How do you deliver photos/video to clients?

[Tabor Warren Photography]

I am burning a client DVD now actually. The DVDs we send out come in a DVD case with custom printing and print release adhered directly to the disk with a business card on the inside and boutique packaging on the outside. Clients love them, though we have had two, that I know of, who had no way of reading the disk in which case, I sent them a flash drive.

My recommendation, as someone who deals with hundreds of DVDs a year, would be thumb drives.

If you can get the personalized ones, awesome, but if it needs to be a generic, so be it. If the packaging is great, they will love having something to put their hands on.

Cheers,
-Tabor

 

[eninja]

I used both dropbox and DVD-R. DVD-R for them incase, i need to delete their files in dropbox.

Since 2 years ago, I've been paying dropbox 9 usd for 100 Gig. Now, they gave free upgrade to everyone to 1TB.

Cool What!

 

[jepabst]

I use BITCASA - for my storage and sharing. UNLIMITED storage for 1000 bucks a year. I store gb and gb on the cloud, it's where I backup everything. You can get 1tb for 100/year - which is 1000gb. Pretty awesome, and it integrates really smoothly into the OS, just becomes a drive letter. I love it.

I currently have 918gb on the cloud with Bitcasa for what it's worth. There is an App too, so you can access any photo, raw or JPEG, from any computer, anytime...

https://bitcasa.com/personal/pricing

 

[guralesko]

Good idea for photo delivery is that elegant Wooden Boxes. Looking good and so elegant. Check http://www.woodywoodclick.com/ website and be a professional photographer!

 

[Zeidora]

A couple of GB go through ftp upload to my website. Client can use any web browser to download. For your amount of data, I'd also do flash drive.

 

[mtam]

Congrats on your first gig! That feeling is great, remember it. Dropbox is the easiest and cleanest. It is the method that I use now. I started off with CD, but quickly realize when one of my client told me they have no CD drive on any of their computers to read the disk. Moved to Dropbox and never looked back. Good luck again with your photography gig, share some of the best photos with the forum!

 

[j-nord]

If I was a paying customer, a CD/DVD would quite simply be unacceptable. However I'm sure a lot of customers, who are technically illiterate, would still like a CD/DVD here in 2016...

 

[GammyKnee]

Right now I'm mostly using Giga.nz who give 50 gb free; for me that goes a long way as I don't do video and typically each client gets < 50 jpeg shots. However when that fills up I'll probably switch to Dropbox, as it seems to offer the best paid deal.

For the few clients who prefer something physical I deliver a DVD with a custom-printed label.

 

[takesome1]

Mostly Dropbox, but if it is impractical or too big then thumb drives, I haven't burnt a CD/DVD for years, too many people don't have disc drives now.

I was actually given an image to print on CD the other day and had to use my wife's computer to run it!

+1 on Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.

I think this is great advice.

I am not a pro, but in todays world of shared files Dropbox would seem to be the best idea.
You can edit to your dropbox file on your computer, it uploads to the web in the background.
Click share on the folder and the pics are instantly at your clients disposal to download.

 

[peterzuehlke]

i use Wesendit for internet delivery or physical dvd-r. don't use dropbox as i think you have to allow it access to your local hard drive.

 

[takesome1]

don't use dropbox as i think you have to allow it access to your local hard drive.

Not true, although if you just share the file they get edit options and the edits they make download to your computer. They could also add files. But this is not how you would send them the pictures.
There are ways to send download only. They will have no access to your computer.
You just send a link by email and they can access the file.

 

[Zv]

For small stuff I use Dropbox. I like the sharing options better than Drive. I'm a cheapo so I just have the free version of Dropbox limiting the amount I can share. I tell them to download the pics so I can delete the folder later.

For local work with large amounts of data I give them the files on a USB drive and then they can hand it back at the next meeting. Maybe buy them a coffee for the effort. Note - I'm talking family, friends and acquaintances not anyone super important

If it was a VIP or non local client I'd buy a USB drive and have it mailed to them by next day delivery. But since I'm not a working pro I don't have to do that. I'd make sure that they've selected the ones they want using the LR web gallery link (Looks really cool on an iPad btw).

 

[pwp]

If I'm delivering to an agency or design house, it's often 2-3 Gb of data (or more), so FTP delivery would mean a 3-4 hour upload with my reasonably fast ADSL+ line. More typically it's a bit over 1Gb. Designers still have DVD readers. DVD's are a useful opportunity for self marketing. I print the DVD's with my branding plus the job description, date and the clients logo. Nicely and simply packaged, it just looks good. The same custom Adobe Illustrator template works for everyone. I file regular clients branded templates. It's a handy mark-up too, I charge $40-$50 per DVD depending on the client. I buy DVD's 500 at a time so the unit cost for premium Verbatim DVD's is next to nothing. There's a modest markup on the courier delivery as well.

But it's true more & more clients can't read a DVD. I have a bunch of 8gb thumb drives printed with my branding. It's not as nice a presentation as a custom printed DVD, but that's the way of the business. The mark-up on thumb drives is not as good as DVD's...they usually go out at $50 and the unit cost for branded thumb drives is still over $10, depending on how many you order. Pretty soon clients will transition to USB-C. The new Macs are being announced next week.

I have my own high speed virtual private server so around 20% of jobs get zipped and uploaded there. The client is emailed the address which is myURL/client/job_name/date. In 2019 or 2020 my area will be upgraded to very high speed fiber optic so at that point DVD's and thumb drives will become obsolete overnight. Still settling into pricing for FTP uploads. A 1Gb upload will typically be invoiced at $35-$40.

Treat every single client however small as blue-chip and you'll be rewarded.

-pw

 

[Drum]

or the few that I have done, I have priced it so that it's easier to let me print them, then if I have to give them the digital files I use a Usb stick. I don't worry about branding.

 

[bart13]

People get payed to upload? I upload unedited video files to my 'cloud' service and my client downloads them. Most of the time it is about 50-100 gb. 50gb x $35 = $1750 for dragging and dropping some files that upload while I do other stuff. Maybe it feels weird because where I live fast internet is widely available and people use services like wetransfer and dropbox all the time but right now I have a feeling you need to teach me how to do sales.

I use a service called stack from a dutch company so this might not be helpful to most of you as I'm unsure how their products work in English(I have a customer from the usa who downloads my stuff). 1tb is free 2tb for 10 and 10tb for 50 euro. You can even link a domain to it.
https://www.transip.nl/stack/?gclid=CKC64ruZ6c8CFeUV0wodZxQGBw

 

[pwp]

People get payed to upload? ......

Hell yes! Look at as many areas of your business which are billable. And charge for it. Do some intelligent Google research and you'll quickly reveal the common items that are regular billable items.

In this case it's File Upload & Delivery - $xxx.00 It's never been challenged.

My business has been strong and highly viable for over 25 years and I've always adopted the position of being reassuringly expensive.

-pw

 

[bart13]

You did give me an idea! When combined with a backup service it might actually work. "Online delivery and back up for a month." Thx!

 

[Don Haines]

I’ve been at this so long, that I started with Pony Express but lately it’s been handing over a flash drive.....

 

[YuengLinger]

Prints.