What's the best way to handle “Memory Mate”-style sports image sales?

Question

When selling photos to school sports teams or other groups, it's fairly common to sell a "Memory Mate" which is a single print that's a composite of the team photo on the bottom along with a small individual photo on top.

The challenge is in the ordering process. If a team as 12 players, there are 12 individual photos and 1 team photo, which are generally offered for sale a la carte. There are also 12 possible Memory Mate sales.

I'm curious if there's a better way for offering the memory mates for sale than pre-creating all 12 of them and offering each in a gallery? Is there a way to create some sort of placeholder item that a customer could order and I would then create the appropriate image for their child?

It's not too horrible doing 12 for a basketball team, but a football team is an entirely different matter...

Answer 1

For a small batch, it seems like pre-creating them would be the easiest way to hammer them out and be done. For a big group you could do the same if you expect enough sales to warrant it (and really work on streamlining the creation workflow to save you time). Templates, automation (actions) or even outsourcing could help your turnaround.

Alternatively, as you suggested, you could use Proof Delay to replace an image after the order has been placed...

For instance, you could create a jpg in photoshop that simply is an advertisement for a Memory Mate. It could have text along the lines of:

• "Add this image to your cart, and the photographer will replace it with your Memory Mate [You must email the photographer at orders@domain.com to let him know which image(s) should be included.] If purchased as a download, please forward the confirmed order so that the Memory Mate can be built and delivered via email."

Answer 2

For situations where you aren't going to premake them all, Smugmug really doesn't offer a decent way to sell these.

Your best bet is to either install your own self-fulfillment order/payment scheme for this one item (often done with paypal) or just have people contact you directly when they want to order a Memory Mate. You can create a page in Smugmug that contains a sample image and includes the instructions for contacting you to purchase one.

I personally wouldn't suggest using proof delay on one master image and switching the photo when each one is ordered. You'd be switching the same photo for different orders and it seems risky that the wrong prints might go to the wrong folks. I suppose you could create a placeholder image with each player's name on it (so there's a whole gallery of placeholder memory mate images, one per person) and ask the customer to order the memory mate placeholder image with their player's name on it and then use proof delay to replace that. That would prevent the risk that the wrong image might go to the wrong person, though it's still a lot more prep work than just having the contact you to order it directly.

Answer 3

One approach that seems to work is to put a comment in the gallery description saying to email you if you are interested in one, then you can make them just for the folks that are interested and send them a link to add it to your cart.

Or leverage the good half of the suggestion about the advertisement image by making an advert that you upload as an image with the instructions to email you if they want one... AND set the image level pricing such that that image is NOT AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE.