

Kicksend partners with Walgreens for 1hr photo printing from your iPhone - skyfallsin
http://blog.kicksend.com/kicksend-for-iphone-now-lets-you-print-to-walgreens

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jes5199
Do people _want_ to print photos? Wasn't there an article a couple years ago
about how Flickr was making less than $1k per year on people clicking the
"Order prints" button?

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patio11
_Do people want to print photos?_

Ask a simple question, get a simple answer: yes. Many of my (female, older)
relatives use synthetic pigment attached to plant matter with animal proteins
as both their primary transfer mechanism and storage media for photos.
Ruriko's mother and my mother got virtually instant Dropboxed/Facebooked
photos from the wedding, cooed a bit, and then went head over heels when they
got the "real" photos. (Not the professional photos, which will be delivered
in data and print -- just the same friends' cameraphone/point-n-click candid
shots printed out at Walgreen's for $6.23.)

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mgkimsal
Wondering why Walgreen's (or CVS, or fill in your favorite store here) didn't
do this already on their own. An app that allows you to scan the camera roll,
select pics, then upload to their machines for printing... seems obvious.

Is this more feasible because the pics are already mirrored on kicksend's
servers, saving upload time?

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alpb
I believe this has almost nothing to do with servers and upload time etc.

People, naturally, don't tend to download some app to print their photos. In
fact, people are not inclined to print photos. So there's an app which people
actually use every day, it partners with a service provider to sell a service
and get commission out of it.

There are examples like Song Pop game gives you to opportunity buy the music
you guessed from iTunes. There's an affiliate problem of iTunes for that.
Because Apple (iTunes) itself won't be implementing a game to increase sales.

Here, the point is, people won't print their photos every day. But people will
take photos every day. So if I would download Walgreen app and can't find
anything to print at a moment, I'll forget to use and print it when I take a
picture with Instagram. So if I would see a print button integrated in
Instagram, it will dramatically increase sales.

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samstave
And if the payments come straight out of your apple ID account that would be
fantastic.

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tar
They would also cost 30% more.

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jes5199
that's not how percentages work. If Apple takes a 30% cut of your price, then
you have to raise your price by 42.8% to still make the same amount of money.

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untog
Ah, but if you offered the same service to Android users you couldn't do that,
because you aren't allowed to price things differently between iOS and other
purchasing options. Unless that has changed.

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alpb
I believe there's no restriction on pricing on different platforms. If mostly
wealthy people have iOS devices, then I might set app price to a higher value
than Android just to encourage purchases on Android. I think no one will ever
care.

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joe_bleau
I thought a Dropbox to (Walgreens/Sam's/Walmart/Target/etc.) app would have
popped up by now. Right click on a pic, select send to your store, pick up an
hour later. Maybe not.

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fuzzythinker
After 2 (maybe 3) print jobs from different Walgreens, I will never use them
again. Get are among the worst in printing, colors were so bad that my own
inkject seem better.

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mhunter
This is a result of Aviary's API - [http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/10/app-
developers-can-now-prin...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/10/app-developers-
can-now-print-to-walgreens-company-outed-as-aviarys-strategic-investor/)

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samstave
Great idea - hopefully you can partner with Target Stores as well as they have
a great picture printing kiosk in most stores.

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javajosh
What you really need is a version of Redbox that takes your phone, scours it
for photos, and prints them for you. It remembers which photos it's printed,
so you don't get duplicates between visits. Heck, might as well have it pull
credit card info, too.

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ConstantineXVI
Walgreens (and others) already have kiosks like this. Haven't used them, so
not sure if it's only for raw USB storage or they speak PTP (which most phones
seem to have).

