Here's my wish-list for a turnkey web-application for professional photographers. I want all of this in one website and I suspect I'm not alone. I've listed the services that do the best at these things, in order from best to worst implementation, in my opinion and to the best of my knowledge.

• The ability to publish HTML content to my own server. AJAX/web services could be used for things like the shopping cart and highly interactive features. Images should be optionally fetched from remote servers, as there could be far too many for a typical shared hosting provider. AFAIK, nobody is doing this, although SmugMug lets me point a domain to them -- a good start
• The ability to sell high-quality prints, and set my own prices (SmugMug, PhotoShelter)
• User friendly shopping cart/checkout (SmugMug gets the nod, here; Photoshelter lacks crop preview/edits)
• Automated license sales based on industry-standard prices, for stock photography sales (PhotoShelter doesn't seem to have any competition here, implemented via integration with FotoQuote)
• The ability to organize photos using tags and galleries (1st place: Flickr, 2nd place: PhotoShelter, SmugMug takes a distant third because it's not easy to put the same photo in multiple galleries... hint to SmugMug's developers, "many to many")
• The ability to sell many other products: Specifically, posters, books, calendars, etc... (Zazzle.com wins here, but doesn't let me set whatever price I like)
• User friendly gallery/tag browsing, and search (Flickr)
• Sort photos by date, views, number of comments, rating/favorites, etc... (Flickr)
• Community interaction, group photo pools and discussions, contact management, etc.. (Flickr is the clear winner here, and I think the guys at SmugMug dramatically under-estimate the potential for professional photographers to earn peer prestige and make business connections via community features)
• The ability to customize the gallery (SmugMug, PhotoShelter, Zazzle)
• Booking calendar so people can check booking availability and pay a small fee to reserve their date
• A simple invoicing solution that lets customers track their invoices and pay for photo shoots online
• Coupon code and link-based referral/affiliate program to reward customers who tell their friends

Labels: business