I’ll probably sound a bit like an old man when I say this but back in the early days of digital photography many of us didn’t even have a website, let alone a need for a shopping cart or online portfolio.

Wow how things have changed over the past 10 years. Today a website is a must for every photographer and so is the ability to sell and host their photos online.

Anyone who’s been in the market recently can attest that given the multitude of options out there it can almost be mind-blowing!  So how do you pick one out of a crowd? That’s easy you pick the one that works best for you. But how do you know which one works for you? That’s easy too… you do your homework.

I recently had a chance to chat with some of the staff behind the scenes at Zenfolio and the result is this interview with their CEO Alex Peyzner.  Hopefully my interview will help some of you with that homework.

As a photographer myself, I find the Zenfolio approach to be attractive, simple and affordable. Would you say that was Zenfolio’s goal when creating the service?

We have tried very hard to put the “zen” into Zenfolio. Everyone in the company is super passionate about photography and we pour our hearts and souls into making the service easy to use and attractive. Photographers are artists and care very much about the design; making the site attractive and professional has been a Zenfolio goal from the first day we launched over 5 years ago.

Unlike many of our competitors who charge too much for an inferior service, we believe in simple and affordable pricing. We know that many established professional photographers can afford to pay more, but why should they? Zenfolio is profitable and growing very fast so we can pass on the savings to our users who voted for the success of the company with their hard earned money.

Occasionally, a photographer might comment that they don’t believe they can get what we promise to deliver for $100/year. The perception is that what we do is just not possible, mostly because other companies charge so much more. But with good business practices and excellent software engineering we have made this a reality for every photographer. And you know this as soon as you try the service for yourself and discover that it is all true. All for $100/year.

Photography is an ever-evolving industry and continuing to innovate and add to the service is what photographers need to invest in. Zenfolio provides photographers with the ability to focus on their art, while we take care of the rest, no matter what the future brings.

Our in-depth organizational tools, robust and easy to use E-commerce platform, and highly customizable designs allow you to manage all your photos on one site, without the scary task of editing code. The user interface is incredibly intuitive meaning photographers spend less time figuring out how to make the site work and more time actually running the business.

Beyond just being a portfolio website with a complete shopping cart component. The bonus feature list you present to photographers is quite impressive: Slideshows; free music from Triple Scoop, export directly to Facebook, Flickr, and Animoto; Coupons and shipping discounts; lots of security options. What has been your most well received add-on feature so far?

You’re right, we offer great many add-on features to help with the marketing and promotion of your business.

It’s difficult to select just one feature that’s most popular, but if I had to pick, I’d say it is the Embeddable Slide Show. This feature allows you to create an elegant slide show with just a few clicks and embed it into any web page, blog, or Facebook stream. The slide show is highly customizable and very easy to use. You choose the gallery with photos, specify the exact size of the slide show, add music, customize menus and colors, then click Create. We will generate a beautiful display of your photos with a code for embedding. And the best feature is that once embedded, viewers can easily switch it to full screen while the quality remains very high.

Another great feature is generating Coupons and Shipping Discounts for marketing and promotions. Photographers can setup any number of coupon codes and have full control over the number of uses, expiration dates, which galleries they can be used for as well as the actual amount or percentage of discount. This is the type of business tool every photographer should have access to succeed in real world.

There are many more useful and in-depth features similar to the ones I’ve described. While a photographer can get their entire site up and running within an hour, with a little more time and effort, anyone can create a stunning and professional web site that is truly your own.

Where is Zenfolio headed in the next year? two years?

We will continue to focus on the needs of professional photographers for years to come. As the industry evolves, and new marketing and product ideas emerge, Zenfolio will continue adding them as tools for our users to take advantage of. For example, as more and more photographers are expanding into videography, we see support for hosting video in our near future.

This is the single most important advantage of using a hosting service like Zenfolio as opposed to building your own web site: we will continue adding new features and products to the platform so you are always ahead of the curve with your business. All for $100/year

Zenfolio has made its reputation on delivering simple and attractive solutions with the powerful back-office tools for photographers and we will continue to innovate in that direction.

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