One day last March Sarah and I decided to switch from Photoreflect to Pictage. We thought Pictage would paint a better brand for us - more complete, professional print services! At only $100 a mont, we could sacrifice the $1200 to never touch another print. Gladly.

My original thread on our choice:
http://www.opensourcephoto.net/forum/index...p;p=130661&

This week marks a major departure from that previous thread. We have just this week acquired our new PhotoCart and will no longer be offering Pictage.

Here is the story of a rape - and when you lose this much money, you can call it a rape because that's what it is.

Over the past 12 months, our clients have paid a grand total of ... $8545 in reprint sales.
Over the past 12 months, we've received a grand total of ... $2646 from Pictage.

We have received 30% of the money our clients have paid in the last year. Subtracting our $1200 "Pictage fees" from that, we've still received 2646/7345 = 36% of our sales. Apparently the products cost 64% of our earnings after fees.

We will *most definitely* be changing the way we do this - starting with the purchase of that PhotoCart for around $300 (cart + add on store). One-time fee, we get 100% minus actual product costs (lower without Pictage too). If we can make $10,000 in sales this year, I am going to anticipate that we take home $7500. If we make the same $8545, we should be near $6000 for a total loss last year of around $3400 by using Pictage (MORE than what we received!).

Just thought you guys would want to hear the follow up. I sure didnt tho.

WOW!!!!

ouch. . .i just became a pictage member. time will tell on this one.

I suppose this would be a nice thing to remember when photoreflect is driving me nuts.

Time DID tell. 2650/8550 is just ... $5900 for them doing it.... I've decided I'm not *that* lazy.



Absolutely - the cart we just got I think is better than Photoreflect. We just got this:

http://www.picturespro.com/pages/photography_shopping_cart/

It's fantastic & so far looks perfect for us. Check it out! $300 one time sure beats $5900 every year.

i remember a thread a while back.... 'ouch.. pictage... ouch'

not many people seem to have nice things to say. i dont like them cause they never returned my email enquiry.

I have read up about pictage and I just don't get why anyone would pay $100/month basically for the privledge of them taking most of your profits away from you.

I plan to get by using my local pro lab for as long as possible. I know the place well - used to work there in college - and I know all the printers personally.

Is this going to turn into a drama thread when the pictage lovers come out of the closet?

you mean those two over there in the corner?

I don't see them... Do you see dead people as well?

I really hope not - not without sales statistics. I'm not interested in hearing from people who've been with Pictage for a month about how wonderful it is never to place another order. I did that. I was that guy. That guy is blatantly wrong.

I don't want to hear about the "quality of life" debate because $3,000+ buys me a better "quality of life" than not placing a few orders each week.

And after the spamarketing, the issues we've had, the print quality basically blowing, Ezprints becoming a backend printer... no... drama is for another thread. Let's quantify this - let's talk digits. Because it's not possible to really *make* money with Pictage - just more or less than you anticipate.

I love photocart it is money well spent, I don't really like print fullfillment, so I switched to ProDpi executive drop ship; it works for me $7.95 to drop ship in a nice black box with a bow...

Their printing is beautiful and the turn around time is better than WHCC who in my opinion is lighting fast. Now ProDpi needs to add press printed books and I would be 100% prodpi.


I just can't see giving pictage that much of my profits.

Mel

+1 - this is how I do things... I never even considered Pictage - why would I pay them to market their brand to my customers?

Photocart rocks. WHCC rocks. ProDPI rocks. Pixel2Canvas rocks.

Pictage sucks.

I <3 pictage b/c it makes me more like DJ

hey, why are we laughing?

Because it is our daily therapy to keep the demons at bay...

i am currently having a beer with mine....

Do they actually say beer over in London?

Matt, this exactly the point I've tried to make about them in the past but seemed to get bowled over. We're also not understanding how they are charging us tax and the client tax. [b]ecker recommended pic pic so that's what we've been researching. I'm so over Pictage. My whopping sales net from them last year was $1876. I'm one of, if not the lowest charging photographers on there and still don't make many sales AND still get complaints as to why the prints cost so much. Dude, I feel for ya man. It sucks.

+1 for pickpic. But it isn't cheap. I think over a two year period it will run you close to $90/month (the cost of the hosting plus software over two years). I did a post on that a while back (like a year ago) if you want detailed cost analysis.

The Pictage devotees don't care about statistics. I have tried in the past to give them and was told that their experiences count, but mine don't. They really don't care that they are just handing all their money over to Pictage.

I switched to Photocart last year and really love it. With just a little customization our cart looks really nice and polished and matches our web site and branding, etc. We have also been with ProDPI for some time and love being able to use the lab of our choice. We just receive our print orders, do the appropriate sizing and retouching and send to the lab via ROES.

For those who aren't wanting to do their own cart or fulfillment, BigFolio and ProDPI are rolling out a new online proofing service that looks really cool. If we didn't already have a cart, this system would be a great choice. http://www.nextproof.com/ This is just another great option out there for those seeking a new service.

Does that mean you're still with them Jim? Tami..... Jim...... Tami...... person.

Yes -- I love pickpic!!! It rocks. Zero problems and insanely easy to use. If I were doing over I would probably do pickpic again -- but then ago I made my buying decision about 12 months ago so a lot has changed and I would look carefully at the solutions out there. I guess the point I was making is that $100 for pictage is about the same as for pickpic -- but with pickpic you get to keep a huge percentage of the sales.

Actually, our cost of using it has been cheaper. We actually had to switch hosting companies when we started using PickPic and our hosting ended up being cheaper because we were using a good but extremely expensive company before. Over two years, our cost for PickPic will be about $40/month. If we use it longer, which we plan to do, it will be less per month.

Also, for us, we had to factor in the monthly fees and percentages that we were paying to Collages.net. The amounts we paid for those, paid for our cart in 4 months. I had originally estimated that it would take 8 to 12 months to make up the cost, but our sales increases once we started using PickPic and so it was significantly less than I expected.

I just ran the numbers for the past year: It would have cost us $1322.77 more to have continued hosting with Collages.net over the past year than it cost us to purchase PickPic a year ago. If our sales are about the same this year on PickPic, it will save us $2172.77. If our online sales go up, it will save us even more.

Tami
That was me in the last thread like this ..... and I shared the stats and still got slammed by the 'coolaid' drinkers

will they ever learn? pass the koolaid around folks, there's enough for everyone.....

Yeah, I've been with them a little over a year and I'm feeling the drain. I'm gonna switch very soon. It's so sad, cause they don't even care.

Thanks for all the companies that everyone shared. I was wondering what my options were.

Tami will protect you... Everyone is afraid of her. She is your personal body guard.

dont forget the fee jim...... damn... do i have to keep reminding you?????

Matt...

were the numbers in your post above including the lab fees as well as the monthly fees Pictage charged?

12 months time $99.00 membership fee = $1,188.00

That leaves $4,711 in lab costs

If your average print cost is $4 each... thats 1000+ prints you had to sell. If for sake of argument, you sold only 1000 prints for that money, you made about $2.60 per print.

Either you sold a lot less prints, and got raped on lab costs -- or you need to raise your print prices!

If you don't mind sharing, were the majority of orders on Pictage for printing? Did you discover where most of the $$ went?

I assume you didn't order a bunch of products -- like proof books and sample products -- that you would have paid for, but not have been reflected in the pictage earnings?

oh yea the fee... and people think Pictage is expensive!

Matt,

i use Photocart as well, and i also have the accessories module. i love it. i will not change at this time. if i do change it probably wouldn't be to pictage for many reasons (which i won't list here).

many of my biz decisions are based on math, and i could never see the math benefitting me.

here is one question for you... and this you will need to determine after another year, unless you have the data from previous years... did pictage generate those sales that you did receive? this is a BIG question. after all, even if they take a lot, if they generated those sales, maybe it is worth it. i'm not trying to play devil's advocate, just raise a real 'data' question. if you would normally receive no sales or very few sales without them, then they are actually earning their take.

as an aside... i don't agree with monthly fees for this type of service. i believe they should make money only when i make money. kind of like a team. otherwise, what is their incentive to help me succeed? none! if they make money off me no matter how i do.

I just cancelled my account with Pictage. Except it is not officially cancelled yet. They need to talk to me again before they can finalize everything. What?

I love PickPic and would highly recommend it to anyone. Their customer service is out of this world and I haven't had a glitch at all. I love being able to have money delivered right to my account. It's not held for up to 30+ days like Pictage. It's money I can use.

With that right jab baby - no price is too high. Plus now I am not with Pictage (went to Pickpic and love em) I can afford ya ........ I think.
I'm a Londoner who lived in Texas for a while ...... understand the culture shock. I never thought I could miss beer that much ......

what? are you serious? that's just wierd and freaky. i couldnt handle that type of control over my account....

hey has pickpic intergrated order fulfilment with whcc yet?

I don't know about Matt's case, but when we left Pictage, our sales went up more than 50% almost immediately. That really made me wonder about whether Pictage really was earning it with their marketing.

Not that I know of, but planning to by the beginning of 2009 is my understanding.

wow.

deal sealed.

Another option for online proofing and automatic fulfillment is zenfolio. I've been with them a little over a month and so far I'm loving it. $100/year is worth it for the online backups of my final jpegs, and they only charge 6% of the profit per photo, so if an item costs $2, and you sell it for $3, they take $0.06.

Oh, that's just plain weird... Wonder if that would be like how cancelling AOL used to be...they'd pitch you all sorts of offers to stay. Just curious, do they bill a CC each month? Maybe they could assist in making things happen faster, aka "Don't ever authorize a charge from this vendor again!"

I too am shifting from Pictage to PhotoCart, and have had a lot of positive feedback from my 6 events newly posted to PhotoCart. I have already made enough to cover the one-time photocart fee! I love that you can offer downloadable images, as it is so easy! I sold 28 on one client at $4 each! Pictage cannot beat that one!! I am so glad that OSP'ers lead me in the right direction to check out the other options.

Since I don't have to worry about customer service issues, since I am the service provider, it has saved me from many problems. Also, I can't believe how fast WHCC is in comparison to Pictage!

I have been doing photocart for a couple months, because osper's told me too and I LOVE it. One of the best things I have done for my business. I don't have to deal with call or email orders but I don't have to let someone else get all my money. I would love pick pack or whatever if it was cheaper. I use whcc and love them so hopefully they will do a discount for the service if you use their lab.

just to clarify, they take 12% of the profit from products fulfilled by their labs. If you add custom products from other companies, then they take 6% of those profits.

THAT will be sweet.

1 Year with Photocart and loving it!!

Best investment I ever made. I has paid itself over and over and over...

Great price too. Very affordable... Updates and upgrades free for life.

So, one time investment and done.

I love Photocart, too. Pretty easy to tweak it to match my site, lots of things to play with, multiple pricing options, very sleek.

I did an unusual event this spring--a fundraiser for our local MOPS group. Spent two days taking pictures of small children (70 families). A week later had them in 70 galleries (I mean one gallery with 70 subgalleries) in Photocart and got to relax for 2-3 weeks while moms placed their orders. Only one hiccup with the cart with all that traffic and I think it may have been user error anyway. I would have lost my mind without Photocart. Because the software was already paid for I was able to donate a significant % of the profits back to the group. Everyone was happy.

Kind of OT but it just made me love Photocart all the more.

We are shopping for a new shopping cart system right now as well. (never used Pictage, couldn't rationalize the lack of profit. Plus, we want our money directly, don't like to wait for a 3rd party to get our profits to us).

Anyway, we have been looking at photocart, and redcart

A question I have for anyone who may know. One feature we currently have that we don't want to loose is we set up the cart prior to the wedding. And put out a photo card of the couple along with the address where the guests can go to view the gallery for the wedding.

Our current system is set up so that when the cart is in place, but inactive, the visitor can enter their email address to be notified when the cart becomes active. We really like this feature, as we find that MANY guests will visit the cart and sign up within the first few days after the wedding. Then cart visits slow until the announcement is made that the cart is available.

Does anyone know if Photocart or Redcart has that option?