Announcing DPChallenge Prints! - DPChallenge Forums

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L USM

03/17/2003 04:23:38 PM · #1

Announcing DPChallenge Prints!

It is with great pleasure that I announce to you DPChallenge Prints!

How many times have you seen an amazing photograph on the site and wished you could have it hanging in your living room? Now, it's possible! We've been working hard for several months to bring you this great new service, and I really think you're going to love it. Let me briefly overview what it's all about.

Just last week, we introduced DPChallenge Portfolios for our subscribing members. Now, you can upload a printable version of any portfolio image (yes, this certainly includes challenge images!) Once uploaded, you'll have these great services at your fingertips...

Sell Your Prints! This is the gateway to selling your prints on www.dpcprints.com. Follow the instructions, and you'll be selling your prints in no time. The basic idea is that you mark-up each of your prints above a certain base price. For every print you sell, you make 50% of the sell price minus the base price.

Order Your Own Prints and Gift Items! Yes, you heard that right... you can now use DPChallenge as your personal photofinisher. We've got all the print sizes you can ask for and over a dozen great gift items. You buy all of these products with no mark-up! Check out the prices by uploading a print, and you'll see that these prints are cheaper than most of the online services you're using now!

The new print-selling and personal photofinishing services are offered to our subscribing members only, but anyone can buy prints for sale on dpcprints.com! Becoming a member barely costs $2 a month (paying annually), and it gets you access to the members-only challenges, your new 10MB personal portfolio, the new print selling and personal photofinishing services, and more. Log in, and check it out!

Your DPChallenge account works on DPCPrints.com. DPChallenge Prints is full of great browsing and searching features, order tracking, seller's sales reports (members-only), personal wishlists, and more!

You'll already start to see a bunch of new things pop up around DPChallenge.com as well! You can add images to your wishlist (even if a print isn't available yet), and you'll always be shown if there's a print available for an image you like. You'll probably notice a few things changing over the next few days, while DPChallenge makes room for her new sister! :) If you've got any ideas, now's a great time to get them in.

I'm sure you have a lot of questions, and we're certainly here to answer them. First, if you're interested, you should check out our Print Sellers' FAQ. You'll also probably want to read the DPChallenge Prints Buyer's FAQ. Certainly posts any questions, comments, or suggestions you have here, or contact us if you need further help.

The Site Council has been helping us test the new site, so you'll see a bunch of their prints already on the site. These prints are ready to be ordered, so don't hesitate to grab any you like. Now, get those prints in, and let's fill this site up!

And last but not least ... please help us spread the word about the new site! Can't wait to see you all on there :)

Drew / Langdon

langdon

Canon EOS-20D

03/17/2003 04:26:19 PM · #2

Don't let Drew fool you by including my name. Praise and thanks should be directed towards him since he handled 80% of this project.

He's a tank when it comes to getting things done.

03/17/2003 04:27:16 PM · #3

Congratulations!!

This is very exciting!

ClubJuggle

Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

03/17/2003 04:27:46 PM · #4

Originally posted by langdon:

Don't let Drew fool you by including my name. Praise and thanks should be directed towards him since he handled 80% of this project.

He's a tank when it comes to getting things done.

Well, in that case, tank you! ;-)

-Terry

Konador

Canon EOS-500D Rebel T1i

03/17/2003 04:28:42 PM · #5

Excellent!

Way to go, both of you!

Refracted

Canon EOS-50D

Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM

03/17/2003 04:28:50 PM · #6

eeeexcelllent...

*runs off to check it out*

ClubJuggle

Canon EOS-400D Rebel XTi

Pentax DA 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 AF

03/17/2003 04:31:54 PM · #7

Great work! Here's hoping this is profitable for both you and the many talented artists on this site!

-Terry

paynekj

Pentax K10D

03/17/2003 04:40:28 PM · #8

I just tried clicking the here link under Sell Your Own Prints and got the error message The requested URL /help_sellers.php was not found on this server.

kevin

Message edited by drewmedia - oops :) ... temporarily fixed. thanks, kevin..

courtenay27

Pentax *ist DS

Pentax A 50mm f/1.7 MF

03/17/2003 04:54:47 PM · #9

Too sweet!! You guys most definitely rock!! Thanks for all of your hard work with this and everything else that you've done with the site. Looks like I'm going to be moving my print files from DeviantArt over to here tonight. And Kudos to John for being the first featured photographer too. Now I can get the prints I wanted before you left DA. :D
BTW, have you guys thought about a PayPal donation account?
Courtenay

kosmikkreeper

Nikon D300s

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

03/17/2003 04:58:08 PM · #10

All I have to say is... WOOOOOHOOOO!!! :-D

Azrifel

Nikon Coolpix P340

03/17/2003 05:03:53 PM · #11

How are you going to handle Fuji SCCD files in relation to the no-upsizing requirement for selling prints? I shoot all my photo's at 6mp and that's also what I use for printing. On screen you can see the difference with a real 6mp ccd/cmos' file and it looks upsized, while in reality it holds up to 20% more resolution as a 3mp file from the camera. The S2 does the same, but creates 12mp files.

So I sent in a 6mp file that should be judged as 3 to 4mp quality, looks upsized but has more resolution than the normal size, but shouldn't be printed at sizes 6mp images normally go for.....

Or should I not worry and resample to 3mp size? But at that moment I am throwing away data that my in-camera upsampling captured (I'd be happy to discuss how a SuperCCDs works in another thread)
Or should I not worry because my stuff is so bad it won't sell? :)

Remie

Nikon D70

03/17/2003 05:04:07 PM · #12

Congrats with your new baby guys :)

Azrifel

Nikon Coolpix P340

03/17/2003 05:14:29 PM · #13

How does this check business work for foreigners?
I think that if I even would get one (do you sent it to Europe?), cashing it here would be very expensive. I'd rather see the money be sent to my paypal account.

Edit: I looked it up, in Holland it is about 10 euro per check. And 25 dollars minumum gets me 22,80 euro at this moment. Perhaps it could be useful, if a paypal option is out of the question, to leave international users the option to only get a check if the amount gets above 50 dollar.

Message edited by author 2003-03-17 17:46:43.

kosmikkreeper

Nikon D300s

Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

03/17/2003 05:20:13 PM · #14

Originally posted by Azrifel:

I would also like to have electronic transfers if possible. PayPal would be wonderful! :-)

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

03/17/2003 05:26:31 PM · #15

Originally posted by Azrifel:

Or should I not worry because my stuff is so bad it won't sell? :)

LOL.. have confidence in yourself, and other will too. :P

GeneralE

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

03/17/2003 05:35:43 PM · #16

Originally posted by KarenB:

Originally posted by Azrifel:

Or should I not worry because my stuff is so bad it won't sell? :)

LOL.. have confidence in yourself, and other will too. :P

Besides, I bet you have a few friends/family you can coerce into buying some prints...that's certainly what I'm counting on!

Azrifel

Nikon Coolpix P340

03/17/2003 05:51:28 PM · #17

My friends and family already rely on my Epson printer. I gave some away for free or ask a small fee for paper and ink. Was that good marketing or have I spoiled them? :)

GeneralE

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

03/17/2003 05:58:16 PM · #18

He gives the kids free samples
Because he knows full well
That today's young innocent faces
Will be tomorrow's clientele
--Tom Lehrer, The Old Dope Peddler

If you must subsidize your relatives, instead of vice versa, you can always order the prints yourself at base cost and drop-ship the order to them. Or, price them so low that it will beat the cost of your paper and ink anyway, and they will have to order them themselves. Or you could be "out of ink..."

joanns

Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro

03/17/2003 06:02:27 PM · #19

Question about search engines. For example, if someone is looking for a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in Fog can they "google" that and be linked here?

drewmedia

Canon EOS-300D Rebel

Olympus 50mm f/1.8 MF Normal Zuiko

03/17/2003 06:17:36 PM · #20

Originally posted by joanns:

Question about search engines. For example, if someone is looking for a photo of the Golden Gate Bridge in Fog can they "google" that and be linked here?

That's entirely up to the google bot, but hopefully their spiders will crawl all over the site. They certainly have access to it.

Drew

emorgan49

Olympus E-5

03/17/2003 06:40:02 PM · #21

I hope this is going to make Drew and Langdon rich and famous, they deserve it!!!

ChrisW123

Canon EOS-1000D Rebel XS

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

03/17/2003 07:12:11 PM · #22

My God this is so COOOOOL! This a very well thought out addition/service to the web site from what I've read so far in the FAQs. Excellent idea!!!

Couple things:

1) I didn't notice if there was a MINIMUM price or not, but if not you may want to make it: Base Price x $2. Or something like that, otherwise someone may constantly sells prints for just the "base price" for some promotional type of thing and you won't make any profit (basically just be providing a free service for someone).

2) The 50% of the profit that DPC keeps may be a little high, although the service/marketing you provide (via this site) is very powerfull and much more then most people (99.9%) could ever do on their own. You may need to "tweak" the profit percentage a little. Although you are doing all the work of printing them, mailing them, actually I think the % is pretty good.

3) The size of our photo space is only 10mbs. Is this going to be enough space to handle a decent size "gallery"? This may be a problem.

4) The galleries show thumbnails of the pics which is good so people don't just download a printable version for themselves, but will they be able to see a 640 x ??? pixel sized version also? If not, they may not buy with just a thumbnail to preview.

I'm very impressed so far with this new service! GREAT JOB! I'm defentely going to make use of this service. :)

Message edited by author 2003-03-17 19:13:31.

Canon 12x IS USM (S3 IS built-in Lens) -- 36-432mm (35mm EQ)

03/17/2003 08:23:36 PM · #23

bump :0)

GeneralE

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

03/17/2003 09:25:15 PM · #24

Originally posted by ChrisW123:

My God this is so COOOOOL!
The 50% of the profit that DPC keeps may be a little high, although the service/marketing you provide (via this site) is very powerfull and much more then most people (99.9%) could ever do on their own. You may need to "tweak" the profit percentage a little. Although you are doing all the work of printing them, mailing them, actually I think the % is pretty good.

I was discussing this with a friend of mine who owns a bookstore. We kind of agreed that 50% is reasonable at the beginning, expecially since the overhead is fixed, but that after some large number of prints sold perhaps the "gallery commission" should be a little lower.

Originally posted by ChrisW123:

The galleries show thumbnails of the pics which is good so people don't just download a printable version for themselves, but will they be able to see a 640 x ??? pixel sized version also? If not, they may not buy with just a thumbnail to preview.

I'm very impressed so far with this new service! GREAT JOB! I'm defentely going to make use of this service. :)

If you click on the link to the left "View Portfolio" (or variation) you should see it as a customer does. If you click on the thumbnail you are taken to the linked portfolio image, with whatever detailed info you want to put there.