I've severed the ambiblical cord and am now free of Pictage... They were an AWESOME match for our business for quite a while, but we recently realized they are no longer the best fit for what we are doing and where we are at.

I sent my email to my pro-rep tonight/this a.m. and am looking for a reply in the next few days (never seem to get customer support answers right away...)

HalbergPrints.com is alive and well... and at the rate we're going with print sales, I would guess that before the end of the month the cart's profit difference between Pictage and the new process, it will have already paid for itself.

SWEET!!!!!!!!
(send me a price list...)

Tim,

Good for you!

Pictage is for some an easy, turnkey way to get started. They entice you with increased sales, free advertising, and a community to help you out when you get stuck.

With a little research, and a bit of creative thinking, you can do yourself what Pictage does for you. The difference is you get more money in your pocket, and more control of your client's experience (which is always good).

Eric

I'm about to be free from Pictage in about a month as soon as my current events expire. I'm excited. lol It doesn't fit my business anymore either.

way to go tim! lucky!

AWESOME!!!!



I'll be doing the same.

Thanks for sharing the link Tim. I am curious about the cart. How does the cropping and toning info get back to you?

Awesome Tim!

I'm sure you've already covered this someplace, but - is this a cart you designed? Is it a "drop in" the rest of us can use? Give us the scoop. Will this thing process credit card transactions and all that?

I joined Pictage a couple months ago but I'm thinking it may be a short relationship. Their system is just too clunky. Clients can't even figure out how to get logged in - it's just too busy and over complicated and too many steps involved to do anything.

... and I haven't sold squat yet using them.

I'll give it time, but I think this fall we may be hooking up our own card / processing system - just ordering the stuff straight up from WHCC and my new office assistant will re-package the prints in a nice box and ship them back out. It's more steps, it's a headache to setup, but then it'll save us $1200 plus comissions per year.

Thanks for sharing. I clicked around in it a bit and liked what I saw. Functional and clean. I likey.

Got my paperwork yesterday for my own online store and will be moving into the queue any minute. Thanks SO much, Tim, for your shining example! Never had Pictage because it never fit my business model in the first place so I can't wait to get going with my very own store!

Tim, you ROCK!

It is Pickpic. I am in the final leg of getting my cart running. It should be up this week -- fingers crossed.

But I want to make people more aware of the true costs to running Pickpic. If you assume a 2 year life span for this shopping cart solution, and you need a new website in order to run it (ala halbergprints), it comes out to about $80/month fixed cost for pickpic. If you go with a 4 year life span, then the cost is about $50/month. This in addition to about a 2.2% gross variable cost to cover credit card processing. These costs take into account the cost of Pickpic, new hosting, credit card processing, and domain/ssl fees. People who can use their existing website or do not want credit card integration or can find a cheaper hosting service can certainly reduce these costs a bit.

I just wanted to make sure people are aware of the cost of running your own service using Pickpic.

I am totally sold on Pickpic and think it rocks. I love that it is html based. While my main website is flash based and I know I am cutting out some of the market who is on dialup from accessing my site, I don't want to cut out anyone who wants to purchase pictures. Troy's support and documentation rocks and really makes the process easy.

My only complaint is that Pickpic is so popular that there is a 45 day delay getting it installed. Actually if mine is installed this week, it will have taken something like 37 days. :-)

Nice cart design Tim.

The delay, lack of support and cost is the main reason I steered away from pickpic. It is a really elegant cart and the guys over at pickpic should be commended. I simply couldn't wait the long delay that rolling it out took.

I went with photocart and I am really happy with it. It cost less than $300 (with no annual fee) and it has many of the same robust features.

Craig, if I may ask, what were the reasons you dropped Instaproofs in favor of photocart?

me too!! photocart is so nice - i need to jazz mine up a bit.
the customer service is TOP rate .

very nice, tim - love your interface. clean.

What are you wondering about price wise?


Cropping and toning - the cart develops an email which is sent to you and tells you which image number was ordered, what the crop, size, paper type and toning options were.


This is a PickPic cart. Cost is $1,049 if you found them at wppi or $1,299 if you didn't... This is a one time fee. There are no other costs from PickPic... you then need to host the cart somewhere... this cost me nothing extra with my current hosting agreement for all of my other domain names. The new domain I chose cost me $6.99 for a year. My SSL cert was I think maybe $20 (go daddy has an awesome cert that doesn't cost an arm and a leg) CC processing costs me a set fee of I think $10-15 per month... plus about 2.5-3.5% per transaction depending on card. Then, I have to pay for the cost of the print (VERY INEXPENSIVE compared to Pictage)

We use ProDPI for our prints (they are as good if not better than whcc) and, we use them for drop shipping... the do BEAUTIFUL packaging for drop shipping... very classy, and I trust their quality. So... I don't have to pack prints or drive to the post office. I just find the file, tweak a little in photoshop, hit send and it's done... out of my hands... outsourced with a company I ENTIRELY trust!!!


Thanks for making that point Jim. I agree, people need to know, you still have to take care of these other things... but, I feel that it can be done for a bit less than what you quoted. Also... I'd hope to use my cart indefinitely... (I'll probably pay for some upgrades along the way, but it will depend on what those upgrades offer)

PickPic ROCKS MY WORLD!!!! In less than two weeks with new weddings actually online the cart has half-way paid for itself... I'm guessing that next month the cart will have blown past Pictage's entire profit for me for last year. (could take two months... but I'm leaning toward one right now... Parents are already finding PickPic easier to use than Pictage...)

Great hearing your experiences, Tim! I do think that it is a very snazzy looking set-up and easy to navigate and use. As much as I LOVE WHCC, you've got me SERIOUSLY looking into ProDPI now!

Thanks for sharing!

Yeah, me too. Hmmm.

tim's experience is the norm, and doesnt surprise me at all. thanks for sharing tim, and for the 411 jimbo.

i think many of us saw the direction things were going probably a year ago as pictage's popularity in the industry is taking a nose dive. i know i know they have 10 million users still and because of that they must be doing something right, blah blah blah... but i think the majority of people i talk with either have left pictage or are just in the middle of leaving for another solution.

when you see pictage in a thread you know it's going to be 50/50 on people's experience in good or bad. when you see pickpic you see 100/0 with positive experience. that says a lot.

i love the way tim put it.... i still love to outsource, just only to companies i trust. well said.

We've totally been looking into something like this cause I'm not making a penny off Pictage. Ok, that was sarcastic, I'm sorry. I finally made a little bit but not enough for me to fall in love with them. Got me thinking again Tim. Thanks for the push.

[quote name='LukeWalker' date='July 18 2007, 11:02 PM' post='172266'

i love the way tim put it.... i still love to outsource, just only to companies i trust. well said.
[/quote]
I'm the most trustworthy company of them all.

I love it Ali! Well said!

I don't understand why people don't get this about keeping certain things in-house.

People can probably find cheaper ways to implement Pickpic. I just used what troy recommended. Pickpic $1249, 2 years of west host $310, 2 years of domain/ssl $47, paynet setup $39 + 20/month = $479 over 2 years. The grand total is $2065. That divided by 24 months = $86/month. In my case, all but $20/month is being paid up front. I know Dan could step in and talk about the time/value of money so it is probably higher than $86/month. :-)




HA! I didn't understand what she meant at first till I read your explanation dan! You rock! lol I am so stupid sometimes. Ali is so smart!

It's ok, I get paid well.