Fotomoto.com
Fotomoto is an online web service that allows photographers to add a Fotomoto shopping cart to their own web site or blog. While there are a number of places that allow photographers to sell their photos, such as STOCK photo sites like Istockphoto or e-commerce sites like Smugmug, the advantage is that the photographer has control over which photos are displayed for sale on their site and no monthly subscription fees.
History
The company launched in early 2009 in beta phase. The co-founders are Ahmad Kiarostami and Nasser Manesh, experienced software professionals, with a team of other employees or advisors coming from photography services like Shutterfly. The Primary mission for the company appears to be giving both amateur and professional photographers greater control over how they sell images online, while also helping save photographers money on subscription fees. The company is currently based out of San Francisco.
Features
- Fotomoto is not a free service. Photographers are not charged a monthly subscription fee, but photographers are charged 15% of the total sale price when an order is placed for a print.
- Photographers can offer quality prints, e-cards and physical cards.
- API
- Support for adding a shopping cart to a number of blogging and web site platforms.
- The company handles all fulfillment for the photographer when an item is sold.
- People that know a little CSS can make slight modifications to the position, color or sizing of the buttons.
- Payments from buyers are accepted via PayPal
- Support for hi-res images (uploaded only after the seller has completed a sale, which prevents image theft from the web site or blog of the photographer).
Known issues and challenges
- Fotomoto doesn't have support for Flash pages.
- While platforms like Wordpress are supported, Wordpress customers that do not host their own blog can't add the Fotomoto script to their page.
- Some people May Be concerned because the company name is the same as a known computer virus.
- Fotomoto can't be used on sites like Flickr.
- The service works well for any web site that is HTML; some customization issues may arise when using some web tools like Lightbox or AJAX.
- The service largely caters to professional art photographers at this time, which can mean that the photographers charge more for their prints than the average buyer might expect.
Major Competitors
- Smugmug
- IStockphoto
- Getty Images
- Cafepress
References
- Techcrunch http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/11/fotomoto-lets-photographers-sell-photos-on-site-without-the-hassle/
- Crunchbase http://www.crunchbase.com/company/fotomoto