Archive
SmugMug’s Pro Pricing Change: What, Why and How.
UPDATE on November 8, 2012: We’ve added the ability to price and sell to the Portfolio account, based on the feedback we’ve been getting from you.
UPDATE on Sept 7, 2012: We’ve posted an update from Don & Baldy to answer your most common questions about these changes.
UPDATE: In case there was any confusion from the email, you won’t see a price increase until after your next renewal date if it’s after October 15th. We are not billing anyone on October 15th unless that was their annual or monthly renewal date.
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Dear Pros,
For the first time in 7 years, we’re raising the price of some SmugMug Pro subscriptions, something we tried hard not to do.
Pros who sell at a markup use far more storage and features than pros who don’t, so we split our pro account into two types: Portfolio and Business.
Portfolio is $150/year or ($20/mo) and still provides access to our pro labs for both you and your visitors, plus pro features like watermarking.
Business lets you set prices and earn profit. It will be $300/year (or $35/mo) for new customers, but existing subscribers who set prices will be asked to renew at $250/year (or $30/month) beginning October 15, 2012.
Personally, if I were asked to pay more for a service, I’d want to hear from the person responsible for the decision. That’s me, so I placed my dSLR on a tripod, and looked it right in the lens imagining it was you. I tried to offer a peek inside SmugMug and our thinking:
What will I be charged when I renew?
If your anniversary date is before October 15, no worries, you’ll renew at our existing rates.
- After October 14, we’ll guess you’d like to renew at the Portolio rate if you aren’t setting prices.
- Also after October 14, we’ll guess you’d choose to renew at the Business rate of $250/year (or $30/month) if you do set prices.
If we’re guessing wrong, you can upgrade or downgrade in a few seconds in your Account Settings.
What’s the diff between Portfolio and Business?
The short. Portfolio has everything except commerce features.
The long. Portfolio lets you build a beautiful site, protect your photos and print pro-quality prints. You get everything in the Power account, plus:
- Watermarking
- Printmarking
- Backprinting
- Access to Bay Photo and WHCC. (Loxley in the works. We’ll say when.)
Business has every bell, whistle and feature we offer, including:
- Commerce tools: Custom pricing, Sales tax, direct deposit
- Marketing features: Events and favorites, Coupons, Packages, Order branding
- Workflow helpers: Proof delay, Personal Delivery, Boutique Packaging
Our features chart has all the details.
Do I get something out of this?
Yes! The other big reason for doing this is to invest more engineering in SmugMug to make your lives better, which is exactly what we’re doing.
We love that many of you have been with us for almost 10 years and it’s stunning to think how far we’ve come together. Thanks so much for all the great support you’ve given us.
Thanks for being a part of the SmugMug family,
Chris MacAskill (aka Baldy)
Co-Founder & President
What were we thinking?
Sometimes you see the dumb things companies say and you wonder, “What were they thinking?”
I never imagined that happening to us, but we did something so dumb in a blog post, we’re now looking at each other blankly and asking, what were we thinking?
The post was about image theft and we used examples from pro photographer Valerie Schooling’s site and gave the impression she was doing things wrong, which she wasn’t.
To make matters worse, we somehow embedded screen captures of her site without asking her permission. If it weren’t such a dumb thing to do, I could explain why we did it other than the obvious: she and her photos are awesome.
Naturally, her friends and other respected photographers in the industry asked us what we were thinking, and unfortunately the honest answer was, “We weren’t.”
We learned a lesson we’ll never forget because we also betrayed ourselves, since we are photographers. We apologize for the time and angst this caused a lot of wonderful people.
Chris MacAskill
President & co-founder
Not usually so clueless
Bulk Downloads, Cart Update, Bug Fixes
Filenames and Custom Domain for Bulk Downloads
As soon as we added bulk downloads to the site a few weeks ago, you asked for two more things: use original filenames as part of the downloaded filename, and your custom domain in the download url. Today, we added both! Thanks for the feedback, everyone!
Shopping Cart Update
Are you a Pro? We updated the ‘buy multiple photos’ page to use your personal branding, and to show SmugMug’s mini-footer instead of our full footer. We also updated the footer in the main shopping cart to use only the mini-footer when photos are bought from Pro sites.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a bug where videos playing in full screen had a frame-grab of the video as a background instead of the normal black background.
- Packages with cards in them now show an error when the image being used to fill the package does not meet the size requirements.
Enjoy,
The SmugMug Family
SmugMug camera strap fail
We thought we were doing an awesome thing by giving away 20,000 stretchy comfy grippy camera straps. Until recently, all we heard was how cool the straps are.
But we’ve heard a few disturbing reports of the clips failing on some straps, so we thought we’d better put out an alert. Problem is, we’ve given these away at places like SmugMug user group meetings, so we don’t have a way to contact everyone who received them. Please pass this along to anyone you know with our straps.
We have 15,000 new straps coming this week and we asked the manufacturer to put much bigger clips on the new ones (click to see bigger):
Disclaimer: the fact that we’re hanging a 20 pound weight from the straps does not mean we recommend it! Don’t try it at home.
We’re happy to replace your strap with the new ones coming this week even if you’ve had no clip fail. No worries, they’re free, just like the originals. But we have to ask for patience because we have a backlog of orders.
The reports we’ve heard of failed clips appear to have come from the kinds of big cameras Batman would use:
We know of a few people who heard of the clip fail but love their straps so much they threw away the clip and sewed the strap.
Clip slip & fail
We researched failures on the net and it was a little bit scary to read clip fail reports about straps of just about all makes. Someone sent in a diagram of the way they have secured their straps for years no matter the manufacturer or size of camera. Here’s what they said:
“The idea of the double lock is that it prevents the slippage by binding the nylon against itself and also captures the tail end of the strap inside the slider. This makes slippage virtually impossible. The other advantage is if the clip should fail, the slider with all of this extra material can and usually does bind and catch the item before it falls.”
But big cameras require big straps
I know, the straps say Pro on them… But honestly we can’t be sure even the new straps will be bullet proof on big camera/lens/flash combos. We’ve not been able to do the thousands of hours of testing under all conditions that would make us be sure they’ll never fail under a big load.
How to get new ones
SmugMug subscribers can get new straps at http://www.smugmug.com/free-stuff.mg.
Love the straps but don’t subscribe to SmugMug? If you have one of the old straps, send email with your name and address to help at smugmug dot com. We’ll get one to you if you act fast before this goes viral and we go through all 15,000.
But we can’t tell you how sorry and embarrassed we are that a clip apocalypse happened to some people whose beloved cameras hit the ground.
All the best,
The SmugMug Family
Referrers, Personal Delivery, and Sales History
Who’s your daddy?
We added a referrer tab to your statistics so you can see who’s making you popular. My SmugMug site was discovered by StumbleUpon:
For most sites, you can click on the numeric link under hits to discover which pages on those sites are fueling your rise to fame and fortune.
Personal Delivery
This feature diverts your customer’s package to you so you can personally deliver it to them.
Enable it for all galleries on the pros tab of your control panel. Enable it for specific galleries via Gallery Settings.
We still collect your customer’s ship-to address in the shopping cart in case you don’t have it. We’ll notify them that their package will come from you.
Continuing the effort to promote your brand on orders, such as cart and package branding, our new order confirm emails mention you more prominently and us less so.
Improved Sales History Page
Faster, lighter, betterer at the maths, with more sort options.
Bug fix
An annoying error message asking you to remove Google Analytics code from your custom footer should annoy you no more.
Almost shipped but…
Stay tuned for our next exciting episode because two pro improvements almost went out tonight but just missed the bus.
All the best,
The SmugMug family
Kevin’s FrankenCamera for high-pixel action
The thing is we have giant walls and we’re kinda bored by static scenes.
What if we want a giant print of fireworks over San Francisco, like this shot we love from Chris Michel, printed BIG!
Creative high-schooler and SmugMug intern Kevin, who dreams of Stanford, did what he does best: mooch cameras from his friends. Fire nine of them at the same instant and voila! Pixels enough for 12-foot prints.
Here ’tis with two cameras firing simultaneously:
So who wants to be part of shooting an epic 12-foot print of Fireworks over San Francisco? ‘Cus Kevin and I would like to meet you there so we can mooch your 5D MKII, if you have one.
Got other ideas for an epic big action shot we can take as a group of 5D donors?
The iPad winning idea(s) and a challenge
Kerry Ellis offered to ask the astronauts to take a high-res pic inside the International Space Station. Ooooo!! Kerry, it isn’t the winning idea for the staircase but I have a wall 140″ tall x 140″ high that I’ll mount that shot on if you can arrange it, and I’ll send you a very fine iPad.
Photo courtesy NASA:
A few days ago I was sure we would settle on award-winning underwater photographer (and editor of Wetpixel) Eric Cheng’s idea for an underwater pano.
Eric, I love the idea so much I may be willing to commission it, and we may not be able to pull off the iPad-winning idea, so stay tuned.
The idea that swept us away:
California Photographer Patrick Smith suggested getting to the top of the North Tower of the Golden Gate Bridge and shooting South, placing the south tower on the staircase far wall, and the spans on the two side walls, with views of SF through the spans. Epic! Chilling! I’ll be sending your iPad right away.
The challenge:
How do you get permission? Some have:
Golden Gate tower photoset on Flickr.
What’s in it for the people who manage the Golden Gate Bridge? An epic public domain gigapixel image for historical purposes? Make it available for public viewing somewhere important?
Anyone know how to get permission?
Thanks!
Chris MacAskill
An iPad for an idea
We’re all about Big Prints at SmugMug’s HQ, like this 60-foot gigapixel skyline of SF:
That one had to be dark because it’s in an entertainment room where we watch movies. Here’s a lighter big print in our conference room:
The tragedy is we have a massive stairwell looking empty and sad. Sad because it doesn’t have the gigapixel wrap-around floor-to-ceiling (150 inches) breathtaking shot it deserves. Even the dog looks sad:
All you have to do to get us to send you an iPad is come up with a scene that would make the hallway awesome. The person who comes up with the idea that excites us most gets the iPad.
There are a few constraints. One is we’d love a light scene, like maybe colorful fishies near the surface in the great barrier reef.
Another is we have to be able to shoot it or commission some talented photographer to shoot it. So Saturn’s rings are out. I dunno, does someone know how to shoot a gigapixel image underwater and stitch it? Sounds hard.
Our bias is that big photos should let you see fascinating details that you can’t see in small ones. We have a 144-inch print of Milan Cathedral that gets people to stare in wonder because they can see details they can’t even see by traveling to Milan.
Robert Scoble made a video of our large prints.
We’re pretty geeky, so we like aerospace museums. Is there one full of coolio planes that would allow us (you?) to shoot for a print that large? We like exotic car collections, too…
Keep in mind that the viewing distance will be very close. People aren’t standing back, they’re walking two feet away as they climb the stairs. They demand awesome detail.
We’ll be watching the comments like hawks and can’t wait to send an iPad to someone!
All the best,
Chris MacAskill (@baldy on Twitter)
Photo Packages and Event Marketing
Sell more, price less: Packages for Pros
This week is pay dirt for Pros. Sell groups of prints and products for totally pain-free purchasing. Packages are here!
Create and configure them from the Pros tab of your Control Panel. Choose your print lab, products, and applicable galleries. Then name your price. When your customers buy one they’ll just need to select their images and check out. Questions? See our full help pages. Did we get it right? Speak your mind on our forums.
Pros please note:
- The print lab you specify for a package trumps the lab you’ve set in each gallery’s custom pricing. If they are different, a photo ordered through a Bay Photo package will print through Bay, while a regular order from the same gallery could print through EZ Prints.
- At this time, digital downloads and custom photo cards are not available for purchase through packages.
- Color correction is currently applied to ALL items ordered through packages. As we improve this feature we’ll let you specify your desired settings, so stay tuned.
Event Marketing and Choosing Favorites
Our Pros have shown us incredible patience through the last year and we hope that this moment has been worth the wait. Introducing Event Marketing and Favorites:
Events are Sharegroups on steroids. Create an Event and assign galleries to it. You get a link to the page to share with any person you wish. They’ll see all of those galleries on one handy page.
Additionally, you can enter a list of key clients (say, the bride). For each Participant you add, we’ll generate a custom version of the page that also contains a Favorites folder specific to them. When each Participant browses those event galleries, they can tag the photos they like best. A copy of each gets placed in that Favorites gallery, and both of you can review their selections at any time.
You can start managing your Events right now from your Pros tab. Visit our full help pages, send your customers to our visitor help, and as always — let us know what you think on our forums.
Last but not least, we brushed up the site with a slew of bug fixes:
- We tightened up the layout of our recently-added Sales Tax tool, so things should look neater in that space. You can also enter tax rates with up to three decimal places.
- Keyworders rejoice! Editing keywords now won’t unexpectedly clear them.
- Keywords links work properly from the lightbox again. (Whoops)
- Browsing by date on an invalid user’s site now redirects back to our general homepage.
- Sepia and Tanning Salon are back in service. Find it under your gallery Tools button > Color Effects.
- We added another great deal on our ClubSmug page for those wanting to try a Showit Website. Log in and check it out!
And a couple updates to our beta Stats feature:
- Video views are more accurate and are recorded more quickly.
- Single day views should appear as a dot on the graph.
- You can now grab a permalink to the page if you’re viewing stats for a single day.
We hope our fans love these new additions and will stay tuned for lots more. If you’re attending WPPI next week, don’t be shy. Please come see us in booth #1518 and say hello!
Happy marketing,
The SmugMug Family
Unveiling SmugMug Pro
Many thanks to so many wonderful pros who invited us to their homes and studios this past year. Never in my career have I seen so much generosity of time while you patiently explained the nuances of your workflows.
Although we have tens of thousands of pros, many who have been with us for years, this year was different. Groups of passionate photographers approached us to say, “You’re off to a good start but it’s not enough. To become great, you need packages. Folders & favorites. Event marketing. Smart galleries. User group meetings. Coupons. Powerful SEO. A great pro lab. Better branding. Deeper customization. And more.”
So we doubled our engineering team, rolled out SmugMug User Groups, and shipped a dozen new features. You can track the details on our release notes blog.
Packages, folders & favorites, and event marketing are imminent. With luck they’ll be live for WPPI next week, but if not, come by booth #1518 for demos (and for an invite to our party Tuesday night).
Soon after they’re live, we’ll display the new SmugMug Pro logo on our site for pages you don’t brand as your own.
Now that we have so much feature momentum, you can expect some more big surprises in the not-too-distant future.
What is SmugMug?
Gorgeous, unlimited photo sharing for everyone. Grab your own website on SmugMug and be ready to archive, share and print the photos you love. From unlimited photo and video uploads to e-commerce tools for Pros, we have it all. Learn more.
