WGAN-TV: Realtor.com Enables Asteroom to Easily Publish to Realtor.com - Plus, Asteroom New Ala Carte Pricing for Real Estate Photographers with Asteroom Co-Founder and CEO Eric Tsai | Thursday, 21 January 2021


Screen Grab: a live listing on realtor.com (Asteroom 3D tour)

Asteroom 3D Tour


Transcript: Realtor.com Enables Asteroom Seamless Publishing to Realtor.com

Hi All,

Transcript below ...

In this WGAN-TV Live at 5 show (above) that aired Thursday, 21 January 2021, Asteroom Co-Founder and CEO @EricTsai:

1. Demos how to add an Asteroom 3D Tour to Realtor.com (via Asteroom Desktop Editor and Asteroom App)
2. Discusses the significance of seamless integration with Realtor.com (86 million unique monthly visitors)
3. Discusses new ala carte pricing for photographers ( see: Asteroom.com/photographer )

Plus, I discuss Special Pricing for WGAN Forum Members

Special Offer for WGAN Forum Members

✓ The first Asteroom Pay Per Tour Bundle is free for WGAN Forum Members with promo code WGANAsteroom on this special Asteroom landing page - for a limited time - effective today (Wednesday, 30 September 2020).
✓ Additional Asteroom Pay Per Tour Bundles are now $49 each for WGAN Forum Members. [Use this WGAN landing page for Asteroom with Promo Code: WGANAsteroomMSP

Best,

Dan

Related WGAN Forum Discussions

✓ Transcript: WGAN-TV Introduction to Asteroom with Founder and CEO Eric Tsai
✓ Transcript: WGAN-TV | Asteroom Desktop Editor with Co-Founder/CEO Eric Tsai
✓ Transcript: WGAN-TV Asteroom Virtual Staging
✓ Transcript: Realtor.com Enables Asteroom Seamless Publishing to Realtor.com
✓ WGAN Forum discussions tagged: Asteroom | Realtor.com | REALTOR
✓ WGAN-TV Training U in Asteroom (free)

Transcript (video above)

- Hi all, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. Today is Thursday, January 21, 2021, and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.

We have an awesome show for you today: Realtor.com enables Asteroom, to easily publish to Realtor.com ... That news just breaking … two days ago on Tuesday.

Plus, we're going to talk about Asteroom New ala carte pricing for real estate photographers. And, joining me here is Eric: good to see you again.

- Hello Dan, hello everybody.

- Awesome. We got Asteroom co-Founder and CEO Eric Tsai joining us to talk about the big news. Eric, Realtor.com has 86 million unique monthly visitors. Give us the context of why real estate photographers should be super-excited about this big news: Realtor.com enables Asteroom to easily publish to Realtor.com ...

- Sure, thank you Dan. So, no matter what kind of tour solution you use Matterport, Asteroom, Zillow 3D ... so on and so forth, the whole point of creating a tour is to all the buyers and the potential sellers can see it, right?

And we're really excited that we can leverage the 86 million monthly visitors of Realtor.com ... and to really push these tours out to these home buyers therefore helping the agent to sell homes faster, get more offers so on and so forth.

- Awesome. Let me read a little bit from the Realtor.com press release that went out just two days ago, and ask you to comment on it, Just take me a moment to call up that screen.

A Realtor.com consumer survey conducted in Spring 2020 found that 65% of home buyers believed that virtual tours would continue to be a great resource in their home shopping process even after the pandemic, and while the pandemic accelerated virtual tour adoption at the peak of the lockdowns, listings with virtual tours received 17% more views per property.

That momentum has continued in December 2020. Listings with 3D Tours on Realtor.com were up 227% since the pandemic began in March 2020. You have some thoughts on those amazing statistics from Realtor.com?

- Yeah, we've probably added/contributed to that 200% growth like Asteroom itself grew a 1000%, 10X over year in 2020, that was quoted in an Inman article just published a couple of days ago, last week comparing Asteroom with Matterport.

So yeah, like we are seeing a similar trend as Asteroom continues to grow, we're excited that we're bringing more tours to all partners of Realtor.com. Obviously there are still a lot of listings out there.

I believe last time I got a number on Realtor.com, 95% of the listings still don't have a tour, right? So, we're excited about how much value we can add potentially to our partner.

- Awesome. Eric, how about a demo from the potential home buyers perspective, Let's take a look at Realtor.com that has an Asteroom 3D Tour.

- Okay, not a problem. So, bring myself onto screen share, so this is a listing by one of the brokers that we work with of Chase International in Reno-Tahoe area, and as you can see there's a 3D Tour button in a listing detail page, right?

So this is really important, on this is the differentiation between the 3D Tour and the virtual tour.

A virtual tour, which traditionally has been just slideshow mostly and could be videos, would be displayed here as a virtual tour, whereas Matterport and Asteroom tours, are considered 3D Tour, and this how the consumer will be encouraged to click on the link and to land on the tours. So--

- Awesome.

What you did was click on the 3D tour badge, and then up that comes the Asteroom tour. Eric, that is giving us a kind of maybe a few minute demo of Asteroom 3D Tour while we're on this page, for those that might not be familiar with Asteroom.

- Yeah, sure. So, every Asteroom tour has ... when you first entered the tour you've greeted with Asteroom 3D dollhouse, so it looks like this one, as you can see your scans outdoors ... which is different from Matterport as you can see it I'll do a layout, If you have a pool you can see that.

The number two difference between a Matterport dollhouse is that you have the room labels. So you can see exactly what's that room is used for, and other than that is pretty much the similar, and what you might notice is it's more of a point-to-point transition within the tour.

So that means you actually taking a lot less points, you scan a lot, you have probably like 10 to 15 scans in total for this room. So that means you take 15 minutes at top to do the scan,

- If we're doing Matterport?

- Then if you're doing Matterport.

Yeah, So if you're doing a Matterport for this home, it's probably a four bedroom home, you probably would take 70 scans, right?

And this one you can see is no more than 15 scans, right? So you can see if one scan is a minute at most, right then it will take you less than 15 minutes, and you still produce this dollhouse and floor plan, a 2D floor plan right here, so produce like that same product as what a Matterport would produce.

Right. And it goes on Realtor.com just like Matterport would, so it's very comparable in terms of the outcome but a lot less time spent and means you get your time back.

- Okay, awesome.

And then I see some thumbnails at the bottom right behind the floor plan there. If we could close that floor plan window, maybe take us to the thumbnails. I imagine those are snapshots from the 3D Tour.

- Correct. Yes. So there are a couple of ways you can navigate a tour. You can use the hotspot to jump around or you can use the thumbnail at a bottom to go to different rooms.

Alternatively, this person did not add the hotspot onto the floor plan, but you can also add a hotspot to the floor plan and you use the hotspot on the floor plan to jump around.

- Okay. So this actually goes from being a 2D schematic floor plan, to a 2D interactive schematic floor plan, such that you can click on the 360 images, and go right to that space in the Asteroom 3D Tour?

- Correct.

- Okay, awesome. Okay, so is there anything else you wanted to show us within the Asteroom 3D Tour?

- Nope. So, what we're working on in the near future is to bring the agents and brokerage branding top left, so it will be co-branded with Realtor.com, and the agent and the broker so that just, you know, just FYI.

- Okay. So it just maybe if you take us one more place just take us outside, because I think that's one of those things that's pretty unique with Asteroom is that you can easily shoot outdoors, just as you do your indoor 360 with Asteroom. So there's no different workflow shooting the 360s for the 3D Tour.

- Okay.

- Okay, awesome. So if you can exit that for us, and for those who want to do a deep-dive into Asteroom Eric has been on the show a number of times, and you can get an entire show dedicated to Asteroom 3D Tours, and everything about it from the front-end and the deep dive in the back-end, as well as the a whole another show on virtual staging.

Eric, how does a photographer add Asteroom to a Realtor.com listing could you take us maybe through the desktop version of Asteroom.com of how a photographer would have added this Asteroom tour?

- Yeah. Before we go there, there are a couple of things I want to show on a Realtor.com site.

So, right now we are in the listing detail page, right? And you can see the biggest difference having a 3D Tour, is this 3D Tour call-to-action [Badge] as opposed to virtual tour [Badge].

There are other places that you can see differences as well, so if I search Richmond, California I know there's a listing, it's a relatively small place and I know like there's a listing with an Asteroom tour.

So, there are 335 homes in Richmond, California, right? So if you do one of the filters and listing status, right?

So you can see a lot of consumers will prefer to look at home they have 3D Tours, they will use this filter, and filter out their search and prioritize on looking at home that have 3D Tours, and so you can see now it can nail down to 16, right?


So I'm like, see if I can find that listing, So this one, is the one that one of our users shot, and you can see there is a 3D Tour badge, so classifying that as a 3D Tour, and going inside.

Yes. So it has two button book 3D and virtual tours, so they both will point to the Asteroom tour, and this is just an experience that Realtor.com has to clean-up. Sometimes it shows only 3D Tours.

Sometimes it shows both 3D Tour and virtual tour. So don't be surprised, but eventually they'll do something to the virtual tour button, so I don't know what they are going to do but they told me there was supposed to clean it up.

- So with the moment the 3D Tour might point to the Asteroom 3D Tour, the virtual tour might point to a video or--

- No, no. Both point to an Asteroom virtual tour.

- Okay.

- Yeah. Consider that as an experience that is waiting to be completed, I suppose.

But the virtual tour will take it to the other URL, we'll open up another page, right? we're on a 3D Tour. It's native the integrated. That makes sense?

- Yes. We haven't left the page, we're still there.

- Yep.

- Yeah, that's awesome. All right. Before we move on anything else to show us on Realtor.com?

- Nope. No one can go on to the uploading part.

- Okay. So, I'm a real estate photographer, I'm using Asteroom, I've created my tour, I'm about to sign in on my desktop version of the Asteroom Editor.

How do I upload my Asteroom 3D Tour to Realtor.com so it ends up in the right place?

- Yeah, it's very easy. So I log into a personal account, and then I have one tour there just for demo purposes.

I click share a tour button right corner, and it says, "Displayed my profile not available on Realtor.com" but it will be available, like I said, this is in the future roadmap, but regardless, just do, "Publish a tour to a listing on Realtor.com" and it's going to ask you to put in address.

You can put in any address. I can put in my own address. and done. And it just tells you ... It's very similar to the Matterport experience.

It will take up 24 hours for your listing status to update. So we send in a feed every day at nine o'clock, so I suddenly, she sent before nine o'clock, you would show up at nine o'clock, they will take the feed, they processes it and they will probably show at 10 am PST, 11 pm PST and it just got it, and you can see the request has been sent and you can undo there.

- And to that batch that goes to Realtor.com from Asteroom.com, Is that 9 am in the morning or 9 pm at night?

- 9 am PST. Morning.

- Morning. So that's nine 9 am PT?

- Yes.

- Okay, great. And so that was a street address with an individual property, what happens if it's a condo?

- It's the same thing. You can put in the condo. If I see our street, they actually had the condo number is E203, and that would just do it. It doesn't auto-populate, because this is Google Maps auto-populate but Google Maps doesn't auto-populate apartment number but just attempting you just put it in there and say done.

- Okay. And then correct me if I'm wrong, is that perhaps a best practice might be going to Realtor.com and looking up EXACTLY the address for the MLS listing, so you've got the street, and the NW and the condo number or the # sign, so that you're using LITERALLY the EXACT address in order to help make sure that the Asteroom 3D Tour actually shows up on the correct property.

- Yes. Yes. Exactly. [Realtor.com] has some machine learning and to parse the address to address mapping but if you go to Realtor.com and copy the exact address you're guaranteed that there is no problem.

- Okay. Tip that I want to offer because I know that we have a lot of members in the We Get Around Network Forum - WGANForum.com - who have used Matterport to publish to Realtor.com and have experienced that problem and their work-around, Eric, has been to literally go to Realtor.com, copy the address, paste it in the back end so that it matches up exactly to avoid having to wait yet another day to figure it out, to get it working. Okay.

So this is on the back-end of the Asteroom Editor on the desktop. How about showing us on a smartphone on the Asteroom App ... ... You have your smartphone already on the screen, and I'm going to see if I can share it, there we go.

So what we're going to do is while Eric is setting up he is on his smartphone, is calling up the Asteroom App, and is going to show us how a real estate photographer publishes from the Asteroom App to Realtor.com.

- Yes. So you can see this is the main screen, the main project screen. Again, I have one tour for demo purpose - Share, and it will be the same thing.

I will do this again. Share and publish a tour to Realtor.com and it's going to ask you to do the same thing to put in the address, and just do that, ... Yes. You just did it.

- Easy-peasy. Literally just go to the share button. Down at the bottom publish a tour to Realtor.com, enter the address, and then you're off to the races.

- Exactly.

- Okay. ... So we just looked at two ways to publish from Asteroom Desktop Editor, from Asteroom app ... either on an iPhone or an Android phone, and there's actually a third way, and that's for your real estate agent to publish the Asteroom 3D Tour to their listing.

Eric, how about just turning off your smartphone or I can do that, let me just do that Yep! Boom! Got it.

So, the third way is for the real estate agent to publish the Asteroom tour to Realtor.com using the Realtor.com account, going to listings, then going to the address: searching for either the address or the MLS number ...

Then selecting the virtual tour field, look for the virtual tour field they'll have a little "pencil" where they can edit that field then copy paste the Asteroom tour in that field. Hit done. Boom.

It populates it on that side. And then in a similar fashion if the real estate agent is using the MLS, they're going to publish the tour, hopefully in their MLS, that populates it in Realtor.com ...

But for any reason their MLS doesn't do that, they can go right into their Realtor.com account, the real estate agent can go into the Realtor.com account, and edit their listing to include the Asteroom 3D Tour.

Eric, anything else on the integration of Realtor.com ...?

- Yeah, one more thing. If they put in an MLS, and MLS percentage Realtor.com too, and if there's a conflict, right, they take priorities on whatever you send from [Asteroom] directly over MLS. The other question that we have been getting is what if someone is just a listing agent, what if someone maliciously sent a tour to my listing, that is not actual tour by listing. So, now if that was the case go on to your Realtor.com account, and you can remove it from there.

- Okay. I got it. Anything else to share on this topic?

- Nope.

- excuse me. I'll add just one other thing is that Realtor.com has two ways to ask for help and support, the first is by email VTsupport@realtor.com ... VTsupport@realtor.com ... you can send the note and there's a separate support line specifically for virtual tours meets Realtor.com and they also have a special phone number that you can call 866-240-3608, that's 866-240-3608.

You can also go to Asteroom.com, go to the tab to contact support. Also support@Asteroom.com ... Good. You also had some big news today Eric regarding Asteroom new ala carte pricing for real estate photographers, can you walk us through that?

- Yes. So, last time when I was on the show, we offered the $60 flat rate Pay-Per-Tour. And, the feedback we've been getting is, "Hey! Pay-Per-Tour is great ... ... because you know like sometimes my clients want Matterport tours.

And, I already pay for hosting [with Matterport] and, I don't want to pay two [platforms]. I'm just trying out Asteroom right, I'm just trying out [Asteroom] to replace Matterport And I don't want to pay hosting every month.

I might just have one tour in one month and the person wants to live for three months, that means I have to keep it live for three months.

So they like the Pay-Per-Tour plan but they don't like the fact that the photographer that I talked to didn't much appreciate the fact that they got everything because sometimes the agent don't want to pay for the floor plan, and so the floor plan becomes throw away work because they can't resell that.

So, we have this new pricing just for photographers.

Then, instead of charging you a bundle, and we just do ala carte. So we have Pay-Per-Tour hosting which is $12 for six months hosting for the tour.

At the same time you can add on whatever you want to add on. If you want a dollhouse, then it's one price. If you want a floor plan, it's one price. If you want us to edit your images, it's one price. So that you increase the margin basically.

- I'm going to go ahead and share my screen so we can actually go over that. I am in the We Get Around Network Forum, We Get Around Network Forum, that's WGANForum.com, we're looking at today's show and I went ahead and posted the pricing here, so the ala carte pricing, Eric -- and then stop me if I'm wrong here -- but photographers ala carte pricing --

First, if you just want the Asteroom tour it's $12 per active tour you get six months of hosting. Then, if you want to start adding to ala carte - you can add the 3D dollhouse view that's optional. So, it's $10 per tour for up to 10 panoramas -

- up to 10 360's - And each additional 360 is $1. If you want 2D schematic floor plans that's $15 for the tour. If you'd like the images enhanced - the 360 images enhanced - that's $1 per panorama. And, then if you want 3D virtual staging, it's $35 per panorama.

And I think you had one other number for me Eric, and this is all ala carte pay per tour, but if I wanted to pay a monthly fee in order to make this number go away.

- Yeah. So it's $49 and you basically get unlimited.

- And that's unlimited tours and hosting and then you can pay for the ala carte pricing?

- Yes. And on top of that you also have the option to remove to watermark which was a requested feature for photographers as well.

- Ah! where does that show up?

- Where? Oh! it wasn't stated in the e-blast that you got, but it's --

- Is there a charge for no Asteroom branding?

- No, if you're already using the unlimited, you're basically on the highest tier already. So, [no Asteroom branding in subscription.]

- Got it. So if as a photographer, if you want to have a white-label version of Asteroom we're probably more precise as to say not to have the Asteroom logo, appear in at anytime during the tour, then select the $49 a month option and then you can order everything for unlimited, and then you order everything else ala carte?

- Yes. That's right.

- Okay, good. Then I have a couple of special offers, Is there anything else on pricing you wanted to cover?

- Nope, that's it.

- Okay.

- Oh! the 3D staging, right? We lowered the 3D staging price, I think it was the last thing that was offered like $49, $50?

- $49.

- Yeah. And we got feedback from people saying that, "Hey, we'll buy it if it's $35." And $35 would be the magic number for both agents and photographers, and we're like, "Okay I guess $35 is just the price to get people to try out this solution."

And we've been getting good feedback. So, we decided to make this a permanent change.

- I'll buy it for $10 a 360 ;-) So once you know that you have that feedback you are going to change it to $10?

- hey no jokes though we actually are working on improving that technology, so we continue to reduce the cost of producing them and we continue to lower the price.

- Okay.

- So $10 may very likely. Yeah.

- Awesome. Because I might say $35 to virtually stage a 360 ... Per image is really crazy-exciting, and you know if you're interested in this topic of virtual staging, Eric and I talked - Gee, I think we did at least an hour on the topic of [Asteroom] virtual staging and why [Virtual Staging Is] important, and how to do it, and you know: SURPRISE!

You don't really need to virtually stage every 360. You might just do the living room, the bedroom. And, got another room?

- Entrance, dining room.

- Yes. So you don't have to do every 360, just a couple of select ones is probably enough to help the potential buyer visualize what the space might look like.

And, then we do have some special offers for We Get Around Network Forum Members, and let me take you through this special pricing for that, just take me a second to get to my screen here, and let's see. Okay, great.

So, Eric has been kind enough to extend some special offers for We Get Around Network Forum Members, so come join us at WGANForum.com It's free to join the WGAN Forum and you get 50 plus great membership benefits, and here are two of those.

So, the first, is if you do want to order an Asteroom Pay Per Tour Bundle, and correct me if I'm wrong here Eric, but the Pay Per Tour Bundle includes the tour; six months hosting; the 3D Tour; the floor plan; and the images edited; you can get your first one free, and just use the promo code WGANAsteroom ... WGANAsteroom ...

And that way you can sample the very first time that you sample Asteroom in order to see the tour, get the benefit of the six months of hosting, the floor plans, the dollhouse view, and the image enhancement the editing of the 360 of all the 360 images.

So anyway, that's pretty cool, and then if you decide that you like ordering Asteroom Pay Per Tour Bundles rather than ala carte, that's still available for We Get Around Network Forum Members, the promo code that is WGANAsteroomMSP that's WGANAsteroomMSP.

So again, the promo code in order to be able to order Asteroom paper tour bundles, at $49 each is WGANAsteroomMSP ... And I did want to take everyone just for a moment to the landing page, two landing pages for Asteroom

Let's see, I think that'll make sense, so I am at: Asteroom.com ... Asteroom.com and so this is the front door for Asteroom, and the pricing here is really for the Realtors and then the pricing for Photographers, and even the short version of it is Asteroom.com/photographers which you can always get to this page, going to pricing for Photographers, learn how Asteroom can work for you, and this is one way that you can sign up to get the special pricing.

So, Eric, do you want to take us through this particular page? What happens when I click on here?

- Yes. You just click on it, and it's going to ask a couple of questions, like how many listings do you do?

And if you do more than three a week, then you qualify for the variable pricing that Dan just showed, that's it. And we will email you the instructions of how to enroll in your email.

- Yes. Super-simple. So, if you want to get the special ala carte pricing that Eric has just talked about, you can simply either go to Asteroom.com, and under pricing, select Photographers, or go to Asteroom.com/photographers select that button about contact us for volume pricing.

So, select three or more as the number of tours that you do, And I want to say it's within about 10 minutes you'll automatically get an email that sounds right Eric?

- 5 to 10 minutes, yes.

- 5-10 minutes you'll get an email ... so that you can get going with the [Asteroom ala carte pricing.] So Eric, was there anything else to talk about in terms of pricing?

- Nope. That's basically it.

- I think we've covered a lot of ground today so is there anything else that you wanted to brief us on, any other news, anything that's coming soon?

- Anything that's coming soon?

So I think portal integration is one of the most important feature that our customers, real estate and photographer even brokers ask us to do, so we'll continue to expand on that.

So, Realtor.com is a beginning, there will be more being added in the near future, and our goal is try to help everybody to create a stunning 3D Tours with dollhouses and floor plans at ease, and of course with distribution to the millions of home buyers on a portal.

So yes we will continue on to march towards this goal. I'm excited that in a couple of weeks, our tour in a couple of weeks to months, I might be back to show and share other exciting integrations.

- Oh! ;-)

- Yeah. Can you hear me?

- Yes.

- ... you'll find out yeah.

- Maybe not, but stay tuned when Eric's got some big news, we'll bring him back to WGAN-TV Live at 5, find out what that is, If you're just discovering us and, you know I should do a shout-out, I know We Get Around Network ...

WGAN-TV is syndicated in lots of places right now, where people can view it either in the We Get Around Network Forum, YouTube, et cetera.

So just the shout-out to the Asteroom Facebook page, because we're streaming live so if you are watching on the Asteroom page, a special hello. Eric, before we go, I just want to say, congratulations! How awesome it is that Asteroom is now syndicated to Realtor.com ... That's a huge accomplishment.

I imagine you're going to keep your foot on the pedal to keep - as you mentioned - adding other syndicated opportunities, to make it easier for photographers, and add huge value to Asteroom photographers to be able to offer Asteroom 3D Tours, to their real estate agent and clients.

And I think for any of our viewers today that are kind of just discovering Asteroom 3D Tours for the first time, Eric has been on our show three times, he's done deep dives -

Everything you want to know about Asteroom, about how to shoot Asteroom, about how to do post-production with Asteroom, about doing virtual staging, about floor plans, about editing,

So ... you'll find all of this in the We Get Around Network Forum all the shows that we've done, WGANForum.com. Thank you all for joining us, Eric, thank you for being on the show again.

- All right thank you Dan, thanks everybody for watching.

- Awesome.

We've been visiting with Eric Tsai. Eric is the co-Founder and CEO of Asteroom, I'm Dan Smigrod, Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5.