A Beginner’s Guide to Creating Your Online Photo Gallery
I am a photographer who has spent the past seven years specializing in wedding photography. My goal is to capture all the joyous moments with photos because one of the best things about being a photographer is that I get to help people relive those moments when they see their photos. I find it rewarding that I can help play a role to do that. I do not claim to be an expert or a master photographer, I simply want to share what I learned and experienced in how to operate a photography business with an online photo gallery. How to start using an online photo gallery? When I first started, I was hesitant to include an online photo gallery in my photography business workflow. I thought it would take too much time and the time would be better spent in other aspects of the business. But I found it was much easier than expected and the return is higher than I ever could have imagined. Here are some suggestions for you: – Choose a suitable platform: There are a lot of online photo gallery platforms available, so it’s important to pick one that suits your needs. Look for a user-friendly cloud-based online photo gallery that offer features like easy sharing, online proofing, customizable galleries, and the ability to sell prints or digital downloads. – Try it in a typical business workflow: Before paying and making a commitment to one online photo gallery, take the time to try its features in your business workflow. Create collections based on themes, locations, or events and engage your friends for help and get feedback. Make sure that the online photo gallery and estore works on different devices such as laptops and phones. – Avoid a balloon payment at the beginning: Once you selected a few different online photo gallery platforms to compare, make use of promotional offers and free trials first than paying regular price to start. For example, Zno Gallery™ has a Free Trial for new customers to help you grow your online presence and improve your clients experience. Usually, promotions are usually found on the product page or you can send email to support team to ask about it. How does it benefit me and my clients? An online photo gallery allows me to showcase my work in a professional and visually appealing way. By displaying my best images in an online photo gallery, unlike traditional workflow requiring clients to come to my studio to look at photos, clients can conveniently view and share my work online at their comfort anywhere. This feature is perfect for me because taking photos at weddings and important events, multiple parties are typically needed to review and look at all the images. Using an online photo gallery also add credibility to my business. It shows that I am serious about my craft and have taken the time to curate my work in a professional manner. Besides, the clients’ experience is improved because they can easily browse through the photos at their own pace and download or share favorite images with others. This accessibility and ease of sharing sometimes increase the chances of attracting more potential clients. What’s more, an online photo gallery should provide photographers with an estore to sell print products. This has become an additional source of income for me by bringing more sale opportunities. With an estore, I can offer a wider range of print products than what I can show in my studio. Plus, clients enjoy the convenience of being able to design and order their own products online without any sales pressure from me. What are the most critical touch points for building an online photo gallery estore? As a photographer, kindly note that our goal may be to earn more profits from clients. Thus, when building an online photo gallery to showcase, an integrated estore should be considered. Clients can enter the online store after they view their photos and preview what their photos will look like after printing. From a client’s perspective, what are the touch points to purchase? First, ensure that the estore has a clean and intuitive design that is easy for clients to scan. Use clear categories and product names to help clients know the print products displayed. Second, use high-resolution images that accurately represent the print products. Include multiple views and close-ups if necessary to give clients a clear idea of what they will be getting. What’s more, prepare many customization options. This could include options for different sizes, framing styles, finishes, or personalized text or images. If applicable, offer clients the ability to customize their print products and order in the estore. Also, having an automatic fulfillment releases my work pressure and helps clients feel confident in their purchase decision. Overall, an online photo gallery greatly benefited me by providing a platform to showcase my work, increased my professional credibility, and generated more sales opportunities.
5 Tips for Earning Second-money with an Online Photo Gallery
Earning Second-money is easier than the first. This concept is taken from the psychology of closing sales, such as adding on “extras” to the initial package (like extra hours of coverage for a photoshoot), only now it’s applied to selling prints. Photographers need to motivate clients to purchase upgrades and other add-ons to generate more revenue. One great sale moment that cannot be overlooked is in the online photo gallery. This is when clients will walk through their treasured memory for the first time. Here are several tips for photographers who want to run a long-term and profitable photography business with an online photo gallery. Show Your Best Photos to Your Clients Photography is a luxury business. It’s important to build an environment for clients to feel a connection and special. In the process of working with clients, photographers need a means to share their images. It’s one thing to store a collection of photos in something like a Dropbox folder and share a link, but doing so this way leaves plenty to be desired in terms of presentation. It also doesn’t offer important functions like proofing or sales features. For those reasons, it is necessary for photographers to create a custom branded and exclusive online photo gallery that reflects style, is professional in appearance, in addition to being easy to use for clients. Give Clients Positive Hints to Upgrades Don’t stop introducing photos after providing clients with their online photo gallery link. Guide them to mark favorite images and help them picture how their album will turn out. For example. Plus, leave comments for the images they favorited. This will help product design later, and it can also give clients something to look forward to when seeing the images. When clients hire a photographer, they already have in mind the prints they want to see from the shoot and expectations of cost. This will also help you understand what they’re looking for in terms of imagery or shots they value. By being able to convey and deliver images they expect and love, clients are more likely to purchase additional prints, wall arts and other print products. Let Your Clients See and Select Products Themselves Upselling techniques work by satisfying the needs of the customer completely – or exceeding them. A practical technique is to give a client the limited time offer. Explain why taking advantage of this offer is beneficial. But in order to entice clients to book more sessions in the future, creating a sense of urgency is not enough. Successful photographers work also as a mentor to their clients, by guiding them to better understand what to values, or may come to value. For example, the photographer may praise that the photo is beautiful and will look especially good and memorable. But they won’t emphasize the necessity of upselling like a salesman. How to use this kind of implicit guidance and avoid potentially leaving a lot of money on the table? This is where an online store is invaluable because it allows the client to preview the print product themselves at their own comfort without the expectation of a sales pitch. They will let their guard down to fully appreciate the photos. The client can see what the products are rather than only hear about them and therefore, be open to make additional purchases. With an easy-to-use solution like Zno Estore™, the online print store for photographers natively built into Zno Gallery™, there is no reason to give it a try especially when it is free. In Zno Estore™, client’s photos are displayed onto the print products. It also includes an easy-to-use designer for clients to change options like size and cover or frame so that they can play and preview how the resulting print product will look like when printed. Select Popular Products for Second-Money Which print products should you offer in your online print store? Should you keep it minimal or offer every print product available? The answer will vary, of course, but somewhere in between is a good starting point. Consider your target market, their taste and their budget. Then provide a printing solution that interests them which may include popular products from different print labs. With Zno Gallery™, you can enjoy the benefit of printing products directly from Zno Cloud or by manual fulfillment with other print labs all through the Zno Estore™. Zno Estore™ is natively built into Zno Gallery™. It allows you to set price lists on a wide range of popular print products with a simple click, including lay-flat photo albums, framed prints, wall arts, table top print products and more. Master Your Cost to Earn More Profit In the photography industry, reducing costs can start from reducing labor costs and reducing goods costs. The tools in this online photo gallery helps you save time and money while also making it easier than ever to earn second-money through print sales. If you’re worried about adding more work to your workflow, don’t be. Once your Zno Estore™ is set up, there’s little else for you to do in terms of operating the store. Here is how it works. With the Automatic or Self-Fulfillment feature, less time is needed to communicate and follow-up orders. Automatic fulfillment works in exactly the way it sounds. When your clients submit an order, the order is automatically transferred to the print lab after your approval where it is made and shipped to client. With Self-Fulfillment, you are responsible for fulfilling the order with another print lab and ship to client. While there are a good number of online client galleries for you to choose from, it’s important to note all features each online photo gallery offers and how they can work for you. The best thing about Zno Gallery™ is how easy it is to use and sell your prints, albums, and wall art with 0% commission. Save you time and earn second-money with Zno Gallery™ now!
