[sarahgirl777]

Originally Posted by prince

Along with other ideas I really like Pat's idea of sending proofs as pdf and then taking orders by email. That is quicker and also saves on travel time.

If you invite them at your place or if you go to their's it puts constraint on time a bit more than required. A week's time sounds reasonable to make proofs available for viewing. When they have proofs via email or online they are able to show not only to their close family but any relatives that are away.

"Free" also makes clients lazy and tends to let them take you for granted.

I think I will soon be in your shoes in few months and this discussion will give some ideas too.

Good luck!!

Yea, I gave them an order form to write down the proofs they wanted, I require a package purchase before individual pics, so it breaks down the packages by size so they can say what proof number they want in each size. I thought about doing it by e-mail, but I want to make sure I get the $$ before I send in the order as I don't want to be stuck paying for them. So I figure they can just give me the order form when they are done deciding. (I'm in a small town (Hays, you probably know it) so everyone is close to me and so far it's all people I know and see often) I did my first one by e-mail and it didn't go so well so I created a form. For example, I require that a certain # of some sizes be ordered, but I couldn't get that through to her that she needed to pick more than one proof for her order... or tell me she wanted all 4 of that size from the same proof. Anyways, I guess it will just take time to work out all of the kinks.