When you get an order from an online gallery, do you fufill the print order yourself, pacakge them, then ship them OR do you have it "outsourced", by either drop shipping or having your online proofing comapny do it? Which do you think is better?

I used to pacakge 100% of order that came in, now I only hand package my actual clients (people who hired me) orders. Every other print order is drop shipped from my lab, WHCC.

Just curious to see what others do, I think the best way would be to hand pacakage your print orders, but the least time/money consuming is to outsource it!

I personally package everything myself...right now it is the best option for me and I like to see their prints first. But can you tell me more about WHCC's drop shipping? I am curious how the packaging looks..does it look the same as what we receive? Maybe you don't know the answer since they are going to the customer, but I would love to hear your experience from this option.

I haven't tested it for myself to see what the packaging specifically looks like. But I do remember reading in a post a while back that the packaging was just plain- white, no logos, etc.

I definitely outsource this and would encourage both of you to do the same. This is not work that the business owner should be doing. Your job as the owner is to grow your business - not to control it.

Your time is more valuable elsewhere and there are plenty of good companies out there who can handle this complete process for you.

Remember - Success should be defined by how FREE your scheudle is and not by how FULL your schedule is so if you find yourself adding and adding and adding to your workload you're only going to be able to accomplish so much before your life is full...hey....maybe your life is already full - outsourcing these "non-core" tasks is a must.

All the best,
DJ

great advice, DJ. as usual. thanks for the reality check.

Check out Prodpi.com for drop shipping. They have executive drop shipping where they ship the images in a nice box, not just cardboard.

Outsourcing has it's advantages, but it also has it's disadvantages too. I think adding the personal touch to what you do and packaging your print order how you want can easily set you apart from other photographers. Sure, it takes time, but that's what my clients are paying a premium for. I stopped using Pictage for this year to try fulfilling orders myself because I want to focus on branding and quality control.

I don't think controlling your business is a bad thing at all. If you don't have control of your company, how can that be good? I have no problem with hiring assistants or employees to do this kind of tedious work but it's NOT bad.

There are differing view points on this, for sure, but it can work either way, you just have to find what works for you.

I want to see the product before it ships to client. Moreover, I think presentation counts so I have special boxes and such in which to deliver prints.

Free time is good, but is cannot be the end. The job has to be done and for most of us we are the ones to do it. We happen to define the job, as well. I don't think an extra 30 minutes or whatever to package some prints once or twice a week is going to make or break a person.

Everything comes to us and then we either send it out or the customer picks it up. Most of our business is portrait business. Most of our orders are our actual customers, and they almost always pick it up. Occasionally we will mail to one of our customers, but that is pretty rare. We have found that having the personal contact improves our relationship with our customers and increases our repeat and referral business.

Generally for mailing orders, I go to the post office about once a week for other stuff anyway, so it really is no big deal and just combined with other stuff I am doing. We have a postage scale, so we pre-stamp most things and just have to drop them in the mailbox without having to stand in line. When I actually have to wait in line, I usually can time it so I am there no more than 5 minutes, even during the Christmas season and I drive past there all the time, so it usually isn't out of the way.

Really, the 1/2 hour or so per week that I spend packaging prints and calling to let customers know there orders are ready really is no big deal. Usually I sit in front of the tv if I have a whole bunch to package, so it is kind of part of my relaxation/down time. If I weren't packaging prints during that time, I would probably be folding our endless pile of laundry . Really not a big deal!

Be sure to control it enough so you don't grow in the WRONG direction. Do your homework.

Waxing philosophic on a single cup of coffee

I use ProDPI's drop shipping when an order is going out of state unless I just happen to send in a huge order which includes both locally bound & out-of-state orders. It does cost a lot more, especially when you have packaging materials on hand, but honestly, I'm tired of dealing with the post office and keeping shipping supplies on hand. I'll let someone else who does it better take care of that.

For local orders, I package & deliver myself.

The one problem with drop-shipping (for me, anyway) is that I find myself making stupid mistakes when sending in orders all the time. How did I forget to order that one 5x7? I don't know, but I do it a lot. I like the idea of using Labtricity through Photoreflect so that the orders go straight to a lab without giving me a chance to screw them up, but they don't have any labs that I'm thrilled with. I guess that would also be a benefit to Pictage, huh?

I don't package or deliver anything unless I have to. And when I do, I hate it! I used to package everything myself and send it out to the clients all packaged up pretty, but in the end it wasn't worth my time. The only thing that I deliver or that gets picked up are albums and canvas/framed prints, but that is mostly because I haven't been doing the volume of those that has required me to put a better system in place.