MorePhotos.com just improved upon an old feature called Archiving. The purpose of archiving was to give clients a call to action. If you don’t order now, you will have to pay more later. This has been very effective for our photographers, and Bill Hodge from Grad Portraits decided to take it to the next level.

He posed the question, “What if we charge our clients before viewing their image?”As every photographer knows, people can’t wait to see their images, its just that not everyone is willing to purchase their images. By putting a little skin in the game upfront with an access fee, they are invested in the images. In return, they receive a gift certificate to use towards their purchase and 3 days to view all archived events. Now they have a gift certificate they don’t want to waste, which results in higher sales for you.

This workflow works best for spec type images: action sports, grad photos, and most other event images, but please share your stories below.

By the way, Bill set the access fee at $10 and the gift certificate at $20. He saw a 250% increase on his first event over the previous year.  This is extra impressive knowing the event’s sales had been declining. Go see what you can do!