PhotoBox Blog

As many of you know, our Photo Books are a great way for you to promote your photography and to profit from your pictures. Whether you’re an amateur photographer looking to make a bit of money for your local school, club or charity, or perhaps a pro looking to expand your business, our Photo Books are just the thing. They’re ideal for showcasing travel pictures, hobbies, family photos, weddings, party pictures etc. What’s more you can add the mark up of your choice and sell your books through our Pro Gallery service as a risk-free way to make money.

Alan Langley of Dover Design Photography, a Wedding Photographer and one of our Pro Gallery owners says, ‘Photobox Photo Books are a fantastic and cost effective alternative to traditional albums. They are easy to produce and even easier to sell via the Pro Gallery. You also have the advantage of being able to create multiple versions to target different groups, such as one for the bride & groom and one aimed at guests. In my experience ‘Wow!’ is the usual reaction you get when clients see these books.’

Win £500 to spend at PhotoBox
If like Alan you fancy selling Photo Books through our Pro Gallery service, or want to create and sell one through our standard PhotoBox site, here’s an added incentive for you. Create any PhotoBox Photo Book and enter it in our competition. The creator of the best book will bag themselves £500 to spend at PhotoBox and be featured on our website and in both Photo Pro Magazine and Digital SLR User. There’s also £50 credit for four runners up. You can find out all you need to know on our competition page. Hurry competition closes 31st August!
Enter our competition now

Good luck and enjoy your weekend

Linda
The Editor

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It’s been another exciting week at PhotoBox. On Monday we announced Craig Hughes as the winner of our Dishy Dads Competition. We received a total of 14,739 votes! He was delighted to win and plans to give some of his £1000 Red Letter Day prize to a children’s hospice charity auction, so he’s a nice guy as well as Dishy Dad!

I then had the fun task yesterday afternoon of joining the judging panel of our DK Photo Britain competition. Thank goodness that with almost 8000 entries the best ones had been short-listed for us, otherwise we’d still be there battling it out to find the winning photo for the next cover of DK Eyewitness Great Britain.

The standard and variety of photo entries was staggering, and the amateur and under-16 categories certainly gave the pros a run for their money. Having decided on a winner for each of the 12 categories, it proved a much tougher job to agree on just one overall winner. Thankfully a designer mocked up a front cover of the guidebook to show us how a couple of our favourite photos would look, and we all agreed that one image fitted the space perfectly. Right now our winner is still top secret – sorry but come on, it’s only polite to let them know first! I promise I’ll update this post with the winner’s details just as soon as I’m allowed to announce it.

As for the rest of the week, we’re left to compete with either the mass of mud that’s likely at glorious Glastonbury, or watch Andy Murray in the toughest tournament of his career so far. Go Andy go!

Have a great weekend everyone

Linda
The Editor

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Use your voting power to have your say on two important issues – new Pro Gallery features and decide our Dishiest Dad!

Calling all Pro Gallery owners
If you haven’t voted yet now’s the time to have your say. We’ve set up a Pro Gallery feedback forum so you can tell us exactly what’s on your mind. This makes it easy to vote for the features you’re keen to see introduced on Pro Gallery. You can vote for ideas that have already been suggested, or share your own new ideas with us. It’s really quick to do and will help ensure we’re offering you the service you want. Just click ‘Want to improve Pro Gallery?’ at www.photoboxgallery.com. 

Vote for the Dishiest Dad
After last week’s blog post inviting you to enter our Dishy Dads Competition you didn’t let me down. We’ve had loads of great entries and having endured the tough task of finding our 12 finalists, I’ve handed over the job of picking our one lucky winner to the public vote. So take a look at our handsome hunks and vote for your favourite. Over 3000 of you already have and the two front runners are currently neck and neck. We’ll announce our Dishiest Dad on the site on Monday, so please vote now!

Last but not least a very Happy Father’s Day this Sunday to all you dads out there

Best wishes

Linda
The Editor

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Well my mailbox has certainly been interesting over the past couple of weeks! Entries for our Dishy Dads Competition have been pouring in and the photos have certainly created quite a stir in the office.

If you haven’t heard, in the run up to Father’s Day we’re on the hunt for the Dishiest Dad. If you think that’s your dad, partner or husband, enter our Dishy Dad Competition and you could win him a fantastic Red Letter Day worth up to £1000.

You’ve only got until midnight on Sunday 14th June to send us a photo of your dad so don’t hang around. We’ll then pick 12 Dishy Dads and put them to the public vote from 15th - 21st June so that you can choose the winner. So send us a photo of your dad today and then come back and vote for him next week. May the Dishiest Dad win!

We’ve also got loads of great personalised gifts so you can surprise and delight your dad with to ensure this Father’s Day (21st June for anyone who needs reminding) is a really special one.

Have a great weekend and I look forward to checking my mailbox again on Monday!

Linda
The Editor

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Hi

We’re launching today two important updates for all our Pro Gallery owners. We believe in both cases that they make the service easier to use, and indeed both changes are as a direct result of your feedback and the continuing success of Pro Gallery.

Firstly, Pay Me is the new way to claim your earnings from your Pro Gallery. It’s now an entirely self-service process that you can use at any time. You’ll find the Pay Me button on both Gallery Admin and your PhotoBox sales reporting page. To make a claim simply:

o Complete seller details (inc VAT status)
o Choose either:
    1.Transfer to PhotoBox cash account for spend on the site (2 year expiry and 5 day lead time) 
    2. Or PayPal account (14 day lead time).Please note that lead times are there to protect you from fraudulent claims
o You can make up to one claim a day for either part or the full amount of earnings
o A £1 handling fee is applied if the PayPal request is under £50
o For invoices go to your PhotoBox Order History page
o Please be aware that email requests for bank account transfers will only be honoured until end August 2009
o For more details on Pay Me see our FAQ section

You’ll also be glad to hear that the new password protection feature is now live. That means as a seller you can now add a password to individual collections and send this to the people you want to be able to view the collection. To set a password, just go to your collections tab and click ‘Set password’. The ones you’ve password protected will be indicated by the padlock icon, you’ll need to be logged out to see this on your own gallery. People can then click on the link you send them and will be asked for the password. You can remove or update the password any time you like.

Please let us know how you find these changes and any other comments you have on our Pro Gallery service.

Best wishes

Mark Chapman
Managing Director

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We’ve had masses of entries to our Photo Britain competition. The standard is proving incredibly high, not to mention diverse. It’s very inspiring and I’m looking forward to getting together with the other judges to find a winner, although I can tell it’s going to be a tough one.

For anyone who doesn’t know, the competition is in partnership with DK Eyewitness Travel, The Landmark Trust and Waterstone’s. The first prize winner gets their photo featured in pride of place on the front cover of the next edition of DK Eyewitness Great Britain, plus £1500 of Landmark Trust holiday vouchers and more. There’s plenty of great runner up prizes too. Just submit your favourite photos of Britain, from iconic London landmarks, Britain’s amazing castles and cathedrals, to anything that’s just typically British like enjoying fish & chips at the seaside. See the competition site for inspiration and to enter.

The deadline for entries to Photo Britain is 29th May. Competition fans can also enter our latest Facebook competition where the theme is wedding photos and you could win a Large Personalised Photobook. Enter your photos today!

Good luck and enjoy your weekend

Linda
The Editor

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Hi everyone

For a while now we’ve been contemplating changing the way we calculate shipping costs for orders placed at PhotoBox. Like many online services, we charge different amounts depending on what you order, however we’ve felt that we haven’t been particularly good at communicating how we come to a particular price for shipping an order. This has also come though from feedback from you via our customer services team.

Our original philosophy was that since the Royal Mail basically charges by weight bands, so we would too. Unfortunately, this has always meant that it’s hard for you to understand just how we got to a price, which didn’t always obviously correlate with the number and type of items in your order.

So we’ve changed the whole model, hopefully for the better. After much debate, we’ve moved to a simple, quantity-based calculation, which you can see in detail on our Delivery Information & Prices page. It’s now much easier to understand (we think) just how shipping costs are calculated, and exactly how much adding an additional item to your basket will cost. Very soon, we’ll add a new service feature so that you can get a detailed calculation in the basket, as to exactly how shipping was calculated.

Let me know how this affects you. We’ve tried to impact as few orders as possible, but inevitably there will be some winners & losers as a result of the change. We honestly believe however that the change makes our service easier to understand and use; and I assure you we’re not making any more money in shipping charges overall as a result of these changes.

As always, feedback on this or any other topic is much appreciated.

Mark Chapman
Managing Director, PhotoBox

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Our last blog post chatted about our new Slideshow and Photo Book sharing, which is already proving popular. Today we want to highlight the fact that you can sell any Photo Books you’ve created through your Pro Gallery too. You decide how much you want to sell them for, so you’re in complete control over both your pricing and your profit.

Sharing is great for family & friends, but it’s also a fantastic chance to promote your business and make more sales. So as well as offering clients a range of print sizes on your Pro Gallery, you can capture an entire event or portrait session in a Photo Book and share and sell this online too. It’s certainly got the wow factor and can put a new spin on your work. Take a look at how this has been done on our very own Antonio Goard’s Pro Gallery.

Sales can be tracked on your sales reporting page and all your earnings will appear on your sales report as usual. There’s further information on our FAQ page and you can always contact our Customer Service Team for assistance.

We think this is a really exciting addition to our Pro Gallery service and are keen hear what you think. Plus feel free to share with us some of the Photo Books you’ve made, we’d love to see them. Either post a link on our blog or email us at shareit@photobox.co.uk, we’ll then showcase some of the best ones. Another great way to promote your business!

Have a wonderful Bank Holiday weekend

Linda
The Editor

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We’ve got two really exciting job opportunities to share with you:

PR & Community Manager

You will be a passionate practitioner of social media, traditional PR and good-ol’ common sense to spread the word and love about our young and rapidly growing company, to build important relationships with real media and in the blogosphere that will propel our company’s growth. You will also serve as the community advocate inside the company and will play a meaningful role in shaping our strategy and direction.

Product Marketing Manager

You will be responsible for the co-management of the overall www.photobox.co.uk website product roadmap, both physical and functional, directing and assimilating the UK marketing team requirements and initiatives to then negotiate and lobby the Paris-based corporate marketing team, to ensure that the UK website develops according to UK commercial aspirations coupled with UK consumer insight.

This role is offered to cover 10 months maternity leave with scope for a permanent role as part of Organization growth.

If that little taster has tempted you, read full details of both jobs on our careers page.

Linda
The Editor

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We’ve seen some feedback on Twitter recently that people find it hard to add photos to their tweets. There are several services out there but there’s no clear winner. Some are complex, some require you to register, or worse still they require you to pay.

So we’ve launched myfo.to, a completely free service to store photos for Twitter, Ebay or any other website. We’ve tried to make it really simple to use, and there is no registration required. Just upload a JPEG photo and you then get a really short URL which you can paste into your tweet.

If it starts to get used we’ll add a few more bells and whistles. All feedback welcome.

Try it now: http://myfo.to

Regards

Graham

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