Selling Albums In The Digital Age
Selling Photo Albums in the Digital Age
In partnership with Pic-Time
At LOOKSLIKEFILM, we are big believers in printing your work. As photographers, we want our clients to have tangible products that they can hold in their hands, lasting for generations to come. It also doesn’t hurt that print, and product sales are a great way to make extra profits. It’s a classic win-win business opportunity!
While the digital era has brought a lot of challenges for photographers, it’s also created opportunities to easily create products, like albums and memory books, right from your online galleries. Technology is getting better and better, and there are now so many new and amazing ways to sell photo albums to your clients.
The hands-free option: let your clients do the work, and make a profit while you’re off enjoying life!
Handing over control to your clients is a great new way to let your clients enjoy the album design process, while you sit back and relax! More and more photographers would rather focus on the creative part of taking photos instead of dealing with the whole album process. If you’re one of them, this is a great option for you.
Creating an album through Pic-Time
Gallery images by Nicole Mason
Until now, the options for clients who want to design their own album in a way that preserves the same quality of your brand has been limited. Clients had to take your images and upload them to a different service, and you had no control over the print quality or design process while losing the opportunity to make a profit.
The new option for creating an album from within a gallery is revolutionary! You now have control over the printer, the design, and you get to keep the profit too. Pic-Time is the only online gallery platform that provides built-in album editing within the gallery.
This new way of creating albums straight from your galleries has clear advantages:
Promotions and Profit
As a photographer, you can set your profit on the photo albums and create special offers to generate sales. We recommend you to price at least 30% over your desired profit levels so that you can create promotions around the albums.
Set prices for albums and send promotions for clients to print – from Pic-Time
Quality and Design Control
The fear of your client printing with poor quality printers and making bad design decisions that don’t reflect your brand is now over.
Selling albums through your own store means you can choose your print lab, making sure the print quality meets your standards. You can also choose which album covers to offer, such as leather photo albums or wrapped books. When designing an album within the system, the final product will be clean, minimal, and will show your work at its best! Using our limited number of pre-designed layouts means the online album design process isn’t overwhelming, and there is no room for mistakes.
Control the album design with a variety of minimal layouts – from Pic-Time
Different Options for Different Clients
You can offer your clients different levels of custom photo books, from affordable and light Magazines to high-end Fine Art Albums. You decide what your client sees, and you can create special discount offers that will drive buying decisions.
Offer clients a variety of albums in the store – from Pic-Time
Another great plus for the online option is that you can create multiple price lists and offer different printers based on your client location and budget.
Set multiple price lists for different clients and locations – from Pic-Time
Automated Tools
The future is already here, and premade album designs can now be driven by technology that learns your client’s preferences and favorite images.
Pic-Time’s smart algorithm tracks the user while they’re browsing their gallery and suggests an automated photo album design based on the images they have engaged with the most. There’s also a process of clever color matching for a harmonious design.
Automated albums offered to the client – from Pic-Time
Automated albums based on color matching and client interaction – from Pic-Time
Working with Fewer Images/Collections
Whether clients start with the automated photobook option or start from scratch, working with a small collection of images instead of hundreds, will make things really easy for your clients to design their wedding or family photo album. Clients can also see the favorited images of friends and family who have accessed the gallery, and easily add them to the album.
Creating an album with a collection of images in the gallery – from Pic-Time
For clients who are scared of technology, Pic-Time has created an easy album tutorial video that goes through the process with them, reducing fear and making it easier! If they have any questions while they’re in the process, our customer support chat is always there for them!
Pic-Time Album Tutorial for your clients
Half and half – make the base and let them do the rest!
Pre-designing a custom photo album for your client within the system is a great solution for those of you who want to have control, but don’t want to dive into a long process. Be involved, but not too much.
How does it work? You can easily design the album based on their selection/likes, or based on your preferred images. Then you have the option to send it to your clients, and the best thing is you can even send it as a coupon! The album will show up as an item in the store, and from that point, they can swap images and amend spreads.
An album created for the client by the photographer – from Pic-Time
Manage the Process and Keep Creative Control
Traditional ways of selling albums are still as relevant as ever for a lot of photographers. If you want to retain full control of the creative process and manage your client’s design from start to finish, digital options can still help you to streamline your processes from selection to proofing and printing. Having all of your communication through one platform makes things simple and easy for your client.
Setting client selections to build an album – from Pic-Time
Selection Process
You can begin the album design by requesting that clients select their most memorable photos. For selecting images to the album, communication should be clear with a detailed email.
Client selection email and gallery view – from Pic-Time
It’s important to create clear selection guidelines, with a specified number of images to select. People tend always to choose more images than agreed, and while this is a great opportunity to upsell, it can add additional stages to the workflow. With Pic-Time, you can set the amount of images a client can choose, and they won’t be able to exceed that limit.
Set the limit of client selections – from Pic-Time
Album Proofing
The proofing process is the last stage of the album journey. The benefit of having it all in the same system is that your clients are familiar with the platform. They can also visit your gallery once again, which is great for engagement!
Album proofing with client comments – from Pic-Time
When the proofing process is done, you can design and upload the spreads into the editor and order them through the system.
Adding the album to your cart – from Pic-Time
Add Your Own Albums to Your Store
Another great way to have everything in one place is to offer your own artisan albums in your online store as a custom product, alongside other printed products.
With Pic-Time, you can set up a unique album for your clients in your store with images and a description. A huge benefit of selling photobooks and albums via your online store is that they can be included in future sales like holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, and so on.
Learn more about Pic-Time’s custom product feature here.
Adding your own albums to Pic-Time – custom product by Samm Blake
Nirit, one of Pic-Time’s founders, says:
The digital era brings challenges to the printing but also offers new opportunities. Today, there is more than one way to approach albums, and you just need to choose the options that work for your brand and business model. We [Pic-Time] offer tools for editing albums right from the gallery, as well as creating the design outside and bringing it in. Albums are here to stay, and it’s in our power as photographers to make sure the print legacy continues!
Image by Pic-Time
Selling Photo Albums with Pic-Time
Also, check out our blog post Why Pic-Time? and read about the 10 reasons to switch to Pic-Time.
