After a couple of weeks of limited release of download / license features, we are finally releasing this feature for everyone to use.  When you log in to your Fotomoto account, you will see a new product under “Site > Products”: Download.

For this new feature we are offering two different types of usage:

• Digital download: this is mainly for event / portrait photographers who want to let their customers buy a digital copy of the photo for their own personal archives. In this usage, we let the photographers set the pricing for a single file or a batch of files (2-10, 11-20, 21-50, 51-100, 100+)
• Licensing: this feature is basically for the photographers who want to license their photos for commercial use, or sell single files as wallpaper. Using this feature, you can set what will be offered (or not offered) through your Commercial License (Ad, Non-Sellable Material, Book,CD, DVD, Editorial Material, Items for Resale, and Distribution). You would have the ability to set a fixed price for it, or ask the customer to contact you to get a price quote. In the contact form they will be asked to give you some information about themselves and the intended usage of the photo. From there, we help you to maintain a line of communication with the customer and offer a price. We also let you sell screen resolution photos for personal use (wallpaper).

We would love to hear your feedback and suggestions.  Please feel free to discuss your ideas in our community or get in touch directly (support at fotomoto dot com)

Are we missing anything in the API?  Do you have ideas on how we can improve our API?  Send an email to the developers at fotomoto!

Fotomoto API is a set of functions that allows users using javascript to use the basic functions of the Fotomoto widget.

2. How to use Fotomoto API?

To use Fotomoto API, the Fotomoto widget must be changed to API mode. Normally, the widget is in non-api mode, which is automatically running on the page. To change the widget to API mode, users need to add:

<script>var fotomoto_api_mode = true;</script>

BEFORE the Fotomoto widget script.

3. API functions:

The namespace for all API functions is FOTOMOTO.API

Product Constants values (used to call API functions):

FOTOMOTO.API.PRINT = 100
FOTOMOTO.API.ECARD = 200
FOTOMOTO.API.CARD = 300
FOTOMOTO.API.FILE = 400 (Digital Download)

FOTOMOTO.API.setApiMode(bool)
sets or cancels the API mode
+ @param bool: boolean value

FOTOMOTO.API.checkinImage(image)
if the Photo does not exist in our database, this should add the photo to our database.  It will also set all the analytics info.  This does not return anything and is asynchronous.
+ @param image: can be an element ID, an HTML image object, or a full image URI

FOTOMOTO.API.showToolbar(container, image)
Insert a toolbar in the given place for the specified photo
+ @param container: can be an element ID, or an HTML object
+ @param @param image: can be an element ID, an HTML image object, or a full image URI
+ @return toolbarID

FOTOMOTO.API.updateToolbar(toolbarID, image)
updates a toolbar for a specified photo
@param toolbarID: Toolbar ID
@param image: can be an element ID, an HTML image object, or a full image URI
@return toolbarID

FOTOMOTO.API.deleteToolbar(toolbarID)
resets a toolbar in a specified container
+ @param container: can be an element ID, or an HTML object
+ @param image: can be an element ID, an HTML image object, or a full image URI
+ returns toolbarID

FOTOMOTO.API.showWindow(page, image)
shows the passed page in parameter for the specified image
+ @param page: one of the product constants
+ @param image: can be an element ID, an HTML image object, or a full image URI

FOTOMOTO.API.checkout()
shows checkout window, if there’s anything is the basket

FOTOMOTO.API.isBasketEmpty()
checks if the shopping basket is empty or not
+ @return a boolean value

FOTOMOTO.API.getStoreID(url, callback)
the store ID for a URL
+ @param url: the domain registered with Fotomoto
+ @param callback: a string that is the name of the callback function.
+ @return the store ID for a URL

FOTOMOTO.API.getProducts(storeID, callback)
returns a hash with true/false values for each main product (in constants, like PRINT, ECARD, etc) for a store
+ @param storeID: client’s unique StoreID
+ @param callback: a string that is the name of the callback function.
+ @return a hash

FOTOMOTO.API.getCaptions(storeID, callback)
returns a hash with string values for each main product (in constants, like PRINT, ECARD, etc)
+ @param storeID: client’s unique StoreID
+ @param callback: a string that is the name of the callback function.
+ @return a hash

FOTOMOTO.API.getImageProducts(image, callback)
returns a hash with true/false values for each main product (in constants, like PRINT, ECARD, etc) for an image
+ @param image: can be an element ID, an HTML image object, or a full image URI
+ @param callback: a string that is the name of the callback function.
+ @return a hash

Fast Media Magazine says:

Fotomoto aims to change the playingfield with a fresh solution to the proces of image licensing… Unlike ‘traditional’ mediums, such as stock photo sites, Fotomoto allows more asset control to the image owner.

Read the complete article about Fotomoto on Fast Media Magazine.

We got a review from TechCrunch

The startup refers to this decentralized way of selling photos online as self-commerce or “CafePress inside-out”, both of which terms reflect perfectly what the service is all about… Keep a good eye on this one.

Read the complete article about Fotomoto on TechCrunch.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we are working on using the increasing traffic that comes to our site in order to promote more artists and photographers. After introducing the ‘Daily Featured Artists’ section in our home page late November, last week we introduced a new section on our home page: Collections.  From all the 500,000+ photos that we have in our database now, we handpicked less than 100 photos for our first collection: Valentines Day Greetings.  As we move forward, we will introduce more collections, and more tools that enable photographers to tag their photos in different collections.

In the next couple of weeks, we will finally have ‘digital download’ for our photographers to offer their clients.  Stay tuned!

But there is another problem, there are very few artists who are familiar enough with the technology to bring high volumes of traffic to their sites (like Sam and David).  What about the rest?  Creating a site is very easy these days, and when using Fotomoto, adding e-commerce to photo sites has become easy too.  But what’s the point if there is no one coming to the site?  How would they know about your photos?  Fotomoto can help there too.

A little more than a month ago we started showcasing some of the photos on our homepage that our photographers have sold using Fotomoto.  As you can see on Compete.com, our traffic has been increasing dramatically.  Also, though it only has been 6 months since we started our public beta service,  our Google Page Rank is already 5.  This gives us a very unique opportunity to help bring more traffic to our photographers’ sites (and more business for everyone, photographers and us!).  This ‘featured artists’ section is only the first step of a bigger plan.  Soon we will start giving our users tools to easily categorize their photos and tag them, and we will create a full catalogue of our artists and their artwork.  The outcome may look a little like those supermarkets, but this will be a “catalogue”. The difference is that those supermarkets try to keep the traffic on their site, while we encourage the visitors to go to the artists’ own personal site (which you can already see on our home page).

We will also work with our photographers to help them promote their work on special occasions.  We are already planning our first occasion.  If you want to be part of this and one of the first to experience it, sign up here and we will contact you soon (sign-up is closed now).

But it wasn’t only our users, we had our own issues with PayPal too!  The amount they were charging for other currencies was really high (3% transaction + 3% for currency exchange + not-so-good exchange rates).  This was OK at the beginning when we had a few transactions per day, but now that we have a higher volume we felt that it was important to start to process payment ourselves.

Now I am happy to announce that we are processing Visa, MasterCard, and Discover cards. We will also have Amex in a week or two.  If you think we should add any other payment methods, let us know in our forum: http://suppot.fotomoto.com.

About a month ago we started offering a “Standard Sizes” option, and I thought I would take this opportunity to explain “Flexible Sizes” and “Standard Sizes”.
When we started our service this summer, we only offered a “Flexible Sizes” option.  Since our first target users were art photographers we knew they don’t like to crop their photos to fit them into standard print sizes.  For example, this photo has a completely non-standard aspect ratio (1:1.05 – 750×714 pixels).  We were sure our photographer neither wants to crop this into a square print, nor wanted to add tiny empty bars to the sides.  So when we designed our system we made it possible to cut our prints exactly to match the photo side.

Our widget is also smart enough to calculate the exact print size (the buyer selects the size of one side from the available sizes – 6″, 8″, 10″, 12″, 16″, 20″, 24″, or 30″, and based on the screen image we calculate the size of the other side).  Back then we didn’t offer smaller sizes like 4″x6″ or 5″x7″.

Sooner than we had anticipated, event photographers started using our system, and complained about the lack of standard sizes in addition to smaller sizes.  For their audience it is more important to be able to use the standard frames and albums.

Last month we added Standard Sizes to our service.  Based on your type of work and your audience, you can choose either to offer either Flexible Sizes or Standard Sizes to your clients.  The type of offered prints can be selected in our portal, in Site > Products > Prints.

We will have more customization options soon, stay tuned!

AppVita:

Instead of forcing potential customers to leave your blog or website to purchase a particular photo, Fotomoto gives its users the JavaScript code and e-commerce capabilities to do the selling themselves—eliminating the middleman and allowing photographers to have more control over the ways in which their images are distributed and sold. Rating: 5 out of 5 (wow).

To see the article about Fotomoto on AppVita, click here.