Global View Photography

Hi Richard,

It was a pleasure meeting with you today. I have updated the proposal below to reflect the things we discussed and present you with a new cost breakdown and timeline.

After you review it, if you would like to accept this proposal as-is, you can click the Accept button. Once you accept, there is an invoice for the down payment ready so you can pay it online. If you have questions or need any changes, just let me know.

Based on our discussion today, here is a list to summarize the services that we believe you are interested in:

• Custom design with animated effects
• Shared website hosting
• Simple website setup
• Contact form
• Protection of all your work
• Simple checkout system to allow people to purchase photos
• Business cards

The original proposal had included a booking system, estimate form, content, and domain name. Those things have all been removed from this updated version of the proposal. The new proposal includes information on the things listed above. The price breakdown has everything, except for the business cards (which you can read about below).

Custom Design with Animated Effects

A customized theme will provide you with a lot of flexibility in the appearance of your website. From animations to interactive elements, we are able to create modern, fast, and professional designs that will impress your prospective clients. Our customization process starts with a thorough planning phase which includes mockup designs that we will send you to review. You will be able to provide feedback which will help us to design the website to suit your taste and needs.

As we work on the design, we will look at various websites for inspiration and then put together a design that we believe could work for you. We welcome and value your input, so if you have any preferences or specific requests regarding the design, you can feel free to send us links and tell us what you like/dislike about any of the designs. We will make changes and create different designs until you are satisfied with it. Once you give your approval, we will begin developing it.

Website Hosting

To make things simple and easier for our clients, we offer website hosting. In doing so, it is easier for us to serve our clients and provide the best service we can. With our website hosting, we provide you with an administrative login to access the controls for the account, have complete file access, and more.

We will never lock you in or make you completely dependent on us. If you ever want to switch to another hosting company, say the word and we will help you transfer over to whichever platform is compatible with your website. While we offer this service, it is optional and we’ll be happy to design your website wherever you decide to host it.

Simple Website Setup

With our simple website setup, we perform a simple installation of WordPress, install an existing theme (we provide a free theme), and create the pages of the site. Page creation includes inserting content and adding images. We design the look and style of the website based on your logo and branding.

This service includes free website analytics tools to help you estimate the number of people visiting your website and what they are looking at, website security to prevent hacking, access to powerful tools that make it easy for you to make changes to your website, and access to our professional form builder that can be used to provide a lot of added functionality to your site.

As part of our service, we assist you with planning your website, including page structure. Once we have a plan, we build the pages, insert the content, design the layout of the pages, optimize  the photos you want on the site, create graphics that go on the website, and put it all together.

Your website should have at least the following pages:

• Home
• Albums
  • Documentary
  • Events
  • Sporting Events
  • Family
• About
• Contact

The Home page is the first thing most people will see when they visit your website. It will provide them with some basic information about what you offer and what they can expect, then they explore other parts of the website to learn more about your business, how they can reach you, and more.

The Albums page is where users can explore the different categories of photos you have to offer. The page could also be called “Collections”, “Past Work”, or be called something else if you think a different name would be more suitable. Each category of photos could go on a separate page, so your website would have 8 pages.

The About page talks about your business. You might want information about how the business got started, your background and experience, how long you’ve been in business, and any other relevant information. The page is to help gain the trust of prospective customers.

The Contact page gives all the ways existing and prospective customers can contact you. The page can have a contact form, map of your photo studio (if applicable), phone numbers, links to social media, your address, and any other contact information you want to publicly share. You may also want to include your business hours as well.

We also include two other pages – Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions for the website. These pages have generic policies created by our generators that fill in some basic information about your business.

Online Contact Form

We recommend having a contact form on your website, similar to what you have, but instead of a math problem, we can use hCaptcha – a free tool that prevents bots from submitting messages through the form.

Protecting Your Photographs

While there is no way to completely protect your photographs from those who want to steal them, we can make it much more difficult for them to access it.

Here are some methods we can use that won’t require using a watermark on the image:

• Inserting copyright information into the metadata of the photos (metadata is stored in the image file itself)
• Using only optimized versions of the photos on the website
• Preventing people from right-clicking on the image and displaying a message saying it is copyright protected
• Linking to a license agreement
• Remove the color profile from the image file – it should display correctly on the website, but if they try to save it, it shouldn’t look right.
• Block screenshots
• Disabling the ability to link to the photos

If you ever want to check if one of your photos are being used without your permission, you can use a tool like TinEye (https://tineye.com) to do an image search for it manually. Or you can use a service like Pixsy (https://www.pixsy.com/monitor/) to monitor and alert you if someone has used your one of your photos without your permission.

Selling Photographs

For selling your photos online, I have found some systems that should work for you. I am not sure how many photos you want to be able to sell or feature on the website – I’m sorry I forgot to ask about that – so I’m assuming that it would be less than 100. With that said, I believe either of these solutions would work for you.

WP Simple Pay (https://wpsimplepay.com/) is a simple, easy-to-use checkout system that should be able to be configured to allow people to place orders for photos on your website, then you can fulfill those orders manually. This is the solution I recommend as the base version of the plugin is free and I believe it should have the functionality you need. If you need features not included in the free version, their plans start at $99 a year, but is it on sale right now for $49.50 a year.

After doing some research, I have concluded that you can use a system such as Easy Digital Downloads (https://easydigitaldownloads.com/) to handle the orders automatically. The plugin protects files from being downloaded without authorization. Easy Digital Downloads has a free version of their plugin as well with the core functionality that you’re looking for.  If you are wanting features not included in the free version, their paid plans start at $199 a year, but it’s on sale for $99.50 a year.

The Easy Digital Downloads plugin supports external file hosting so the files could be stored on Amazon’s file storage or Dropbox, without taking up the storage space for your website. This would require an additional expense to host the files externally, however, if the photos you plan to offer for sale on your website are not part of a massive collection, then the files could potentially be hosted with the website. So for example, if you want to sell 100 photos and the total file size for all those photos is less than 5 GB or so, then it should be fine to host it with the website, saving you the expense of external hosting while still protecting your files and enabling you to automate the sales process.

While either of these checkout systems would work, the Easy Digital Downloads system would allow you to automate the process. When a purchase is made with the Easy Digital Downloads system, it presents the customer with a purchase confirmation page and a link to download the file. The customer also receives two emails, one is a receipt and one is a link to download the file. The system keeps a log of all the file downloads. I don’t know the specifics of how it works exactly, but my assumption is that it generates a unique link for each file for each order. I believe it allows you to control the download links and limit how many downloads can be made through the links.

Of the two, the Easy Digital Downloads plugin seems like a reasonable solution that could automate the process for you while protecting the files at the same time. With an automated process, I believe it would be easier for you and require less of your time. However, if you want more control and prefer to manually process orders, then I would recommend WP Simple Pay. There may be other solutions out there, but those are the ones that I came across that I believe meet your needs.

To accept payments online, you will need to use a payment processor. As I explained in person, the two most popular payment processors are Stripe and PayPal. With Stripe (https://stripe.com) you can accept credit card payments securely through your website. PayPal typically redirects customers to the PayPal website to collect their payment before sending them back after the payment is completed. It is possible to offer both options, or to choose one. I would highly recommend Stripe, especially for your target audience, as it will look more professional to have the credit card information input directly into your website, than to process payment through PayPal’s checkout system.

With setting up a checkout system, there is a one-time setup fee. If you require a paid plan to access features you need, that will be an additional expense that is not included in the proposal. I believe that you should be able to use the free versions of these plugins, but I can’t guarantee it. There may be some limitations in the free version that are not clearly stated on their website or documentation – such as a limit to the number of products you would be able to list for sale.

Business Cards

The tap business cards (also called NFC business cards) are a different kind of business card that is not something I can have printed. If you want to use that kind of card, you will need to go through one of the NFC business card companies. Here are the top companies that are currently offering that service:

1. Popl – https://popl.co
2. Linq – https://buy.linqapp.com
3. Mobilo – https://www.mobilocard.com/
4. TapTok – https://taptok.shop
5. V1CE – https://v1ce.co

Here is an article that talks about them in detail and gives a list of pros and cons for each company.

If you are interested in having print business cards made, there are a wide variety of specialty cards that I can produce designs for. I have accounts with different wholesale printing companies, so I can sometimes get much lower prices than you can get yourself, but it can vary with the specialty cards.

There are a wide variety of different types of specialty cards. The materials, sizes, colors, and other features can all vary depending on the look you’re going for. So for example, I can do thick cards with painted edges, custom cutout cards, clear or solid plastic cards, USB drive business cards, or other types. I also can do promotional items, banners, bookmarks, and more. Whatever look you’re going for, I will do my best to track down a supplier and get you the best price I can.

We Stand By Our Work

We always strive to do our best to meet and exceed our client’s expectations. If for whatever reason you are unsatisfied, we will do our best to provide a solution to address whatever concerns you have. If you ever have an issue with the site, you can submit a ticket by clicking here or going to https://support.makingtheimpact.com. You can also check the FAQs section for answers to common questions or send an email to us directly at customerservice@makingtheimpact.com.

In the sections that follow, you will see a more detailed breakdown of the pricing, timeframes, and more regarding our services. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

Best Regards,

Melissa (Lisa) Li
Making The Impact LLC