew and try their 5 page economy builder. They had it on special for $1 a month! So I bought my first paid website for $12 for the first year. 5 pages was enough to list my info and pricing. One my homepage, I created links to my blog (so that I can still profile my work without using my 5 paid pages) and my instaproofs account (my client access page).
The GoDaddy builder is familiar to me, my husband and I use it for our church site. They have several templates available to chose from. All of their templates are fully customizable and you need no HTML knowledge to do most options.
After about 4 hours of typing and customizing, I was finally happy. I feel like this past year's worth of research has finally paid off! And I hope that by sharing what I've done, I can spare you, fellow photographers, many hours of research.
Thanks for following!
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