so I've had my own photography website
for the past nine years and over that
time I've used WordPress Squarespace and
SmugMug and in this video I'm going to
talk with the advantages and
disadvantages of each and which ones you
should choose now like most thing is the
choice won't be the same for everybody
it really depends on your goals so it
makes sense for me to start off with
what my goals are from my photography
website and that is to make money
selling licenses and prints from my
website so my website really is a way to
make a passive income off the photos
that I've already taken now to be clear
you can use Squarespace WordPress or
SmugMug to sell your photos online and
they all work so it's not about whether
it can do it it's about which one's
right for you now there's certain
features that I want to be able to sell
my photos online and here's my list if
you're watching this video I assume that
you're either thinking about setting up
a photography website or you've already
set one up and you're thinking about
changing platforms in which case I
recommend that you create a list of
everything you want on your site these
sites all have so many features
available to them that when you start
evaluating them it's really easy to get
lost so it's good to have a list of
exactly what you want your site to do
before you start looking at the
different platforms just to keep you
focused as you're going through a time
trying to choose which one you want now
to start I'm quickly gonna go through
exactly what I mean by these features
and maybe talk about why they're
important to me I'll do this by just
walking you through my website souvenier
pixels calm and if you want to check it
out for yourself I'll put a link down in
the description below
so first the large photos and a feed so
I like to have a page I like to do my
home page that basically shows all the
photos that I've uploaded recently and I
like people to be able to click into
those photos and see a large version of
the photo so then let's go with this one
here I think this just really shows when
it fills up the screen you can see a
high-resolution version I think people
are much more likely to buy so you kind
of see exactly what they're getting okay
so that's the first thing to be able to
see these high-resolution photos the
next is field a bio photo so you can see
here when you open up and look at the
photo there's a bi photo button and from
here if you look and then go in and
purchase this photo so they can purchase
the download a paper print or wall
and there's other things you can set up
here depending what you like but
personally I find these install the best
I kind of limit the items the ones that
sell okay
also within the downloads here I have
personal licenses and commercial
licenses and I like to be able to have
different versions of the full license
so if someone just wants to buy it for
the web or for Facebook or something
they can spend a little bit of money and
buy it but if they want to buy a large
version for a print and it costs more
okay so this is something that I look
for being able to have pricing versions
as well now if I go to this I also like
to have the portfolio here so somebody
can go through if they want it they're
just getting used to seeing my photos
they want to see some of my best photos
or what I think are my best photos they
can go and look at the portfolio so I
can set this up here this is also the
second most viewed page on my website
after the main page so I think the
portfolio page is very important
next is the photos by location so for me
I do a lot of travel and landscape
photography and what I found over the
years is that people want to be able to
browse my photos by location someone
might see a photo of mine from let's say
go back and they may think that I like
that photo but I want a different
location in Quebec I like that style so
then what they'll do is look on my
website I want to just see the photos of
Quebec so that's how I've organized them
here the next thing I want to have is a
bit as a contact page so I want a way
for people to be able to come in and
contact me send me a message ask me
questions about my photography the next
thing that I really need is an RSS feed
and this helps me set up my daily photo
email so what I have here is people
enter their email address and then when
I upload a photo to the website they'll
receive and I need an RSS feed for that
the last thing that I really need here
is to have it mobile-friendly now one of
the things that I think is important for
mobile-friendly is when someone comes
from a mobile site it should be easy to
use so if I go take a look at this here
one of the things that I've set up is
I've actually set up a special Instagram
Paige so if someone comes and looks at
this from Instagram I've got a page that
looks very similar to my Instagram feed
with the square crops but the only thing
different is is that what they can do
here is they can actually go in and
purchase the photo and this looks great
on the mobile device so this is really
important to me as well so those are the
different things that I'm really looking
for that the key features that I think I
need on my website to be able to sell my
photos effectively so it's totally
possible to set up WordPress Squarespace
or SmugMug to do exactly what I just
showed you so when you're evaluating
these platforms it's not really about
whether it can do it or not it's about
how flexible design is and how easy it
is to set up and maintain so before you
into the details the evaluation one
thing I should mention is there's really
two different versions of WordPress one
of them is the hosted version on
wordpress.com we may see to sign up and
start using your site another way to use
WordPress is to go to a hosting provider
set up a site and then install WordPress
on there if you're just starting out I
strongly recommend you start with
wordpress.com if you decide to go that
route because it's much easier to set up
and maintain and when I go through and
talk about the evaluation today I'm
really comparing it to the wordpress.com
the hosted version of WordPress so
here's a comparison somehow I found
using these three sites to sell my
photos online 3 stars being the best and
one star being not so good the first
main difference you're gonna see here is
in the flexibility of design so
WordPress has a lot more templates out
there I think it's a lot more
configurable than the other two
platforms with Squarespace being second
and SmugMug being third but with all
that flexibility and configurability
comes complexity so it kind of goes the
opposite way whereas because WordPress
is so flexible it also makes it a bit
more complex to set up whereas SmugMug
may not be as flexible when it comes to
configuring the site but it's much
easier to set up so the big thing that
makes my box so much easy to set up and
maintain
is the way that it handles products so
SmugMug
the feed and the sales are really
integrative so when you upload a photo
to your feed it's easy to set it up to
be automatically available for sale now
that's only because it's set up for
photographers and set up for sales it
makes it that easy
whereas with WordPress and Squarespace
they're more general site so it takes
more work to set those up so for example
if you want to sell a fit photo license
on Squarespace what you need to do is
you can upload your post first then you
actually need to go in and set up a
product to sell the license as well so
whereas it takes a couple seconds to set
up a photo for sale on SmugMug it can
take five or ten minutes to set it up on
Squarespace or WordPress and that's
really the big difference between the
two so take a look at what I mean this
is my process for uploading photos to
small right now I'm going to show you
how I do it through for talut which is
the way that I upload my photos but it
works the same way if you upload them
directly to smaug mother normally I
upload my photo to all the sites at once
but for this demo I'll just upload it to
SmugMug to simplify it I add in my title
description choose my keywords then the
photo goes to SmugMug and check this out
immediately it's available for sale and
it is in my location collections as well
I have SmugMug setup to do all of this
for me automatically you can't easily do
that with Squarespace and WordPress all
right now let's check out pricing for
the three now all of these sites have a
monthly pricing in a yearling price I'm
just gonna use the monthly price for
comparison but you could obviously go
with the early price which gives you a
bit of a discount over the monthly price
so WordPress is $59 for the commerce
version now you may be able to get away
with the $33 business version and then
use a plug-in to sell your photos but
that'll be more work to set up first
Squarespace you need the products
feature to be able to sell your photos
online so the cheapest version you can
get that with is $18 a month lasts for
SmugMug
to be able to sell your photos online
you need the portfolio version which is
going to cost you
twenty-four dollars a month so none of
these are exactly cheap but I make more
money selling my photos online through
the website that I pay in the yearly
costs so I kind of think of it as an
investment to kind of make more money
passively from my photos so currently I
use SmugMug for my website but let me
talk a little bit about the transition
between the three different sites so
when I first started uploading my photos
online I was on WordPress and I would
just upload the photos there but I
wasn't slowing them but I had a lot of
people contacting me to purchase
licenses for my photos so what I would
do is I would go to PayPal and I would
create a PayPal invoice and then send it
to them and then those people could then
use a credit card to buy the license and
that's how I solve for my website but it
was a lot of work and it was very
reactive and if I was on vacation didn't
have access to a computer I could miss
out on the sale because I wasn't able to
send that person in their voice so what
I did was I you know looked into
upgrading my WordPress install from
there and looked to expensive and
complicated so I decided to switch my
site over to Squarespace and then I ran
it on Squarespace for awhile so every
time I uploaded a photo I would do a
post on my blog which is like a photo
blog and I also go in and I create a
product on Squarespace for the license
for that photo and that worked well for
a while but I upload multiple photos a
week and every time it was five or ten
minutes to be able to go in and create
the blog post and create the product and
after a while I just got busy and I just
stopped doing and it was just it was
monotonous work I didn't like doing it
and my blog got stale and is waited for
someone to contact me before I went in
and created of the product so it's not
that I wasn't maintaining it as much as
I as I thought I would and that's when I
decided to move or to SmugMug because in
SmugMug I was really able to streamline
the process as you saw just upload it
and then everything there is available
for sale all right now mo-mo works great
for me and i'm really happy with it
but it might not be for everybody like
if you understand website design and
you'd like it and you would like to go
through and customize your site a lot
you might be better off and more happy
working on a site like WordPress also
and this is a big one if you want to
have a written blog you may be better
going with Squarespace
because Squarespace has a really good
blogging module that you can just go set
up and start
now what I was using a Squarespace I did
have a blog for a while and it did Drive
more search traffic to my site but again
I finally didn't keep up with it I
wasn't that interested in blogging and
so it got stale so I don't currently
have a written blog but if you do have a
written blog that's something that's not
available on SmugMug so you may want to
consider looking at Squarespace as a way
to host your photography website now
there's a couple of other things that I
really like about SmugMug that I found
when I was setting up my site over there
these aren't key for me I could probably
live without them but they're pretty
cool that it has them the first one is
the gallery map so I GPS coordinate all
of my photos because they're travel
photos so what I can do is I can add
this map to a gallery so people when
they log in they can see exactly where I
took the photos and what photos I took
nearby there which i think is pretty
cool now another thing that I really
like is that you can set up a different
page with a different layout for the
same photo feed so what I've used this
for is I've gone through and I've
created a page for Instagram that's
really mobile friendly and it kind of
looks like an Instagram feed and I've
used that as the link from my Instagram
so when someone's on a mobile device
like in Instagram and they click on the
link they go to a page that also looks
like Instagram with a similar type of
feed and they can go and purchase a
photo from there which i think is pretty
nice lastly the photo organization this
mug mug is so much better than it is in
WordPress or Squarespace now this isn't
a huge deal for me so I'm just really
posting one photo a day to my feed but
it is nice to have it there until it
goes through and easily organize all
your photos so that's another nice thing
that you'll find in SmugMug that you
won't see in some of the other tools now
the great thing is all of these tools
have free trials so if this giving you a
better idea of what you want you've got
a list of the features I'd recommend
going in and signing up for a free trial
just trying them out I'll put a link in
the description that you can use to
basically go through and sign up for
free to our ELLs from all of these sites
all right now if you found this video
useful really appreciate it if you go
down and do a like and do a subscribe it
just kind of lets me know the time I put
in to do these videos is worthwhile
also if you decide to go a SmugMug and
want to see how I've configured it to do
my website like everything I just showed
you I'm gonna create a video on that and
upload it next week and I'll put a link
to that up here
best of luck selling your photos online