ImageKind Review - Why I left

If you were a visitor to my blog a couple months ago, you may remember that I used to offer fine-art prints of my images through ImageKind ("IK"). I no longer do that, and to get a fine-art print from me, you can contact me directly (you can see an email in my profile). I get occasional emails asking me why I left IK and I think I'd be appropriate to share why, since it is a popular outset to see one's work in the Flickr community.

First, what I liked about ImageKind.

The quality of their prints is outstanding. I printed my images on various kinds of paper and in various sizes, and I was pleased with the results. As a printing service, IK is not the cheapest way to print, but you get what you pay for with them.

Their customer service is also outstanding. They ship things fast, and they package prints in a safe manner. Apparently, they're also really good when you have to call them, though I never had to do it.

Second, what I disliked about ImageKind.

As important as print quality and customer service is, most of us join IK hoping to find new buyers for our work. And this is where it gets tricky. If you already have an online or live following of fans, they'll be satisfied with prints you will sell to them through IK. However, IK will not help you find new customers. Here is why.

- Their "search" function on their web-site is broken. I used to have my Point Lobos photos listed there, and as hard as I tried, search results never generated specific image of mine I tried to find based on certain keywords. It's an issue that's frequently brought up in their forum, yet IK has done nothing to fix it over many months they are operating.
- During the weekday busy hours their web-site is often slow to respond, and again, nothing has been done to resolve the issue of bandwidth and increased traffic.
- Their featured and popular artists are generated somewhat randomly. Again, it's brought up frequently in their forum, but nothing is being done to change it.
- Their premium and pro accounts are only for extra storage space. They promise priority placement of your work on their web-site, but since search results and priority placement is random, it's an empty promise. There is very little that is being done to market their artists, so you will have to do a lot of self-promotion to find buyers for your work. IK will not do it for you and they're clear about it when you bring it up on their forum.
- They keep too much profit. Sure, you can keep the most profit on the print itself, but where they're making the most money is when your customer is buying a mat and frame for that print. They only give you 15% commission on that. So say, you sold a print for $20, but your customer end up paying $100 for it. How much do you get in the end? $35. That means they keep $65. And the profit they keep only goes up higher as your customers pay more money.
- They only pay you if you made over $50 and they only do it 45 days after the sale takes place.
- They are not concerned about improving their web-site. If you read through their forum, almost every week someone starts a new thread complaining about bugs in the web-site, sharing thoughts on the improvement. The administrators claim they write all of these things down, but in 6 months that I been visiting IK, very little has been done to improve the web-site's functionality. Things that artists really want have not been implemented, nor the timetable for the implementation been given. To me that means they're in the printing business, not in the business of taking care of the artist.

Bottom line, use them as a printing outlet, but don't expect to find any new buyers of your work through them.

UPDATE (10/03/2008) - After looking into other options, I now use Zenfolio as an outlet to sell my prints, and I explain why I am happy with them here.