By David Gewirtz
Last week, we had the opportunity to speak with Andy Patrick, a social entrepreneur and CEO of liveBooks, a resource for photographers. We learned about how you can promote your photography to how we can all save the planet.
This week, we continue our interview letting him dive deep into liveBooks, shown in Figure A. You'll learn both how it might help you promote your own photography and learn more about the inner workings of the site itself.
FIGURE A
This is a sample photo from a liveBooks portfolio site. (click for larger image) David:
So, what exactly is liveBooks?
Andy:liveBooks is an innovative online software solution that provides a custom designed Flash-based Web site with easy-to-use editing tools for controlling all the content on the photographer's Web site.
The combination of custom design time when developing the Web site and the creative control delivered through the easy drag-and-drop usability of our online editSuite tools means that photographers have complete creative control over their online presence without ever having to learn HTML or Flash.
Through the use of liveBooks, photographers are able to take their business to the next level. Using our online management tool -- the editSuite -- photographers are able to keep the work on their site current, uploading custom portfolios for potential clients when needed. The drag-and-drop nature of these tools saves time in the Web marketing workflow of liveBooks' clients, freeing up much needed time for their real work which is being a photographer.
In addition, because liveBooks' Web sites deliver large, high-quality images that load quickly and intuitive navigation with the focus on the photographer's work, many of our clients are booking jobs without ever meeting their clients or showing printed samples. This not only saves time but expands the opportunity pool reaching potential buyers worldwide rather than locally or regionally.
David:It looks like a Macintosh application based on the screenshots. Is it a downloadable Mac application?
Andy:No, liveBooks editSuite tools are delivered online meaning there is nothing to install on your computer and they can be used regardless of the type of computer that you have. Our only requirements are that you have an Internet connection and a Web browser with the Flash Player 8 or higher installed.
The liveBooks editSuite tools allow photographers to easily upload their images and store them in online libraries for easy access and use in their online portfolios. Once in the libraries, photographers can drag-and-drop these images into their portfolios with the option to sequence and re-sequence them whenever they like, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
Feel free to move images around. (click for larger image)
After completing this simple process and saving their changes, the photographer's content is then live on the Web. Using a similar process photographers can also upload custom pages that they design to cover information such as contact information, customer references, client lists, etc.
In addition to uploading and editing content, the editSuite tools also allow photographers to control transition and menu effects and deliver access to marketing tools. One of the keys to effective Web marketing is search engine optimization and the editSuite allows photographers to enter keywords for posting to search engines.
Photographers also have access to partner deals and opportunities through the liveBooks partner network accessed within the editSuite.
David:You offer a professional version and a student version. What's the difference between the two?
Andy:At liveBooks, we believe that being a successful photographer involves two things: a mastery of the craft of photography and the ability to market. You need the ability to manage your business to ensure there will be a business in the future.
Having a Web site is one of the most critical parts to marketing your photography business and it is our goal to allow photography students and faculty to experience this prior to the day they actually have to use the tools to sink or swim. For this reason we have taken our liveBooks "Professional" product and streamlined it for the education market.
Our "professional" product is known for offering custom design time and flexibility to all our clients. For education, our goal is to deliver the same tools but to do so based on function vs. customization.
The liveBooks|edu packages are purchased directly on the Web site without a consultation. They offer several options in colors and backgrounds but they do not include custom design services and all sites include liveBooks|edu branding in the bottom left corner.
In addition, the liveBooks|edu product is a monthly subscription paid as long as the photographer wants to keep their site and is an active student. Once they graduate, they have the option to convert to a post-graduation subscription which removes the liveBooks|edu branding or to apply their investment toward a "professional" version product.
All liveBooks|edu packages, along with the Web site, include the liveBooks editSuite online tools although there are less tools in the edu toolbox than with the "professional" version.
liveBooks|edu is available in two packages to active students and faculty (a proof of active status is required to qualify such as an .edu account). The Lite package includes 3 portfolios with images at the smaller size of 750x500px and persistent navigation as well as a contact and bio page.
This package includes hosting a liveBooks|edu subdomain (i.e., www.livebooks.com/yourname) and costs $29.00 per month. The Deluxe package includes virtually unlimited portfolios with images at the larger 920x562px images and hide/reveal navigation as well as a contact and bio page. This package includes hosting at your personal URL (i.e., www.yourname.com) and costs $59.00 per month.
David:It seems that the user has some degree of limited control. What can the user change and what needs to remain constant?
Andy:Our research with photo buyers tells us that photo buyers want to see big, clean images that load quickly. In addition they don't want to be distracted by lots of ancillary elements but they do want to easily navigate a photographer's site. Our sites have been designed to accommodate the photo buyer by focusing on the photographer's images with intuitive navigation.
Other than the images and the navigation, everything on our sites can be customized by the designer. During our design process, each customer interacts with our design team to identify their specific needs. This includes logo usage, font choice, colors as well as placement of the menu items as well as graphical treatment for the home page and, in certain packages, the contact and bio pages as well. We can also include additional design time for a minimal fee to build custom Flash intro animations or interactive informational pages for our clients.
In addition to the custom design work that we will do for our clients, the photographer also retains control of all the naming of their menu items, the animation style of these items, the transition effect between photos and they have the ability to change and upload different graphics for all their pages at any time.
The best way to think of this is that we design a custom frame for the photographer's work and then they retain control of how they name elements within this frame as well as all the items they put into the frame.
David:Do you host all the Web sites you build or do the photographers host the sites on their own servers?
Andy:Yes, all liveBooks sites are hosted by liveBooks. This is a seamless process in that people visiting my Web address just end up there by typing in my URL (for example www.andypatrick.com).
We host our clients' sites to ensure maximum uptime and consistent throughput when people are viewing their sites. We have our own server farm in a tier-one data center. The system has been built to deliver optimized performance, provide scalable throughput, generate daily backups of data and provide redundancy to ensure uptime.
Our clients' sites are delivered over a load-balanced network that self-adjusts based on overall system performance. It is connected to an Internet backbone via Gigabit connectivity and can deliver as much as 100 Megabits per second of dedicated throughput for our customers.
This costs our clients $90 a year or $7.50 a month and includes 500MB of disk space and 5 email addresses. This is the only recurring fee our "professional" clients have and our edu hosting is included in the monthly subscription fee.
David:What's all this built in? If you're running a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server, can you tell us some details about your server applications? What you built and your development environment?
Andy:As a company we do not usually talk in detail about how we are developing our client and server technology. We tend to use the latest tools that can help us to deliver what photographers need in the easiest to use way, as quickly as we can.