PRINTING PHOTOS ONLINE !

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Date: Friday April 29, 2005 10:20:00 am
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    Printing Photos Online: the Consumer’s Best
    BeT

    April , 05

    Over the last few years, poker has found a new level of popularity.
    Television shows have made household names of professional poker players. You
    can watch celebrities bet thousands of dollars on single hands for charity or
    witness professional players risk amounts that eclipse your annual salary on
    opponents’ placid poker faces. You can even bet your own hard-earned dollars in
    online tournaments. This poker boom has highlighted America’s fascination with
    gambling –further demonstrating Americans will gamble on anything, even games
    that take place outside of casinos. Specifically, they gamble when advertisers
    convince them to try a new product or service. However, when it comes to
    deciding how to print their digital camera pictures, I think that consumers are
    making bad bets.

    Many consumers are betting on the convenience of printing at home with their
    inkjet and dedicated photo printers. Other consumers are betting on the past,
    going to traditional retailers and paying more than they should to get their
    pictures processed. While retail and at-home printing provide the comfort of
    familiarity and instant gratification, a consumer’s best bet is an online photo
    processing site.

    Online sites such as KodakGallery.com (formerly Ofoto.com) and Snapfish.com
    (now owned by Hewlett-Packard) are royal flushes because they provide the lowest
    costs per print (CPP) in the market. Online retailers cater to customers who are
    computer-savvy and have a lot of pictures to print. They offer technology that
    is similar to that of retail stores at lower prices, especially if you pre-pay
    for the prints. For instance, Snapfish charges only $0.15 per print, the lowest
    cost per print anywhere; if you pay for 600 of them up front (the photo credits
    do not expire, by the way). Some personal printers, on the other hand, have a
    cost per print of more than $0.60–four times the price!

    The online sites are also a big win because they protect consumers from a lot
    of the drawbacks of the “old way.” For instance, they allow you to easily share
    and send pictures without taking up space on your home computer or learning new
    software. Digital images can become large files as digital camera enthusiasts
    try to get the highest quality image to share with friends and family. Having a
    safe place to store your images is one of the great features the online sites
    provide. The online sites also provide the ease of classifying pictures into
    photo albums, so you can share single images or entire albums.

    Further, getting pictures printed through one of the online sites is more
    convenient because you don’t have to go anywhere. Your pictures are delivered to
    your door in a few days, making the services a winning hand for busy people.
    Plus, the sites save your prints, so reprints are easy!

    Lastly, consumers who keep their photos on their hard drives risk losing
    their digital images to a virus. Computers are great, just like getting a high
    pocket pair in Texas Hold’em. However, you can think that you have a winner and
    then the cards come out and you lose to three 3’s. That is the same thing as
    getting a virus on your system. You can lose all of your precious images in a
    matter of seconds, just like cash at the poker table.

    Because of the tradition behind retail printing, most consumers don’t realize
    that it is a bad bet. If they did a little research and had some patience, they
    would save money and protect their photos. Going to print at your local drug
    store or photo retailer is like chasing a bad hand at the table. You think that
    you have a chance to steal the pot because it seems convenient, but you just end
    up losing. Printing pictures at retail is very similar; you can get the same
    picture printed online for nearly half the price and in just a few extra days.

    Photo printing through an online retailer, especially when you choose one of
    the pre-paid plans, is the right play. It alleviates the issues of
    inconvenience, price and hardware failure that can make a portfolio of digital
    prints into a winning hand.

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