Frequently Asked Questions

• Dual Layer Security. We have proprietary software that we developed, and it has been evaluated by IT security specialists to confirm that it exceeds a reasonable expectation of privacy for photo galleries hosted behind it. There are many photo hosting sites (SmugMug, Shutterfly, etc.) that allow photo galleries to be hosted behind a single layer of security (such as a password), but single layer security is inferior to dual layer (user id & password/pin). On line banking uses dual layer authentication security to protect on-line banking. To our knowledge, we are the only company that requires dual layer identification to gain access to a school’s photos. Unless a parent gives their unique identifier information to someone who is not authorized to visit a school’s OLYB site, there is no way to reasonably bypass our security. Managing this security is a full time task for us, and it is what first sets us apart in this business.
• Our professional management of the site. We dynamically manage user access, and we organize “links” between our security software and our photo-hosting site. In the 5 years that OLYB has been under development, we have seen numerous photo hosting sites being run by parents or local photographers being closed down. Inevitably the reason has been that it takes too much time and costs too much for a single person/ photographer to develop and maintain a site that is dedicated to supporting a specific school. Our business model is designed in such a way that we can amortize expenses across many member schools, and offer a superior product in the process. It is a full-time job to create upload galleries, to link those galleries behind the dual layer security software, to dynamically manage the authorized list of users for each school, to maintain the organizational integrity of each school’s photos, to provide bookkeeping and accounting services, to provide training to member schools, and to execute timely marketing support (Snapshot newsletter, webinars, Constant Contact, etc.)
• Our “organizational construct” (how we organize a school’s photos). We organize and sort photos for each school based on the class structure of the school (e.g. K-6, K-8, 9-12, pre-K only, etc). This makes organization easy to understand for families and makes finding photos easy.
• We integrate ALL students, classes, and activities of a school behind our dual layer security software. Our software allows parents to peruse all the grades and activities of member schools for which they are approved. This is critical to parents with more than one child at a school. You will hear and read that other hosting sites (SmugMug, Shutterfly, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.) have security that is available to schools. All of the “secure” school sites of which we are aware are basically a single class or event that is being managed by a supportive, volunteer parent. That parent decides who gets access and who does not, by using a simple password, which is probably not something that schools should endorse. Additionally, children in other classes are usually not included in the work of the volunteer parent. It is quite a different challenge to have all classes protected behind an authentication, log-in database, which is what we offer.
• Marketing the images on behalf of the school. We are also constantly creating promotions and marketing the specialty products that will bless the parents and will raise money for the school. We utilize Constant Contact to keep school officials and parents aware of the “latest and greatest” products available that will support their school.
• We provide annual CONTINUITY. As stated elsewhere in this FAQ, we have seen numerous photographers and parents offer protected photo galleries, and all of them have fallen to the wayside. Sometimes they shut down because it is too expensive to provide the service year for prolonged periods. Other times they shut down because the parent is just too busy with their own life, or their kids move on to new grades or another school, so the “volunteer” goes away and the galleries fade into oblivion. We have been at this for 5 years and we have a business model that will support your school for many years. As long as a school remains a member of Our Living Yearbook, their historical photo galleries will remain accessible. How cool will it be at graduation in 2024 to look back through your school’s Our Living Yearbook galleries and be able to obtain photos of graduates going all the way back to 2011!
• We handle all the tax reporting for member schools. Parents who make purchases also make tax payments to SmugMug, who in turn sends the tax payments to us for reporting. We eliminate this responsibility from the school.

Q: What does our school stand to gain by participating in Our Living Yearbook?

A: Lots. First it is a wonderful source of “new” revenue to the school. Second, it is a “gift” to families to get to see their kids growing up at school. Parents miss so much of their kids’ lives. OLYB helps parents to see their kids grow up. Third, it encourages and enables parental participation in school activities. In our first year of development, we were told by a leader of Liberty Christian School: “We would want to participate in this even if we never made a dollar because of what it does to encourage parental participation in the activities of the school, especially Dads, who often don’t know how to ‘plug into’ activities in the lower grades. With Our Living Yearbook, Dads could be the ‘official’ photographer at all the events they can attend.”.

Q: How does Our Living Yearbook help us make money?

A: 1) We offer a NEW income source: scrapbook snapshots. These are basically photos that have been taken by parents that other parents would like to have. Our business recognizes that these photos have value, and that other parents will pay for access to photos of their child. After a small OLYB management fee, 100% of the profit from the sale of these “scrapbook snapshot” photos goes to the school. 2) The “Low Hanging Fruit” with lots of “easy” development money is our “re-design” of the annual school portrait day. Instead of a national photography company making lots of profit, and giving some sort of rebate to the school, our business puts the vast majority of the profit into the school, while paying a local, professional photographer to take, edit, and deliver photos that will meet, and likely exceed those taken by the national photography company. We accomplish this because we can offer photos on-line, with dual layer security. Student’s photos will be grouped by grade, and NOT by individual name. With our system, parents get to see other students, they get to view multiple images of their own child, they get to “custom crop” the images to whatever size they want, and they get to order exactly the photos they want/need.

Q: How much money can a school make with OLYB?

A: That really depends on multiple variables. The range is probably from $0/student/year to >$100/student/year. The “success variables” include:

• parental participation,
• prices chosen by member school,
• marketing of new photos and photo products (e.g. Christmas photo cards)
• acceptance of the OLYB school portrait hosting model (i.e. paying independent, professional photographers a fee to take the annual school portraits, and having the school take ownership of these photos so they can be sold to parents),
• having a Fall AND Spring portrait session.

Q: How much does it cost us to have Our Living Yearbook in our school?

A: We charge $3/student/year. This is 25¢/student/month. And, to make it easy on schools, we do not require up-front payment of this fee. We will deduct it from a 50-50 profit split until we receive the full $3 per student fee. After the fee is paid, 100% of the profit goes to the school for the remainder of the school year. The fee starts again the next year.

We also offer direct marketing support to parents for an additional $1 per student per year. We believe that this is money well spent, but if a school wants to do all the direct marketing themselves, there is no obligation to pay this marketing fee. We will send marketing ideas and suggestions to ALL member schools each month, but we will not directly market to a school’s parents without enrolling in this service.

Annual school portraits are hosted at no extra charge. This is a BIG WIN for member schools. Schools can project $30/student less labs and photographer fee, which leaves about $20/student as available profit on school portraits. Multiply $20 x (# of students x participation rate) to estimate income from annual school portraits.

Please be reminded: Our Living Yearbook only posts portraits on-line. We DO NOT utilize printed forms, envelopes, manual order entry, or any of the “old school” processes. We post photos by grade and parents visit the site and purchase what they want, when they want.

Q: How much do the photos cost?

A: Our objective originally was to allow schools to set the price that their parents will pay. But, because there would be almost unlimited iterations in pricing if there were no guidelines, we have chosen to give schools a choice of pricing schedules for each photo gallery. Basically, OLYB consists of two types of photos: 1) donated snapshots and 2) professional portraits. Member schools can select from 3 pricing options (schedules A - C) for donated “Scrapbook Snapshots,” and 2 pricing options (schedules D & E) for annual portraits. Schedule E pricing reflects national averages for school portrait pricing and produces a net profit to schools of ~60% per order (58% – 63%).

In addition to traditional photos and file downloads, numerous specialty products are offered through our host partner. The price for this merchandise is the SAME for each of the 5 pricing schedules above. These products are priced at approximately 20% above cost. This merchandise is priced consistently so that marketing programs can be run across all pricing scheduls without risk of being discounted below our cost.

Click here to view the 5 pricing schedules. A-C are for donated, scrapbook snapshots. D & E are for posed portraits (e.g. school class, team and individual photos). We recommend schedules C and E for most schools.

Q: What is the most important variable in making OLYB successful at a school?

A: Parental participation. First in taking and sharing photos at school events, and second in viewing and purchasing photos, downloads, and photo-products (coffee cups, calendars, Christmas cards, etc.). Neither of these activities is new or unfamiliar to families today. What simply must happen is 1) the member school MUST, MUST, MUST express and continue to express its support for this program at their school. Parents want to help their schools, but they must be reminded over and over that Our Living Yearbook is important to the school. 2) Member schools MUST work with OLYB staff to help us obtain permission from parents to market the photo images and products to the parents. If marketing does not happen, results will suffer and development income will be lower.

Q: Why would a local photographer want to contract their services to us?

A: This is a GREAT question, and it is in many respects the “backbone” of the school portrait “re-engineering” business model. It took us several years to figure this out. The answer is basically that local photographers cannot compete with national photo companies that have developed huge infrastructure around manual order processing. That processing was perfected back in the film days, but it persists into the digital world of today. Because of the intense labor involved in processing envelopes and manual orders, local photographers are “boxed out” of the local school market. It is just too difficult to process orders manually. AND, local photographers cannot host photos on-line because of the limited/inadequate security that they can provide to schools. Together, these factors have removed annual school portraits from the photography market for local photographers. The OLYB portrait-hosting model puts the local school photography market back in the reach of local professional photographers.

The main areas where local photographers make money is in Weddings, Family Portraits, Graduation Photos, etc. Therefore, by participating in the OLYB portrait business model, which gives all of the profit to the school, local photographers can gain exposure to new clients where they can build the profitable parts of their business. This “marketing exposure” to the target market of families, graduates, and future brides is PRICELESS to local photographers.

Also, in the short term, because school portraits are taken during the week and during the daytime hours, this is usually a “down-time” for photographers. Therefore, having a photo shoot during that time is highly desirable. Schools can decide what to pay the local professional photographers with whom they contract to take the school portraits. Our market research says that a fee of $3-$5/student photographed is acceptable.

Here is an example:

- A shoot of 500 students would pay a local photographer $3-$5/student shot ($1,500-$2,500). Then, after lab costs (paid on-line by the parent) the school would make 100% of the profit.

- 500 students x 80% order rate = 400 students x $30 = $12,000 photo sales; minus Labs (est. $2,400) minus photographer fee (est $2,000 [500 students x $4]) = $7,600 (63%) net profit.

In the traditional “profit sharing” model, the example above would have earned the school $600 (5%) to $2,400 (20%), and the independent, local photographer would have earned zero. The profit would have gone to the home office of the national photography company.

Q: Can we put photos of students (especially little ones) on-line?

A: This was a question we asked back in 2006. We were advised that using the internet to deliver photos to a secure place is NOT putting photos “on-line.” If the photos are not available for public viewing, then the internet is no different than the US Mail. It delivers the images somewhere, but it does not make them public.

In 2006 we were advised that the term “reasonable expectation of privacy” was the threshold that determines when photos can be posted on “un-secure” sites and when they must be “protected.” The “reasonable expectation of privacy” concept says: when a student competes/performs in a public event) e.g. a football game, including players, cheerleaders, dancers, etc., the student and their family “gives up” the “reasonable expectation” of privacy. After all, they are performing in a public place. However, when a parent sends a child to school, and there is no “pubic event” going on that involves the child, the student/family then has a “reasonable expectation” of privacy. In order to post photos taken where there is a “reasonable expectation of privacy,” the images must be “protected,” which is why most photo-hosting sites now offer password protection.

What became obvious was that the security that protects the “delivered images” would “make or break” this business. Designing and implementing superior security set us back almost two years in developing this business. One year we used a single password (which is still the most common form of on-line security) but we realized that was not sufficient for images of children. Computer hackers (and all the derelicts who try to use the internet for malicious activity) can figure out single word passwords pretty quickly. Once we understood the vulnerability of single word passwords, we dedicated ourselves to developing security that was “second to none” in the photo-hosting world. We developed and utilize an authentication database that confirms the identity of each visitor with the list of “approved visitors” that are provided to us by member schools. Authentication databases are what people use to do on-line banking, so it is the industry standard for excellence.

Managing this security takes ongoing effort, which is why it is uncommonly used in the photo-hosting world.

Q: How do we upload photos?

A: You upload the images to our dedicated “upload site,” and upon receipt of the images, our staff will move the images to a permanent location behind our dual layer security software. There is some communication that must happen between the school and us so that we can create galleries and design links that parents can follow to find the photos, but the process is simple, and we do all the work once the photos are uploaded.

Q: Will OLYB take our school portraits?

A: YES! Because of our experience and commitment to this market, we will take the school portraits for member schools in the Texas market. We will also accept portrait photography requests from non-member schools, but we will prioritize our schedule to service member schools first. At this time, we will not be able to take school portraits outside of our regional market.

Portrait photography services are provided by Our Living Yearbook Photography. Our photography team has 5 years of professional, school photography experience, tens of thousands of dollars of professional equipment, organizational processes that will ensure a smooth “photo day” for schools, and pricing that support the objective of helping schools make as much money as possible from this fund raising initiative.

All portraits taken by OLYB Photography will be posted on-line, behind single or dual layer security. The use of envelopes to sell school photos is “old school.” On-line ordering is preferred by parents, and is much friendlier to the environment since order forms, envelopes, and unwanted photos are printed and wasted. Our goal is to help schools raise development funds, and if we can do that with less negative impact to the environment, that is a good thing!

Q: How and when does our school get paid?

A: Your school will be paid Monthly.

Q: Who actually hosts the school photos?

A: We have chosen SmugMug to host our photos. We have used other labs, and we have evaluated quality and support for each. We have been more than pleased with SmugMug. Their quality is good and their prices are reasonable. Most importantly, their software (for on-line perusal) is superior to any other that we have evaluated. They are the #1 rated site in the on-line photo industry.

Q: Tell me about your Marketing Support.

A: This is a variable cost that we highly recommend. In the 5 years that we have been developing Our Living Yearbook, we have seen a direct correlation between marketing and sales. Marketing drives participation and it drives sales. Our Living Yearbook staff will regularly make school administration and coordinators aware of marketing opportunities. And, for an additional $1.00 per student/ year, OLYB staff will communicate directly with parents and teachers at member schools. We will accomplish this primarily through the use of Constant Contact email, using a publication the we call “The Snapshot”.

In order for us to communicate directly with member school parents, we need their personal approval via an “opt in” invitation. In order for us to reach parents, the member school will have to use the school email to encourage parents to authorize OLYB marketing to communicate with them. Without their authorization, we will NOT be able to market directly to parents.

One of the most powerful marketing tools that can be used is the “special offer.” Member schools who choose to have us market to their parents must authorize OLYB marketing to offer special discounts to drive orders. An example of such a special discount might be “15% off Christmas photo cards ordered before Novermber 15.” All photo merchandise has been priced so that there is about 20% pricing flexibility over cost that can be used to create “special offers.”

Q: Can we put the OLYB security software “behind” our school’s log-in website?

A: No. We have found that doing this makes it very difficult for OLYB staff to manage the creation of links, and our business efficiencies are “blown up,” so we cannot authorize this.

Q: When can our school start?

A: Right now would be a good time!