ZachIsHere

The total tonnage of work I got done today could stop a team of oxen in their tracks. 3\4 of the pictures are up on the front and back ends. Locked and loaded. There are a few minor things to sort out.

- I need to find the turnover time from purchasing a print to receiving it in the mail. This is just a good thing to know to pass on to customers. A quick phone call will clear this up.

- Print sizes and ratios. This is a little tricky. 8×10 is a very widespread and standard size for a picture. Lots of pictures and frames are sold to this size. The only problem is my pictures don’t come out of my camera in that ratio. Yes, they can be cropped easily. Yes, they can also be resized easily but each of those actions takes a little bit away from the composition of the photo. Searing off some of those edges a lot of times changes everything about how someone will look at those pictures. Resizing can make for some weird skewed images that don’t look terrible but just a bit off. A more natural size for my picture would be 8×12. I am going to get with my printing expert and figure out if 8×12 is really that strange. The last thing I want to do is marginalize myself by selling prints from some weird size that nobody uses but if it turns out it isn’t that big of deal then I would love to go with the more natural pictures. If I have to convert them to 8×10 then it can be done…I can find a way. Just another decision to make. This is going to have to be something I think about when I take shots now.

- Will the shots from my older Canon IS S2 look decent? I loved that camera. It opened up a world but it isn’t the quality that I have now. Shots on the S2 look great on a computer screen but printing them out to a large size is a different game. I am going to get some test shots sent to me to make a decision. There are some great photographs that I would love to have included so hopefully they are up too par.

This will get sorted out in the next few days. I hope to solicit some people to do some test purchases late next week. Make sure the process goes well and get some feedback about that. After that it should be game on. I have some marketing advertising ideas that have been sitting around just waiting to be unleashed so all of that will go into motion.

Thats the 2 steps forward but what is the light bulb?

EBay.

Why not EBay? The idea hit me like a tree branch snapping a power line. It would be so easy. I list the photo and if someone wins an auction I get a payment from them. *Boop* *Bop* *Bam* 3 clicks later my photo distributor has an order from me to print and send the picture to the customer direct from lab. Customer pays me in full photo lab bills me for their cut, which is minimal. All the hassle of EBay (shipping and crap) is done by someone else. Not only can I make revenue but I could also advertise the hell out of my website.