posted on September 17, 2004 02:39:32 PM new
Okay, I have been puzzling at this all day. I have the $29.95 Sales Manager plan which used to come with unlimited image hosting (that is why I chose Vendio) now there is the additional charge for over X amount of mg images stored. How in the blue blazes can I figure this out?? Is it 29.95 + 34.95 or does it just end up as 34.95 or some combination somewhere in between??? Luckily I am already a customer, if I had read this type of stuff when I was shopping around you would have gotten about as much of a look as Andale did. (about 15 seconds)
Kevin
[ edited by Kevinatgrannys on Sep 17, 2004 02:40 PM ]
In your image hosting area you will see an MB usage number. Take that number and compare it to the list -- it will tell you how much it would cost for image hosting, for that amount of storage. If it is less than what your monthly sales manager fees are, you will not be charged that amount for image hosting (it will be credited to you).
I hope this makes sense, let us know if you are still confused.
posted on September 17, 2004 06:57:51 PM new
Okay, So I will be charged $29.95 for the Variable Power Sales Manager + $34.95 for image storage + $6.95 for the gallery. Grand total of $71.85!!! I will be spending this weekend looking for a new image host, thank you! That is worse than Andale! Great improvements, but I think you will loose a LOT of business at these prices.
Kevin
posted on September 18, 2004 11:39:50 AM new
Hi Kevin,
So I logged into your account and tried to see if there was something we could do get your fees down. You are right, that is pretty expensive. I looked at your images and it appears you've got a bunch of images that can be deleted and that are going to be deleted soon. Also, it seems that your images are pretty large in terms of byte size. You might want to consider sizing down your images before you upload them.
For example some of your images are over 300K. This is bad for our business and your's as well. For people on a dial up modem, they will not be able to see images unless they wait at least a minute. Downsizing your images will help in two ways, first more people will be able to view the image, and secondly, it drastically reduce the amount of MB you need for images hosting.
Also, if you can simply get your image account size down to 134 MB, you will not see any overage charges. And from the looks of your account, that shouldn't be tough to do.
Here is the url for our basic image sizing tutorial:
http://imagehost.vendio.com/help/imgsize.html
Keep in mind that the tutorial is very general, and may not match what you see in your image editor. Your image editor should have some online documentation or manuals that will give directions on how to size and save images.
If you want to compress your images so they will be smaller in kilobytes, but retain the same area, color, and resolution, there are a couple of web utilities available that will help with this. We recommend http://www.spinwave.com/ for online file compression utilities. You can also download jpeg and gif compression utilities for a minimal charge from http://www.downloads.com.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
posted on September 18, 2004 12:16:51 PM new
"For example some of your images are over 300K. This is bad for our business and your's as well. For people on a dial up modem, they will not be able to see images unless they wait at least a minute."
I'll have to wholeheartedly agree with you there! I still have dial-up, but only because DSL is not available in our area. If any image(s) takes over 45 secs to download, I'm outta there.
I take my pics with a Sony Mavica FD90. The untouched photos measure 640x480 pixels (large) with a dpi of 200. The file size is in the area of 36kb.
As Bob stated, I'd definitely re-think how you edit and present your images.
posted on September 18, 2004 02:11:36 PM new
So, even if I went as small as I can with the pictures (stopping just this side of getting a non enlargeable postage stamp) I would have to pay the $29.95 + $19.95 (for 68.37MG). I need large, clear quality pictures for what I sell, not a tiny little guess. Seems a shame that the reason that I went with all of this was because of free unlimited image hosting with the Sales Manager: Variable Power. Will this program even be here after the 30th? There should be some sort of a discount since now you have to pay for the image storage. All I wanted was templates and image storage. Oh well, off shopping.
Kevin
posted on September 18, 2004 03:25:11 PM new
Kevin,
I downloaded a couple images from your ended auction #2269157244 (IM006370 and IM006371). I use PaintShopPro as my graphics program. All my images are set to save the image with a compression factor of 20 percent. By no means the worst quality.
Out of curiosity I cropped down your image IM006370 to a size of 640x480 (too much extra around the item), and saved it as a .jpg with a 20 compression factor. The file size went from your original of 224KB to a new size of 78KB with no loss of perceivable quality. Image IM006371 I didn't crop at all, I just saved it with a new name and it went from 165KB to 81KB.
If, when you save an image, your program allows you to control the compression factor, set your control to a higher number. Try it out on an image, with difference compression factor, and save them with different names. See which one has the smallest file size with the best quality. I'll bet you could cut your total storage size in half.
If you would like to see some of my item images, please feel free to check seller "miniature*treasures". I have no current items at the moment so you'll have to check my list for the last 2 weeks, at least. Each of my images are between 35-45KB and they are not "postage-sized".
Regardless of whether you decide to stick with Vendio or not, I still think you should seriously consider the size of your files.
posted on September 18, 2004 06:03:26 PM new
Terre,
Thanks so much for all the help!!!! Please keep it up!!!!
When I try to take my images down to the below 50k range is when I start getting a postage stamp sized picture that Vendio will not allow to be clicked on to enlarge. I am going into my program to find out how to compress the images. (HP program) Never have figured out how to use ArcSoft Photo Studio, the only other program that I have.
I did manage to remove a bunch of un needed pics from my Image Hosting page and brought my numbers down to under 135MG. I will be playing with this for the next few days and trying to figure out how to lower it even more. I still like Vendio's picture quality better than most of the others out there. And with what I am selling, I need quality. Blurry pics just don't do it. This stuff is hard enough on its own to get good pics of, with out the host degrading them even further. (Ebay did that all the time)
Oh, image IM006370 had all that extra around it because I don't want ebay turning the sphere into an oval. Once again, Thanks so much for all the help!!!!
Kevin
posted on September 18, 2004 06:09:07 PM new
Hey Guys,
Thanks for all of your help on this I really appreciate it. So Kevin, I just want you to be clear that as long as your image hosting MB size is lesss then 134 MB you will get NO OVERAGE CHARGES AT ALL as long as you are on the power plan for 29.99. The image overages are strictly for people whose monthly fees are not higher then what the image hosting fees would be. Also, there are some cheap compression programs out there that will make it so that your image stays the exact same size, but drastically reduces byte size. The changes aren't noticeable to the naked eye when viewing the images on a computer monitor.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
posted on September 18, 2004 06:19:50 PM new
Bob, I want to thank you also!! I needed to know what I was dealing with. The way that is all written out on the pricing is still Greek to me. As you can see, I don't want to switch but I also didn't want to pay a fortune. ( you guys need change the wording in your power plan, it still says unlimited. That only added to my confusion.)
Off to see what I saw on compression.
Kevin
posted on September 18, 2004 06:46:10 PM new
Kevin,
In my PSP program, when I go to SAVE FILE AS, the context box pops up where I name the file, choose the file type, and decide where I want to save it on my drive. On that same context box, in the bottom right corner is a clickable box called OPTIONS. When I click on that, this is where I can change the compression factor.
Maybe ArcSoft Photo Studio has something similar? If you can't find out where in the program to do that, try clicking HELP on the menu and searching for "Compression".
posted on September 18, 2004 07:27:53 PM new
Terre,
WOW! Thanks, I had been trying the help (I don't know why they call it that, it never does) and didn't find it. However, in the HP Director program there is a Save as button and when that screen opens there is a slider for compression!!! YEA!!! I had seen that several times when renaming a picture but never had really thought about it. All I have to do is play around with some of my "Problem Children" and see how it turns out. It seems to compress the pictures quite nicely into tiny files. It took one from 209k to 38.9k with very little distortion. Now to upload it and see what it looks like out here. Thanks once again! If you think of anything else, let me know.
Kevin
posted on September 18, 2004 09:15:29 PM new
GREAT Kevin!
Amazing the difference in file size, huh?
Not sure how many images you need to re-do, but I'd just start with new auction images. Then I'd progress on to the re-lists. Might be quite a task, considering you have to delete the old ones and upload the new, but sure worth it in the long run - in more ways than one.
Glad I could help. Have a wonderful, albeit busy week.
posted on September 20, 2004 07:00:29 PM new
I want to ask a couple of questions of the Vendio "blues" to see if I understand this new plan in terms of my usage.
I'm an occastional, small-time seller - "pay as you go." Typically, I work on my auctions a bit here and a bit there, and then, when I have time, I launch my segments.
My understanding is that if I have between 5 and 55 MB of images in storage, I will pay the new monthly minimum of $9.95, even if I don't have any auctions running - that's just for storage.
If I do have auctions running, then the 10 cents and 1% fvf is credited against that $9.
95 - so if I had $4 in listing fees and
$7 in fvf's, I would pay the higher of the two - $11, in this case - right?
Also, there are some times of the year when I clearly won't be doing auctions for a month or 2 or maybe even 3 months.
So, if I delete a lot of the old photos and bring it down to 3 or 4 MB, my monthly storage charge would go down to $2.95 - right?
What if I decided that I wasn't going to do any auctions for the next 6 months because of time constraints from my regular job?
Even if I didn't have any images in storage, I would still pay the monthly minimum charge of $2.95, right?
Could I/should I cancel my account for 6 months and then re-instate it when I was ready to do more auctions? Is that do-able?
I have a good idea that if I it went the other way and I had the opportunity to do more auctions on more of a regular basis, I'd be better off looking at some of the other plans, but that's another story.
Right now, I just want to be sure I understand how this works on the low end.
I'm sometimes very active - and I use a lot of layouts with 5 or 6 photos in each ad - but then I sometimes don't do any auctions for a couple of months.
posted on September 21, 2004 09:18:40 AM new
Hello,
Yes, you would pay the higher of the two.
Yes, if you didn't list auctions you would have a monthly minimum but say your image hosting fees (if you are storing images in Vendio during that time) are higher than the monthly minimum, you would pay the higher of the two. In which case if you had a lot of images you would benefit from removing as much images as you need to remove in order to get down to $2.95 per month.
I hope this makes sense, let me know if you need more clarification on this.
posted on September 21, 2004 09:50:11 AM new
Sonya,
Thanks for the response.
I'm also considering the other side of the coin. I'm going to try to do a lot of auctions between October 1st and mid-February. If I'm successful, I could easily exceed 55 MB. My ads are very photo-intensive - 3 to 7 photos in every ad.
So, I'm also considering switching to one of the $12.95 plans.
Can I switch to one of the $12.95 plans with unlimited image hosting for 5 months and then switch back to the "pay as you go" plan for 4 or 5 months?
Is there lead time when you have to notify Vendio that you want to switch from Plan A to Plan B?
I'm not talking about going back and forth month to month, but for blocks of maybe 4 or 5 months.
But is that do-able?
Or do you have to choose a plan and stick with it for a minimum of 6 or 12 months?
Right now, I'm going through all of the photos I have on Vendio. I've already deleted most of the photos from completed auctions. There are a lot of other photos where I haven't done the auctions yet, but I don't expect to do them right away, and I have the photos/scans on floppys. I just need to doublecheck that I do indeed still have them on disk before I delete them from Vendio.
I've cut my MB number down pretty substantially, and will reduce it more over the next couple of days.
But then I'm going to start uploading for my October auctions, too.
So, when I see where it stands, I might want to sign up for one of the $12.95 plans starting with the next cycle in October. I think my billing date with Vendio is mid-month.
posted on September 28, 2004 12:35:40 AM new
I use the Image Hosting only and pay a flat rate of $12.95/month. I have only about 70 pictures in storage, and have deleted quite a few, but my MB number doesn't seem to go down. Can you please let me know what the new rate for me will be? Would it be cheaper for me to switch to one of the other plans, which I haven't wanted to do because I don't really want to pay a FVF to vendio?
Thanks,
bobbmart
posted on September 28, 2004 06:17:35 AM new
Bob I don't know if this helps but did you delete the photos in the recycle bin? Maybe that will help reducing your number?
posted on September 28, 2004 09:33:40 AM new
Hello,
Roz -- you can switch plans at any time. We don't require that you notify us ahead of time. If you do it a few days before your billing cycle then you won't get charged another month for the plan you are trying to switch out of. You can see your billing cycle date on your online statement.
Hmngbrd -- you currently have an MB storage of 129.42 in Image Hosting. If you check the announcement on image hosting, that puts you in the price bracket of $19.95 per month for up to 135 MB images stored. Your Sales Manager plan is the Power Plan Variable Rate which has a monthly fee of $29.95 with a 1.25% final value fee on items that sell. Since your image hosting fees come out to be less than your Sales Manager fees, you will not see any change in pricing -- provided you keep your image storage under 135 MB. Let me know if you have any more questions on this.
Bobbmart -- you need to delete what is in the recycle bin in order for the MB count to go down. Once you do this if you want us to take a look and see if you will be paying more when the fees go into effect, let us know.
posted on September 28, 2004 12:01:30 PM new
thank you - i am trying not to delete because my primary comp is on the fritz (the one with all the pics) and i will be listing.....next question i have is that imported from ebay auctions pics are id'd with i1_ etc....and are duplicates of some i already have in the image folder.......but if i relist i may be shooting myself in the foot to delete now....before i relist....
posted on September 28, 2004 04:33:11 PM new
Hi Hmngbrd,
When you relist those items that had the imported images, the relist data will still link to wherever you originally had those images stored. The images are imported at the time the auctions are imported as an easy way for you to have the images in your Vendio account for future use. However if you have them uploaded already, you can delete the images that were imported in.
It might be better to create a listing anew, so you can take advantage of all templates and the image hosting attach process.
