Posted in Gear on November 23rd, 2008 by Northwest Astro
Some may notice that the header for this blog now has a couple new links.
The traffic being generated has actually been growing, and I have managed to hit spikes in the range of 3GB/day and more in traffic. It means I have to take extra steps to keep the site accessible, and help pay for the bandwidth being used. I have a couple options at my disposal for offsetting the cost:
- Place up ads such as Google Ad Sense.
- Ask for donations directly.
- Offer something up for sale where the revenue can be used to help pay for hosting.
Personally, I love the look of a clean website that doesn’t need advertising. Especially when some of the ads I would pick up wouldn’t be the best or even useful for the target audience. I’d also have no control over what they are, so I couldn’t exactly block ads from a company whom I’d rather not do business with or give traffic to. Or bump up vendors who do a good job serving the customer.
Asking for donations also tends to make me squirm a little. I understand that other sites get by fine on it, and I don’t even have a problem with being charitable (there are a couple sites I do donate to in order to keep the author doing what he/she is already doing). I just don’t like the idea of asking for handouts. I really don’t. I’d rather that someone get something for their trouble.
Sample: Lunar Print
But, one option came to mind: make some of my best images available as prints, suitable to be framed or posted somewhere. After investigating my options, getting samples, re-cropping/exporting/tweaking images, and generally doing a fair amount of work, I am ready to get started. I’ve gone through a couple different online print services, and found one which I think I am happy with, on both the quality of the print and the price of it. Each size print offered is created from the original, full-size, post-processed image and re-scaled and re-cropped for each size print. You can see a sample of the highly-saturated Lunar mosaic to the right. The sample is for an 11×14 print. Larger prints will actually have smaller fonts to account for the larger area, and text will only be on astrophotographs to give a quick idea of the subject.
A couple things to keep in mind:
- These are printed on demand and shipped straight to you from the printer. They will take a couple days to print, and standard shipping will also take awhile. Expect it to take a little over a week to reach you. I will send an e-mail letting you know when the order is placed with the printer.
- Shipping to you is included in the price. International shipping is extra, however.
- Not every image will become available as a print. It doesn’t make sense to turn it into a web store when all I want is to offset the hosting costs.
- If you have questions or requests, you can reach me using the ‘Contact’ link above.
I am working on a couple articles aimed at the beginning astrophotographer, especially those wanting to learn some specific tips and tricks for capture, stacking and post-processing. So stay tuned.
