School Photography Sites to Sell Photos

Josceline Reardon

Hi All,

Wondering how other schools might sell photos, buttons, etc.. to parents for sports. We previously printed pictures (1 athlete and 1 team photo) and 2 buttons in-house and then distributed them to the parents and charged the student accounts for the items. We used this money to pay the photographer.

Does your school have a website you suggest we upload these photos to, so that parents can print on their own and the funds will come to the school? I have a list of potential sites that I need to research, but thought I'd start with our wonderful community to help narrow it down.

PS: the photographer does not have their own site to sell photos. Thanks in advance!

Bryna Gleich

@Josceline Reardon

I don't have a site to recommend, but as a parent with a small child in daycare, when the daycare has a professional photographer I never buy prints. I always buy the digital rights to the photos instead. The photographer sends me the digital files in high resolution and I can download that, upload it to the sites of my choosing, share as I choose, and print with any service I choose.

Ditto for things like my wedding photos. I never bought prints from the photographer. I bought the digital rights/copyright instead (over a decade ago) and that gave me permission to do what I please with them. I've printed via Shutterfly, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, Google, Amazon, etc.

I can even crop and edit them by myself when I own them.

I really love it when there is an option for me to buy the rights instead of buying only prints. Also the digital is nice because I can use my phone app to send them directly to digital frames like the Aura frame on my work desk or the frames at grandparent houses. For digital frames, I don't need a paper print at all because they use digital files instead.

If only paper prints are available, then I have a slight hassle of getting them scanned first and then converted to digital so that I can use them and that's not as high quality sometimes because it's a copy instead of the original.

I like using services like Shutterfly to print because Shutterfly runs a lot of promotions. Often I only have to pay shipping and handling for specialty items like a small notebook with a custom photo on the cover. Or playing cards, puzzles, keychains, Christmas tree ornaments, etc.

Lauren Henderson

@Bryna Gleich Ditto! I always buy the digital versions of my kids' photos and then print myself. However, the class photos (printed) either come as part of the package or complimentary from the school. They do come directly from the photographers, or services with which they have contracted.

That being said, my kids are not on any school sports teams yet so that isn't a use case I've encountered.

Annemarie Merow

@Josceline Reardon

We started using SmugMug in 2006 for all school photo sharing and haven't looked back. They are currently hosting a couple of TB of images for only $110/year although we pay for the lowest level which doesn't' include the school making any money off the sales. Parents can download or order anything they want. SmugMug does offer buttons but you would have to upgrade to the next payment to make any profit.