Needing help changing a website

[Rodica]

Hello,

I need help changing a website www.photosforprinting.com (http://www.photosforprinting.com) from a blog site into Photo Retouching and Restoration site.
I don't know anything about HTML and such technical stuff, but I can only guess that I need a page for paypal or credit cards for the customers to be able to pay for the services and a way for them to upload the photo and retrieve it once I am done retouching or restoring it.

I would appreciate any quote you can give me in regards to how much it would cost.
In case you would like to contact me directly, my email address is rln55@sbcglobal.net (rln55@sbcglobal.net) or contact me through the Contact page of my other photo website at www.photosandprinting.com (http://www.photosandprinting.com)

Thank you so much,
Rodica

[dnuttall]

I need help changing a website www.photosforprinting.com (http://www.photosforprinting.com) from a blog site into Photo Retouching and Restoration site.

Perhaps it would help us to know if you're distributing information or are you selling services?

If you're selling services, then use of Joomla is a good choice, but you're going to need/want some way to let the web-site CLOSE the sale (the agreement the visitor will buy something) and then provide the mechanism to enter into a contract (take their money and give them something).

Since you're in Chicago, you might want to drop by and talk to the dudes who run MidPhase.com (http://www.midphase.com). They're not any cheaper than most professionals, but I've been one of their customers for about 5 years and I know they are rock-solid when it comes to competency and integrity. If you had the personal skills, then other services would be more competitive when it comes to price, but what I suspect you want isn't trivial when it comes to taking people's money, making them happy and actually doing the photo retouching/restoration work, etc.

Fire back here or PM me if you need/want to continue. I'm not personally seeking to do work for commercial business but I will share my $0.02 worth if you ask for it!

Good luck.
Dave Nuttall
San Antonio, Texas

PS...I have several sites running off one MidPhase account, as in:
www.randompathways.com (http://www.randompathways.com)
www.dnlt.com (http://www.dnlt.com)
www.ourvirtualheritage.com (http://www.ourvirtualheritage.com)
and a dozen or more private sub-domains.

[Rodica]

Hi Dave,

Thank you much for your message. As I said above, I don't need a brand new website. All I think I need, is a page added to the existing site connected to PayPal for the customers to pay and a FTP upload page or something like that for them to upload their photo and retrieve it when I am done retouching it.
I looked at the pages you gave me and I think they are information websites or blogs or something of that nature. Not what I need.

So lets say you have an old photo needing correction or other modifications. You would upload it to my site, I would download it to my computer, make the corrections, upload it back to the site. You as a customer, would check it out, pay for the service and download it to your computer.
That's all.

So there is a service involved that needs payment for, but I would not sale any other products.

Rodica

[dnuttall]

OK, sorry to have confused you! The sites were meant to demonstrate that a single MidPhase account can do several sites concurrently while they appear to be independent.

So about your business plan. Suppose I have an heirloom photo that I want digitized, digital air-brushed, etc.? Surely you will be able to do that, so your site will need to provide some way to reach a price for whatever I, the customer want and you agree to be able to do.

I'd expect that your on-line gallery would show me samples of before, during and after a photo was given your "full treatment" and a discussion of what it takes to create the finished product which leads to an explanation of why "it costs so much" but your services are worth it...blah, blah, blah.

About a year ago, I built a prototype for a casual acquaintance and we used a combination of Joomla and another open-source product called "Zen-Cart". She was really more interested in doing custom photography and the restoration work was a sideline. We discovered that we could build a reasonable site, but her best successes came (or would have come) from getting an expression of interest from someone via the web and then following up on the phone/email and in person whenever practical.

Maybe all that is over-kill for your idea. I've never considered if there is a mass market for retouching photos that are already digital, but my sense is that it can't be a very big market sector or there would be lots of folks trying to do it and getting rich.

If you're going to accept heirloom photography and work with it, I think conventional wisdom would suggest you consult an attorney to formulate your services contract, acquire immense liability coverage and then double or triple what you think is a fair price to pay because it's going to take a lot more time and overhead than you may have considered!

My personal view is that unless you're going to do dozens of monetary transactions per day/week, you'll sleep better working on the basis of small deposits when the work-order is started and then do C.O.D. for the return shipment or almost any other arrangement where you have a SAFE exchange of the customer's valuable photo/art for whatever fees are owed. And then there is the "remorse" issue to deal with, where I'm not satisfied with your workmanship after I paid you a lot of money to do it. People who can and will pay for good work, aren't likely to be attracted to a web/eCommerce-only environment.

But perhaps you will be able to change that! I hope you have success and your enterprise prospers.

Thanks for the platform to "rant"!!
Dave