Robert’s Photography Blog

Services that allow photographers to upload photos and sell prints online have evolved over the last few years into effective business partners for freelance photographers. For a yearly membership fee and commission on each sale, they host galleries, print and ship photos, and perform order processing. Many of these services are located in the USA. They do, however, ship worldwide using damage-proof packaging.

After looking at the features of three of the best-known services, I decided on Exposure Manager. Here is list of what you get. Check their website for more information.

Key Features

• Unlimited storage space/uploads
• 20GB per month download limit
• Unlimited galleries and nesting of sub galleries
• Web-based and FTP based uploading
• Upload smaller ‘pre-order’ photos
• Watermarking with custom logo
• Password protection on galleries
• Searchable galleries and keywording tool
• Specify images sizes and image quality
• Customizable header/footer/templates
• Your own subdomain (e.g. yourname.exposuremanager.com)
• Domain mapping option (e.g. gallery.yourdomain.com)
• Different pricing per galleries
• Order from multiple galleries
• Package pricing (for one or multiple photos)
• T-shirts, mousepads, coffee mugs also available
• Discount coupons, ‘reprint’ and volume discounts
• Pro Lab fulfillment, digital, and self-fulfillment
• Built-in stats or Statcounter, Google Analytics, etc. via custom footer

What’s missing? Exposure Manager has an impressive list of features. Their system is, however, heavy reliant on Internet Explorer/FireFox and Photoshop. Also, they do not provide software that you can use on your computer to manage your jobs and orders offline. That is fine with me. Other services such as Printroom and PhotoReflect have desktop applications that allow you to work offline and upload changes when convenient. On closer inspection, you will find their offline software is less than perfect. Choose your poison. All of the services get the job done!

Sign-up Deal! Use the coupon to the right and get a $5.00 discount coupon on a yearly account, or the 2nd month free on a monthly account. The discount will be automatically applied. If you wander around the site, make sure to come back through the link if you choose to sign-up. For convenience, I have also put the link on the sidebar.

Competitive Upgrade! In addition, Exposure Manager is offering a competitive upgrade from other photo services (collages.net, eventpix, pictage, photoreflect, photoshelter, printroom, smugmug and shutterfly) until April 30th, 2007. This promotion gives you a $40.00 discount on the first year of a yearly event account. To qualify all you have to do is follow my link and enter the necessary information.

Update April 28, 2007 Now you can upload directly from Aperture to your Exposure Manager FTP inbox. Save time and eliminate needless complexity in your workflow.

Update March 20, 2008 The competitive upgrade deal has supposedly expired. However, it’s still on the sign-up page. I contacted Exposure Manager support and was told they will still honor it. (Note: The sign-up coupon does not expire.)

Update Sept. 15, 2008 As of today, 100 people have taken advantage of the discount coupon!

Robert’s Rating: