All businesses have expenses. One of my biggest business expenses is photo software and processing fees, such as photo culling and editing software, photo hosting, backups, and archiving.
 

For editing photos alone, I maintain six programs that I  regularly use. After that, I can categorize things into four parts:  external hard drives, photo gallery hosting service, continuous computer  backup, and photo archiving. Here, I’m talking only about gallery hosting and photo archives. Let’s break it down!
 

Client Galleries
 

I personally use Shootproof for my client photo galleries. I started  using this web based service many years ago, and continue with it to  this day. It’s user-friendly – for both me and my clients – and they  have some great features. This is the way that I instantly share my finished galleries with my clients, allowing them to download files and to easily share files with family and friends. 

 Shootproof has a few features that I am particularly fond of — automated  emails, customization of galleries, password protection, and lots more.  I also love that for online ordering, it links directly to my photo lab,  making it convenient for me to complete customers’ orders as they are  placed.  They can order high quality prints, canvases, metal prints, and  greeting cards.
 

So, yes I love my online gallery program, but it’s not free!  As a professional photographer, I have thousands of photos to deliver to  clients each month.  I want to allow enough time for clients to view  and download their photos, and this amount of storage has costs  associated with it.                           

 In my business, I keep weddings up for a year, and all other sessions for 60 days. In my delivery email, I state that extensions can be granted as long as you ask for the extension before the expiration date. And in  those cases, sessions are extended by 2 weeks, and weddings by 4 weeks.
 

Once a gallery expires, I charge a $50 reactivation fee (also stated in the gallery delivery email and expiration alert email one week ahead of expiration). The reason for this fee is that once the  gallery expires, there are extra steps I have to take to make the photos  available to you again. Since I use a separate storage for my long-term  archive, I have to spend time finding the particular gallery, then re-uploading the photos to create another gallery in order to make your photos available to you again.  This takes time out of my workflow.  In the last week or so alone, I've had 13 inquiries to re-upload galleries!  If each one takes on average an hour or so to complete, you can see how  much time this takes away from my editing and delivering current clients' galleries.
 

Even though I’m paying for my galleries yearly, there is still a limit to the number of photos I can post based on my plan. I utilize 100,000 photos, but you’d be surprised how fast I get to that number!
 

Download your photos in a timely manner
 

The key takeaway here is to be mindful of your expiration dates, and download or order your photos upon receipt.