Smugmug is forcing me into professionalism
 

I've made money selling photos from my site, yay! They took a whopping 15% of it because they can, I don't care too much about that- it costs money to make money. My real gripe is that I need to pay taxes on what I earned and possibly open an additional bank account so they can direct deposit $ into it because quite frankly- I'm not giving them my business account when the latest trend is hacking into 'secure' websites. So it looks like technically I'll have to be a professional and my knowledge and skills are Noob at best. I don't want to hear the real pro's crying when amateurs are calling themselves pro when this type of crap happens. Btw, I'm still amateur. ;-)

we all have to start some where
and from the amount of info you have provided me that would make me....young grass hopper :)

Direct the potential buyer / buyer to contact you via email to arrange the transaction. IF they are really interested in a photo you have on your site, they won't hesitate in contacting you. Smugmug will only charge their surcharge if your sales are done through their lab, which I think Bay photo is one of them, and I think they give you another option too. I print all of my own photography, or if I cannot do it ( if someone wants something larger than I can print) I handle that too through a 3rd party contractor. That way, I know the quality of the goods going to the customer. Just my $.02 worth.

Lmao, watch this video, it's relevant. Dude's Photos | Xtranormal

lol

I've done that before. It works well when you do photo shoots for people personally - I can use my site as an album that they can look at then tell me which photos they want printed. I've made a bit of $ that way also. It's just a lot of back and forth back and forth and time consuming.

As far as my event photography goes - the smugmug store is easier, especially when I don't know the people buying the photos, it's a one stop shop for them and i'm completely out of the transaction which is nice and less time consuming.

I currently run a more than full time business that takes up my nights and weekends but I get little bit of time off when I need it, I rely on my family to cover for me. So after shooting a big event it's time for me to put all my focus back into work. I have very little time to PP my images and get them on my site. So once they're on there I get my usual routine back and can focus on work and hardly want to deal with the transaction process. The smugmug store works for me.