Transcript: WGAN-TV MSPs: How to Price Matterport, Photos, Video and Drone13468
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| WGAN-TV | Real Estate Media Services (including Matterport) and Pricing with Eli Jones. Eli is the Founder of Ft. Worth, TX-based Norman & Young photography agency (and Matterport Service Provider) and the Creator of Real Estate Photographer Pro course | Wednesday, 28 October 2020 Transcript: Matterport Service Providers: How to Price Matterport, Photos, Video, Drone (and More) ✓ Real Estate Photographer Pro Course by Eli Jones ✓ Webinar (Pre-Recorded): How to Get Started as a Real Estate Photographer by Eli Jones Hi All, Below is the transcript ... Must watch show (above) if: 1. you are new to real estate photography 2. you are new to virtual tour photography 3. you are deciding your pricing strategy 4. you are deciding on your pricing 5. you are revisiting how you price your services 6. wondering what are best practices for pricing strategies and best practices for pricing 7. wondering how to simplify your service offering 8. wondering how to simplify your pricing --- If you are just starting in real estate photography, you likely have questions about: 1. which media services to offer first? For example: photos, video, drone, 24/7 Open House Virtual Tours 2. how to price real estate media services That's why I invited Real Estate Photographer Pro Course Creator Eli Jones to be my guest on: ✓ WGAN-TV Live at 5: Real Estate Media Services and Pricing This WGAN-TV Live at 5 show aired live: 5 pm EDT Wednesday, 28 October 2020. Eli is also the founder of Norman & Young. His real estate photography business has grown to 18+ employees. When it comes to pricing, Eli's mantra is: Simplify! Simplify! Simply! Among the questions that I asked Eli on WGAN-TV Live at 5: 1. You are the Founder of Ft. Worth, Texas-based Norman & Young, a $1 million; 18+ person real estate photography agency. How did you get started? When first starting out as a real estate photographer, which media services should you offer and why? 2. Simplify! Simplify! Simply! What does that mean regarding real estate photography services 3. How do you charge for real estate photos? 4. How many packages to offer for photos? (For example, 25 photos; 36 photos and 50 photos?) 5. How to charge for drone photos? 6. How do you charge for real estate video? 7. How many packages to offer for videos? (For example, 25 photos; 36 photos and 50 photos?) 8. Why does it make sense to also offer video? 9. How do you charge for drone video? 10. 20. How to charge for Matterport 24/7 Open House Virtual Tours? Does that include floor plans? 11. How to charge for Twilight photos? (virtual or real twilights?) 12. If you are new to residential real estate, is it okay to begin with 24/7 Open House Virtual Tours? 13. How to structure pricing for each media service: photos, video, drone, virtual tours, other? 14. 12. How many photos should be included in a photo package? 15. Should you do your first (media) free? 16. How to differentiate from competitors? 17. How might pricing vary based on markets? For example, Los Angeles, New York or Waco, Texas? 18. How long should it take to shoot photos inside a typical listing? 19. How important is it to be the best real estate photographer? 20. How important is editing of photos? Do yourself or outsource? 21. What's the different between offering a "service" and offering a "product" [productising]? 22. How do you make services into products or packages? 23. What is a MLS and how does that affect packages? 24. Your thoughts on charging by SQ FT for a Matterport tour: says, 2,500 SQ FT or 3,500 SQ FT? 25. Do you include floor plans with a Matterport tour or offer as an Add On? 26. What are the best Add Ons and why? 27. How to charge for video? 28. What are your thoughts about charing distance fees? 29. Why do real agents switch to you from other photographers? 30. What pricing strategies to avoid and why? Best, Dan P.S. WGAN Forum Member? Save 70 percent on Real Estate Photographer Pro course when you watch this free video: How to Get Started as a Real Estate Photographer by Eli Jones. --- Transcript (Video Above) - Hi All. I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Wednesday, October 28, 2020... And, you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. Our topic today, Real Estate Media Services and Pricing, how to simplify, simplify, simplify, and we have an awesome guest to take you through this, Eli Jones. Eli, good to see you. - Dan, you as well. Thanks for having me. - Thanks for being on the show. Eli is the Founder of Fort Worth, Texas-based Norman & Young, a photography agency; 18+ photographer agency, and is also the Creator of Real Estate Photographer Pro course. So, just a super expert on today's topic. Eli, before we jump in, how about just taking us back a little bit, so that we have context about how you got started as a real estate photographer? - Yeah, absolutely. So, like most people, they have a funny story of how they got into this. 'Cause real estate photography, it's not one of those things you just wake up and say, "Oh, I'm going to shoot real estate". People do that with weddings, with portrait, stuff that makes more sense. So, everybody has an interesting story, and mine is, I'm sure like many, I always was interested in cameras at some level. I wasn't skilled with them. I was just interested in them and I'd always shot for fun, but never really had a way to make anything out of it. And my family moved from Alaska to Texas, I guess about six years ago, six, seven years ago at this point. And my Mom, when my parents were buying their personal house, decided to become an agent just to save commission. And so, I went with her one time to do a favor to a broker. In those days, and we'll talk about this as it kind of develops here in the conversation. But in those days, cell phone pictures were the King of everything. And so, the broker had asked my Mom, "Hey, can you go take cell phone photos of this house?" I was with my Mom and I was like, "Wait a second, I have my camera, "I don't have to shoot real estate, "but let me just try it". So, I shot some photos. I broke every ... what I consider now, to be rule of real estate photography, and took photos that today I would never deliver to a client, but they were good enough at the time. And then that was enough to get me started, just because it was competing with cell phone photos. I didn't have a great product, but what I was competing with, wasn't great either. And so, as time went, I came to be referred to more and more agents, I spread through that first office pretty quickly. And then one agent was kind enough to share me with a competitive office to theirs. And I grew in that office, and it started a town called Granbury, and it just kept growing from there. We had two employees in Granbury, and kept growing into the larger DFW area. And I guess it's been four years since we officially started the business. And when I say we, the businesses called Norman & Young, which is my middle name, Norman, and my brother's middle name, Young. So, at a certain point when it got too busy for just me, I convinced my brother to join forces with me, and we started doing it together. And over the last four years, we've grown from just us to the company as a whole. Now has I think about 18 employees right now. So, it's not been an extremely quick road, but we've grown consistently and had a lot of fun doing it. - That's awesome. Four years ... up to 18 plus employees. I would imagine that really qualifies you as a subject matter expert and authority on Real Estate Photography and Virtual tours, as a Matterport Service Provider. I would say, for the purpose of this show, let's just assume that I've decided, for whatever reason, I want to be a real estate photographer. And in particular, I want to do virtual tours. And so, I've come from a completely different industry, and I've landed in the We Get Around Network Forum, and I'm super-excited about getting started with virtual tours, and I'm ready to start pricing my services. So, I think even before we touch that, maybe you could advise me, to say, what service or services should I offer, since I'm new to the space of residential real estate photography? - Yeah, it's a great question; definitely something I have a lot of opinions on, just 'cause I've been doing this, kind of as my daily ... for the last multiple years. And I've seen a lot of people go wrong by doing this the wrong way. And so, before I answer what I think is best to start with, and what I think you should stay away from starting with, I kind of want to cover how the real estate market has changed over the last 10 years. Because that really lends itself to why I recommend the services I do starting today. So, like 10 years ago, and even before 10 years ago, when someone wanted to see a house, when someone wanted to buy a house, they didn't go online. It started to be the case over the last 10 years, but at 10 years ago, they weren't going online. They went to the Keller Williams office, and they met the receptionist, and the receptionist referred them to an agent, and then sat down with that agent, and they said, "I want three bedrooms, two bathrooms, "and I want a pool in this neighborhood." And then that agent would then go compare a list of active properties. 20 years ago, that was a physical book. And it started to become more digital between 10 and 20 years ago mark. But either way, that client went to an agent and said, "Find me a house". Well today, things are so much different. Five years ago, things started to be so much different, where when I'm looking for a house today, I don't go find an agent first. I look on Zillow, I look on realtor.com. I look on any of the other public sites, and I find one, two, three houses that I like, and then I call the agent. And so, because of that, there's been a massive shift in the industry, where, before, the agent had all the power, but now, what's displayed online, has all the power. And so, real estate agents know that cell phone photos, aren't going to cut it anymore, because whether or not they get a sale, or another potential client that they can show a different house, it totally depends on the media they presented with online. So, if you go to Zillow, you don't click on the house that has awful photos. It just does not happen. Might get lucky enough traffic, and someone will, but for the majority of houses, the better the photos are, the more traffic they get. And the more traffic that listing gets, the more likely that agent is to get a call. And it doesn't matter if that agent sells them, that exact house, but the agent then has a lead they can sell any house to. And so, agents know this. Because of that, it's completely shifted to where photos are the primary driver of residential real estate sales. Now it kind of gets me into the next thing, which is, so, photos are the primary driver, 80% or so of our revenue is coming from just standard still photos, not virtual tours, not drone photos, not anything like that. But, that doesn't mean there's not a place for them. And so, what I recommend always is get started with just standard photos. If you already offered 3D tours, great, just add photos quickly. But my recommendation, having done this for a long time, and having coached a lot of people to building successful businesses like mine is, you can't start with one of those ancillary services that I consider them to be. And so, there's a place for 3D tours, there's a place for drone photos and video, but the place is not initially to catch that attention. And so, because of that, photos are so much more important. But agents know that because they don't have to do all the work that they used to have to do, they don't have to compare to those physical books, they don't have to find 10 properties to show a client, they know that they need to market themselves more towards the next listing. And so, let me explain what that means for a second. Photos, I always say, sell the house, virtual tours, videos, drone, photos, that kind of stuff, sell the agent, especially virtual tours. Everybody, and this is why a lot of people got into doing virtual tours, they're so cool. It's great technology. It feels too good to be true when you start using it. So, because of that, virtual tours are really great tool that an agent can use to help win their next listing. But, they most of the time don't sell the house. And because of that, we don't generate nearly as much revenue from the virtual tour side of the business, as we do our standard photos. So, I always recommend getting started with just standard photos. It doesn't mean you can't start with virtual tours at the same time, but if you just start with virtual tours, you basically take in about 80% of your business potential off the top. And you really need that 80% to gives you consistency, especially if you want to go full time, or scale a business like I did. - So that's a real aha moment for me, thinking that I'm going to be new to the residential Real Estate Photography space, and the first thing that I think that I want to offer, is our virtual tours, 24/7 Open House Tour. So, I think what I'm hearing from your business, starting out first as a solo photographer, and now up to 18 plus employees, since 80% of your revenue is actually coming from bread and butter photography photos-- - Yeah. - I'd be way better off going after a much bigger slice of the pie, the photos, than I would be starting out with virtual tours. - Definitely. It's my opinion that you really have to start with photos. My business wouldn't exist if we only offered virtual tours. It wouldn't exist like it did. There's a great place for virtual tours, they're awesome in real estate, but if you're shooting real estate specifically, if you're doing work for businesses and other stuff, virtual tours are amazing, you could do just those. But in residential real estate specifically, you to offer standard real estate photos to compete. Because, another factor too is, besides just that 80% of the revenue, agents want a one-stop shop. So, you will need to offer virtual tours. And if you already do, that's great. But if you don't offer the photos, they're more likely going to go to someone that offers photos and virtual tours. It's very unlikely that they'll use company "A" for photos and you for just virtual tours. So, it's so so important to have that one-stop shop. And I think, initially you can start, if you're going to pick one, you have to start with photos. You want to scale as quickly as you can, as you can offer virtual tours as well. But you have to start, in my opinion, with that photo side of the business, or you're just really limiting yourself. - Okay. So, I'll start with photos first, but I'm hearing I need to be a one-stop shop. How quickly do I need to get up to offering other services? And what are those core services that a real estate agent would expect a photographer to offer? - Yeah. So, speaking back to my experience with this, the first two years of my business, I only offered photos. And so, I think you do have some time with just photos, just because most agents only order photos. You'll lose a percentage of the business that wants 3D tours too, but you have some run room with photos. That being said, the market's changing quickly, and it's becoming more commonplace to expect everything. So, I had two years, but that was a number of years ago. I think, as long as you're working towards that, it's definitely something that, it doesn't need to be instantly, but I always tell our members that you're... By not offering that, there's a ton of opportunity cost, and a ton of loss to business, for something that isn't going to take you a lot of time to add, or a lot of money. And so, while I think you could go probably indefinitely with just photos, it's my recommendation. And it's definitely in your financial best interest to start adding virtual tours and other services as fast as possible. To talk on kind of the second part of the question, which was what is an expected service, or what makes a company full service? There's a really easy way to simplify it down to three services. You have to offer photos, 3D virtual tours, and videos. It's not, I would say an order of importance, Photos are most important, 3D tours and 360 tours. 20% of open houses, whatever you want to call them, are second, and videos are third. Within each of those categories, there's some different things like, for photos, you probably want to offer drone photos, for video, you want to have the capability to offer drone video. But the core and the primary services you'll need to offer are photos, 3D tours, and videos. - And in We Get Around Network Forum, we do really have a lot of people that come from different fields and they're totally enamored on starting with virtual tours as their first entry into residential real estate photography. And again, I can only surmise, if 80% of your business is coming from photos, and the other services or video, drone, virtual tours, maybe some other services, there's not a really large percentage, which I would translate into demand for virtual tours, that would allow someone to make a living full time, particularly in many markets where they're likely to be competing with a photographer that's offering photos, video, drone, virtual tours. - Yeah. And what I always tell people too is, starting a business is not the easiest thing you're going to do in your life. It would definitely be very rewarding, but because it's not an easy thing to do necessarily, you want to give yourself the best chance possible. And I think it's not a good way to go, just starting with virtual tours. Because you're starting behind, and you really want to start ahead of what everybody else is doing. And by offering only virtual tours, you just took a huge portion of that business and just tossed it out. And I think, a lot of people start with virtual tours because they're really cool. I share that same thing. I still think that's the coolest technology ever. And so people are enamored with them. They want to start with them. And the other thing is, they think taking photos is hard. It's not. There's the same process that can be repeated every time. And so, I think those two factors, lead a lot of people to starting with 3D tours, which ultimately I think, prevents them, or at least makes it more difficult for them to achieve what they're looking to achieve, whatever that is. Maybe that's a side income, maybe that's a full-time job, maybe that's scaling like I did. Whatever it is, you definitely want to give yourself the most potential and advantage possible, and not start behind. And I think if you just start with virtual tours, in my opinion, you're definitely starting a little bit behind and you're just making it harder on yourself. - Before we jump into pricing, you did mention, I want to say, for core services, first, photos, second, either virtual tours or video, second and third, and fourth, drone, presumably photos and video drone photography. What other Add Ons might a photographer offer next? What's the next most popular services when we finally get there, when I get there? - Yeah. And then that's a great question. Because one thing we tell our members as well is, you have to have that base photo business. That's what you know is paying the bills. That's what's doing that, but a lot of your profit and a lot of that extra money that makes being in this industry really worth it, comes from little Add On services. And most of them don't take a lot more time, or much skill to learn. And so, there's some small ones we offer like room measurements. When agents list a house for sale, most MLS systems, which is where the agents post the house, they have to input the room measure. It's not a floor plan, the room measurements. We'll talk about floor plans in a second, but they need master bedroom 18 by 20, guest bedroom, 24 by 11, whatever it is. And so, we charge, it takes us five minutes. We charge $25 for that. And we'll kind of get why that it starts to be really profitable in a second. But we charge $25 for that. We offer simple floor plans. We recommend a software that does it so easily. You don't have to draw anything. We charge $65 for those. We teach our students to make virtual twilight photos, which are really cool. It's where you take a daylight photo, and you convert it to look like it was taken at dusk. We charged an additional $95 for that. We have a bunch of services like that. Those are the most commonly ordered ones that I would say. You get into some other stuff like agent intros on video, stuff like that. It's not ultimately that profitable, but those other ones I just mentioned, can be really profitable. Because if we look at it this way, let's say you charge $150 for a standard 36 photo package. So, you go to that house and you shoot it, and it takes you an hour and you made $155. Well, if you just added on $95 virtual twilights, that take you an additional 20 minutes of total time, you took your $155 and made it $250, or $150, and made it $250. And so, that's a significant increase for a little bit extra time. And so, that's one way that we really recommend and help our students grow their profit. Because that's the important thing, it's how much you can make per hour. And so, those Add Ons, little as they might seem, like room measurements, and virtual twilights, and floor plans, really add up to be significant income. And significant income, that really makes the difference between just getting by and really making a lot. And so, that's some other services you can offer, but really the core of the business is always going to be those photos, videos, and 3D tours. And then of course you have drone, but that's drone photos and drone video. - Okay. Awesome. And you mentioned students. So, presumably those are students of Real Estate Photographer Pro course, which is the other piece of your business. Later in the show, I'll ask you about that course. We'll also have some special offers, including one from We Get Around Network, for a Real Estate Photographer Pro course. So, back to those four core services then. I'm just starting out, okay, I've mentally I've made the shift, I'm a business person first, more than I am a geeky artist person that wants to offer the tours, so, I understand if I really want to make a living as a real estate photographer, I got an offer photos. You started to talk about pricing. Do you want to talk a little bit about maybe strategy on pricing, even before you maybe give some specific examples? - Yeah, definitely. And one thing I think, even before we get into anything strategy at all, is just understanding that different areas have vastly different costs of living. And I think this is one thing that can really discourage someone, or make them think it's going to be easier than it is. Say, we have students in Oklahoma and other States, where the cost of living is nowhere near what it is in California or anywhere on the coast, really. And so, they might see that, "Hey, in my market, I can only make $95 shooting a house". And then they see guys in California charging $350, and they're like, "Oh, I'm never going to be able to do this". But what they don't see and what they don't understand is that the guy who's charging $350 in California has an insanely high rent or mortgage payment, has a much higher cost of living, and pays way more in taxes. And so, the way I look at it, and that's kind of the nice thing about the Real Estate Photography industry is that, regardless of where you are in the country, and we have actually students around the world that will say the same thing is, it's relative. How much you make is very relative to your cost of living. And how you live will be about the same as a real estate photographer, regardless of where are. So, I think that's really important. When I talk about specific pricing, my company is based in Fort Worth, Texas, which is a fairly middle market. So, some places you won't be able to charge as much as us. And when I talk about my pricing, someplace, you'll be able to charge more than us. I think that's very important to understand from the start. So, you don't get discouraged or you don't start thinking that it's going to be an easy road to make a ton of money. Which, it's a great opportunity, It's a great industry, but it depends on where you live, and you're really noticing that in pricing. - I won't get discouraged when you start talking about pricing, as long as you can show me in Atlanta, how I can make a gross a hundred thousand dollars a year. - Definitely-- - Can you do that? - Say that again. - Can you do that? Can you show me how I can make ... - Yeah, obviously, I can't say like specifically you as a person will be able to, because there's a lot of factors. But what I would say is that, anywhere in the U.S, that is possible, and we have students doing it in most markets. Just like any business, there's skill involved, there's frankly, more than skill. Like, I don't think I have a lot of skill in this, I just work hard. And so if you're willing to do that, there's great opportunity. Like I said, at the start, and this is what makes the opportunity so great is, one, the market has changed where photos have become so, so important, where media has become so, so important. And that just really makes the difference. But two, and this is even more important, I would say, nobody for the most part wakes up and says, "I'm going to shoot real estate." They don't just wake up with that. And so, there's not a lot of like, just demand for it, not a lot of new photographers flooding it. And one more thing too, that I think is funny is, a lot of people think real estate is like the bad side of photography where you don't make a lot. And I love that. And frankly, I'm fine with people thinking that, because there's more opportunity for those of us that do shoot it. - Okay. So, I'm ready to price photos. Where do I begin? - Yeah, and so there's a couple of things-- - I'm I charging by the hour, I'm I charging by the square foot, I'm I charging by the number of pictures? Is there yet some other way to charge for my service as a photographer? - I guess one thing I will say is that, one of the things that I think has made us successful, and this will make sense kind of when I talk about pricing, is, we keep things, very simple. People, as a whole, not just Realtors; anybody likes things simple. They like knowing what they're going to pay for, they don't like being surprised by fees and everything like that, they don't like complicated pricing structures. And that's one thing I've always known just as a person. I don't like when I can't understand someone's pricing, or I go to their website and there is no pricing. Immediately like I'm out. So, the first thing you have to do, this is something, it's one of those things like, you're not going to do this well without posting your pricing on your website. So, don't think you're going to have someone call, and it's going to.. They don't see your pricing, they're more likely to call. Not true. First thing, whatever pricing structure you decide, and we'll talk about those in a second, absolutely, have your pricing posted on your website. It's not the same for weddings, or any other type of photography. For real estate, you have to post your pricing. So, you get to that point and you're like, "Great, I'm going to post my pricing." But then, and I always encourage people to do this. They start looking at their competition to determine what a market rate is. They see that, competitor "A" charges by the square foot, and competitor "B" has these weird list price thing, where it's at it's $500,000 house, I get this much, and they do that. And so, they start going, "Okay, how should I price my services?" Well, I am a huge fan of simple flat rate pricing. And so, what we do at my company specifically, on the photo side, we'll talk about that first. But the pricing ideas that we have-- - This is Norman & Young. So, if they want to go to NormanandYoung.com, NormanandYoung.com, that's your website, yeah. And so, we post all of our pricing, and it's simple flat rates. We have a 25 photo package, It's $135, 36 photo package, $155, and 50 photo package, $175. It does not matter how big the house is. It doesn't matter how expensive the house is, it doesn't matter how much lands the house on. And our agents really love that. And they've actually given us feedback saying they've loved it. Because a lot of other companies, by square footage, by list price, and they really never know what they're going to pay, gives them some anxiety. And so, we like them to know if they want 36 photos, they're always going to pay $155. And I think that's so important is pricing that. And people think, "Oh, I'm going to get ripped off. "they're going to have me shoot an 8,000 square foot house "and I'm only going to charge $155." A couple things on that. The first thing is you're going to shoot an 8,000 square foot house for 150 bucks, and you're also going to shoot a 600 square foot apartment for 150 bucks. That evens itself out. It really does. But number two, at least with the way we shoot, it doesn't really take that much longer to shoot a massive place. We're delivering 36 photos, either way. There's a little bit more walking between photos, but ultimately we spend about 45 minutes on site regardless. And so, that's why I'm a big fan of that. It works better for our clients, and for us, it works out to be great as well. And so, that's one thing that I'm really passionate about with our students, is helping them price services in a way that's going to give them a leg up, and make their clients really liked using them. That's so important. That's a constant that we teach in our courses, the more your clients like... The more they like you, and the more they get to know you, the more confident they are with you in terms of everything you offer, the more likely they are to keep using you, but more importantly to refer you. And so we build everything client first, and our pricing reflects that. - And why 36? Why not 35? Why not 30? Why not 40?. - Great question. (And the sun's coming out, so it's getting nice and bright in here. Sorry about that guys.) But the reason we do 36 specifically is because in our area, the max amount of photos they can list a house with is 36. So, it fills up our MLS system, which is 36 photos. Some places it's 25 in some places there's no limit, but for us, the average agent wants those 36 to fill up every slot available. And so, that's why we have that package. And that package, out of all of our packages, probably, if you take our photo packages, 90% is a 36 photo package, 10% order smaller one, 10% order a bigger one. That 36 package is our bread and butter. - So, for me to price our photos, don't immediately think, "Ah, you've been successful, I should use 36". No. In Atlanta, got to go find the multiple listing services. The MLS's here in Atlanta and... Pointing back here. I don't know. I think it may be it's actually there. It's there. I have to find out how many photos does the MLS max out on, that would be a clue of what the real estate agent really wants to buy is. Perhaps the max number-- - It's really easy to find out. You just look up MLS, your city, so if you're Atlanta, Atlanta MLS, call them, ask, they'll tell you, you don't have to call an agent. You could ask an agent to, if you know, a real estate agent, but calling the MLS is an easy way to figure that out. And that's definitely... Whatever that number, if they say 29 photos, 29 photo package is going to be your highest selling offering regardless. I'm not even just talking about photos, you're going to sell way more 29 photo packages than 3D tours, aerial photos, everything. That will become your bread and butter. - Okay. Well, the number that you gave for 36... Forgive me, was a hundred-- - $155, yeah. - $155. So, 155 doesn't sound like a lot of money. So, can I make a living on $155 for shoot? - Yeah. - So, depends on where you are. So, yeah, like I said, here in Dallas, Fort Worth, we're a middle market and there's a couple of things. And the first thing I want to hit now right off the bat is, if you're spending six hours in a house for $155, you're never making money doing that. And so, like I said earlier, our method takes about 45 minutes in a house. So, you could say that 45 minutes, so, you have 30 minutes of driving between shoots. A realistic day for our photographers, and for me, when I was shooting, is about four houses. If you really get in greedy, you can shoot six, but it depends on how much you want to work. So, four houses times 155, that starts to look a little better, right? Because at that point we're looking at way more. - Hey Siri, what is 155 times four, times 22. - [Siri] 155 times four is 620. - All right I didn't get far enough with this. So-- - So, 620 Times... So, 620, a day potential, not saying you're going to make that every day, there's rainy day, stuff like that, but 620, and then you have 22 business days in a month. It's $13,600. And so, that shows you, you don't have to... You're not going to have to work yourself to death to make a good living. In our area, I would say, a really good living, that someone's going to expect from a decent job here, is somewhere around the $50,000 a year mark. And so, at $13,000, we're seeing that we're 3 times that, and again, that's busy. Four shoots a day, you're working, but a lot of us work a lot and so, I'd rather work a lot doing that. - Okay. But I wanted to get to the number for... Let's say I worked 22 days a month, times, 12 months, times four shoots. I can't do the math, can you help me out here? - So, that would be? - Yeah. I mean, to pick it to a specific example, I was actually talking with the guys in our course. And when I say a guy he's 20 years old, so, he's really young. He's been doing this for a year, and he just hit $14,000 this October. So, that is possible, you just have to have no rain. but I mean, if we're doing, let's say you're averaging 10K a month, times 12, that you're looking at $120,000 a year. - Let's just say I'm doing two shoots a day. - Yeah. So, what I found is, approximately if you do one shoot a day, you make about $50,000 in a year. If you factor in the average amount of Add Ons you'll book. So, if you do just, and that's something we didn't even factor into that last calculation, but if you're doing just two base shoots a day, you're always going to be at $310, 310 times 22, $6,820 a month. Standard expense rate, maybe 20%. But a lot of that you're already paying for anyway, your car and stuff like that, that you can deduct obviously depends on where you are. But $6,800 times 12, I mean, that's another good one. Two shoots a day is like the easiest job ever, honestly. It's you work in the morning kind of thing. And that's, I just closed it out here, $81,840. And so, that's the cool thing to me. And that's why I think it's so funny when people talk about Real Estate Photography not being a great photo niche. Yeah, you only get $155 per project, but you get super consistent projects. They don't take long. And that's one of the reasons I love it. It's just great earning potential. - So, if I can now add a second service, why would I want to add video? Let's let's start there. - Yeah. And so, one thing just to go straight to the numbers on that, is our average shoot at Norman & Young. It depends a little bit on the time of year, but we're averaging somewhere around $190 to $200 per property that we visit. And that even factors in the re shoots that we go do for free on occasion, if our photographer, miss something. Regardless of what it is, the average photographer driving to a property, is netting us about $190, or is grossing us, I should say about $190. So, if you multiply $190 by four, you start to see what a normal really good day is. And it's something a lot of people... I remember really, really well the first day I made 100 bucks. I went and told my parents, I thought it was the craziest thing ever, but it shows what you can do. And that's why volume is so important in this. You have wedding photographers like, "Oh, I make four grand a wedding". Yeah, You do two weddings a month. Maybe, maybe right now you don't need two weddings a month, and you have a lot more stress involved. And this is just consistent every day. - Okay. So, in terms of video, why should I offer video? And then how do I charge? - Yeah. So, offering videos, one of those things, again, it's an Add On that some agents are going to want, and they want a one-stop shop. So, by offering video, you firstly, open yourself up to a bigger pool of clients. Number two, video is a skill that not a lot of people have, but it's not that complicated. To me, it's actually easier to shoot video than photos. So, we can teach you to shoot videos, and you can charge, we charge about $250 for a one minute video. So, in a one minute video, and let me say this before I get to that, 15 to 20 minutes shooting, it's not long. And you can hire out the editing. So, you shoot that you got the $250, plus the $155 from the shoot, and you just made one shoot $400. But you'll notice that a lot of people order video, they'll order drone photos too, they'll order virtual twilights. And so, the nice thing about operating everything is, you realistically will do a lot of shoots that are $600 plus, and still are only taking two hours onsite. It's a real possibility there. And so, that's why, again, the profit, those really good days that you go home and you're like, "That was a really good day," comes when people order a lot of those Add Ons. 'Cause there's days we've done two or three of those shoots, when it was me or just me and Aaron. We've done two or three of those shoots in a day, on a really good day, and that becomes know sort of a wild amount for one day. - You only shoot video for a client, or is it typically it's an Add On price? - Almost exclusively in Add On. So, and when I say that, they can order it all at cart, if they just want a video for 250, they're free to order it. It's just very uncommon. The only time we would typically see a video by itself, is if house wasn't selling, and they wanted to get some new stuff going. But typically, we get videos, we also got photos. If we get video, we typically get drone photos, or a floor plan or some other type of Add On. - And you mentioned only a minute long. Why a minute? - Just because people's attention span online is very, very short. And so, if you have an agent pay for a two minute video, which we charge an additional hundred, so $350, I always encourage them to order one minute, because they're not getting extra money. They're not getting extra value for that extra minute, people are only going to watch a minute anyway. And then on Instagram too; a minute is the limit, unless you want to go over to IGTV. And so, that's why I recommend a minute. I think. One thing that goes back to your point, I want what's best for our clients, and what's best for them as a minute. So, I always make sure to tell them that. Builds goodwill with them too. They see that, "Oh, Eli, wasn't just trying to up-sell them to a two minute video". He said in this case, it wasn't worth it. And so, we made great money at one minute, it gets our clients the best results, everybody's happy. - And when you price it on your website, you do price it all at cart, so, it's not an Add On price, it's the same price, They either add it on or come out and shoot only video. But you know they're going to order photos first, and maybe video second. - That's the thing consistent with all of our pricing is, every single service we offer is all at cart. We have no packages or anything like that. It's all just very simple. You get what you want. And our clients love that. That's one thing they've told us. And so, that's another good thing to add to the pricing conversation is -- Actually there's one thing I do want to say specifically. People will get really funny, they'll say, "I want them to order photos and videos". So, they'll make photos and video on a package with a little discount, and they'll call it the premier package, or something. When I say premier package, what does that mean? It doesn't intrinsically mean anything. And so, when agents are referring, they'll say, 'Oh, I get the premiere package". And then people are confused. But when agents refer us, they say, "Oh, I get photos and video, and it's this much". So, it's very clear in that. And that's one thing that's very important. And I really liked that we do À la carte I think, and our agents do too. - Okay. No packages. (Continued) |
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| (Continued) -- - no packages. I know a lot of people will throw their hands up, and talk about marketing psychology and anything like that. But our students and our business does very well with no packages and our competitors that have a ton of packages don't do nearly as well. And so whether that's the packages specifically, or a bunch of our factors coming together to make us a strong business, I don't know. But I do know that people were really like, and they've told us this, which is weird to get feedback on specific stuff like this, but it happens. They really like how everything's straightforward, À la carte. There's no extra fees if you don't package. There's no complexity at all. They always know. - And so, a theme I'm hearing is simplify! Simplify! Simplify! When it comes to pricing-- - Absolutely. I mean, if you look at the competitors that... Our business businesses made up of people who used to use other companies, those companies have wildly complex, complex pricing structure, just to the point where it's like hard for me as a real estate media business owner, to even understand how much they charge, which I can't even imagine how hard it is for a new client. - Well, so why do people come to you? They were using a different photographer first, so why are they switching to you? - Yeah, that's a great question actually. And a lot of people spent so much time thinking that if they improve the quality of their photos, that the clients will come, and that could not be further from the truth. The entire reason that we have the business we do, because, and I can tell you this with certainty, because our photos were not always as good as our competitors. Now we've had time, they're better, but they weren't always. But we still got business. And It comes 100% back to customer service, and the level of experience we providing. A lot of businesses say they all have great customer service. And we say that too, but really it comes down to the customer experience. And so, we've tried to look at everything we do from how they book with us, how easy that process is, how simple it is, to what our photographers introduce themselves as, and how they present themselves, and how well they're dressed, and how accommodating we are with retouch requests, and how we're willing to move stuff. And so, we've built our business, we've gone out of the way to make it so clients love to work with us. And that means we have the flexibility to where if we mess up, they're not worried about it. We just messed up. They're like, "They're great." Otherwise, if we charge more than other people, they're like, "It's great, it's worth it". And so it gives us a huge competitive advantage. So, to me, it's not the product that sets us apart. It's our service. - Awesome! I'm trying to understand, why did somebody leave another photographer? What's the pain that the photographers are causing, that you can result in them reaching out to you, whether it was a referral or not? - Yeah. And so, there's the common ones and the funny ones. The common ones are - the unwillingness generally to help prepare a home. That's one of our big selling points is, we'll spend 15 minutes tidying stuff, regardless of how well the agent tells the homeowner to prepare, there's always stuff out. And so, we've actually heard people say, "Oh, the photographer, said for insurance reasons, "I can't touch anything." That's not true. They need to find different insurance. I have great insurance, it's cheap and it doesn't tell us we can't move anything. So, that to me is just honestly a lie to get out of doing work. So, there's stuff like that. And there's other stuff like the photographers are not really, they're not invested in, they're not nice, they're not easy to work with. We get a lot of that. "I'm the photographer, I know better" competitors. And those are my favorite, because of the clients don't like working with them. We get funny ones like the photographer wouldn't go in because the air conditioning was off. What? The photographer wouldn't shoot the backyard, we had this one recently, because they saw a fox. And so, to us, it's really the customer service, and it's our accommodating that we do, and to make the experience great, both for the agent and the homeowner. - Do you know what the fox said? - It sounds like you're going to tell me. - I don't, just curious. - I know. - Do any real estate agents leave photographers because their pricing is too complex? - No, I couldn't tell you directly. I do know that we've heard people say they love how simple our pricing is. So, whether that was the reason itself, or maybe just like a catalyzing factor that made them make the switch, I don't know. And I think, usually, it's a multitude of things. It's messing up a bunch of other stuff like that. - You're talking about two kinds of pricing. I'm going to ask you about virtual tours in a second, but I really wanted to jump right to drone photos and video. How do you charge for drone and video? - Yeah. So, drone is one of those things that, I think people vastly overcharge for it, because that used to be acceptable when it was way harder to get a license to fly a drone. It's not the case anymore, you just have to take a test. When I first started, I literally, in order to get my drone license, which they changed this midway through fortunately, but, I had to learn how to fly like an actual Cessna, to get a drone license. And because of that, you could charge more. But those companies that were established kept charging more, even after it just became a pretty easy knowledge test that you have to take. Just the written test. And so, I think people really overcharge. And I think another thing to take into account is how quick drone photos are. We, it takes us an extra 10 minutes. And so, we kind of use that as something that's a common, we want people to add drone photos as much as possible. And so, we only charge $95 for our drone photos. That used to be dirt cheap. Now that's pretty much more typical. But either way, I think drone photos are one of those ones. I'd be happy if you were charging $65 for drone photos, because more people are going to add it. $65 for 10 minutes of work is always a great exchange of time for money there. And so, that's how I recommend. But again, simple flat rate structure, we charge $95 for a drone shoot, that comes with eight drone photos. We'll shoot 12, if it's an acreage property, it needs some more, but they're getting billed for eight, and our clients like that. They just order your own photos and we take care of them. - And video, is that a separate charge? Drone video? So, it is and it isn't. This is the one thing that we have figured out the simplest way to do it. But our normal videos are $250 videos include drone video, no extra charge. If a property is not in an airspace we can't fly in, and deserves drone photo, meaning if there's a landfill behind it, we don't want to use drone video obviously. But if it's a piece of land that you know is great, has made usable add drone video. And so, that's at our discretion, but almost always, we add that. If they want a standalone drone video, we have a :30 drone video that we charge $135. - And is that edited video? - Yeah. So, it's not one long cut or anything. We take a bunch of shots and we edit them together. Back in the day, it was me doing all the edits. Video edit is again, one of the things people way over complicates, not that hard to cut video to use it quickly. I can bust out a whole real estate video, whole :60 video in 30 minutes. No, it doesn't take long, and they're good videos too. It's not garbage. And so, yeah, that's an edited video. - Okay. Virtual tour. So, you offer Matterport, - Yes. - You charge a square foot. Do you charge by the hour? Do you charge by the price of the house? I'm going to guess not, based on this simplify, simplify, simplify. - Yeah. So, again, simplify, simplify, simplify, but we do have a little protection in place here. So, we charge $155 for a Matterport tour, but we say that that's up to 3,500 square feet. Over that, it's an additional $30 per thousand square feet. And that, unfortunately, goes against that part of our pricing, but we don't almost ever actually charge the client for that. So, they have a 4,500 square foot house, they still get billed $155. What that's there to prevent, is the occasional 14,000 square foot house that would literally take hours to scan. Just gives us an ability to say, "Hey, that's going to be this much." We charge that one out of a hundred tours, more than $155. So, again, the lion's share of that, they Add On a virtual tour, It's $155, super simple. - So, whether that's a apartment, or a house, or a big house. - Yeah. - You'll still charge $155. - Yeah, keeps it really simple. And again, same as the photos, you shoot a big one, you shoot a small one, it evens out, but the clients love it. They're paying the same every time. - And will you come out and shoot just a Matterport tour for $155? - Yep. Just a Matterport tour, and it'll be $155. - Do you get requests for that? Not as a standalone, I just want Matterport. That's all I want. - Not very often. COVID made that more common, but still not very often. It's almost always paired with something else like photos. - Okay. And so, when you offer your services, again, there's no bundling, there's no package pricing, there's no discount, is just, I go to NormanandYoung.com website, and we'll see very straight pricing for photo, video, Matterport, and drone photos, drone video. On Matterport, do you offer floor plans? - So, what we do is a little different than some people. We don't use the Matterport cameras, the ones that are actually made by Matterport. We us Ricoh Theta Z1, they're great cameras. But the downside of that is, you can't get a normal floor plan through Matterport. They don't allow you to, with those third party cameras, we don't offer those anyway. And from Matterport, we use a software called CubiCasa. But for the actual Matterport, what we do to make it a little different, a little more interesting, and our clients actually really love it, that's some of the time, the reason they ordered Matterport, is we'll go into the Matterport editors, screenshot that dollhouse floor plan, and then label the rooms. And so, you get a 3D floor plan that I think is really cool. And actually we've had clients say that's the only reason they ordered the Matterport, was to get that photo floor plan, that they can then put in with the rest of their photos. - Do you charge extra, or does that come with the Matterport tour? - Used to come with it. We actually charge extra now. We charge an additional $65, just because it was kind of a workflow pinch point, and it was taking us some more time. So, within our Matterport category, we have base Matterport, $155, 3D floor plan plus $65, and that is the only service you have to order another service for. You have to order a Matterport in order to get the 3D floor plan because it's a byproduct of Matterport. - So, I think part of what I'm hearing on price, as a newbie photographer in Atlanta, real estate photographer, I want to earn $100,000, and if I could order offer just one service, I could get there. If I offer two services, I have a larger pool of potential real estate agents. But if I offer three, four services, then whether they order a service, A, B, C, or D, and that's all they want, I still can get to my $100,000. But in the reality, the first thing that they want, the real estate agent wants, is real estate photos. - They want real estate photos. Yeah, and you can definitely get $100,000 with just photos. But it's one of those things, the more services you offer, every time you add a new service, you're expanding the pool of potential clients that would be willing to work with you. And you want that pool as large as possible, obviously, because that gives you the best shot. - So, and then, I believe what I heard was your average order, even if your photos are $155 for 36 pictures, it sounds like they're not many shoots that you show up for that you don't offer... The real estate agent typically buys at least one or two additional services from you. So, your average order price is still way more than $155. - Yeah. So, it fluctuates depending on the time of year. In winter, agents typically don't spend as much. In winter, I really mean just in December, for most markets. So, they might not. But throughout the year, we're averaging over 50% of the houses we go to, will order more than just base photos. Maybe that's a small Add On, maybe that's just a floor plan or room measurements, or maybe that's something larger like videos. But on average, over 50% are adding on to that. And what really brings that $190 number down, it would really be more like $250, but occasionally we'll go just shoot drone photos. And so, because that's a much smaller number, it brings an overall down. But realistically, you're averaging about $200, or a little bit more than $200 per house that you visit. - Bringing you back to my interest as a newbie photographer in Atlanta, thinking about... I was first thinking about virtual tours first. But I think now I'm totally convinced I really should start with photos. Okay. So, I grew up taking pictures in high school, but I don't think of myself as a great photographer. Do I need to just kind of put things on pause and wait until I'm just awesome at my craft of taking pictures of houses. - So, that's question we get all the time, and first I'll say, I was not an awesome photographer and I'm still not. I just know Real Estate Photography very well. And so, one of the questions we often get is, "Do I need to go learn a lot about cameras "before I even start this?" No, and honestly, the more you know about cameras, the more I'm going to have to teach you to unlearn and learn in different way. Real estate photography, I tell people this all the time, is much more a science than it is an art. There's a right way to do things. And what I love about that, and what's allowed me to scale, is it means you do the same thing every time. There is a right settings to use. There're right settings to use that you almost never change. There's a right way to shoot a photo. And so, that's what I like is, not only was it easier for me to learn, I didn't have to have years of photography experience, but also, it's easy for me to teach a new employee. So, we're able to, at Norman & Young, and this will kind of show you how fast you can get up to speed. Took me longer because I didn't have... There was nobody to follow. There was no courses to buy at the time. So, it took me a while because I had to learn, but we have new photographers go from zero, never used a professional camera before, in two weeks they can offer photos, videos, Matterport, drone, photos, everything, because of how fast we're able to get them up to speed. And that's not like, "Oh, we're skilled at training". It's because it's a simple process if you only need to learn what you need to know. And that's one thing I like about real estate is, it doesn't require you to be a super versatile photographer, or a photographer at all. You'll learn stuff about cameras as we teach you, but you only need to know a very specific and narrow amount about photography. We get requests to shoot portraits all the time, and shoot weddings and it's great people trust us. You do not want me shooting your daughter's wedding. That is not going to end well. The photos are not going to be great. Because I know so much about real estate, and that's what I zone in on, I don't know about other types of photography. So, you don't have to have experience coming in. - Yes, but I just have this angst that I'm kind of good, but I don't think of myself as a great photographer, let alone I haven't done real estate. So, I don't know, maybe that segues into your course, Real Estate Photographer Pro, maybe you could talk about the course, why I should take your course. - So, when we first built the course, It's something that I've wanted to do for a while, because I saw that we were doing it in a different way than a lot of other people. And the reason I knew it was different is because I'm in a lot of Real Estate Photography forums online. I'll see people ask a question. I assess 30 comments below the posts, and I'll read through the comments. And like every comment is all the same, and it's all almost the opposite of the advice that I would give. And so, I thought that was kind of interesting. And so, when I first built my course, I started thinking, "Okay, I'll teach real estate photographers "how to do it the right way". So, I built it, and really aimed at real estate photographers. But I found that a lot of real estate photographers are kind of stuck in their ways, and they think that I'm the one doing it wrong, and I'm not going to fight an uphill battle. And so, since then, built the course to be for anybody who thinks this field is interesting. Not necessarily real estate photography. We have a lot of real estate photographers buy it, and really change their business, but for the most part, this is for somebody who just wants to be in this industry, wants to make a great living, doing something that's not awful. They want to be in photography. Maybe they want to offer virtual tours. They love drones - Something that made them curious about this industry. And we're able to take them regardless of what their experiences and help them do exactly what we do at Norman & Young. And so, we always say kind of, Real Estate Photographer Pro was built as a business in a box. It's everything, it's all my experience over the last seven years, really narrowed down and refined to be an exact step-by-step guide on how to build a business. And for different people, that means different things. Some people don't want employees. I understand that having employees is a lot of work. Some people just want to be a fully booked photographer. Some people just want to make an extra $2,000 on the side, whatever it is, you can take what we've learned, and get there a lot faster. That's one of the thing-- Or, I'm sorry. Excuse me. - No, go for it. - I'm sorry, I stepped on you ... while you were about to finish your sentence. - Yeah. And I'm just saying, regardless of what your skill level is, we really built it for someone to get what they want out of the industry. And that's something I really like. There's a lot of, whether it's YouTube videos, or forum advice, I like practical straight to the point, no fluff. And so, that's kind of how we built our course. They're short, easy to digest videos. And we don't say... A lot of things, they'll talk - Here's 30 different options you can choose, and they'll go through the pros and cons of each. When I was starting my business, I didn't want that. I wanted, "You've tested all 30, which one should I do?" That's my course. We tell you exactly what we do and exactly why we use it. And we don't fill it with all that nonsense about "Here's what you could do, or you couldn't do this. "You also could do this." It's just like, don't do. Just do what we do. It's what made us successful. And it's what will make you successful. - So, for context, for our viewers, Real Estate Photographer Pro course, the easiest way to get there, WGAN.INFO/repp ... WGAN.INFO/repp I'll talk about a special offer for Real Estate Photographer Pro course coming up. So, assuming I don't have a lot of experience in photography. I was in IT, I was in something else, I was in television entertainment. In fact, we did a post just today, and then We Get Around Network Forum, and asking what'd you do before virtual tours? And the answer didn't really come back: real estate photographer. It was something else. So, I imagine that there's a lot of our Community that that has a proclivity for photography, but may not understand everything about real estate photography. So, let's just assume I'm somewhat new to photography, and I just looked at this space; looks interesting, I've heard you go through the numbers, sounds like something I could make gross $75 or $100,000 in my first year if I hustle and I follow your course. Is the course... Is it designed for me? Is it designed for someone who's just starting out? - Yep. This question we get a lot, and it definitely is. We have built it out in a way where it doesn't matter your experience level, you're going to be able to follow along. The only prerequisite I tell people, is that you need to be willing to learn and put in the work. And if you're willing to do that, it's a step-by-step guide, it will teach you everything you need to know in a way that, maybe you're going to have to watch the occasional video twice. It's meant to be that, it's meant to be a reference guide, but if you're willing to put in that work, and the info is there, it doesn't require outside learning, it doesn't require YouTubing stuff, we teach everything from start to finish. - I'm about 60% through your course. And I just find it awesome! - Thank you. - I have not taken any of the things to tell me about camera settings, or Photoshop, or anything about the photography part. I've initially said, "Oh, I just want to learn all the things about business, "and pricing strategy, and your customer service style, "and the examples that you show". So, I wish this course - I bought my Matterport camera in July of 2014, and I was new to residential real estate. I came from television and entertainment, completely unrelated space, and I immediately jumped into virtual tours. And I know had I bought your course, had it existed when I started, that it probably would have profoundly helped me succeed faster as a real estate photographer first, and then as a virtual tour photographer. And I did take the time to watch your course on training of Matterport, and I thought that was awesome. It's a little bit different, for our community that's maybe been around for six years now, and we've been through a Matterport Pro 1 Camera, Matterport Pro 2 Camera, Matterport Pro 2 Lite camera, and now, just with the 360 cameras starting out, I thought it was awesome that Norman & Young has focused on using a Ricoh Theta Z1, mashed up with Matterport in order to have a workflow that's super-fast and works, and the tours come out great. So, congratulations on that. I think that's awesome. - Thank you. And I-- - But that was really where I was too, I wish, that's as one thing, we built the course I wanted, I wanted to build the course that I would have liked to take. And so, that's really what we tried to do. But yeah, on the Matterport aspects, specifically, we bought the Matterport cameras too. They're expensive, they're slow, they're great quality, but they're expensive and slow. And so, that's been a workflow change in the last year for us, and we've really enjoyed; switching to that Z1. - Yeah. And I think part of that really kind of goes back to perhaps your philosophy of good or good enough, that you could obsess on the quality and say, no, Matterport Pro 2 3D camera is far better in terms of producing the quality of the imagery, versus a Ricoh Theta Z1, and plus, enables you to get, floor plans ordered through Matterport. But I think as a business person, you've said, "No, no, the workflow is way faster, "we're hiring a number of photographers to join the team, "we don't want to spend $3,000 or more "on a Matterport camera" A Ricoh Theta for a thousand dollars, and probably the quality is going to keep getting better, and the price keeps coming down over time, that I really thought for, particularly, for the next generation of virtual tour photographers that are looking at Matterport, that you're teaching a workflow that is super-fast. You can, just the nature-- - Much faster, yeah. When it comes down to it, what we always say is we're all about our clients. And that's one of the reasons we don't mind the expensive cameras. If we bought those, not only would it cost us more and take us longer, but we'd have to pass that cost onto our clients. And they don't want that. They have told us it's good enough. It's great. That's what we want. And so, we're very receptive to that. Very focused on clients. And a funny thing happens when you focus on your clients, as you stop wasting money on things your clients don't care about. And so, that's one of our philosophies is, we focus on them and we let them tell us. We don't arbitrarily decide what's good enough. We let them be involved in the process. And that's kind of how we've gotten to where we are today. - Yeah. I think in your course, you talk about, perhaps a product-market fit, I think maybe-- - Yep. Yeah. Product market fit is the word we're all looking for in any industry. We want to make sure our product works with the market. And that looks like a number of things. Product market fit isn't just your product specifically, it's how your clients want your customer service to look, and if you're in the Los Angeles area, it's fine to charge $300. But if you want to charge $300 in Los Angeles, and take great photos, there's a market. But if you want to charge $300 and take really great photos here, there's no market. People don't want to pay for that extra 5% in quality. And so, we're laser-focused on what our market needs. And, of course, as we've expanded the students in other markets, we've added new things that we would do if we're in their area. So, that way we can serve everybody. But overall, it's a theme, you'll learn in the course is that, it's really important to know your market well. We teach you how to do that. And we teach you how to serve your market well, based upon what they're actually asking for, not what the other photographers offer, not what someone on the Facebook group tells you should offer, what your clients actually want. Because if you offer something that your clients want, at a price they want, you have a business. And it's as simple as that, if you do it right. - And that price that they want, it still works for you, it's probably, cause we have this discussion in the forum all the time, about, are you an artist, are you a business person? And if you've come to the conclusion that you're a business person, you're likely going to say, "If I'm going to use Matterport, "then my workflow really needs to be a Ricoh Theta Z1, "because I need to be able to shoot fast, "with a relatively affordable camera solution. "And that's going to enable me to price at that $150". - Yeah, yeah, That's such a good thing to talk about. What most photographers do wrong is, they start with the product they want to offer, and then try to price it to whatever makes sense for them. We start with the price agents want to pay, and then we figure out a workflow that we're profitable at, within that price. That's a huge thing. It's very important. If you do that, right, you're way more likely to find success. You have to start with your clients. You can't start with what you arbitrarily, or someone else online tells you, you need to start with. All about what the price your clients want to pay is, and then you determine. It's up to you to build a workflow that makes it profitable within those numbers. - Yeah, and I think what you're describing. Eli, I could talk to you like hours on this topic. I also know that, I've been lucky enough to complete 60% of your course, focused on the business part, everything else, other than the photo matrix settings, - The tight angle, how to actually get it done, yeah. - Photoshop setting, I'm a Canon person. I'm curious to go through all that. But, my impression of Real Estate Photographer Pro course that you've created is, first, if someone is totally new to this space, it's like, "why are you taking two seconds to think about any other kind of research?" Because you've built, first, you built it as Norman & Young. First, you build it as a one photographer agency, and now as an 18 plus photographer agency, and everything that you teach in your course, is actually things that are from what you've learned at Norman & Young. So, you're not making it up. You literally say, "Hey, we've done this, this works for us, "this is why we do it, here's how we do it". And, I think, for anyone that wants to succeed faster, Real Estate Photographer Pro course does that-- - Not only is it built off of our experience, but as we... It's a living course. So, as we change things at Norman & Young, that gets updated in the course. And so, what that prevents our members from doing is, have to focus any energy on research. We do that part for them. We test it and we find best practice, and then pass that onto them. And so, not only is it some of our best practice in what we've determined, but it's actually evolving as we learn. And I think that's very important. So people don't get left behind. We're still.. I still have my Real Estate Photography business. We shoot houses every day. I might not be answering the phone anymore, I might not be shooting myself, but I'm very well involved in it. And I think that's important to still be practicing in that sense, because it keeps me up to speed with what's going on, and it doesn't get antiquated. - Yes. And this thought of you updating the courses is just making me crazy because I'm at 60% completion. And I feel like I want to get to a hundred percent, and you're just going to keep adding helpful and useful content to it. So, before I talk about the special offer we have, I think one of the things that's interesting about, there's many things that are interesting, and useful, and helpful about Real Estate Photographer Pro course, one of them, which I think is pretty unique, is that you have your own private community, and you're doing two live shows a week in Facebook. Can you talk about the Community aspect of the course? - Yeah, it's so funny. So, when we first built the Community side of it, we have a private Facebook group, as you said, and I wanted to offer that because I saw all the other Facebook groups out there with the bad advice. So, I was like, "okay, if we can make a group, that's just our students, "there'll be less of that bad advice", because they'll all have taken my course. So, I did that without a lot of hope for it. But honestly, we have a lot of people say it's just as valuable as the course itself, because you have now 2,400 other members. I think only about 1,900 joined the actual group of our 2,400 people are on Facebook. But 2,000 members, who've all taken our course, that help you instantly. Obviously I respond to every email I get, but sometimes that takes 12 hours. If it's the end of the day, I'm not going to respond till the next day. So, that Facebook group has provided a super-great place to learn from others, be encouraged by others, but coming from the same background. So, you're not doing things our way, and then someone tells you, you need to do something a different way and now you're confused. It's everybody coming from the same perspective. But on top of that, one of my goals was to make myself as accessible as possible. Because not only does it help me understand my clients better and my members, so I can make the course better, it helps them, and it actually showed there's a lot of course out there that make the course. They give it to you and they're gone nowhere to be found. So, because of that, not only do I answer a lot of questions in there, my team is in the room, you can see here, the Real Estate Photography Pro team, they're answering questions in there daily. And we do two, one hour live streams every single week, where we answer questions. And so, not only do we provide a great course content, but we wanted to have that backend, that support. So if someone needed help interpreting something, or had a specific issue, they weren't just on their own. And I think that's really something that makes our course incredible. Really separates it from a lot of the others out there. - Yeah. I think it's awesome. Private Facebook group, nearly 2,000 members and that you do at two live shows within Facebook, private shows, - Within that private. Yeah, It's only for members. It's not a sales live stream. It's just sitting there. It's usually me Mark, who was the COO of Norman & Young and Aaron, who, as the co-founder of Norman & young, we sit there and we just answer our members questions. - Yeah. I attended yesterday and it was helpful to see, while you read the chat, people have questions, and you're answering them live, and you have a brain trust of three, you and two of your colleagues answering questions. So, I did promise that we had a special offer for We Get Around Network. For those watching the show, if you buy a Real Estate Photographer Pro course, using our WGAN affiliate link, two things happen. One, you'll save 70% on the price. And second, you'll receive 12 months free WGAN-TV Training Academy. So, we've probably have, gosh, it seems like a hundred hours or more, where we've interviewed typically, Founders of 24/7 Virtual Tour platforms, software, camera companies, third-party service providers in the space. And so, if you want a deep dive, you can sit back for an hour, an hour and a half, and listened to a subject matter expert on a topic that you have a deep interest in, just as if you were getting the best demo possible from the founders. So, that's typically what's in the WGAN-TV Training Academy. Tons content on Matterport, but also on other platforms as well. So, again, if you use the link, WGAN.INFO/repp that's WGAN.INFO/repp, for Real Estate Photographer Pro that will automatically use the WGAN affiliate links so that you automatically get the 70% discount on Real Estate Photographer Pro course, plus, you'll be eligible to automatically receive 12 free months WGAN-TV Training Academy. I also wanted to talk, Eli, you've put together this awesome webinar, "How to Get Started as a Real Estate Photographer." And I think that is just like an awesome way just to get started if you're totally new in this space. Can you talk a little bit about that course, and why you put that together? - Yeah, so, there's a lot of online courses out there. There's a lot of different people offering online courses. And so, rather than hide everything behind the course, and obviously, if you just go to the WGAN.INFO/repp link, and you can joined the course, you're going to learn everything in there. But if you want to learn a little bit more before committing that, you can watch that webinar where we basically explain, and it's some of what I covered here, but some of it more in depth, we explained why real estate is a great opportunity, what market changes have led to real estate photographers being needed, and then we teach you how you can get started in the industry. Again, that's all included in the course. But if you want a little bit more before you just trust some guy who you watched on the internet, that's what we wanted to make. We wanted to make it, so we didn't hide everything behind and you had to buy it to see what was in it. You can actually learn, learn from me, see how I teach, and see if that's a good fit for you. And so, if you do want to do that prior to looking, I encourage you to check out that link. - And I highly encourage our audience to watch it there, even if you don't decide to buy Real Estate Photography Pro course-- - Yeah, definitely, its really worth it. - There's a ton of content in about an hour webinar, that Eli has already recorded. It's called "How to Get Started as a Real Estate Photographer." The WGAN link to get there, WGAN.INFO/reppwebinar And if you do decide to, that'll automatically, it's an affiliate link for We Get Around Network, so, if you do decide to watch the course, the webinar, "How to Get Started as a Real Estate Photographer" you'll automatically get that special offer for Real Estate Photographer Pro course, as part of watching that webinar. So, either one of those, I think links, WGAN.INFO/repp to go right to Real Estate Photographer Pro course, or WGAN.INFO/reppwebinar to go right to the webinar, "How to Get Started as a Real Estate Photographer. And I think lastly on that course, if you're just starting out, I think one of the first questions you're going to have is, "What gear should I buy?" And you get, you get a link that takes you to the gear that Norman & Young, that Eli recommends getting started with. - You'd be surprised that it's not... A lot of people get all this expensive gear. We don't use and we don't recommend gear that I think is uselessly expensive. So, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised with the gear recommendations we have. - Or you can use your own gear. - And that's any camera you have is going to work, so, it's a nice part about it. - Yeah. Eli, are there any questions that I haven't asked you, either about the photography services, offering, or pricing, or pricing strategy that you wanted to talk about today? - That pretty well sums it up? I would say anything you do, that you have to focus on the business side, not just the creative, not just the product you're pushing out. So, the business side is super important, and the biggest part of the business side is good customer service. So, if you take anything away from that, doesn't matter if you take my course, if you learn from me at all, focus on your customers, and you'll really be surprised what it can do for you. Because, I know that to be true from my experience, but tons of our students find that to be true as well. And so, that's what I pass on and leave you with. - Awesome. Eli, thanks for being a guest on the show today. - Dan, thanks for having me. It's my pleasure. - You bet. We've been visiting with Eli Jones. Eli is the Founder of Fort Worth, Texas-based Norman & Young, a 18 person photography agency. And now also the Creator of Real Estate Photographer Pro course, for Eli in Fort Worth. And I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the, We Get Around Network Forum. You've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. # # # # # |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
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 Black Friday Pricing for Real Estate Photographer Pro Course by Eli Jones Hi All, Here is the WGAN Affiliate link for Black Friday pricing for Real Estate Photographer Pro course by Eli Jones. I highly recommend this course for you if: 1. you are new to residential real estate photography 2. you are thinking about offering virtual tours to real estate agents Real Estate Photographer Pro course includes a 30-day money back guarantee from course creator, Eli Jones And, this is a very good deal. Here is the WGAN Special Pricing for Real Estate Photographer Pro course year-round for comparison. Plus, when you use this WGAN Affiliate to buy Real Estate Photography Pro Course, you will also receive - FREE - the first 12 months of WGAN-TV Training Academy membership. (no credit card necessary) Real Estate Photographer Pro Black Friday pricing is good now through midnight Eastern Time, Black Friday (27 November 2020). Happy holidays, Dan WGAN Related Discussions ✓ WGAN Forum discussions tagged: Real Estate Photographer Pro Course |
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