Online Payments - Photographer

Dutchology

Hi folks,

We have a website for our photography business. With very little knowledge, a Theme Forest theme and Blacknight Hosting & Domain, I "built" the website and have been adding content to it. I've managed to customise it to a point I'm happy with (no background coding done, though I've dabbled in it before). I'm now afraid to update (though we do have backups) in case I break it, but that's not today's issue.

We want to be able to take payment for prints ordered and services booked through our website, simply, securely and using a 3rd party. I know of Stripe and PayPal, that's about it and when I say "know" I mean, I've paid for things via both.

Can someone give a recommendation as to which is better and more easily placed onto a complete newbie's website and whether or not it's something that I can do easily myself? What I'm effectively looking for is a 'Pay Now' button where a varied amount can be inputted by the person paying (i.e. they have already spoken to us and know that the fee is €€€ and can input that at the checkout)...?

Or I could just be talking out of my backside, in the wrong section of the forum or the wrong business entirely, but I'm trying!!

Thanks in advance,
Milca

EIREHotspur

Milca

I would say to you from talking to other Photographers that there is very little money in selling photos online anymore.

So my advice to you is to go with Paypal and minimise your expense in setting up payments.

Today everyone thinks they are a photographer and photos....even excellent professional photos are not something many people will pay money for.

Dutchology

Hi EIREHotspur,

Thank you for your response. We do make sales through Facebook of prints of our landscape work and also of portraits from events - I know what you mean. we considered setting up a print sales section on the website, but then decided that for the number of sales, it's not worth the effort.

My query is based on having a 'payment' section for those that contact us through Facebook for print purchases and for clients who book us for shoots or wish to buy vouchers. A simple page with a button on it that allows them to pay us online without us needing the security on our website or a facility to take credit/debit cards.

A lot of clients are happy to do bank transfers, but it's not always an option so we're looking at Stripe or PayPal (or other suggestions) as an alternative to make things as client-friendly and easy as possible.

M

EIREHotspur

Hello....ok I know what you mean.

Well my advice holds....Paypal through Wordpress website with maybe a Facebook extension to connect through Facebook to take payments is your best way to go.

M.T.D

Putting a PayPal Buy Now/ Pay Now button on the website is one way. You can get all the code needed from PayPal when you create the button.
Another option is when you are talking to the purchaser get their details and create an invoice on PayPal that you email them.

By the way some of the images you display on your website are large 4meg+. Consider editing the images before you upload them. If your picture viewer is set at say 900px then that is all the size image you need. This is for several reasons, browsers resizing images on the fly are not generally going to be the best (you have more control doing it yourself), it takes much longer to down load a 2500px+ 4meg picture than a resized to 900px @70% compression (possibly 20 times longer), you can download/print out the full size images from your site

Dutchology

EIREHotspur, thank you.

M.T.D. Thank you for your input - PayPal seems to be taking preference over Stripe. One of my confusions was whether or not customers could pay us via PayPal if they don't actually have PayPal.

Thank you M.T.D., that's a mistake on my part, clearly not paying enough attention to which versions of the files I'm uploading, really appreciate the feedback because at the end of the day I really have no clue what I'm doing....

M

M.T.D

M.T.D. Thank you for your input - PayPal seems to be taking preference over Stripe. One of my confusions was whether or not customers could pay us via PayPal if they don't actually have PayPal.

A customer does not need a PayPal account to make use of the Paypal payment facility. Once the customer reaches PayPal there is an option to just pay by card without actually creating a PayPal account.
As in the usual way of things it is in a smaller font and fainter than the "Pay with PayPal " option.
On your website beside the pay button/link just add a note that you use PayPal's secure payment system and that they do not need to create a PayPal account to use it.

Dutchology

Super, thank you very much M.T.D. you've been a great help.

muirsin

M.T.D wrote: »

M.T.D. Thank you for your input - PayPal seems to be taking preference over Stripe. One of my confusions was whether or not customers could pay us via PayPal if they don't actually have PayPal.

A customer does not need a PayPal account to make use of the Paypal payment facility. Once the customer reaches PayPal there is an option to just pay by card without actually creating a PayPal account.
As in the usual way of things it is in a smaller font and fainter than the "Pay with PayPal " option.
On your website beside the pay button/link just add a note that you use PayPal's secure payment system and that they do not need to create a PayPal account to use it.

Just noticed this facility gone from Paypal .Does any one recommend other payment options where creating account not needed

Graham

muirsin wrote: »

Just noticed this facility gone from Paypal

It hasn't gone - PayPal Web Payments Standard offers this facility.

As suggested you could also look at Stripe.

muirsin

Graham wrote:

It hasn't gone - PayPal Web Payments Standard offers this facility.

Graham wrote:

As suggested you could also look at Stripe.

Thanks for that. Must check it out. Not sure what version I have but it just changed recently.