Software/Hardware set up for event selling

[Mary L]

I am helping a friend who wants to capitalize on photos her son takes at sports competitions. We usually post his pictures on SmugMug and people then go there to purchase. She feels that she will get more people to purchase if the pictures are available to purchase/order on site. She only has 3 events a year.

Can anyone give me tips on how to streamline this? There are a tremendous number of pictures shot (over 10,000) and we only keep a fraction of them.

Are there programs/hardware that link the computers so that the pictures are housed on one computer, but have multiple computers that can view the pictures at one time?

Do we need to charge tax and fill out all those forms - currently SmugMug handles all that. Can we circumvent filing out the forms if we go through SmugMug for the processing?

Is it worthwhile to have a creditcard machine or is that just another headache?

Thanks so much for any suggestions!

Mary

[Tom]

Definitely worth while to be able to take credit cards. I don't know a lot of people that carry cash or checks anymore.

You definitely have to collect and remit sales tax.

You are probably going to want a fairly quick DyeSub printer. That will be costly, but you don't want to wait an minute for a pic and you don't want an ink yet that needs time to dry.

To do this efficiently you are probably going to need:
1. One or more person to shoot
2. One person to run cards
3. One person to cull and edit
4. One person to show, print, take orders, run credit cards.

You can network the computers together so that when you finish selecting/editing pics, you put it in a shared folder that the next computer can then show.

There may be ways to do this with less manpower or computer power, but it would really be surprising to me if little league parents are buying enough $8 4x6s to make that worth the equipment/manpower/time needed to do it well.