Recently, I discovered a new website called Crated.com that was looking for talent in their initial start-up phase. I figured, why not, and submitted my portfolio for review.
Surprisingly, they sent me a response within a few days offering me the chance to showcase my art on their site. Basically, it works like a full-service print shop from order to delivery. How is this different from my current Smugmug account, you may ask? Well, aside from cosmetic differences (Smugmug wins this one easily with the ability to skin your gallery any way you want using custom CSS), the main difference is price. Whereas Smugmug just upped the prices for their Pro accounts to a whopping $300, Crated has no yearly membership fee.
The catch? They take a hefty cut from any sales you make, which digs into your profits. And at an 80/20 split, some would argue that’s a huge cut. So what’s the appeal then? For someone like me who (sadly) has very few sales, the $300 yearly fee over at Smugmug is pretty staggering. I need to make buku bucks just to cover the cost of membership. With Crated, I’m only paying them if I actually sell something (at least for now–who knows when they plan on changing their business model (if ever)).
Sure, Crated limits the user to whoever they choose to use for printing, and the sizes and amount of products offered are severely limited, but that all seems to be part of their approach. Simplicity is key, and it shows in their site design (responsive!) all the way down to their purchasing options. Their back end isn’t nearly as robust as Smugmug’s (I can’t even access even the most rudimentary of tracking), but it promises to add these features sometime in the near future.
I’ll still feature my limited edition art prints through Smugmug, at least for the time being. But it’s going to be hard to keep paying those membership fees after a few more years. For now, I am a Crated artist and a Smugmug artist.
Below are some of the highlights that Crated offers, as well as a link to my gallery at the bottom. I plan on adding much more to the site as time goes on, so check back regularly!
Enjoy!
4 Comments
Brian I enjoyed viewing your photography. I love your mix of artistic and personal. I have been looking at website templates and galleries and have become very overwhelmed with it all. I love what you have done here. Would you share with me which wordpress theme you used? I would greatly appreciate it. I have some images on tumblr under the name PicXpressions if you want to see them. I feel like why just keep my photography to myself? I want to share because it’s feels good. Again loving the way you have laid out this site, linking to the different sites and galleries, just what I am looking to accomplish.
Karen
Thanks Karen! You’ve got some great stuff on your tumblr page, by the way. I you’re not using flickr, I can’t recommend it enough. There seems to be a great community of people on there and you’ll get a lot of great feedback, no doubt.
For my site, I’m using a slightly modified version of a free theme called Time (if I remember correctly). I had the same problem with the website vs. gallery struggle, but ultimately decided my website should be a blog first and foremost. I’ve found Flickr is much better to use as a gallery, and have just recently signed up with crated.com to sell prints (which is great since you don’t pay a thing—they just take a percentage of your profits).
Enjoy!
Just starting to look at using something like Crated. Just wondering how successful your sales have been on Crated? Are you using any other similar services? You can reply privately if you prefer.
Eric
Eric, thanks for checking out the site! All I can say is, you get what you put in. Honestly, I devoted some time to Crated at the beginning and then let it fall by the wayside. I can’t say I’ve updated or promoted the page since I first started (and my sales are a direct reflection of that lack of effort). I switched to Crated from Smugmug mainly because the latter became too expensive for me to maintain (which might not be a problem if you anticipate high sales volumes). That, as it turns out, is a catch-22 of sorts. Since Crated is free, there is much less motivating me to really put a lot of effort into it (since there is no penalty if I am lackadaisical in my approach).
Hope that helps!