SmugMug.com - Read This Before You Waste Your Money...

I hate paying for things that I used to get for free. I'm sure you don't like paying for things either. I used to only use the free photo sharing sites, you know like Kodak, Snapfish, Shutterfly, etc. All free, and at the time, I thought they were good enough. I wasn't very serious about my photography, and you could imagine why I simply refused to pay for any of those "premium" photography sites. I just didn't think they were worth it (and honestly I was a bit stubborn too).

It must have been about six months ago. I was reading one of the few photography blogs that are actually worth the time, and they recommended a website called SmugMug.com, one of those premium photography sites that charge a yearly fee. I couldn't even believe that they didn't even have a free option...

Now, I rarely read blogs, but this particular one is actually one of the very few blogs that I trust when it comes to photography, which is the only reason I decided to check out SmugMug.com and click that link. So here I am...

Well, I'll tell you why. I have been a photographer for close to ten years, and recently I began getting more and more clients who wanted to order prints from the events I shot, or who even wanted to purchase digital downloads to use the pictures on their website or for marketing materials. I also needed a better tool to sell wedding photographs, and to create online galleries. Most importantly, I really needed to meet their demands if I wanted to make money selling my photographs. Personally, I wanted to stop running to the post office to manually fulfill their orders by hand every time I wanted to sell a photo or create a photo gallery for an event. Plus, I wanted a website that looked really professional, and which was totally customizable.

But, I have never been a one of those people who always bought the most expensive things. I always looked for the bargain, and I thought the free sites were good enough. Suddenly, I realized that I didn't have a website that looked professional. When I went to SmugMug their sales page was pretty convincing... and I'm sure lots of new photographers see "professional website in minutes", and think "Wow! That seems perfect, I'll get it".

The problem is, many of these "Professional Photo Portfolio" or "Sell Your Digital Photos Easily" services are often only really making money for themselves by selling the service, while only making peanuts for the photographer who set up the site.

So, you can imagine my doubts when I read the recommendation of Smugmug Power and Professional Accounts, which were "supposedly" fully customizable. It was only because I really trusted this photographer that I even checked out SmugMug in the first place.

When I reached the SmugMug website, and activated my Free Trial, I was immediately surprised by what it could create right out of the box. Within minutes, I was creating cool custom galleries, awesome full screen slide shows, plus setting my own prices on my photos and selling photos for a profit. Most photographers who have tried that know that you usually need to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on the services of a great graphic designer and software developer to set up a professional looking website (especially one that takes credit cards). Not only is it very difficult, if you get a lousy designer, it still won't look that great. Trust me, I tried that first. So, SmugMug's service could be really useful, if only I could make it look like it wasn't SmugMug.com, but my own personal website instead...

"At this point, I was thinking “cool features, easy to use, and it looks decent... but, it just isn’t easy to customize it to make it look like MY website... so forget it"

And that was it. After my 14-day free SmugMug trial, I decided not to pay to continue... but then a weird thing happened. Out of the blue, one of my trusted photographer friends emailed me his customized and very slick looking SmugMug site.

At first, I didn't even realize he was using SmugMug to power his website, so I was pretty shocked.

It didn't even look like SmugMug at all, but his personal, professional portfolio. He also had a special private section just for friends and family (that was me). He had all these private photos securely hidden so that only invited friends could see them, all on one site! So, those embarrassing birthday pictures where somebody had a bit too much to drink were safe from the public's prying eyes. I decided that if he could do it, so could I, and I took the plunge and purchased a year subscription of SmugMug Professional.

First, I decided to use some of his methods for customizing my own site. My friend does make a good living from photography, so he often has great ideas that are very helpful. I activated my account, and sat down for a couple hours to try it out, but I was still frustrated! What wasn't it working?

"The biggest problem with SmugMug is that it's the kind of tool you can spend weeks playing around with and still have a lousy looking website. On the other hand, IF you know what to change, it is incredible..."

• SmugMug gives you total freedom to create the look and feel of your website, IF you know which fields to change, and which hidden options need updating.

• Most people don't know what those options are, and most of them are not listed in the help manual or tutorials. They are hidden deep within the 40,000+ pages of the SmugMug forum and on other people's blogs. It's just downright hard to find this information out there, and nowhere is it in step-by-step form.

• Most photographers are too busy taking pictures or not technical enough to dig through all these options to make their pages look perfect, and so they accept "good enough" and just stop there.

I am ashamed to admit this to you, but it took me over 4 months to understand why I couldn't get SmugMug to look and work like I wanted it to, even with my photographer friend's secrets. It was a decent site, but not MY site. I wanted it to easily highlight my best photographs, and to hide all the extra unnecessary stuff that is often on the page, and most of all, it HAD to look professional for potential clients, but still let my friends and family view private pictures of parties, birthdays etc, all in the same site.

In a nutshell, I wanted it all, and I knew SmugMug could deliver that, IF ONLY I could unlock some of its hidden features. I just wanted it to look better than this...

"But now for the fundamental question – did my SmugMug account ever end up looking and working the way I wanted it to? The answer is..."

Well, I'll tell you the truth: The results at first were still second-rate, but it all changed once I learned the key...

Having been disillusioned with premium services before, I decided to look at SmugMug from a scientific standpoint. Since I was a programmer by background, I decided to learn the nitty gritty details about web programming (CSS and html), to finally figure out just what needed to be changed so my site would look perfect. I was going to create my own SmugMug Theme, fully customized and designed by me. I was getting ready to spend hours, weeks even, in doing so...

That's when something hit me! Maybe there was a way to use a combination of simple CSS changes and SmugMug tools to completely change the way SmugMug looks and functions. So, I dropped everything I was doing, and in less than 2 hours, I did these five very easy things. It soon turned out that these two hours might be of the most productive I’ve ever had.

I discovered that there were some very SIMPLE code segments you could insert, in very unusual places (like this one code section that gets pasted into your BIO that changes everything). The best part is, even if you didn't know one single THING about programming or what CSS even stands for, these tricks were so simple that all it takes is some minor editing and a cut and paste to totally transform your SmugMug home page, and your entire photography portfolio.

"The truth is, most SmugMug users have absolutely no clue how to make the site look awesome."

Remember, I spent months - even though I had years of Internet and Programming experience - to finally make it look good:

"So I sat down and created a 97-page step-by-step guide guaranteed to save you hours and packed with over 40 tips to make your SmugMug page look totally amazing! "

This step-by-step guide details everything I did to make my custom SmugMug site. Without the guide, I'm pretty sure it will take you hours upon hours to figure out how to make all these changes in SmugMug, and you may not be fully satisfied with your Smugmug Account.

By activating your SmugMug account through the link below, you get this Book 100% free for a limited time (hurry, free supplies are limited to 103 copies, after which time it will only be available at the Retail price of $39)!

To get the exclusive, step-by-step guide to customizing SmugMug (97 pages in all), with a retail price of $39, there are four steps you need to take...

2. Create a New SmugMug Free Trial (must be a new user name) and enter the "Email / Coupon Code" ABCqVAbVfVvvs to save yourself $5

3. Feel free to play around with Smugmug all you want during your free trial. Then, when you are ready, you must log in, go to your homepage, click "Sign Up", and enter your billing information.

4. Send me your purchase confirmation - forward it to info@bestdigitalreview.com - and I will send you access instructions to the guide, as soon as I have confirmed your order.

5. Optional - If you love it or have any comments at all, send them to us! Because this guide is still new, we are actively seeking testimonials and all other feedback. Send your thoughts to info@bestdigitalreview.com, and if we use your testimonial on our site we will send you a special surprise gift.

Remember - You must start your FREE Trial with the link below in order to qualify for the free book. Otherwise, or if you already have a Smugmug account, you can purchase this guide here.

Click here to start your SmugMug Free Trial AND get my guide when you sign up (Retail Price of $39)

But, remember to do it fast – Since this guide is new I am only giving away 101 copies free, after which I will ask people to buy it instead... and if you don’t get both SmugMug AND my guide, you are most likely going to be stuck with a standard looking, boring, SmugMug homepage.

Remember that this step-by-step guide is only available from this web page; nobody else is offering a guide like this on the net. You are going to have a massive advantage over people who have SmugMug Professional but who don't know how to make it THEIRS....plus its only FREE for a limited time to those who signup for their SmugMug account below.