Captain Kimo Featured Artist for Fotomoto.com

Dec 9, 2010 | misc

Got an email last night that said I was a featured artist for Fotomoto.com, a website that helps photographers sell their photos. Out of all the photos they could have picked to showcase my work, they pick this one! A jet ski that I took at the Bahamas, years ago. Not sure why so many people like this photo, it’s really nothing special, at least in my eyes.

About Fotomoto

Here’s a little detail about Fotomoto for any photographers who are interested in their service. Fotomoto is like Smugmug or Zenfolio but the difference is it’s free! This is the reason I chose them as my third party source for handling the sale of my images. Well it’s not totally free, Fotomoto charges you only when you make a sale, so they get a commission from every sale you make. Logically from a business stand point, this makes sense. Why would someone pay hundreds of dollars a year hoping to make a sale?

The only down fall to Fotomoto, but to be honest this is really an advantage, is that Fotomoto doesn’t host your photos. This is how they are capable of selling their service the way they do. Without that extra overhead in hosting images, Fotomoto can offer there services based on commission, compared to a monthly or yearly membership fee like Smugmug or Zenfolio.

So to use Fotomoto you need to have your own website or blog. Setting it up is actually pretty easy, their customer services is a little slow when it comes to the technical side, but once you’re setup that’s it. Fotomoto will pick up any images that you post on your website and place a widget on it to allow you to sell the image. It couldn’t be any easier! Basically this is what it looks like, http://store.captainkimo.com/gallery/99, note I plan on redoing this whole system and setting it up more like a stock photography website.

However if you don’t know your way around building a website then I recommend paying for Zenfolio or Smugmug. But if you think about it, you can hire someone to setup your own website (preferably with WordPress)  for the same price as a yearly membership paid through Zenfolio or Smugmug. After that all you have to pay for is hosting which can be anywhere from 3-6 dollars a month and domain name which is about 10 dollars a year.

If you’re a photographer, I always recommend hosting your images on your own website. To many reason to go into detail about it all, I can probably write a whole book on it! But just take my word on it from someone that does this professionally.

“It’s always better to have your own website with your own domain name.”

If you need help setting up Fotomoto just drop me a comment. I am in no way affiliate with them. I think the services they provide is great, especially for someone like me who hates paying monthly fees for no reason.