Recommendations for online portfolio

[AaronMaffeiPhotography]

I recently found one online portfolio website that allows you to upload and sell your pictures from the site, the pricing can go from $25 to $250 per year, but I'm still experimenting with the free trial. It's called zenfolio.
* Update: Just found another site, viewbook, with better pricing (pro is $190/year instead of $250), and is seems simpler, I'll just have to try it out also and see which one I like.

But I'm not posting to tell you about this site, I'm wondering what other sites others have used. The main things I'm looking for is to be able to sell my photos online as well as display them.

[oldwolf]

smugmug.com

[AaronMaffeiPhotography]

Thanks I think I might actually go with that one, have you made any sales with it? Is it easy for customers to order prints right from the site?

[oldwolf]

Very easy for customers to order prints from it. It also gives you an option to upload low res files and when customers order that print then you can replace the file with a high res file and make sure the crop is correct before it's sent to the customers.

The low res file saves on bandwidth. The photographer preview before the order is sent ensures that the customer doesn't mess up on cropping if they order a different print size.

I like it. I've used it for a few years and don't have any complaints about the ordering process. It's a bit limited in what you can do to customize the page though. You can hire someone to do it, use a preset or if you know enough about CSS and stuff then you can just DIY.

I like Zenfolio. The $100/year plan is more than enough.

[ChrisAdval]

Originally Posted by oldwolf

smugmug.com

I'm considering smugmug but I'm super cheap at least right now, and anyone taking a chunk of my profits feels eh... not good. Not just that their printing quality I am not sure about seems very dictated to me as right now I'm figuring out the cheapest but highest quality source for prints for photos for myself and for future clients.

[BK553]

Smugmug (for Pros) uses Bay Photo in CA. Look at their site for info on printing. You can download a profile to soft-proof your prints if you're worried about how they will turn out.

[AaronMaffeiPhotography]

I started my SmugMug site today and I already really like it, of course I'm still using the free trial so I think in order to still have all the features that they give you in the free trial, I'll have to get the Pro which is $150/year which really isn't that bad if I make some sales on it, and even if not, it's a great site and gives me good exposure and a good way to share my photos.

Plus, you can set the prices on all your products that you want to sell by the gallery or even by individual photo so you can set the amount of profit you get. Also, I think no matter what site you go to, they always take a portion of the profit from your sales.

If you want to see what I have so far from just a couple hours of work today: aaronmaffeiphoto's Photos | SmugMug. By-the-way, if you go to my photos and see that "PROOF" watermark over all of them, that's actually a feature on the site.

[AbramG]

I've been using Smugmug for a few years as a photohost though I haven't made any sales through them. That's still an area I'm working on but it's not directly their fault.

They also offer a monthly pricing plan which is pretty reasonable in my opinion.

However if you are not worried so much about sales and more about displaying a digital portfolio there are a couple good options out there.

For one, 500px offers a beautiful and simple portfolio page to all members. Membership is also free! If you pay for an "Awesome" account then you get access to more features of course and more options for themes to display your portfolio.

Another option is Virb.com, they are a pretty decent web host if you are HTML/CSS challenged like I am. Their prices are very reasonable and the themes are very customizable. Best of all they totally listen to customer feedback and are regularly implementing new features for their users. They have a lot of great stuff in the pipeline that will hopefully be available soon.

Anyways I hope that helps some! If anyone is interested in signing up for Smugmug, you can use my invite code to get a $5 discount off your membership at the end of your trial period. (AAIpMN70BKznY)

[AaronMaffeiPhotography]

Thanks, I'll keep you in mind when I sign-up