Monday, November 26, 2007

Imagekind Print-on-Demand Review

Imagekind POD is different from the others I've mentioned because it is only for high-quality prints and framed prints. They are a niche site to focus on that need.

A huge number of printing and framing options

You have the option to print on different types of papers and even canvas. They offer many different sizes and many different frames and mats. No other POD comes close with paper or frames.

Payment options include PayPal and check


You get paid after 45 days if your account has reached the minimum payment.

Commissions and Royalties

Affiliate commissions are handled by Shareasale which won't offer PayPal (yes I asked)

Earning for your art is either by check or PayPal

You can set the markup as either a fixed amount or as a percentage.

Gallery Creation depends on account type


There are three account levels Free, Pro, and Platinum. The free account gives you one gallery with 24 images (each image can be as big as you can manage to upload.)
UPDATE: Now the free account allows unlimited images in 3 galleries.

The pro and Platinum accounts give you unlimited galleries, but the pro version limits the number of images per gallery and the amount of disk space for your photos. Many people have done test prints and the quality is the highest that they've seen.

Lack of gallery and profile page modification.


You can add links and text to your profile, but you can't change its layout or its colors. I'd like to have my profile and gallery pages use the same link, text, and background colors as my related websites, but you can't.

SEO is limited


You can add tags, titles, and descriptions to each image you upload as well as a description to each gallery. You cannot modify your meta tags. The URLs that the system generates for each image are randomly created so they are not indexable. It would improve Search Engine Optimization greatly if they'd just use image and gallery names instead of random code.

Marketing tools


You can add a widget that shows photos from one gallery with Javascript to a blog or other website. You can also easily make a product link with an image using their tools.

Conclusion


If you are serious about selling high quality art then I think it is worth it to at least set up the free account for your best images and then a paid account if you can get a sale. If you are only casually into selling your images or you have a huge collection of good images, then you might want to try Redbubble.

You can see an example profile with galleries at Imagekind here.

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