With over 100,000+ paying customers, 100 million photos and revenues over $10 million a year, SmugMug is carving out a fine business following for themselves in the professional photographers market.

Charging $40-150 a year doesn’t seem like a deterrent for them. Although it goes against the majority of the Web 2.0 company’s business models out there offering service for free, the key to success in this subscription service is convenience … the service has never made professional photography sales so easy on the internet. Upload photos and they’ll do all the business transactions from charging the customer to printing and mailing them.

Key changes just launched make it more superior service than many of its competitors. New features include live Ajax refreshes on photos, increase site navigation, increased browser compatibility and a better user interface.

Whoever said you can’t make money charging for a Web 2.0 service. However, if you do start charging for a service, it has to be vastly superior to any competitor out there or else you are going to fall flat on your face.

Site [SmugMug] Via [Techcrunch]