developing a website for photographers to display and sell their work

Surfer

Hi all
I am developing a website for a college project to display work for artists and photographers and allow them to sell their work too. Some of the features I think would be useful would be ability for announcements and comments about Artists and their work. What other features would you like to see on a website like this?
thanks for your help.
Mark

LiNgWiStIkZ

One tip: Please don't use a flash site (they are annoying:( )

Xios

another tip, if ya wanna make money, advertise the s**t outta the site.

A cool feature, i dunno how it works, but nearly all the flickr users here can turn an image into a link to, so if a user of your site posts on a forum, they can link directly to your site.

ThOnda

Yep, good idea. If they have their own web galleries or accounts, let them just link files (flickr, pix.ie, and the one for paintings I keep forgetting it name, but it is like something weird).
Try to get as much control and as possible to prevent downloading pictures from that page.

Sounds good, but I'd keep there only pictures and contact to photographers - painters. No sale via that page, please.

City-Exile

One tip, please use flash.
It's smart looking & makes it more difficult for people to steal your images.

rymus

another tip.. if you want to stop people stealing the images, don't make a website. Print them all up in 6x4's and sell them on street corners. You'll make more money that way than you ever would with a website.

City-Exile

rymus wrote: »

another tip.. if you want to stop people stealing the images, don't make a website. Print them all up in 6x4's and sell them on street corners. You'll make more money that way than you ever would with a website.

You've obviously never been to Dublin!
Absolutely everything that can be stolen, will be stolen & even somethings that aren't even worth stealing!

rymus

invest in a shotgun?

Placebo

- Do not use flash, People that want to protect images can use watermarks when displaying their images, flash makes the website chunky and youre adding restrictions already, not to mention the complications it will add to the whole back end, unless youre using flex.

- Each photographer will need an account
- Keep it simple, pictures uploaded will be resized, Pictures will have tags associated with them, Caption and detail of the pic, maybe a size panel for apparatus used.

- Sell feature , allow user to specify different print sizes and prices accordingly.

- Standard will need to be set in what sort of method would be used to deliver the photo, stick to same sort of post etc, no private offsite transactions

- % goes to the website on sale.

etc etc, Site has a lot to live up to, look at sell feature on deviantart.com and picture feature on flickr itself etc

DotOrg

have a look at the way www.etsy.com works too

ThOnda

aaaaa... devianart, I knew that there was some weird page :-)

Surfer

great guys thanks for that feedback so really good tips there.

Mark