| Who should use Your Images Forever? |
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| Your Images Forever is designed specifically for professional photographers and studios of all sizes. Every photographer should be establishing long term relationships with their clients and protecting their cherished images against future loss. If your studio wants a competitive edge and is interested in making more money through additional client services, then Your Images Forever is the perfect answer.
Disasters are waiting to happen, and do happen, to homes and important valuables every day. Considering many people list photographs as one of the most important valuable they would take with them if they could in case of a disaster, are you letting your clients know that you care as much about their memories as they do? With Your Images Forever, you now can. |
| How Much Does Your Images Forever Cost? |
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| Your Images Forever is priced very economically for studios of all sizes.
$29.95 per month for 30GB of storage
Additional storage is available in 30GB increments for an additional $9.99 per month
If you exceed your current storage limit, you will receive an email letting you know that you have exceeded the limit and your subscription rate will be adjusted automatically to the next 30GB level at the next billing cycle.
Of course if you have any questions at any time regarding your subscription, always feel free to call us at 866-819-4645 or email at sales@yourimagesforever.com
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| Is there a charge for uploading or downloading my images? |
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| No, there is never a charge for uploading or downloading images. You only pay one flat monthly fee for Your Images Forever, based upon the amount of storage space you would like available (space available in 30GB increments). |
| Do I have to pay for the emails that are sent out to our clients? |
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| No. Your Images Forever sends out the emails to your clients for you based upon your specified frequency (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and there is never a charge for this. |
| Do I Need To Upload My Images Individually? |
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| No. You can either select an individual image to upload, a selection of images to upload, or an entire folder's worth of images.
Typically, if you are using a lab and have already placed your jpg's for a session into a folder that is being uploaded to the lab, you can use the same folder to select for uploading to Your Images Forever and all of the images in that folder will be uploaded and cataloged.
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| How Many Images Can I Upload? |
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| You are not limited to the actual number of images you can upload or the number of clients /sessions you archive. The only limitation is the total amount of storage that your images take up.
Since most images tend to be printed from jpg resolution (ie: images uploaded to your lab) and jpg uses efficient compression, you should be able to store approximately 5,000 images at a typical jpg file size of 2MB for every 10GB of storage. Of course your actual image file size may vary depending upon file format (raw, jpg, tif, etc.) and resolution. Additional storage space may be purchased in 30GB increments.
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| How protected are my images? |
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| Very protected! Your files are stored and backed up on multiple servers located in different geographical regions. |
| Do My Clients Have Access To Images Stored On Your Images Forever? |
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| Never. Your images are protected from any unauthorized access.
Your Images Forever is a service for access by professional photographers only. All of the images that you upload to Your Images Forever are for your purposes only and can only be viewed and retrieved by an authorized member of your studio with the correct userid and password.
Since no one but your studio can access your account, your copyrights are protected!
Consumers are not authorized to use or access the images archived in Your Images Forever.
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| How Can I Cancel My Account? |
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| Your Images Forever does not require any contracts or long term commitments. We hope we can address any questions you have pertaining to your account. However, if you feel you would like to cancel your account, you may do so by sending us an email with your User ID, Name, Address, Phone Number and Studio Name and email it to sales@yourimagesforever.com at least 5 days prior to the end of your current billing period. Upon receipt of your email, we will send an email back to you as confirmation of your cancellation.
Please note that as per the terms of use, partial refunds for the current billing period you have been charged can not be refunded. Your account will remain active through the end of the current billing period (the billing cycle which you are charged). At that time, your account will be closed and no further billing will occur. Your account will be deleted from Your Images Forever and images that had been stored under your User ID will be deleted off the system at the end of your fully paid month. |
| When am I charged? |
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| Your Images Forever charges your credit card at the beginning of each month. So for example your April subscription plan would be charged approximately on April 1st. The first month of your service is pro-rated, so if you sign up on March 15th you would be billed the pro-rate for the time of March 15th to March 31st, plus your April charge. Then each month thereafter you are charged simply for your monthly subscription fee. |
| What File Types Can Be Uploaded |
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| Technically, any type of image file may be stored in Your Images Forever (jpg, bmp, gif, tif, psd, eps, all raw formats such as cr2, etc.) In addition, you can actually store any other type of file formats you may want to store off-site for safekeeping as well such as document files, Word files, spreadsheets, etc.
However, in order for thumbnails to be generated for you to view the files you have uploaded, they would need to be in the JPG file format
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| Can I charge my clients for the Your Images Forever service? |
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| Absolutely. We have structured Your Images Forever with economical pricing so that you do not need to charge your clients for this service. In these situations, some photography studios see Your Images Forever as a competitive benefit they would like to offer their clients for free that help them stand out from the crowd.
However, other photography studios see a benefit to offering Your Images Forever as an upsell product. When offered as an 'image protection', 'heirloom protection' or 'cherished memories' club membership for example (you can make up your own club name), you can increase studio revenue by offering this protection service to your clients. For example, you could offer this service to a wedding client for $99 for 10 years of protection on any images used within their album(s) and wall portraits. If a typical wedding client has already spent $2,000 or more for wedding photography, $99 is a small additional price to pay for knowing their images are protected in case they loose or damage their album, etc.
You could also consider charging an annual fee (for example, $19.99 per year) for club membership - renewed automatically each year. This gives your client the piece of mind that if a print is ever damaged or they just need a reprint of an image, it is safely stored off-site and ready for immediate retrieval by your studio for processing.
Additional ways of incorporating a fee for this service that you can pass on your to clients is to consider Your Images Forever a cost of goods sold (COGS) that you calculate into the pricing of your prints and add a profit margin on the service to add revenue to your studio. Still another idea is to charge a small 'Handling' fee (ie: $2.50) on orders that include prints or albums, where you can explain if you wish that this handling fee covers your fee for 'handling' the protection of your clients' images for a specific period of time.
Remember, your clients NEVER have access to these images within Your Images Forever. They would contact you for a reprint and their images would then be retrieved by your studio personnel, then processed and charged to the client for reprints in your normal fashion.
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| How Do I Create The Email That Is Sent Out To My Clients? |
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| Click on 'Edit Email Message' on the left menu panel of your account.
Emails may be created with either standard text, or you may use HTML editing tools provided for more content-rich formatting. The HTML editing tools allow inclusion of images, bulleted items, font selections, font colors, and many other formatting features.
Your emails should contain a reminder that their printed images are being protected in case they ever have damage or loss. In addition, you can then add additional services or specials that your studio is currently offering. You may also want to consider creating an email newsletter - the possibilities are endless.
We will notify you by email (to your email address you have file in your account profile) approximately 3 days prior to your email message being sent to your clients. This allows you time to edit your stored email message if you wish before your clients receive the email. |
| What happens to my images if Your Images Forever isn't around anymore? |
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| Your files are stored on secure independent and redundant multi-location servers. If for some reason Your Images Forever no longer existed, you would have the opportunity to retrieve all of your images prior to that point. The servers are stored off-site and are not dependant upon our physical location or existence for the retention of your images. |
| Do you have a logo we can place on our website to advertise we are a photographer that uses Your Images Forever to protect client images? |
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| Yes. You can download a logo that identifies you as a photographer that uses Your Images Forever by clicking below:
Photographer Logo
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| How Often Do Email Communications Get Sent Out To Our Clients? |
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| One of the major benefits of Your Images Forever is not just the off-site storage of your images, but the ongoing communication you will have with your clients to remind them of this valuable service.
You decide for each client how often they are to receive an email notice reminding them of the value of their protected images. You may select Monthly, Quarterly, Semi-Annually or Annually. |
| Why should I use your service if we can backup ourselves? |
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| Simply stated, unless you are performing backups the correct way then you are really not backing up your images effectively. Here are just a few reasons why Your Images Forever should be a critical part of your backup procedures:
1 - Your images are stored off-site, thereby protecting your studio's image assets against any type of studio disaster such as fire, flood, earthquake, theft, etc. If you are not storing your backups off-site on a weekly basis, then you are not truly protecting your images!
2 - Backup media such as DVD's and CD's have a shelf life of typically less than 10 years, and even with archival quality DVD's can not be guaranteed to withstand the test of time. Technologies change rapidly and even if you backup using DVD's now for example, will you have the required equipment years from now to read from what will then be an outdated media (remember 5 1/4" and 3 1/2" floppy disks?). Even hard drive technologies advance to the point where an older hard drive can no longer be easily read due to changes in interfaces (note the current change from EIDE to SATA drive interfaces). With Your Images Forever, you never need to worry about transferring backups from one old media to a newer one just to keep up with technology and the eventual degradation of existing backups. We take care of it all for you!
3 - Your Images Forever catalogs your images by client and session for quick and easy retrieval.
4 - Do your backups have backups? In other words, if you are relying on one backup and something happens, do you have a redundant backup to retrieve from?
Your Images Forever is much more than just an online backup and archiving service. It is a client relationship building tool that is designed to help your studio make more money. Your clients will appreciate that their special memories that can't be recaptured again are being safely protected by Your Images Forever in case they ever have a loss of those images you sold them. |
| What happens if my clients want a reprint of an image? |
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| Your clients would contact you just as they would for any of your services. You would download the requested images directly from Your Images Forever, and then process the image as you would any other image (ie: send to your lab, print in-house, use within a DVD slideshow, etc.) |
| Do you have 'membership cards' that we can hand out to our clients? |
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| We are currently designing several templates that can be downloaded for your use in creating membership cards for your clients. Once these templates are available you will be able to log onto your account and download them (coming Summer 2008). They will in a photoshop format with layers intact so you will be able to modify the logos, membership club name, studio name, etc.
Once you download and modify the templates, you would then contact your lab or printer to print 'gift' style cards. There are also numerous labs online that specialize in the production of gift cards.
Membership cards are an excellent way to provide your client with your own branded card explaining their images are protected. |
