The new Fotomerchant PRO Plan ..for Event Photographers

As part of the flurry of changes that you’ll be seeing over the coming months, we’re really excited today to introduce the brand new Pro plan!

The Pro plan will represent a fourth tier of functionality that goes above and beyond the Plus and Premium plans to support high sales volume professionals and studios catering to events and large customer bases.

What's new in the Pro Plan?

A collection of brand new features specifically designed to help streamline workflow and help you manage large-scale events. Here’s the list..

Event Search

Searching your live site has always been powered by Tags, Titles and Descriptions to pull in the most relevant image results possible. However the search can now be isolated to individual Categories rather than querying your entire image library. This means that searching for the tag 123 in the “7th of February Triathalon” category will only return images of the competitor wearing bib number 123 in that category (or event). The other twenty runners you’ve shot recently with the same bib number from other events won’t be getting in the way!

You can even provide your customers with a direct link to the Event Search page with a relevant Tag “pre-loaded” to the end of the URL. So as your customer, the link below will take me directly to the “7th of February Triathalon” search results page for the tag 123, without my having to enter the bib number myself. I can then add those images directly to my Shopping Cart from the results page!

http//example-eventphotography.com/search/category/7th-of-february-triathalon/123

If you’re a wedding photographer you can bet that this will make your life easier with search terms like bride too!

Smart Shopping Cart

Your automated Digital and Direct Fulfillment process just became a little more automated!

The Shopping Cart can now make decisions on which products will be offered to your customers based on the aspect ratio and resolution of the image they’re interested in. So for print products, rather than having to crop, upscale and change images once a customer has placed an order, you can simply elect for the Shopping Cart to hide the print products that are not a good match for the chosen image file.

Similarly for Digital Download products; if your uploaded digital file isn’t large enough in resolution to accommodate a particular Digital product, then that product simply won’t be offered in the shopping cart. This means that there will never be any “Action Required” orders in your system!

Advanced Account Search

Now that you have an account full of new Contacts (and hopefully new orders), you’ll to need to be able to access those Contacts and Order details as smoothly as possible. You can now pull this information up immediately from anywhere in your Fotomerchant account! (Checkout the demonstration video below for a quick walk-through)

Bulk Product Purchasing

Allow your customers to purchase an entire gallery of photographs in just a few clicks. Using Bulk Products, your customers can purchase any Digital, Self Fulfilment or Direct Fulfilment product for all images in gallery for a single price!

Advanced Financial Reports

You can already view a break-down of your sales revenue by Gallery and Category, but now with the Pro plan you can view the performance of specific products and product types (Eg: Self/Direct Fulfillment or Digital products).

Contact Import Tools

If you work with large events then there’s a good chance you’ll have big lists of new customers to deliver to with each event. You can now import a CSV of new Contacts directly into your Fotomerchant account!

Branded PayPal Checkout

You can now add your logo to the PayPal checkout interface to ensure that your customers have a more consistent experience as they finalise their orders.

Example Video

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Pro Plan Pricing

The new subscription plan will be $99 per month or $80 per month (billed annually). Both the monthly and annual plans let you enjoy a low 2.5% Transaction Fee.

You can view the monthly and yearly pricing options as well as the full feature list from the My Plan section of your admin account.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are a few questions to help get the conversation flowing. If you have more, please post a comment below.

Q: When is the Pro plan available and how do I upgrade?

A: It’s available right now! Just head to the My Plan section of your admin account to view the plan details, then select either the Monthly or Yearly payment options. Now click on the Pro plan column, hit the green Choose this Plan button at the bottom of the page and you’re off!

Q: I’m definitely interested but would like to try it out before committing.

A: No problem, we can set you up with a two week Trial on the Pro plan within your existing account. Just drop us a line via the Help Desk to let us know if you’re interested! Beyond that you can always try the monthly subscription option and then downgrade back to your current plan the following month if you decide it’s not for you.

Q: The Pro plan isn’t a match for my business. What have you got in store for me?

A: No fear, we have a heap of exciting changes coming to the application over the coming months that will apply to all subscription levels. In case you missed it, check out our previous blog post on the soon to be released “Fotomerchant v3″.

Don’t have a Fotomerchant account yet? Create one now!

Start my trial today

Written by Steve Saunders

Steve is Fotomerchant's head customer support guy. We call him 'sherpa'.

Joshua Nicholson

hmmm very cool, my search for a new platform maybe over. As a sports photographer I can see those benefits…. now just need a “magical fairy” to tag images for me
- Derek Clapham
  
  Hi Joshua,
  
  We may just have a few “magical fairies” that can help you out here. If you drop us a line at help@fotomerchant.com we’ll get in touch.
Barefoot Photog

Yikes $99 is a real deal breaker for me sorry guys!
- Derek Clapham
  
  Hi Barefoot,
  
  We understand the Pro Plan pricing isn’t for everyone. The plan is designed for photographers who do a moderate to large volume of sales online. The $99/month is justifiable to these businesses due to the fact that the time and effort saved in dollar terms is far greater than $99 each month.
  - expozme
    
    for $960 a year (80/mo) how is fotomerchant prepared to handle SEO and exposure of individual photographers. if it is then maybe it is justifiable, if not then I agree with Barefoot.
    - fotomerchant
      
      Hi exposeme…
      
      Let me know if I’ve missed the mark here, but are you asking about general SEO Meta Data management tools? We have a range of SEO tools that have always been standard issue across all of our subscription plans. Check out this video tutorial for some more detail –
      http://support.fotomerchant.com/entries/78558666-7-Editing-your-SEO-Meta-Data
      
      You can also run a quick search for ‘SEO’ from our Support home page to access more resources if that helps – http://support.fotomerchant.com/home
      
      Don’t hesitate to touch base with us via the Help Desk if you had any extra questions we can help with – help@fotomerchant.com
Az Jackson

I agree with Barefoot Photog… $99 is way too much if you’re not providing any more features that will attract buyers such as… better UX design, less clicks to make a purchase in the shopping cart, a way to subscribe to a newsletter and possibly newsletter templates so we can engage with our audience better. On a lot of other sites your “new” features are standard and are what customers have been accustomed to for a while so asking photographers for more money without a more advanced way to sell might not be the way to go. Just out of curiosity… what type of photographer is this pro plan for? I haven’t tried it but non of those features would make me even click to find out more about them. I now only use my Fotomerchant account for people to view my work. I’ve had to disable the shopping cart and use another website to sell my work because it is a lot less hassle for my customers.
- fotomerchant
  
  Thanks for the feedback Az,
  
  As mentioned in the post, this release is really catering to high volume sports and event photographers. Think triathlons, community fun-runs, full scale marathons etc.. Totally agree that it’s not a fit for your custom order / landscape photography business, but it’s really designed to serve a different purpose. There’s more on the way soon that should be more interesting for you and applicable to your business model.. Hope this helps,
  
  Steve.
Mark Walker

Some of the features I was looking to leave the platform for.. though to be honest the cost differential is a bit ridiculous for what you’re getting and there is still a few things missing like purchase all images of this bib number only. Maybe if the transaction cost dropped as well might be more palatable.
- fotomerchant
  
  Hi Mark,
  
  the Event Search feature does provide exclusive search results for an individual bib number from a particular event. You can even send a “pre-loaded” search URL to a competitor with their bib number if you wish.
  
  So this link.. Eg: http/mysportsphotography.com/search/category/February-Triathalon-2015/123
  
  ..would take competitor with bib #123 directly to a search results page loaded ONLY with images of him or her from that “February-Triathalon-2015” event. They can then add images to their Shopping Cart directly from that search results page.
  
  Hope this helps!
  - Mark Walker
    
    Thanks guys but not sure you really understood.. Unless something has changed I can’t say to a competitor and have the system enforce, you can buy all images for this event tagged with your bib number for one price as a digital download. Yes I know you can search for images tagged with a bib number but thats only one part of the requirement.
    - fotomerchant
      
      Thanks for the extra detail Mark,
      
      agree that that would be a really attractive extension of the new functionality. Kind of blends the new “Bulk Products” feature together nicely with the “Event Search”. Not really able to offer a commitment of any kind at this point but I’ll ask the dev team to take a look at it for us.
      
      I should point out again that this plan is really designed to cater to high volume businesses that would find the subscription fee justifiable.
      
      The Standard, Plus and Pro plans are still our ‘bread and butter’.. but we’ve received a lot of feedback recently indicating that we were failing to deliver to a segment of photographers in this high volume sports / race events arena. The new plan and it’s costs have been moulded from that feedback and direct conversations we’ve had with businesses.
      
      Thanks again for your input Mark.. There’s definitely more value to come very soon for the Standard, Plus and Premium plans!
David Jackson

Ouch 99$!!!!! That’s a bit extream. Some of the features are great. But in no way are they worth that much.
Anna Pillich

I have to agree with many of the other comments, I like the new features but they seem to be pretty standard with a few of the other companies at a fraction of the price. Some I think should be in the premium plus plans. The other issue is there are no other products available, I know many see them as kitch but when you are doing bulk events etc that’s often when people want something a bit different. I know I would like to be able to have people pay for photography classes through the website as it is a service I offer, but they can’t. I also agree quite a few clients say that the purchasing experience isn’t that easy at times.