8 Ways to Make money & save Time with Shootproof

I’ve been using ShootProof to deliver beautiful online galleries to my wedding and portrait photography clients for almost 5 years.

In that time, I’ve witnessed the evolution from basic online proofing galleries, to a fully fledged print sales platform that can literally make you money while you sleep.

At its core, ShootProof offers a simple, efficient way for photographers to upload and share their photos with clients, friends or family – see my full review here.

However, using it simply to display and share your photos is only scratching the surface!

With the powerful features described below, I’ll show you how you can use ShootProof for much more than this, saving you more time and making you more money in 2023.

Let’s dive right in!

1. Make More Money with Print Sales

If you’re not comfortable trying to sell prints to your clients in-person, ShootProof”s seamless printing feature takes all the pressure off you.

(Even if you’re a rock star at in-person sales, this feature can still easily add more revenue to your bottom line…)

If you’re delivering your photos to your clients, then simply moving on to the next client… you’re missing out on generating additional income via print sales.

ShootProof makes it really simple to link your account to one of their professional print lab partners, based in USA, Canada, Australia, UK and all over Europe.

This means that anyone who has access to one of your online photo galleries, can also order prints and other wall art, then have them delivered straight to their home. You don’t even need to lift a finger!

Using ShootProof to handle all your print fulfillment has 3 huge benefits:

1. It’s a BIG time saver for you the photographer, since you don’t need to take/fulfill any print orders yourself.
2. You’ll make more money selling prints and other products that you didn’t offer before. The client is free to order anything they like, without your intervention.
3. It’s much more convenient and easy for the client since they don’t need to deal with you. They can even make small image adjustments themselves before placing the order, all inside the gallery!

You can set your own prices and products which you’d like to sell, then add mounting or boutique packaging, and even swap files if necessary – see our guide on pricing photography prints here.

If you’d prefer to hand them in person to the client (always a nice touch), you can also choose to have the products delivered to your studio.

The way ShootProof simplifies print sales is just the beginning, though…

This next tip can really make a big impact to your profits as a photographer, so keep reading!

2. Make More Money with Email Campaigns

So now you have a print lab linked to your ShootProof account, how can you boost your sales even more?

Glad you asked, as this is one of my favourite features! Best of all, it’s super easy to set up…

When a client wishes to view a ShootProof gallery you created, they need to submit their email address.

If the client shares the gallery with their friends, family, or entire wedding guest list (best case scenario!), this means that you’ll have a big list of email addresses… and many of these people will be interested in purchasing a photo (whether a print or a digital download).

‘Email Campaigns’ reach out to your gallery visitors automatically at different points in the life-cycle of a gallery.

You can either create your own campaigns from scratch, then save them as templates, or use one of the templates provided by ShootProof.

(I like to use a combination of both, starting with the template, then tweaking it slightly so it matches my voice and brand.)

You can choose a ‘Trigger-Based’ Campaign or a ‘Date-Based’ Campaign – whichever you use, there are various ways you can encourage the gallery’s visitors to make a purchase:

• offer an early-bird discount for any orders made in the first week after the gallery is viewed
• offer a Xmas gift of 1 free print with any order placed in December
• send a reminder that the gallery is about to expire, to encourage final print orders

The beauty of Email Campaigns is that they can be saved and easily applied to any gallery as a template.

Every new client can receive the same automated email ‘sales sequence’ – you could have hundreds of automated emails going out every month, without lifting a finger!

This is by far the easiest, most friction-less way to encourage your clients to purchase more prints or digital downloads from you.

It’s also great for the client to keep receiving discounted offers – just be sure not to spam them!

3. Save Time with the Lightroom Plugin

This is my favourite feature of the photographer-to-client photo delivery process offered by ShootProof.

It’s a way you can streamline not only client deliveries, but also your own export, editing and backup workflows.

Using the free Lightroom plugin, you’re able to upload images direct to one of your ShootProof galleries, all from within Lightroom.

Galleries are displayed under the ‘Publish Services’ menu on the left-hand side of the Lightroom panel. Each new gallery becomes a Collection, nestled within a Collection Set.

When you’re done editing your photos in Lightroom, you simply drag them into the Collection that corresponds to your gallery on the ShootProof website.

When you hit ‘Publish’, your images are processed using whatever Export template you normally use (i.e. sharpened, resized, renamed, etc), then uploaded automatically to your gallery.

This has 3 huge advantages:

1. You don’t need to export separate local JPGs (to your hardrive or external HD). This can save time and your computer’s processing power.
2. Any edit you make to an image in Lightroom will be reflected in the client’s gallery.
3. Your collections are backed up in your online galleries,.

The second benefit above can really save you a lot of messing around, so let’s recap what it means:

Any time you edit an image, even after you’ve delivered it to your client, the edits will be reflected in the client’s gallery.

Obviously, you can choose not to ‘Republish’ the image from Lightroom if you prefer, but if you’re the kind of photographer who likes to keep tinkering with their photos, this can be a really useful feature.

It also means that any edits to images that the client requests (when they’re already in the gallery, i.e. after you’ve delivered them) can be made easily – none of this ‘changing the file name, re-exporting, deleting the original file, and uploading a new one’ mess!

4. Save More Time with the Desktop Uploader

The Desktop Uploader is a free download that allows you to upload photos directly to ShootProof from any folder on your computer.

It can build nested albums in your galleries from the file structure on your computer, saving you tons of time.

Why would you want to use the uploader instead of the Lightroom plugin?

Well, the big advantage is that you can upload multiple galleries at once. This is great for those busy times of year when you have a huge backlog of images to upload, and want to leave them all uploading over night.

It’s also really simple to use – you just drag a folder or individual images into the Uploader, and let it do its thing.

You can even ‘queue up’ your uploads by using the Pause button – this is handy if you’re not in a strong WiFi zone, paying for your Wifi, or on a plane, etc.

When you get back to your office, you simply unpause the uploads and watch as they start whizzing up to your ShootProof galleries :-)

5. Deliver Images with Free Digitals

So far we’ve only talked about making more money from your clients via prints or digital downloads.

However, a lot of the time you’ll be using ShootProof to simply deliver your clients’ images, with everything displayed in an attractive gallery.

As a wedding photographer, I used to deliver my clients’ images on a fancy wooden USB stick…

I soon got tired of packaging and posting them out, or the times when my client’s computer couldn’t read the USB, or when the package got lost in the post… 😢

Digital deliveries are SO much more convenient, and using the Free Digital downloads feature in ShootProof is simple and efficient.

All I have to do is create a ‘Gallery Rule’ to allow anyone with the correct PIN to download all their full resolution images at the click of a button.

(You can even include a print release, or other notes in each download.)

If you’re an event photographer, you could easily create a rule that only allows small images to be downloaded for free, and another that encourages visitors to purchase the high res versions.

You could even combine this with an automated email campaign which offers a discount to anyone who’s downloaded a low-res image, to try and encourage them to purchase a bigger one, or even a print.

For me though, allowing my clients to download their images easily via their private online gallery is most important, and ShootProof allows me to do this in an efficient, professional way.

6. Build Relationships using Vendor Albums

This benefit is especially good for wedding or event photographers who like to maintain great relationships with venues, florists, make-up artists, and any other vendor that’s in need of your photos.

Using ShootProof Vendor Albums can help make you money in the long-run, since any vendors you treat well,will be much more likely to recommend you as a photographer to their clients.

As an additional bonus, any images used by vendors bearing your branding is great for publicity, and any links back to your site can be great for photographer SEO.

Allowing vendors access and use of your images for free is a great way to strengthen relationships and encourage referrals.

Although some photographers may be a bit reluctant to share their images without receiving payment, it’s usually much more beneficial (and thoughtful!) to be generous with them.

Inside your ShootProof gallery, you simply choose the vendor photos to create a separate ‘Vendor Album’, which is hidden from your main client and all other visitors.

Then you can specify a different Digital Download ‘rule’ for the Vendor Album – adding watermarks to images, reducing the image size, including a print release, or even limiting the number of image downloads.

After that, you can even use ShootProof’s built in email system to send a snazzy ‘Your gallery is ready’ email to each vendor, with all their contacts kept safely in your dashboard.

7. Speed Up Album Building with Favourites

Building albums for wedding and portrait clients has always been a huge annoyance for me.

Aside from the endless back and forth during the proofing process, simply getting clients to choose their favourite photos, record their choices somewhere, then send them to me, is usually an inefficient and time-consuming process for all involved.

Fortunately, there’s a really simple solution: using ShootProof’s Favourites system.

Now I simply instruct my client to mark any image they’d like to include in an album by clicking a star icon, right from within their gallery.

Allowing clients to view only their favourited images from within their ShootProof gallery makes it much easier (for them) to visualise their selection, which in turn makes album proofing more efficient and enjoyable.

After the client has selected their favourites, they can click the “Favorites” button in the gallery, and then click the “Share Your Favorites” button to notify you that their selections are complete!

As an added benefit, you can even view the photos your client has chosen as their favourites… from within your Lightroom catalog!

This is enormously helpful when you need to view only the images to be used in an album, so you can edit or export them separately from the rest of the clients’ images.

8. Encourage Sales with the Package Builder

The Package Builder lets you create great-looking photography packages in a simple and efficient way.

ShootProof Packages are an easy way to encourage clients to order more in your galleries.

Presenting curated packages reduces the friction of traditional in-person print sales.

With packages, you simplify your client’s buying experience by:

• presenting your top-selling products in a single pre-bundled package.
• removing the effort of making your client create their own product bundle.
• presenting a single up-front price that requires zero mathematics on your client’s part.

The easier and more enjoyable you make the experience for your clients, the more sales you’re likely to make… and the more the client is likely to refer you to their friends.

Within a few minutes, you can add pricing to your chosen print lab to create a custom package.

You can add both auto-fulfilled items (such as prints and canvases) and self-fulfilled items (such as albums and novelties), to any package.

There’s no more awkward in-person sales sessions of lengthy back-and-forth phone calls – your client is left to build and buy their own packages in a fun, efficient and interactive experience.

Bonus – ShootProof Discount

If you’re ready to start saving time and money with ShootProof this year, here’s something you can use right away:

Click here, then enter the promo code SHOTKIT25 to save a massive 25% off your first 12 months.

(You can check out the regular pricing here to see exactly how much you’ll be saving.)

Just make sure you click the small blue text ‘Have a promo code’ so you can enter it.

Final Recommendations

I didn’t intend for this article to be one big sales pitch for using ShootProof, but in all honesty, it’s just one piece of software that I can’t do without for my work as a photographer.

It saves me a ton of time each month, and allows me to make a bit of extra passive income with very little effort at all.

Even if you don’t intend to sell your photography, I still recommend you use ShootProof to display your photos in beautiful galleries, and share them with friends and family.