Your images deserve to be seen. The Internet is a powerful tool for reaching new markets and introducing new clients to your images. Our system provides your current and future clients with a gateway to your work and your services.

Present your images to clients in a way that makes their lives easier. Having your own online member archive tells your clients that you're serious about your business and able to meet their 21st century needs.

Your Home Page

Every member archive has a personal digitalrailroad.net Web address — www.digitalrailroad.net/YourMemberNameHere — and a home page on which you can easily feature your newest and most noteworthy photos and long-term projects. You can provide a description of your business, contact information, links to other Web sites and more. Unlike most online portfolio services , your featured images link directly into your online member archive, allowing image buyers to see captions, prices, and preview download sizes. Additionally, visitors can quickly search your member archive from your home page.

Personalized member archive Web addresses may be whatever you would like:

Digital Railroad is not the brand — YOU are the brand! Just take a look at how our members use their member archives to maintain and extend their image to and from other promotional Web sites.

You can seamlessly connect your member archive to your other Web sites through:

• Branding, logo, color, and navigation — establish your member archive Web site's look and feel with our design features and customizable search engine.
• Personalized digitalrailroad.net Web address/URL — Every member archive has a personal Digital Railroad Web address www.digitalrailroad.net/YourMemberNameHere and home page on which you can easily feature your newest and most noteworthy photos, essays and long-term projects.
• Personalized domain name — Point your domain name at your digitalrailroad.net member archive. For example: http://www.upinewspictures.com
• Search box — Add a search box to any page on the Web so buyers can search your portfolio Web site and view the search results in your Digital Railroad member archive. For more information, see Tools.
• Groups and lightboxes — organize your images so that you can create links between your member archive and your portfolio Web site and/or any other Web sites you maintain.
• Photo feeds — add RSS feeds to automatically deliver your latest images to your portfolio Web site and to your customers desktops. For more information, see Tools.

Define your member archive's look and feel

With Digital Railroad's customizable member archive capabilities, you can extend the look and feel of your existing Web site or use it as your business' primary Web presence. You can customize your member archive with colors and layouts that correspond to your current branding scheme or you can create a whole new look and feel.

Easily change your member archive Web site's colors to match your existing business color scheme. The ability to enter specific color "hex" values ensures that you'll have a perfect match. Suggested color schemes are also provided.

Share Searches

Shared searches can market specific image sets that are timely and fresh.

Copy the Share This Search link into email or Web pages to give your clients easy access to specific sets of your images.

Feature Groups

Your home page images can link to both individual photos and groups of photos, giving you maximum flexibility in what and how much you choose to showcase.

Feature Links

You can provide a running set of home page text links to lightboxes or groups of member archive images, allowing you to feature particular sets of images, portfolios, or new work. It also allows you to point image buyers to your specialties and subject areas.

Lightboxes

Our lightboxes are simply a digital version of the physical lightbox in your office. Lightboxes are meant to help you organize collections of images, edit them (by yourself or in collaboration with others) and market your latest selects.

Share Images

You can share images through edited lightboxes or as entire member archive groups. These images can be shared either privately or publicly with any registered user on the Digital Railroad system. You can also invite people to review digital lightboxes via email which sends a link with a personalized not to your clients. You can market these images to clients with view only or with edit and download permissions. A history of your past shares is available for your review so you can track your direct marketing activity.

Archive Buyer Member Management

Our advanced search features are great for buyers who are perusing your images, but sometimes you want to market your images directly to your customers. Our built-in tools easily let you do this:

• Invite customers to your member archive
• Create and manage lists of your customers
• Manage your customers' permissions
• Send announcements of new images, with links to image groups, right to your customers' inboxes.

Let's say you've just published a group of new high-resolution images from your African safari. With one click, you can send your latest images to your "member list" of an unlimited number of buyers at Travel magazines and Airline Magazine. When you share the images via this method, an auto-generated email sends a link and your message to all buyers associated with this member list. Your high resolution images are protected and the link drives buyers back to your personally branded member archive. They can then easily add your images to their lightbox minutes before they go into review their selects on deadline.

RSS Photo Feeds

RSS Feeds stream customized content through desktop software, a Web page, or a blog. For an image buyer, feeds are an easy way to be alerted when a member archive has new photos available. For a member archive owner, feeds are an easy way to market and distribute images that link directly back to the member archive.

Photo feeds come in two formats: XML and JavaScript (JS). XML-based feeds are usually accessed through downloadable desktop applications, also known as feed readers, like RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom. JavaScript is placed directly into a Web site's source code to allow images to stream to a page within that Web site.

To learn more about RSS and feeds, please consult
CNET, Feedster, and Wikipedia

To learn more about making RSS feeds work for you, go to Tools