In the Field: Photo Blog by Richard Wong

Photography field reports by Richard Wong. Richard’s work has been published in magazines, books, advertising, and offers fine art prints of his work. Images may be licensed as rights-managed stock photos by contacting Richard directly at Richard@rwongphoto.com or (626) 422-6151. California stock photography, fine art prints, photo blog: www.rwongphoto.com

More on Photoshelter Archive, Bandwidth Costs and Other Stuff Only Web Geek Photographers Would Enjoy

Posted on | April 18, 2008 | 14 Comments

Last summer I wrote about upgrading my website with a photo search feature and weighed the pros & cons of going with PhotoShelter Archive, Digital Railroad, or Lightbox Photo. After reading Ron Niebrugge’s blog post today about high server bandwidth costs, “I could make payments on a very fancy car for what this thing will cost.”, I figured I would revisit the topic again.

Correct me if I’m wrong on the technical details – Ron uses Lightbox Photo software for his image search feature and hosts his images on his web server. His site has well over 5,000 images and is receiving in excess of 300,000 visitors per month to his website. Content = website crawlers = traffic = $$.

At this time last year, I was contemplating going with a similar approach for my own site using the same setup. Lightbox Photo is software you purchase and need a database server on your site to run. It would have cost about $1,000 to get the features that I wanted. Other than the price tag, one concern of mine was how much re-occurring costs in bandwidth and storage space to host all the images that I wanted to put on there. I had no idea what that amount would be, but Ron’s experience has probably answered that question.

PhotoShelter on the other hand costs around $30/month for 35gb of space to store files without restrictions on bandwidth usage. With PhotoShelter while I don’t own any of the infrastructure nor have my own rwongphoto.com URL for the photo archive, I know how much I will be paying in re-occurring costs and have control over that with their pricing plans. I currently have 5,300 image files uploaded to my archive, (not all visible), and have a feeling that if I were to host all those images on my own server it would cost significantly more than $30/month.

One could use PhotoShelter Archive in many different ways. For my own purposes, I place the “search archive” box on each page on my website so if someone needs to find more images then they could easily look for what they need. My site gets tens of thousands of visitors per month so I figure that even if 5% of people who visit my site use that feature then that’s still enough traffic to make it worthwhile. Though I haven’t sold anything from the archive yet without direct involvement in the process, it is still an amazing tool for distribution. It saves people time by giving them the opportunity to find exactly what they want and even price an image before contacting me.

Another way I have used it is if someone calls or emails me with a Photo ID# then I could instantly type it in and know what they’re asking for. It also saves me from having to carry around an external hard drive. If I need to make a quick submission, (not something I do enough of), then I could generate a lightbox online and email it within minutes.

For example, a photo editor found me from a photo agency I am with and called to ask if I had certain images. I did a photo search on my site while on the phone and told her what I found then directed her to my website as well and looked it up herself. They turned out to be the same images that she had already seen but at least it only took a few seconds to come to that conclusion. I was at my freelance job that day and didn’t have my external drive around, so if my images weren’t already online and easily searchable, then I would have had to gather those images together later that night from my computer, create a gallery for them on my regular website and email the link to the editor or I would have had to email low-res jpegs to her. By that point, the editor probably would have already contacted someone else or forgotten who I was. She ended up licensing my image through the photo agency afterwards so despite not making a direct sale, I didn’t lose a sale either.

Which brings me to my next topic; time. To update my website, it usually takes a few minutes to get all the HTML coded, placed and re-arranged. That’s all fine and expected, but when you need something online ASAP it is very easy to just upload to PhotoShelter then click a few options to make them available online. Once I shot a scenic landscape image on Saturday, processed it on Sunday, uploaded it to my archive that afternoon and by Tuesday a buyer called to license it. For photojournalists, wedding photographers, event shooters, etc… having images up ASAP is essential. The quick sale of that image just happened by coincidence for me but it does show how important it is to have your photos available online and easily searchable, not just sitting on the hard drive collecting dust.

Category: Opinion
Tags: > > >

Comments

14 Responses to “More on Photoshelter Archive, Bandwidth Costs and Other Stuff Only Web Geek Photographers Would Enjoy”

  1. Jim Goldstein
    April 18th, 2008 @ 4:12 pm

    Nice write up Richard! I had been thinking about Lightbox Photo and never thought about the bandwidth costs. That is a great point to consider. None the less if you’re bringing in as much traffic as Ron you’re likely pulling in the sales to cover the bandwidth costs and more. If he didn’t I doubt he’d continue using it. Interesting enough Frans Lanting uses it as well, but requires people to contact his staff rather than order online. Two different ways of operating.

    As we discussed the other day my Washington Post image sale occurred while in Maui solely because I had a Digital Railroad account. Both DRR and Photoshelter’s model works well in these situations. I’m not sure how much time would be sucked away by trying to emulate that service. As I investigate Lightbox Photo further I’ll try to find out.

    Thanks for the great read.

  2. Richard Wong
    April 18th, 2008 @ 4:56 pm

    Thanks Jim. I think with Ron, even though he earns a lot of his income through the site, if the bandwidth really costs as much as a luxury car payment then I’m sure it’s enough to compel him to find ways to maximize his profits by keeping costs to a minimum.

    Good point about Frans Lanting. Since he operates that way, I’m sure that he doesn’t have high rez images online as well which would add to the server space costs. For someone as famous as he is though, I would think that making his images available for instant licensing online would be suited for him more than someone of lesser stature. It’s more tempting to want to speak to someone before deciding to buy if you don’t know who they are but since Lanting’s site visitors are likely from those who already know who he is, the unfamiliarity issue is not likely a factor. If they already know they want the penguin picture of the parents looking at the baby, then it’d just be easier to buy it straight off the site than having to talk to someone.

  3. Ron Niebrugge
    April 19th, 2008 @ 4:24 pm

    Hi Guys,

    I found this to be an interesting topic. :)

    I agree with what you say about PS Richard – you really can’t beat what they do for the price. When I added search to my site, neither they nor DRR were around, so they weren’t an option.

    I believe there are some real advantages to sticking with Lightboxphoto. I don’t know if they are worth the jump in cost to my own server, I’m trying to decide that now.

    Some advantages:

    We use it for our on-line shopping cart for prints – can you do this with PS ? This has worked out very well.

    I like having everything on the wildnatureimage.com url. This may seem minor, but I like the consistent branding. If a client sends image links to my images to other employees etc., I like having my url in the link.

    I am a bit of a control freak with this stuff. I like having the control – if PS raised rates, went under, etc. I’m not at thier mercy.

    I also believe there are search placement benefits as well, but I don’t think I will elaborate on a public forum – maybe the next time we have lunch.

    I have wanted to pursue some other opportunities, screensavers etc. A dedicated server will allow me to do this, and Lightboxphoto could completely automate the process.

    I have considered representing other photographers. With Lightboxphoto, I could have the photographers upload images, track their own sales etc. I’m really not sure I want to go that way, but it is an option.

    I wish there was a simple way to do stock pricing outside of RF becuase lightboxphoto could do it all, but I don’t see myself going there.

    I tried to keep it short, and really I did – I could go on and on, but those are my general thoughts.

    As an interesting side note, PS interviewed me recently for thier blog – didn’t ralize I had photos there – they were via Mira. I hope they post it.

    I have some photos on DRR, but again Mira does as well so I think I may leave that to them.

    I have thought about discussing this on my blog, but I think most my subscribers would say “what?”

    Ron

  4. Richard Wong
    April 19th, 2008 @ 5:34 pm

    Thanks for chiming in Ron. Very excellent points you bring up. For the print ordering there are self-fulfillment options such as what you are doing and there are automated print transactions if you choose to do so. The one drawback I should point out though is that if you rely on automated sales, is PhotoShelter takes a 10% commission. That could be a deal-breaker obviously depending on how you currently do business.

    I agree about the URl differences as well. Though my own icon is on the archive URL’s as well so it’s not a total loss. However there is a thing you can do through PhotoShelter to “mask” their URL out and put yours in there but it requires some database tweaking on your server. It’s been awhile since I’ve looked at other websites so I’m not sure how effective that is.

    For someone looking into starting down this route, it might be a slightly easier decision to try this just for the fact that it’s very easy from a technical standpoint to get PhotoShelter integrated onto a website and relatively stress-free.

  5. Mark Zanzig
    April 21st, 2008 @ 6:54 am

    I have been using Lightbox Photo (the $1,000+ edition) on one of my sites and came to the conclusion that the product is OK for single photographers. But it’s next to impossible to have a (largish) group of photographers contribute at different times to different folders and topics. Also, the managed rights feature is a nightmare to configure. Heck, the whole software is a nightmare to configure! Sometimes you have to modify templates from the administration interface, then you have other templates that are uploaded through FTP. A nightmare.
    Also you should be aware, that the software can not be cústomized because it is coming as compiled code, i.e. you can not just hack into the code as you see fit. (Certainly this IS dangerous, but not as long as you know what you are doing.)
    So, I’d stay far away from the Lightbox Photo software.
    Re. your bandwidth concerns… Today you get good flatrates from providers. My sites are running on an all-you-can-eat package for 49 Euro (77.50$). You can serve MANY customers before that server hits its limit.

  6. Richard Wong
    April 21st, 2008 @ 10:49 am

    That is interesting to know Mark. When looking into what it would take to get Lightbox up and running, it scared me as soon as they started talking about web server databases.

  7. Ashish
    April 23rd, 2008 @ 10:01 am

    Hi,

    Wanted to email you, but could not locate your email address on the blog. We have 2 cool widgets ( a slideshow widget and a content widget) which can help enhance site interaction and reader’s experience. Please contact me at ashishbaldua5@gmail.com to know more.

    Thanks
    Ashish Baldua

  8. Greg
    May 1st, 2008 @ 2:23 pm

    Richard, Thanks for sharing your experiences in this area. Lots of useful information from those who have gone before! Would love to chat with you sometime about what FocalPower is building and get your thoughts and feedback…

  9. Richard Wong
    May 1st, 2008 @ 9:06 pm

    Thanks Greg. I responded to your email a while back but never heard back from you regarding this. I’ll try again.

  10. Michel Bourquard
    September 4th, 2009 @ 1:38 am

    from the 1st blog ….PhotoShelter on the other hand costs around $30/month for 35gb of space to store files without restrictions on bandwidth usage.
    who said no limitation ??? I just received an invoice ( not small for passing the kota of 20gb a month.
    go to Rob Galbraith …http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-7900-8658

  11. Richard Wong
    September 4th, 2009 @ 10:41 am

    Thanks for pointing that out Michel. Regarding bandwidth I think I was referring to website traffic allotment whereas the bandwidth you are referring to is about downloaded files.

  12. Michael Glenn
    November 17th, 2009 @ 3:26 pm

    I have the free PS and I am paying for smugmug. I was wondering if anyone else was using smugmug and what opinions were out there.
    I am just getting my feet wet after years as a hobbyist and need some guidance

    Thanks to all.

    Nikon
    Aperture

  13. Richard Wong
    November 17th, 2009 @ 5:48 pm

    Hi Michael. I’ve seen a lot of photographers use SmugMug but most pros do not because the layout is kind of amateurish and also because there are SmugMug branding all over the template so you probably don’t want to do that if you want to create your own brand identity.

  14. Aditya
    July 23rd, 2010 @ 9:58 am

    Hi, Use this Photoshelter promo code to get a discount up to $30 off new accounts and referals.
    HA2VA8PW7C

Leave a Reply





Page 1 of 11