How's business?

Although my business is still relatively young, i have been getting more interest. One problem i seem to have is in my marketing technique. What is the most effective method you use; newspaper ads, approach realtors?

I recommend you read this book - it helped me a LOT: "The Photographer's Guide to Marketing and Self-Promotion" by Maria Piscopo

The Big Shots
South Africa
Interact, Immerse, Impress

One thing I wanted to point out is the "smart" Realtors never stopped using virtual tours and higher quality photos.

The "smart" Realtors know that the advertising and marketing they do on a current listing is often part of their job interview on their next listing. Especially in the higher-priced part of the market.

By continuing to spend marketing money in a good market, they're able to increase their market share.

What too many "average" Realtors and a lot of the photographers in this Forum don't understand is that there can be multiple reasons for a Realtor to do something.

Listing an over-priced home doesn't make sense for a Realtor who has a good inventory of well priced homes....unless the seller definitely has to sell because they're relocating to another town. Eventually the seller will have to lower the price enough to get the home sold. And the Realtor can't get a price reduction on a listing they don't have.

Or a Realtor who is low on inventory might take an overpriced listing in a popular area to get the calls from buyers that they might be able to get to work with them. They don't actually have to sell a house to make money on the listing. When I was selling homes (for those that don't know, I'm a licensed Realtor who doesn't sell anymore) I never sold my first listing. But I picked up 4 buyers who bought homes with me from calls on that house and listed another home becasue of work I did.

That's where good still photography and virtual tours can benefit the Realtors.

Homestore.com (they run the Realtor.com website) used to have a "sorting" question "Do you want to see homes with Virtual Tours first?" following the price, area, number of bedrooms, etc., questions. According to what they told me, "Yes" was the response 92% of the time. So the Realtors who use virtual tours get their listings looked at first and more often.

Really good still photos and virtual tours are tools Realtors can use to get higher-priced listings. This can be an important advantage for Realtors who have to deal with the more demanding owners of higher priced homes. And by giving them an advantage, I can charge more money for my work. That's why my biggest Realtor customer spent almost $9,000 with me last year. And she didn't say a word when I effectively doubled the price of still photos because she could see at a glance the difference in my new more expensive HDR work and my older cheaper point & shoot work.

Since most of us are one-man operations, trying to do lower-priced, lower quality, higher volume business just isn't practicle after a certain number of homes per day or week. I usually won't schedule more than 2 combined virtual tour/still photo shoots a day.

So going after Realtors who list and sell higher priced homes only makes sense. They're making more money on each listing, so they can afford better quality work. Here's the math; 2 or 3% on $500,000 is $10,000 to $15,000 gross commission. A good commission split with the broker/company is 70% to the agent and 30% to the broker, so that's $7,000 to $10,500 before expenses and taxes. A couple hundred dollars to get the listing is a bargain.

I even give them the tools to take to their listing presentation, like printing the thumbnails (they're big pictures, 8 to a page) of my HDR stills on glossy photo paper.

In fact they'll willing to pay more if they can see the difference in the work, because it makes them stand out from the crowd which is hard for Realtors to do because they're all operating under the same real estate laws, code of ethics and multibple listing service rules.

The slower real estate market is a great opportunity to raise prices after improving the quality of virtual tours & photos. We just have to be able to show them our work is of more value to them than our competition.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

I'm in the Chicago real estate business and we've seen a nice rise in buying and pricing the last few years it's a hot area to be moving to right now.

Thanks Ewart for this bit of information. Tourism here has been really interested and are my main clients at the moment. Developers and Hotels are also interested.

I will look for the book you recommended and read it.

Over the last six months my business has increases substantially. One area that draws a lot of interest is the tourism related/resort area. I have two websites www.realty360tour.com (real estate centric) and www.bcinfopage.com (tourism centric).

The tools i use are nikon d200-10.5mm-nodal ninja (thanks Doug). I also have a fifty foot tall remote camera mast with a 360 remote pan/tilt unit. Lateley, i have been drifting toward video (especially green screen technology) and examples will be posted on www.bcinfopge soon.

The idea is to be able to offer more than virtual tour shots. Some realtors have "virtual tour" links on their sites but they lead to a slideshow using the ken burns effect. Define virtual tour i guess??? So, when i speak with a potential client i market the marketing first then talk about the tools available to give them what they need.

I am becoming quite a photoshop CS3 and premiere CS3 fan. With www.bcinfopage.com i am able to offer services to other customers i.e. stores, restaurants, B&B's etc. They can create their own "mini-site" and manage it themselves, upload their own photos or have me create something for them either in slideshow form or movie form. Youtube and other additional marketing outlets allow me to offer more exposure as well.

All in all, it has been, and continues to be extremely interesting, challenging and rewarding.

Getting involved in community initiatives offer great exposure for new buinesses as well. The Canadian Cancer Society had their Relay For Life events in two communities that i support so i got involved as a voluteer photographer. They got a pano, many images and a movie to use as marketing tools.

Jake

Jake
Nice HDR work with those great views out the Outback Resort's wondows.

How's the traffic on BCInfoPage?

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Hi Doug,

Between www.realty360tour.com and www.bcinfopage.com visitors are viewing over 15,000 pages per month. This is up from only 4,000 six months ago. The incoming links from resorts, realtor sits, MLS and others really helps.

Have a look at the Relay For Life movies i've created if you get a chance. Your feedback on this would be great.

I am working on doing a film/still walkthough of a home to use as an example to post on the sites as well.

Your advice on using photmatix has been a real help. I also use a seldom known trick in CS3 to sharpen my images.

Your site is looking great as always... well done.

Jake

Jake
Quit lying! ;)

Your work taken with the D200/10.5mm are soooooo much better than mine shot with the Coolpixes

Those page counts aren't bad. How long have the sites been online?

I'm at home today and only have a DialUp connection, is there a DialUp version of the videos?

What's the "seldom known trick in CS3 to sharpen my images"?

I have Photoshop 5.5, so it won't likely help

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Thanks Doug,

I have always been impressed with your work though.

www.bcinfopage.has been up since last May and www.realty360tour since October of last year.

The photoshop trick is to use a highpass filter on a new layer. This eliminates the grey's and brings sharpness to colours. Very cool.

I don't have a dialup version of the videos unfortunately, they are strictly meant for fast broadband connections.

Jake
Don't get cocky now ;)

I got the Sigma 8mm f/3.5 for my Canon XTi & Nodal Ninja 3 a couple months ago. I just haven't had much time to practice with it. I think I need to work on the Nodal point

Those aren't bad traffic figure for such a short time

Something I just did seems to causing an immediate traffic increase. I had my webmaster change the Titles of the pages so, instead of reading "Sandia Peak Tramway, Albuquerque, NM", they now read "A Virtual Tour of the Sandia Peak Tramway, Albuquerque, NM" or whatever the appropraite location or event is.

The Sandia Peak Tramway page was only changed about June 15th, but its moved up from the 16th most popular Entry Page last August (as far back as I have details)to the 2nd most popular so far this July with almost a 200% increase in Entry Pages Viewed.

Maybe if you change the Titles to include the phrase "Virtual Tour", maybe you'll get more traffic from the search engines

Do a search on Google for sandia peak tramway and you'll see the difference on the reults page

I'll see if its possible to do a high pass filter with Photoshop 5.5

Keep up the good work

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Doug,

Do you get a full circle image on your canon with the Sigma lens? I am looking for a lens that will give me the full circle image for my Nikon d200 without having to move to the full size sensor that the new D3 offers.

I'm a bit of an SEO specialist and although titles are important (very important) so are H1 tags, link text, Alt tags, bolded text and even comment tags within the html page.

I also use Google analytics and visistat to track success. For keyword research i use IBP.

I forgot to mention that another popular thing for my clients is purchasing domain names for their properties. Some use www.theaddress.com but i take it a step further and use something like www.vernonluxuryhomewithview.com or okanagan3bedroomonlake.com. It's an effective SEO tool and somewhat profitable. In time i will own many domain names that i might be able to lease out if this activity gains in popularity.

Jake
No the Sigma 8mm gets cropped by the Canon on the sides (in Portrait position) and a little at the top & bottom.

I've been experimenting just little with tilting the camera & lens back a bout 10° and shooting 4 shots around so I don't need a Zenith shot. Like I said I'm having a little bit of Nodal Point problem, but the Zenith is fine.

The Sunex 5.6mm produces a full circular image on the smaller sensors like your D200 and my XTi. I've test stitched a few sets of 3 fisheyes and they stitch pretty easy. Even though the lens has 185° FOV, they're having a problem getting it to produce a good stitch, but I just traded a post with a VR company in the UK that's working on a Rotator that will postion the Nodal Point correctly for a 2 fisheye stitch.

The new Sigma 4.5mm will also produce a full circular image on our cameras but the FOV is exactly 180° so it can't be used for 2 fisheye stitching.

As far as SEO, VirtualAlbuquerque.com has always done well. Most, but not all, of the locations and events are usually among the first 10 results on Google, but when people are seeing a "Virtual Tour" listed among the other results they seem to be trying it out a lot more that just the name of location like the other results have.

Douglas Aurand
Albuquerque, NM

Thanks Doug,

I'm not so worried about having the ability to stich 2 fisheye images. Personally i prefer 3 or 4 images. At the moment i have to shoot 6 shots to get a 360.

So, you say that the Sunex 5.6mm is a 185 degree lens but won't work with the Nodal Ninja? At least that's how i understood it.

I haven't seen the Sigma 4.5mm lens but will look into it.

Jake

Doug,

I got so excited about the Sunex unit and researched it on Ken Rockwells site. Now i have ordered it and the rotator. I hadn't heard of Sunex before but evidently they have experience with this equipment.

Very cool......thanks.

Jake

Thanks Doug,

I will look at this and wait for the order to arrive. I did choose the 3 stop rotator and will let you know how it works.

Jake