A couple lines of code. That’s all it takes for photographers and publishers with large inventories of images to start selling their work on their own websites, thanks to an ambitious fledgling company. You’d think that something so simple could be pulled off by many a startup, but in reality I’m having trouble finding other companies that do it the way the recently launched Fotomoto does it (i.e. the right way). Sure, there are multiple ways for photographers to sell photos on other websites, but that usually requires both them and buyers to have a separate account with the provider of the marketplace service.
Fotomoto does things differently: photographers only need to insert a few lines of codes in their website, after which the images on his or her website will automatically be indexed and automatically provided with a ‘purchase photo’ link. Sellers can tweak the settings so the ‘buy’ links appear completely integrated and branded to match their sites’ look and feel, and the back-end of the tool enables them to set the availability next to the sizes and pricing of the photos. When visitors click the link to buy photos, a Fotomoto widget pops up and enables them to instantly purchase images through PayPal (with the ability to pay by credit card coming later this month). There’s also a sharing link, which lets people send the picture to others as an e-card, with the ability to push to social networking and bookmarking services coming in a couple of weeks.
You can see the integrated code in action on photo websites daily dose of imagery and Chromasia (under the photos).
Photographers and publishers pay a commission when an actual sale takes place, so no paid monthly subscription or anything like that is required for them to start offering this service to their fans. The fee that they pay Fotomoto depends on the printing cost and the price the photo was set to in the first place – the startup asks for a 15% commission fee to cover cost and payment processing fees. Soon, Fotomoto will start offering a number of extra printing services, like postcards, t-shirts, merchandise and the likes which it hopes will drive more sales (and revenue for both them and photographers). It’s also slowly going to make its main site a place where you can discover photos from various photographers and instantly buy them from an iStockphoto-type directory.
What I dig about the service is that Fotomoto clients get to dispose over detailed statistics on which photos perform well in terms of view count, orders, etc. which helps them evaluate which direction best to take for commercial success. That’s a really good selling point for starting and established photographers alike, but also for publishers (media groups etc.) who would like to cash in on that part of their content offering that rarely gets brought up in online media monetization discussions.
Fotomoto launched about 3 weeks ago and currently has close to 27,000 photos in its database from about 125 photographers, with over 100 orders completed successfully so far. The company was started in October 2008 and raised seed funding to the tune of $300,000 from early-stage financing firm Amidzad Partners and DFJ soon after. It’s currently looking for an additional round of funding together with one of its notable board members, Andy Wood, former CEO of ShutterFly and also former CEO of PhotoWorks.
Sounds great I hope they find a UK partner for printing and despatch in the UK.
I would love to sell some of my http://www.worstpizza.com if anyone ever needs some!
Here’s hoping you don’t get spanked by Motorola hello moto.
Funny, it made me think of Animoto first.
funny, I thought of Moto Moto from Madagascar 2!
Sweet! As a photo buyer, I would love to see them integrated with Ginipic http://www.ginipic.com to discover the actual photographers, but can users search photos through them or do I have to find photographers by myself who are using their system?
I mentioned this in the article: in the near future, Fotomoto intends to turn its main website into an online directory of their clients’ photographs.
It’s a really good idea. It would be nice if they extended beyond traditional print and sold licenses to photos as well. While iStockPhoto is great, I would be really happy to have an instant “buy license” button alongside the “buy print” on my own web album instead of having to go through the process of getting photos accepted to iStock.
At the risk of sounding like a shill for Fotomoto, photo licensing is actually on their roadmap too, and what they are trying to do is cut out middlemen like istock.
Jani,
Check out BuyThisImage! where you can sell digital files right on your website. We also handle prints and other items. We do our own printing. It is very similar to Fotomoto except that this service has been around for 6 months, and is backed by ExposureManager. EM has helped thousands of photographers sell their work online for the last five years.
Donovan
Check out Ozmo (www.ozmo.com) from Copyright Clearance Center to license your content for commercial use. You don’t have to upload your content to the site, just create a license and tag your work.
…you forgot to mention they’re in closed beta. I don’t actually know what is the reason to write about a site that is in closed beta if there are no beta invitations available at the same time… seems like they would benefit more from the publicity at a time when they are actually ready to take on new customers?
As I understood they let anyone request a code and they hand those out swiftly, so apart from some delay in getting back to you they are public.
Great Idea…. see Techcrunch – If you just take a minute to look outside of the Twitter space you’ll find tons of gems like this. This has the potential to be huge; a kind of paypal for art!!
We are now in closed beta, but we usually send out invitations to those who have a photo web site within 48 hours.
This is pure innovation.. it unlike other web2.0 companies actually solves a real problem that a lot of people would have.
It sounds such an obvious thing to do but I guess thats the nature of great insight its always obvious in hindsight.
Congratulations.
fotomoto
Sounds like a great idea, so simple and it sounds like it just may work.
I like the idea, but if they had the chance to sell it in Live Video and explain about there pictures could be much better, check out on DealitLive.com, it lets you ask the sellers questions when they sell there pictures on Live Video stream.
Any idea who is doing the print fulfillment for the orders? i haven’t been able to find that on their site.
We have been testing different services for more than 7 months now, and finally decided that no one place can offer the best quality for all products. We use different fulfillment partners for different products.
i remember motofoto, the one-hour printers.
and confusing stock photo with family snapshot printing whereby somehow passing off that andy wood adds credibility or authority is ignorant at best. mean no disrespect to andy; he’s a great guy.
Pete, Andy is our board member, an industry veteran, and absolutely a great help. Regardless of family snapshot or professional printing, he knows the space very well, he knows the key players, and he shares our vision of scaling this business. We are fortunate to have him on our board!
Yep that will work, I’m doing the same but on the Yang said of that equation.
Sounds like a great idea! Is this only available in the US?
Jens,
This service is available to anyone with a website. We currently have photographers from 24 countries.
Thank you!
Good idea. Soon it will be one of the prominent website for photo businesss.
this is hilarious. the majority of these comments appear to be from guerrila motofoto PR cheerleaders, not real readers. you guys are making this social marketing tactic thang a bit too obvious.
Pete,
I’m sure TechCrunch people check the IP addresses to prevent “social marketing tactics”, otherwise everyone would have done this!
After spending the whole morning in meetings, it felt really good to see feedback were so great you thought it’s social marketing!
give me a break.
and this robin has no clue what she is writing about but all kudos for your company on this puff piece. nice to have this connection for you.
there is not a shred of journalism here.
Hi Robin,
Check out BuyThisImage! This service is very similar to Fotomoto and we launched in December of 2008. Besides prints, we offer mousepads, mugs and even canvas wraps. We also allow you to sell digital files or use self-fulfillment to handle printing and shipping on your own.
The company behind BuyThisImage! is ExposureManager, which has been helping photographers sell their work online for over 5 years. We own and operate our pro lab in Los Angeles and have processed hundreds of thousands of orders. EM has been bootstrapped since our inception in 2004 and has not received any outside funding.
BuyThisImage! was recently favorably reviewed in PC world.
If you’d like any more information about BuyThisImage!, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
With kind regards,
Donovan Janus
Chief Executive Officer
ExposureManager.com – Focus on Sales
BuyThisImage.com – The simplest way to sell photos online. Period!
Donovan,
Our Alpha version has been around since October ‘08. We just launched our closed beta to ensure software quality. Most of our functionality lies within our control panel, for analytics, photo editions, per-photo pricing and availability, and more once our photographers log into the system
What we have done which is unique is our patent-pending “widget” — quite different from your offering which is a link that checks referral URL to find the photo. To see the fundamental difference, compare Fotomoto
http://wvs.topl...l.com/08/08/27/
with BuyThisImage:
http://www.stuc.../buying-prints/
Additionally, after testing tens of print shops it was obvious to us that there is no single print shop that can offer the best quality for all products, that’s why we decided to go with several fulfillment partners, and offer the best of the market to our users.
Best of luck,
Ahmad Kiarostami
CEO and Co-founder
Fotomoto
Ahmad,
The link you copied is not using BuyThisImage! but thank you for allowing me to clarify that we offer two technologies:
1) a Javascript widget that adds a BuyThisImage! button below each image.
See the video at buythisimage.com (TC is blocking my comments every time I include that URL)
2) An HTML link that parses the referral site for photos. For an example, see:
http://www.macb...l_abery-t1.html
I am sure that there are some differences in our implementation and management screens but the bottom line is that the process is the same for both services from a photographer’s point of view:
1) sign-up for a subscription free service
2) add a little bit of code (JS or HTML) to the photographer’s website
3) notify the photographer when an order has been placed and let them upload the high-res photo
After all, #3 is what has been the issue before; the requirement to upload a photo to another service before offering it on your website.
It is true that you enter more information in your widget than you do in ours but eventually you do leave the photographer’s website for the final check out, as you do with BuyThisImage! but other than that, I don’t see much difference.
Regarding print services, we shared your experience which is why we print over 95% of our orders in house. When we launched ExposureManager, we outsourced all printing. As we scaled up, we found that in order to properly service our thousands of professional photographers there was no other option to do it ourselves. Besides that this ensures absolute quality (and no order mix-ups with other services!), it also enables us to offer advice to photographers when needed.
Anyway Ahmad, best of luck with your service and congrats on being mentioned on TC. I am sure we’ll cross paths some time. If you are ever in LA, feel free to stop by and say hi.
Donovan Janus
Chief Executive Officer
ExposureManager.com/BuyThisImage.com
Hi Robin,
One other key difference is that, based on my limited testing with FotoMoto, you can only buy one photo at a time with their service. With BuyThisImage, you can purchase multiple photos from the same site. This is especially useful for photographers that shoot weddings or any other type of event.
Anyway, best of luck to FotoMoto.
Donovan
Donavan,
Thank you for pointing this out. We are rolling out a new version of the widget in two days, with the option to buy multiple items, as well as several other major improvements.
Expect to see new features from us every other week or so!
How do they figure there 15% fees when they use a PayPal? PayPal has it’s own fee of what – 2% – 6% already right? That 15% is pretty high, and what fees would they really have to process if PayPal does the processing?
Our 15% fee includes all transaction fees (including PayPal’s).
While most of the photo selling sites usually charge a subscription fee plus 15% or more, we have no subscription fee. This means photographers *only* pay if/when they make money.
What’s so new about this service? Check fotki.com – guys are in this business since 1998. Have been using their photo selling option on my own website (wedding photos) for the past 2 years. Their commission is also 15%, but service really worth it!
That’s correct, hosted, centralized services have been around for a long time. The difference is we offer this as a widget on photographers and organizations own website with a level of integration that did not exist before.
My site, Doublecrossed.ca is also one of Fotomoto’s current users and I have been really pleased with the service. The fulfillment is done by a CA area pro lab, with all prints on professional kodak papers and packaged like their were delicate pieces of glass. Great, great, great.
Fotomoto seems to be very interesting.
Personnaly I don’t sell my photos I just share them using Joomeo (http://www.joomeo.com).
I really love this website, certainly the most powerfull to share your photos privately.
Is there a way to get off of Fotomoto’s widget once you click on the link? After I saw the prices for one photo on the example website, I wanted to not buy it, but I have to exit the website all together. That’s not good for the people who have these portfolios!
Joshua,
There is a round “close” button on the upper right corner of the window… just click on it and it closes the window!
Just curious, if you plan to do all of your own fulfillment (sorry, I don’t trust a service when my reputation is on the line) and you don’t mind tweaking a bit of HTML code, what does Fotomoto offer that the FotoPlayer (skin for Jalbum) doesn’t? It’s a flexible flash photo gallery creation tool with built in support for a shopping cart and checkout via PayPal and Google Checkout. Read about it here: http://www.fotoplayer.com/
A similar and pretty new site is gonogging.com. It’s not as saturated as a lot of other photo selling sites, and it doesn’t hurt putting your stuff up being as it’s free.
I’ve heard about GoNogging.com.. seems like a real interesting site. On the site there’s two section, one where you can post photos for sale and then there’s another section called “Requests” where people posts requests for things they need .. such as a particular photo or an image creation. It’s a neat site.. if you want to check it out click here.
Michelle – did you hear about it, or do you work for them? The full URL in your link makes it look like you are working for them.
Not working for them.. heard about it from friends of mine who are into selling their photography.
Any plans for making photo licensing possible this way?
get smart ide to manage n publis de fotograph