Selling Digital Products

With the introduction of Digital Products, photographers have the ability to define almost any downloadable product with custom licensing terms, at any price. Here is what is included:

• Four standard licenses, provided by Zenfolio
• The ability to create your own custom licenses by modifying the sample licenses or pasting in your own licenses
• Many image size options to choose from including your own custom dimensions
• Create a digital product with fixed image dimensions. A cropping tool will become available in the Shopping Cart so users can crop based on defined dimensions. A good example of this would be creating iPhone wallpaper which has to be specific dimensions.
• Create almost any product available for download, including original full size files, desktop backgrounds, Web avatars, iPhone wallpapers, etc.
• Zenfolio charges a 8% service fee, which is one of the lowest fees in the industry
• Order e-mails are sent to photographer and clients when the order is placed, with links to the download page
• Photographer can still review and approve orders, including uploading new files and making cropping adjustments, if needed
• Zenfolio stores downloads for 30 days
• Customers can download individual photos, or a complete order as a ZIP file

To learn more about how to create and offer digital products, refer to the Guide to Digital Products on Zenfolio

Redesigned price list editing
The new price list editing pages are many times faster than before and allow you to manage many products easily. As part of this redesign we have introduced separate formulas for each product category including a dedicated formula for framing and mounting. Look for more more related features coming soon including export to Excel and printing.

Friendly URLs
You can now use plain words to create easy links to group, gallery, or collection pages (such as http://demo.zenfolio.com/weddings). You can use letters, numbers, and some punctuation including dash '-' and a slash '/'. This works with custom domain names as well.

Updated Reports
We have overhauled the Reports to make them more consistent and easier to understand. We've added a Summary report and a Coupons report under SELLING > Reports. The Summary report makes it easy to view high level financials for any time period. Coupons are now accounted for everywhere in the reports.

Additional Visitor View page customizations
New setting in Customize Visitor View > Options provides the ability to hide the path to the Gallery/Collection/Group (also known as breadcrumbs) displayed at the top of a Visitor page.

Private paths no longer display in breadcrumbs on Visitor pages allowing you to create "branches" in your organizational hierarchy. This really helps keep visitors focused on specific galleries or groups. For example, if you have a private group in the middle of a path to a gallery, the path leading to that group and the group itself will be hidden from your visitors.

"Publish to Zenfolio" plug-in for Windows Live Photo Gallery
Released a plug-in to export to Zenfolio directly out of Windows Live Photo Gallery. If you are not familiar with this product from Microsoft, it is a free application used for managing and previewing photos on your Windows XP or Vista system.

Other feature enhancements
In addition, the following enhancements were released:

• Streamlined Account Statement with mini summary reports for each order sold
• Added easier access to links from the Edit View
• In the Add to Cart window we have renamed 'Back to Categories' to 'Back to All Products' to help navigation
• By popular demand from our forum members, added a new subcategory: Artistic > Picture a Day (PAD)
• New Mpix products and services - more canvas gallery wrap sizes available from Mpix:
  

• 8"x10"   $55.00
• 10"x10" $55.00
• 10"x20" $75.00
• 10"x30" $90.00
• 16"x16" $80.00
• 16"x24" $100.00
• 20"x20" $105.00

 At last the long coveted Digital Sales are here! Kudos! Hurray to the mighty Zenfolio web programers, and thanks a bunch!

Thank you!  it will take time to assess the full capability that you have enabled for digital downloads, but it looks well thought out.

Did anyone ever come to a conclusion on whether or not photographers need to charge sales tax for digital downloads or if Zenfolio has the responsibility to figure it out, or if there is no need???

 Thanks again

Thanks a lot for these updates !  It is much more exciting to receive updates more regularly (and being better informed) as you do now than waiting too many months with limited info !

 Regarding this update, you wrote "New setting in Customize Visitor View > Options provides the ability to hide the path to the Gallery/Collection/Group (also known as breadcrumbs) displayed at the top of a Visitor page."  Maybe I'm not fully awake, but how do people navigate in your galleries without the breadcrumbs ? I feel it is a stupid question, but I claim the right to feel stupid on Friday afternoons ;-)

Vitas - I tried to check out the link Guide To Selling Digital Products on Zenfolio. It took me to a "page can't be found error".  Great updates. I am going to have to check into the digital downloads. Never did it on my own website, only through stock sites.

As far as the sales tax, I was told by an IRS guy here in Florida that with all my online sales as long as I didn't physical provide or ship the final product to the end user, I was not responsible for the sales tax. If I have it shipped to me, or in any way provide the physical products for making the item for sale, they I am responsible. I still have to do my quarterly sales tax reporting the income, except that I put it in the exempt column. Now, this is what I was told for Florida. It would be best if you check with the sales tax department in your state for the specific procedure for you. I think each state is a little different in how they handle sales tax.

 The pdf url is http://www.zenfolio.com/zf/misc/Guide-to-Digital-Products-on-Zenfolio.pdf

Visitors cannot navigate without breadcrumbs. You are right. However, this feature comes handy when you do not want them to navigate. For example, you send them a link to one gallery or a group and want to keep them inside, without seeing your other galleries. Removing breadcrumbs is also useful if they are long. In this case, visitors can use the Back browser button instead of breadcrumbs, if navigation started from your home page.

Being in the UK as well any advice on this subject would be brilliant!?

Thanks for the link, John. That really helps.

I just wanted to say that I am very happy to be in the Zenfolio family.

I am also happy to see lots of updates ,this one is just what I wanted..

 Thank you

Digital Scott

 All very good stuff Vitas and Team ZF!  I especially am fond of the url naming and also, the option to remove the 'breadcrumbs' (which I know you did JUST for me!  hehehe).

:)

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

 Love the downloads and the friendly links.

Great job.  Keep it up!!!!!

I already have one issue with the digital download feature.

With print products I can upload a higher resolution, better quality, post processed images after the order has been placed. It seems like I can do the same thing with digital downloads as well (I did place a test order with $0 cost on the prints). However when the user places their order they just see the dimension of the uploaded version of the image (well Zenfolio can't suck it out of their thumb just ow big my originals are, I get that).

 This causes several issues. I only upload my basic JPEGs from the camera that are half resolution of the original raw files I shoot. So I'm uploading images, let's say 1800x1200 when in reality my originals are 3600x2400. I want to sell my 3600x2400 images, but I also want to sell sizes smaller than that, like smalls (900x600) and mediums (1800x1200).

 Right now if I upload my 1800x1200 resolution proof, when the user is trying to add it to the cart they will get a Small (900x600) Medium (1800x1200) and Large (1800x1200). There is probably no way anyone would order the Large one as it's the exact same size as the Medium, at least to the customer.

My only recourse right now is to upload true full res originals to zenfolio, but I doubt that Zenfolio would want my images that would be 10 times the file size (4 times in pixel dimension, plus jpeg quality 10 vs. jpeg quality 4) for storage, and I certainly don't want 10 times the upload times just to remedy this shortcoming.

 What is your take on it? Will there be a quick fix for this obvious oversight?

I upload my full res image. I convert my .psd to a .jpg in PS, but I don't change the resolution. In fact, I never change my resolution unless I need a web version for email or for posting on a forum. I prefer to upload my full res image so I can offer the largest print size at the highest resolution that I can offer. And I don't think the upload time is that bad.