Transcript>How Photogs can Resist Zillow's Threat to Monopolize Real Estate15528
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| WGAN-TV | How Photographers can Resist Zillow’s Threat to Monopolize Real Estate with HomeJab Founder and Owner Joe Jesuele | Aired: Thursday, 2 September 2021 | Episode 116 Transcript: WGAN-TV How Photographers Can Resist Zillow’s Threat To Monopolize Real Estate Hi All, Transcript below ... After reading this blog post (reprinted in the WGAN Forum with the permission of the author) ... ✓ How Photographers can Resist Zillow's Threat to Monopolize Real Estate ... I invited the author, HomeJab Founder and Owner Joe Jesuele, to be my guest on WGAN-TV Live at 5 on Thursday, 2 September 2021 to discuss this topic. What questions should I ask Joe during the show? Feel free to post in this WGAN Forum discussion on continue the lively discussion going on here. Enjoy your weekend, Dan Transcript (Video Above) [00:00:03] Dan Smigrod: Hi all, I'm Dan Smigrod, [00:00:04] Dan Smigrod: Founder of the We Get Around Network Forum. [00:00:07] Dan Smigrod: Today is Thursday, September 2, [00:00:09] Dan Smigrod: 2021 and you're watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. [00:00:15] Dan Smigrod: We have an awesome show for you today: [00:00:18] Dan Smigrod: How Photographers can Resist Zillow's Threat to Monopolize Real Estate. [00:00:23] Dan Smigrod: Here to talk to us about this topic is Joe Jesuele, [00:00:27] Dan Smigrod: Founder and owner of HomeJab. [00:00:29] Dan Smigrod: Hey Joe, good to see you. [00:00:31] Joe Jesuele: Good to see you, Dan. Thanks for having me on. [00:00:34] Dan Smigrod: Thanks for being on the show. I reached out to you in July, [00:00:38] Dan Smigrod: back when you wrote a very in-depth blog post on HomeJab. [00:00:45] Dan Smigrod: The title of that post was, [00:00:47] Dan Smigrod: How Agents and Photographers can Resist Zillow's Latest Threat to Monopolize Real Estate. [00:00:54] Dan Smigrod: It was lengthy. It was well-researched. [00:00:58] Dan Smigrod: It was very thoughtful; [00:01:00] Dan Smigrod: and I thought it would be great to have you on the show. Thank you. [00:01:04] Dan Smigrod: I would encourage our viewers to actually Google that [00:01:08] Dan Smigrod: original article, or in fact, go to HomeJab HomeJab.com, [00:01:14] Dan Smigrod: go to the tab "Blog" and go back to the July [2021] blog posts, [00:01:17] Dan Smigrod: or simply Google, "How Agents and Photographers can Resist [00:01:21] Dan Smigrod: Zillow's Latest Threat to Monopolize [00:01:23] Dan Smigrod: Real Estate." Or, for our We Get Around Network Forum community – [00:01:27] Dan Smigrod: www.WGANForum.com – just go to the search box and search for Zillow HomeJab; [00:01:33] Dan Smigrod: just search the entire contents of the We Get Around Network Forum and it will pop up. [00:01:38] Dan Smigrod: Joe, before we jump into this topic, [00:01:40] Dan Smigrod: how about first tell us about HomeJab? [00:01:44] Joe Jesuele: Yeah, sure Dan. HomeJab is an online marketplace for real estate photography, [00:01:49] Joe Jesuele: but we also do many other services like video walkthroughs, [00:01:53] Joe Jesuele: and aerials, and 3D [00:01:56] Joe Jesuele: virtual tours, virtual staging. [00:01:58] Joe Jesuele: It's pretty much at any service. [00:02:02] Joe Jesuele: From the photographer's standpoint, [00:02:04] Joe Jesuele: we're really the back-end office for a photographer. [00:02:08] Joe Jesuele: We have not only the scheduling software, [00:02:11] Joe Jesuele: but we have a full-time staff that handles any customer support issues. [00:02:16] Joe Jesuele: We do all the editing; [00:02:18] Joe Jesuele: all of the post-production; all sales; [00:02:20] Joe Jesuele: all scheduling; anything that comes up during the process regarding the customer. [00:02:25] Joe Jesuele: It's the photographer that goes to www. HomeJab.com; [00:02:29] Joe Jesuele: downloads our app, gets approved as a photographer, [00:02:32] Joe Jesuele: and then all you have to do is shoot. [00:02:35] Joe Jesuele: You can make your own schedule and essentially after the shoot is done, [00:02:39] Joe Jesuele: you just upload the raw files to our platform, and then we take it from there. [00:02:43] Joe Jesuele: We'll handle all that: [00:02:45] Joe Jesuele: post-production, editing, media delivery. [00:02:48] Joe Jesuele: We create the property pages, [00:02:49] Joe Jesuele: we handle any marketing advice, MLS integration, [00:02:54] Joe Jesuele: stuff like that, that the real estate agent needs, [00:02:57] Joe Jesuele: and the photographer just has to shoot the property. [00:03:00] Joe Jesuele: Therefore, we make things a little easy for the photographer and also the agent. [00:03:05] Joe Jesuele: We create an easy way to schedule and a fast turnaround time, [00:03:09] Joe Jesuele: you get everything back the next day. [00:03:13] Joe Jesuele: It's a good system and we're up and running in 50 states now, [00:03:18] Joe Jesuele: pretty much national, [00:03:19] Joe Jesuele: and things are going pretty well [00:03:23] Joe Jesuele: and we're looking at a global expansion right now into parts of Europe. [00:03:28] Joe Jesuele: We're partnering with some people in Europe and in Canada. [00:03:32] Joe Jesuele: So things are moving for us pretty nicely. [00:03:36] Dan Smigrod: Awesome, you mentioned virtual tours, [00:03:38] Dan Smigrod: which platform or platforms are you using? [00:03:42] Joe Jesuele: Well, we are one of [00:03:45] Joe Jesuele: the first companies that started using Matterport and we worked with, [00:03:50] Joe Jesuele: I think Dan, we've known each other for [00:03:52] Joe Jesuele: quite a few years, but most recently where we've transitioned to EyeSpy360. [00:03:58] Joe Jesuele: There's many reasons for that, [00:03:59] Joe Jesuele: but one of it has to do with, frankly, [00:04:04] Joe Jesuele: the way that Matterport change up their pricing and the fact [00:04:07] Joe Jesuele: that we'd like to have our tours active indefinitely. [00:04:12] Joe Jesuele: It just wasn't feasible to do that from a pricing standpoint. [00:04:15] Joe Jesuele: Also, we like to have our control over the editing and [00:04:18] Joe Jesuele: the files and want to have the source files hosted. [00:04:22] Joe Jesuele: That's what we preach to real estate agents. [00:04:25] Joe Jesuele: Yeah, we are a big fan of EyeSpy360 and friends with the founders there, [00:04:32] Joe Jesuele: and they're great guys. [00:04:33] Joe Jesuele: So that's what we use. [00:04:35] Dan Smigrod: All right. Our community We Get Around [00:04:37] Dan Smigrod: Network is pretty Matterport centric. [00:04:40] Dan Smigrod: If you're shooting Matterport, [00:04:42] Dan Smigrod: can you shoot for EyeSpy360 using a Matterport Pro2 3D Camera? [00:04:48] Dan Smigrod: Or, do you need to make the transition to a different 360 camera? [00:04:51] Joe Jesuele: You can use any 360 camera. [00:04:54] Joe Jesuele: I don't think that you can use the Matterport Pro 3D Camera, [00:04:56] Joe Jesuele: but you can use any 360 camera. [00:04:58] Joe Jesuele: Therefore, it's pretty much agnostic to the type of 360 camera, [00:05:02] Joe Jesuele: which is one of the reasons we really like it. [00:05:04] Joe Jesuele: Photographers that worked with us can use any equipment which is nice at the same time. [00:05:09] Joe Jesuele: I mean, Matterport does a good job if the customer [00:05:12] Joe Jesuele: requests that will still provide a Matterport tour. [00:05:16] Joe Jesuele: But we found that many of the customers that we work with are very happy [00:05:20] Joe Jesuele: with what they get with EyeSpy360; and in many respects the product is better. [00:05:25] Joe Jesuele: They offer a lot more in terms of the floor plan [00:05:29] Joe Jesuele: is included and you get this live tour if you're the agent, [00:05:32] Joe Jesuele: you can do a screen share and then have [00:05:36] Joe Jesuele: a call with the customer and tour the property with them. [00:05:40] Joe Jesuele: There are a lot of platforms out there and I don't think we [00:05:42] Joe Jesuele: want to go over the technical aspects of each one, [00:05:44] Joe Jesuele: but we're really happy working with EyeSpy360. [00:05:48] Dan Smigrod: Great. For photographers - real estate photographers - that would like to get going with [00:05:54] Dan Smigrod: HomeJab, go to www. HomeJab.com and next step? [00:06:00] Joe Jesuele: Yeah, it's pretty easy. [00:06:02] Joe Jesuele: There's a link to jobs on the bottom of [00:06:04] Joe Jesuele: our website and that's where we'll take you through just a few steps. [00:06:07] Joe Jesuele: Give us your basic information, [00:06:09] Joe Jesuele: your equipment, and some links to samples of your work. [00:06:14] Joe Jesuele: Public profiles, your LinkedIn or your websites, stuff like that. [00:06:18] Joe Jesuele: We can see your online presence and then we'll look at your work, [00:06:22] Joe Jesuele: we'll look at your equipment, and then usually get approved within a day or two. [00:06:26] Joe Jesuele: Then we'll give you instructions on how to download our app, [00:06:31] Joe Jesuele: which is how we schedule shoots and we'll send you our [00:06:34] Joe Jesuele: photographer guide on how to shoot and how to upload the files and that kind of thing. [00:06:38] Joe Jesuele: It's pretty easy to get up and [00:06:40] Joe Jesuele: running if you're a professional and you have the right equipment. [00:06:44] Joe Jesuele: If you're new, just starting out we're probably not the right fit. [00:06:49] Joe Jesuele: But, if you are established and know the business, [00:06:51] Joe Jesuele: you have the right equipment, then Homejab can be a great way to get extra jobs, [00:06:58] Joe Jesuele: continue what you're doing, [00:07:00] Joe Jesuele: but you make your own schedule so you tell us when you have openings, [00:07:04] Joe Jesuele: and then we'll schedule jobs in those openings. [00:07:07] Joe Jesuele: If you're busy on the weekends, [00:07:09] Joe Jesuele: you can just work a few days during the week or vice versa. [00:07:13] Joe Jesuele: If you have an open day, [00:07:16] Joe Jesuele: we'll just schedule for you in that day if [00:07:19] Joe Jesuele: you're out doing a feature film or commercial for three weeks, [00:07:23] Joe Jesuele: you can put in the app that, "I'll be back on September 15th," [00:07:27] Joe Jesuele: and that's when we'll start scheduling jobs for you. [00:07:29] Joe Jesuele: It's nice in that respect and you don't have to worry [00:07:33] Joe Jesuele: about any customer service or sales or editing, [00:07:37] Joe Jesuele: post-production, any of that stuff we handle all that. [00:07:40] Dan Smigrod: Great. You mentioned that you're across America, 50 states, [00:07:48] Dan Smigrod: with an eye towards Canada and Europe. [00:07:50] Dan Smigrod: Are you interested in hearing only from [00:07:53] Dan Smigrod: real estate photographers in the United States or elsewhere as well? [00:07:58] Joe Jesuele: Definitely in Canada as well. We have a lot of customers that are in [00:08:03] Joe Jesuele: the Toronto area and Quebec little bit as well, but mostly Toronto. [00:08:08] Joe Jesuele: So we're looking at growing in that area. [00:08:11] Dan Smigrod: Okay, great. Let's jump into the topic, How [00:08:16] Dan Smigrod: Photographers and Real Estate Agents can Resist [00:08:19] Dan Smigrod: Zillow's Threat to Monopolize Real Estate. [00:08:23] Dan Smigrod: Joe, what's your beef with Zillow? [00:08:30] Joe Jesuele: I'm not a big fan of big tech in Silicon Valley, that's number one. [00:08:35] Joe Jesuele: I don't think they're evil people, [00:08:37] Joe Jesuele: but at the same time, [00:08:38] Joe Jesuele: they're not necessarily the friends of real estate agents. [00:08:41] Joe Jesuele: As a real estate photography company our customers are real estate agents. [00:08:46] Joe Jesuele: We're interested in what's good for the independent real estate agent. [00:08:51] Joe Jesuele: What we see is Zillow tech trying to monopolize real estate search. [00:08:56] Joe Jesuele: They're doing that not only by just advertising and SEO, [00:09:00] Joe Jesuele: but also with patents. [00:09:02] Joe Jesuele: Which personally I think it's unethical. [00:09:05] Joe Jesuele: What they are doing with the patent strategy, [00:09:07] Joe Jesuele: but also with the new iBuyer system. [00:09:12] Joe Jesuele: I have nothing against expanding your business. [00:09:16] Joe Jesuele: They are a public companies so certainly to have to look at how do we expand, [00:09:19] Joe Jesuele: how do we get bigger, I totally get that. [00:09:22] Joe Jesuele: But they are competing directly now with [00:09:25] Joe Jesuele: real estate agents going after consumers with the iBuyer model. [00:09:31] Joe Jesuele: As a real estate agent, [00:09:32] Joe Jesuele: why would you help them do that? [00:09:37] Joe Jesuele: What I mean by that is, [00:09:39] Joe Jesuele: why would you use their tools and provide free content to them? [00:09:45] Joe Jesuele: Virtual tours, videos, why just hand that [00:09:49] Joe Jesuele: over to Zillow and let them use that content to monetize their site, [00:09:55] Joe Jesuele: sale advertising, sale leads? [00:09:57] Joe Jesuele: Doesn't really make sense. [00:09:59] Joe Jesuele: As a photography company, [00:10:00] Joe Jesuele: we don't want to support that because it's not in the best interests of our customers: [00:10:06] Joe Jesuele: the real estate agents. [00:10:08] Joe Jesuele: That's really the main problem. [00:10:10] Dan Smigrod: But that said Joe, [00:10:11] Dan Smigrod: the real estate agent, I would imagine, [00:10:13] Dan Smigrod: has a fiduciary responsibility as a professional to their clients – and as a [00:10:20] Dan Smigrod: member of the We Get Around Network Forum community pointed out – [00:10:24] Dan Smigrod: @Dataventurer (Dave Villa): [00:10:29] Dan Smigrod: Zillow and Trulia account for 39 percent of [00:10:32] Dan Smigrod: real estate related website traffic worldwide. [00:10:37] Dan Smigrod: Isn't it a fiduciary responsibility of a real estate agent [00:10:42] Dan Smigrod: to post a house for sale where 39 percent of the market's looking? [00:10:49] Joe Jesuele: No question. I mean, you got to have the listing on Zillow [00:10:52] Joe Jesuele: and I'm not saying don't list the property and Zillow put the photos there. [00:10:56] Joe Jesuele: MLS data, yes. [00:10:58] Joe Jesuele: But when it comes to enhanced media like virtual tours, videos, [00:11:03] Joe Jesuele: when someone goes to Zillow and they look through [00:11:06] Joe Jesuele: that photos and they're interested in a house, [00:11:11] Joe Jesuele: the next step is then to look at the virtual tour and the video. [00:11:13] Joe Jesuele: At that point we tell our customers, the agents, [00:11:17] Joe Jesuele: don't upload the video directly to Zillow, [00:11:20] Joe Jesuele: don't use the Zillow 3D Home app that they're giving you. [00:11:24] Joe Jesuele: Rather post the files yourself or use [00:11:27] Joe Jesuele: the property pages that [HomeJab] provides to you for free and post those links [00:11:31] Joe Jesuele: as a virtual tour on the MLS branded with [00:11:35] Joe Jesuele: the listing agents information so that if someone is looking for the virtual tour, [00:11:39] Joe Jesuele: they'll scroll down, they'll look for it, [00:11:41] Joe Jesuele: and then they'll click the link to go back to the listing agent's website so that they [00:11:46] Joe Jesuele: can then control that lead and facilitate the transaction. [00:11:53] Joe Jesuele: That's really what we're saying. [00:11:55] Joe Jesuele: Certainly we're not saying don't list on Zillow, [00:11:58] Joe Jesuele: which if you list on the MLS, [00:11:59] Joe Jesuele: it's going to be on Zillow. That's not what we're saying. [00:12:03] Joe Jesuele: It's really about putting the 3D tour, the video tour. [00:12:09] Joe Jesuele: What a really interested buyer is going to be looking [00:12:11] Joe Jesuele: at before they make the decision to contact the agent and go visit the house, [00:12:16] Joe Jesuele: that media: make sure that you're controlling it on your site, [00:12:19] Joe Jesuele: on your domain or on the photographer's domain in partnership with the agent. [00:12:25] Joe Jesuele: That's really the concept. [00:12:26] Joe Jesuele: It's not, don't list on Zillow, [00:12:29] Joe Jesuele: that would be foolish. [00:12:30] Dan Smigrod: Okay. Forgive me. [00:12:33] Dan Smigrod: On not having Zillow host video or virtual tours, Why not? [00:12:39] Dan Smigrod: What's the problem with that? [00:12:41] Dan Smigrod: Particularly from a photographer's perspective, [00:12:44] Dan Smigrod: why should I not use Zillow 3D Home, [00:12:48] Dan Smigrod: for example, to create a virtual tour? [00:12:52] Joe Jesuele: If you do, the virtual tour is going to be on Zillow. [00:12:55] Joe Jesuele: A buyer going to Zillow can basically stay there, [00:12:58] Joe Jesuele: see the tour and then contact whoever they advertise as the buyer's agent. [00:13:04] Joe Jesuele: That gives quite a bit of control to Zillow. [00:13:09] Joe Jesuele: As a real estate photographer who's working for real agent, we're saying, [00:13:14] Joe Jesuele: keep that off Zillow – on your own website – so that [00:13:18] Joe Jesuele: if someone is searching for that property and they're really interested, [00:13:22] Joe Jesuele: they'll find the tour and the video on [00:13:25] Joe Jesuele: the agent's website or on the photographer's websites. [00:13:27] Joe Jesuele: Then that lead can be nurtured from there as opposed to funnel through on Zillow's site. [00:13:35] Dan Smigrod: Zillow does offer iFrame embed code that's white-labeled. [00:13:42] Dan Smigrod: As either a real estate agent or a photographer using Zillow 3D Home, --- (Continued below...) |
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| (Continued from above...) --- [00:13:48] Dan Smigrod: you can publish to Zillow and then [00:13:52] Dan Smigrod: get embed code to put it on the photographer's website, [00:13:57] Dan Smigrod: the real estate agent's website or elsewhere. [00:14:01] Dan Smigrod: Is there any reason not to do that? [00:14:05] Dan Smigrod: I'm trying to understand from your perspective, [00:14:08] Dan Smigrod: what is the challenge for example, [00:14:10] Dan Smigrod: of using Zillow 3D Home? [00:14:12] Dan Smigrod: I might just digress for a moment and say, [00:14:16] Dan Smigrod: I really think it's a 360 tour, [00:14:17] Dan Smigrod: but it is actually called Zillow 3D Home. [00:14:22] Dan Smigrod: What's the problem with using their app to create content? [00:14:27] Joe Jesuele: Content is king and controlling the data is important. [00:14:30] Joe Jesuele: I think data is maybe the most important thing [00:14:33] Joe Jesuele: besides just a good real estate agent and the advice that you get from a good agent, [00:14:37] Joe Jesuele: maybe number two is the content and the data. [00:14:41] Joe Jesuele: Why not own that? Why not control that? [00:14:44] Joe Jesuele: I think that puts the agent in a very powerful position and the real estate photographer. [00:14:49] Joe Jesuele: If you're a real estate photographer, [00:14:50] Joe Jesuele: why would you not want to hold on to that data, [00:14:53] Joe Jesuele: share it with your customer, [00:14:55] Joe Jesuele: and funnel leads to your customer because they make money, [00:14:58] Joe Jesuele: they're going to hire you more. [00:15:00] Joe Jesuele: That's where the money is going to be. [00:15:01] Joe Jesuele: If you're basically handing over data to Silicon Valley, [00:15:05] Joe Jesuele: Big tech, Zillow and others, then it's theirs. [00:15:11] Joe Jesuele: It sits on their servers and they can do whatever they want with it. [00:15:14] Joe Jesuele: Now, I'm not saying they're evil people and maybe like Google, [00:15:18] Joe Jesuele: they go around saying don't be evil and maybe that's fine. [00:15:23] Dan Smigrod: Let's back up for a moment, Joe, if we may. [00:15:26] Dan Smigrod: Let's back up for a moment to photos. [00:15:28] Dan Smigrod: When HomeJab gives images to its real estate clients, [00:15:38] Dan Smigrod: does the agent own those photos? [00:15:40] Dan Smigrod: Does HomeJab own those photos? [00:15:42] Dan Smigrod: Does the photographer who shot those photos own the photos? [00:15:46] Dan Smigrod: Does Zillow now own the photos because they've been uploaded to Zillow? [00:15:52] Joe Jesuele: There's lawyers that talked about that. [00:15:54] Joe Jesuele: There's a case about that, [00:15:56] Joe Jesuele: that I'm sure you know about that with VHT and Zillow. [00:15:59] Joe Jesuele: I'm not a lawyer and I'm not going to talk about legal stuff like that. [00:16:04] Joe Jesuele: I think in the court system that question has been answered. [00:16:09] Joe Jesuele: From my standpoint, [00:16:10] Joe Jesuele: if we're shooting homes, [00:16:14] Joe Jesuele: then it's the person who bought the photos just to do whatever they want with it. [00:16:21] Joe Jesuele: But even more important than that, [00:16:24] Joe Jesuele: it's the homeowner really because when they buy the house, [00:16:28] Joe Jesuele: and this happens weekly, I mean, [00:16:29] Joe Jesuele: people will contact us and say, "Hey, that's my house. [00:16:31] Joe Jesuele: I just bought it, can you take that down?" [00:16:34] Joe Jesuele: As the owner of HomeJab, I don't say, [00:16:37] Joe Jesuele: "No, it's my photo I'll keep it up." [00:16:39] Joe Jesuele: I'll say, "Of course, I'm not going to keep up a photo of [00:16:41] Joe Jesuele: your living room and your bathroom on my website." I'll take it down. [00:16:47] Joe Jesuele: It's really the homeowner that ultimately I think just due to privacy reasons, [00:16:51] Joe Jesuele: not legal, I'm not talking about legal stuff, [00:16:53] Joe Jesuele: but privacy and ethics controls that. [00:16:58] Joe Jesuele: But if you want to talk about just the photographer being in a really strong position. [00:17:06] Joe Jesuele: That's another reason not to just hand over more and more data and [00:17:09] Joe Jesuele: more files to Zillow because it should be [00:17:12] Joe Jesuele: the photography company that controls that [00:17:15] Joe Jesuele: and gives the agent the right to use it for that listing. [00:17:21] Joe Jesuele: That's another reason not to hand things over to Zillow is because you really [00:17:24] Joe Jesuele: want to keep the source files controlled by the photographer and your customer, [00:17:28] Joe Jesuele: the real estate agent, and not hand that to a third party. [00:17:32] Joe Jesuele: That's my personal view. [00:17:33] Dan Smigrod: Okay. Surprise. I'm not a lawyer either [00:17:37] Dan Smigrod: and I don't give legal advice and a lot of this topic is way over my head. [00:17:42] Dan Smigrod: But I'm still trying to understand the nuances here, excuse me. [00:17:49] Dan Smigrod: Even as a photographer, [00:17:51] Dan Smigrod: am I selling or licensing my content to the real estate agent? [00:17:55] Dan Smigrod: Even if I'm licensing my content to the real estate agent for [00:17:59] Dan Smigrod: the sole use of selling that particular house [00:18:04] Dan Smigrod: and my transaction ends at the point that they've sold [00:18:08] Dan Smigrod: the house or they are no longer marketing that house. [00:18:13] Dan Smigrod: But they've uploaded the images to Zillow, [00:18:18] Dan Smigrod: does it really matter that I own the copyright, [00:18:21] Dan Smigrod: but Zillow already has the actual physical possession of the content, [00:18:27] Dan Smigrod: and therefore, I can't get it back, [00:18:30] Dan Smigrod: I can't take it down? [00:18:32] Dan Smigrod: Are you able to take down your images for HomeJab that have been [00:18:36] Dan Smigrod: uploaded to Zillow or do you have to go back to [00:18:39] Dan Smigrod: the real estate agent and ask them to take it down? [00:18:43] Joe Jesuele: I've never tried, and that's why I'm not even talking about photos. [00:18:47] Joe Jesuele: I'm talking more about the enhanced media: video [00:18:51] Joe Jesuele: and virtual tours that the real stuff that I think serious buyers are going after, [00:18:56] Joe Jesuele: especially in today's market, [00:18:57] Joe Jesuele: photos, yeah, I mean, [00:18:58] Joe Jesuele: I think there's other solutions for photography that includes [00:19:03] Joe Jesuele: the blockchain and NFTs or maybe that's another phone call or meeting here, [00:19:07] Joe Jesuele: but I don't want to get into that. [00:19:09] Joe Jesuele: But I think that's where that is going. [00:19:12] Joe Jesuele: But in terms of photos on Zillow, [00:19:15] Joe Jesuele: I don't think there's anything we can do about that. [00:19:18] Dan Smigrod: Then we'll pause on that one because that's a topic [00:19:21] Dan Smigrod: that sounds like neither of us can have an impact on. [00:19:24] Dan Smigrod: But on virtual tours, [00:19:26] Dan Smigrod: I think what I'm hearing is that you really do want agents [00:19:30] Dan Smigrod: and photographers to use a third-party platform other than [00:19:34] Dan Smigrod: Zillow where the photographer or agent actually controls the content and [00:19:39] Dan Smigrod: then can actually take the content down at [00:19:42] Dan Smigrod: some point when the house is no longer for sale. [00:19:46] Dan Smigrod: Did I summarize that okay? [00:19:48] Joe Jesuele: Exactly. Or at least not be paying a third-party company [00:19:52] Joe Jesuele: to host those files and keep them active, [00:19:56] Joe Jesuele: and use that content for your own marketing purposes. [00:20:00] Joe Jesuele: You might as well own the files, host them yourself, [00:20:03] Joe Jesuele: and not be paying someone else to host the files. [00:20:08] Joe Jesuele: At the very least just from a financial perspective not do that. [00:20:13] Joe Jesuele: But yeah, it's exactly right. [00:20:14] Joe Jesuele: That's my view on it. [00:20:18] Dan Smigrod: If you're using a third-party platform, [00:20:21] Dan Smigrod: I guess it really depends on the platform about whether you're paying [00:20:27] Dan Smigrod: recurring charge for hosting or whether you've done a buyout of the tour for hosting, [00:20:34] Dan Smigrod: perhaps, in perpetuity, [00:20:36] Dan Smigrod: or whether you host it yourself. [00:20:44] Dan Smigrod: I reprinted, with your permission, [00:20:46] Dan Smigrod: your HomeJab blog post in the We Get Around Network Forum, [00:20:51] Dan Smigrod: and we didn't really get a lot of pushback from photographers. [00:20:55] Dan Smigrod: They seem to be perfectly fine using Zillow 3D Home. [00:21:02] Dan Smigrod: It's a free tool. [00:21:05] Dan Smigrod: I really want to give you an opportunity to keep [00:21:07] Dan Smigrod: pushing back on that about why photographers should be [00:21:10] Dan Smigrod: upset that Zillow now has this content rather than the photographer [00:21:15] Dan Smigrod: using a different platform where they're in control of the hosting and can turn it off. [00:21:23] Joe Jesuele: Well, I don't think they should be upset. [00:21:24] Joe Jesuele: I don't think it's smart business. [00:21:27] Joe Jesuele: I think that if you're a photographer, [00:21:30] Joe Jesuele: you're in the business of not only producing the data, [00:21:34] Joe Jesuele: but controlling it and distributing it where you think it should go. [00:21:40] Joe Jesuele: If you hand it over, [00:21:42] Joe Jesuele: then there's really no way to monetize that in the future. [00:21:47] Joe Jesuele: Also, you have to think about your customer who's paying you, [00:21:51] Joe Jesuele: the real estate professional. [00:21:54] Joe Jesuele: You're basically using the tools of your customer's competitor. [00:22:01] Joe Jesuele: Now, it might not be the end of the world, [00:22:03] Joe Jesuele: but again, I don't think it's the smartest business strategy. [00:22:06] Joe Jesuele: I think if there's other options you should look at that and [00:22:10] Joe Jesuele: consider solutions that give you more control over the source files, [00:22:16] Joe Jesuele: more control over the hosting, [00:22:19] Joe Jesuele: and provide your customer a solution that doesn't involve their number one competitor. [00:22:29] Dan Smigrod: Okay. Fair enough. [00:22:32] Dan Smigrod: Does the Zillow presently provide [00:22:38] Dan Smigrod: additional promotion for a listing if it includes the Zillow 3D Home tour versus...? [00:22:45] Joe Jesuele: Yeah. I'm sure they do. In a seller's market, [00:22:48] Joe Jesuele: that's not really a big deal. [00:22:49] Joe Jesuele: I think people would look for listings and find [00:22:51] Joe Jesuele: them whether they're highlighted on Zillow or not. [00:22:53] Joe Jesuele: I guess we can argue that how valuable that is, [00:22:59] Joe Jesuele: but at the very least in today's market, it's not very valuable. [00:23:05] Dan Smigrod: Okay. In your post you talked about blockchain. [00:23:10] Dan Smigrod: Could you expand on that and how that might fit into our conversation today? [00:23:17] Joe Jesuele: Well, there is a lot of discussion about who owns the files and that's a major topic. [00:23:25] Joe Jesuele: I think the legal experts have said that technically, [00:23:28] Joe Jesuele: it's the photographer that owns the files, [00:23:31] Joe Jesuele: and I think the other question is how do [00:23:35] Joe Jesuele: photographers monetize that because it's very difficult in [00:23:40] Joe Jesuele: today's world where you can take a snapshot or a screenshot rather of [00:23:45] Joe Jesuele: a JPEG and then use that image with blockchain and you can track it. [00:23:51] Joe Jesuele: If there's an image that a photographer has that is valuable [00:23:56] Joe Jesuele: such as a nice shot of a city, neighborhood, landmark, [00:24:02] Joe Jesuele: historical building, something that can be used in marketing and listing, [00:24:09] Joe Jesuele: creating an NFT from that and then selling that NFT on an NFT marketplace. [00:24:17] Dan Smigrod: Non-Fungible Token, NFT. Okay? [00:24:20] Joe Jesuele: Right. I think that at least from [00:24:23] Joe Jesuele: a technical standpoint puts a lot of power back in the hands of [00:24:28] Joe Jesuele: the photographer because you can control or at least track selling that asset, [00:24:36] Joe Jesuele: and then if that NFT gets resold the photographer can make [00:24:42] Joe Jesuele: recurring revenue on that at royalties that they [00:24:44] Joe Jesuele: define in the smart contracts of the blockchain. [00:24:49] Joe Jesuele: I don't know if you want to get super-technical about that? [00:24:51] Dan Smigrod: Well, I think this is important in part [00:24:53] Dan Smigrod: because my impression is that's the direction that HomeJab is going. [00:24:59] Dan Smigrod: I'm interested to hear what your plans are. [00:25:01] Joe Jesuele: I'm sorry to cut you off, [00:25:04] Joe Jesuele: but it is certainly a very interesting topic and I think the technology [00:25:09] Joe Jesuele: presents a very good solution for the problem that exists for the photographer, [00:25:15] Joe Jesuele: which is once you shoot a photograph and you put it online, [00:25:21] Joe Jesuele: how do you control that, how do you monetize that? [00:25:26] Joe Jesuele: It's in very early stages, [00:25:29] Joe Jesuele: but NFTs and the blockchain do solve that problem very elegantly. [00:25:36] Joe Jesuele: It is something that we're exploring right now. [00:25:38] Joe Jesuele: We are building an app that photographers can [00:25:42] Joe Jesuele: use for free to create NFTs of their photographs. [00:25:52] Joe Jesuele: Of course, we're even starting to identify or recognize NFTs as a legal ownership. [00:25:59] Joe Jesuele: But once this happens, [00:26:01] Joe Jesuele: I think it helps to solve that problem. [00:26:05] Joe Jesuele: If you're not the owner of that NFT, [00:26:07] Joe Jesuele: then you can't use the photograph, [00:26:08] Joe Jesuele: and if you are the owner, [00:26:09] Joe Jesuele: then you have the legal recourse if someone steals that photograph, [00:26:16] Joe Jesuele: and if you're the creator of the NFT, [00:26:18] Joe Jesuele: you get paid on the sale and then every other sale that happens from that point forward. [00:26:24] Joe Jesuele: That's a really nice way to make recurring revenue if you're a photographer. [00:26:28] Dan Smigrod: Yeah. I'd like to add a parenthetical thought right here. [00:26:32] Dan Smigrod: It's relevant, I believe, to our community, [00:26:34] Dan Smigrod: particularly since it's somewhat Matterport centric, [00:26:38] Dan Smigrod: is a member of our community did create an NFT of [00:26:42] Dan Smigrod: a Matterport tour and wrote about it on the We Get [00:26:45] Dan Smigrod: Around Network Forum and it sold for $340,000. [00:26:51] Dan Smigrod: We're not making stuff up about this NFT stuff. [00:26:55] Dan Smigrod: It's real. It's coming. [00:26:57] Dan Smigrod: You can certainly search the We Get Around Network Forum for [00:27:01] Dan Smigrod: NFT and read more about Matterport meets NFT, [00:27:08] Dan Smigrod: and engage with the Matterport Service Provider that posted that article to the Forum. [00:27:19] Dan Smigrod: Does your app create [00:27:21] Dan Smigrod: blockchain unique numbers now for your photos or is that something that's coming? [00:27:29] Joe Jesuele: Probably Q4 this year. It will it do that. [00:27:33] Joe Jesuele: Yeah. Basically, you have to upload the source file and then put in not only the price, [00:27:41] Joe Jesuele: but how many copies you want to sell and what the royalty is. [00:27:46] Joe Jesuele: Then we also ask for verification for the actual raw image so that we can verify [00:27:51] Joe Jesuele: that it was a photographer that took the image and [00:27:54] Joe Jesuele: wasn't someone stole a JPEG and now he's creating NFT for it. [00:27:58] Joe Jesuele: There is a verification process that has to happen. [00:28:02] Joe Jesuele: But then once the NFT is created from that point [00:28:05] Joe Jesuele: forward it'd be tracked automatically on a blockchain, [00:28:09] Joe Jesuele: which is basically just a network of many, [00:28:12] Joe Jesuele: many computers and completely immutable and you can't hack into it, [00:28:17] Joe Jesuele: hopefully, at least that's what we think. [00:28:22] Joe Jesuele: I think it's a really nice way to track ownership of a digital asset. [00:28:30] Dan Smigrod: Will that be within the existing HomeJab app or is this [00:28:34] Dan Smigrod: a separate standalone app for tagging NFT registration? [00:28:42] Joe Jesuele: It'll be separate in the sense that any photographer can use it. [00:28:47] Joe Jesuele: You don't have to be associated with HomeJab, [00:28:50] Joe Jesuele: you don't have to work for us. [00:28:52] Joe Jesuele: Anyone can use it. It's really a tool for photographers to create NFTs and then sell them [00:28:59] Joe Jesuele: on a marketplace where there's [00:29:01] Joe Jesuele: only real estate photos so that there's a market for it because you can create NFT, [00:29:05] Joe Jesuele: but then you have to sell it somewhere. [00:29:07] Joe Jesuele: There's a lot of good marketplaces right now, [00:29:11] Joe Jesuele: OpenSea being one of the big ones. [00:29:16] Joe Jesuele: You can do this right now, [00:29:18] Joe Jesuele: but we're building a marketplace just for [00:29:21] Joe Jesuele: real estate photos and I think that can have a significant value. [00:29:25] Dan Smigrod: Cool. [00:29:33] Dan Smigrod: Since you do engage photographers in all 50 states, [00:29:39] Dan Smigrod: you're obviously very busy with content creation in this real estate space. [00:29:45] Dan Smigrod: Have you given some thought to what the use cases might be [00:29:49] Dan Smigrod: for virtual tours in particular after a house sells? [00:29:57] Joe Jesuele: After a house sells, [00:30:00] Joe Jesuele: one of the ways that you can obviously [00:30:03] Joe Jesuele: present that tour and just as a showcase of your work, [00:30:08] Joe Jesuele: but the real estate agent can do the same. [00:30:12] Joe Jesuele: It has high-quality content, [00:30:14] Joe Jesuele: so if you're creating proper pages with SEO associated with it, [00:30:22] Joe Jesuele: it's going to drive more traffic to your site. [00:30:24] Joe Jesuele: I think there's certainly value and having that associated with the photographer, [00:30:32] Joe Jesuele: and then linking to the real estate agent; your customer. [00:30:37] Joe Jesuele: But again someone's house that they just bought, [00:30:41] Joe Jesuele: in many cases they would ask to take that down. [00:30:46] Joe Jesuele: Again, if someone does ask that, then we do that. [00:30:50] Joe Jesuele: It's their personal residence. [00:30:54] Joe Jesuele: Again with regarding the NFT marketplace, [00:30:57] Joe Jesuele: I just want to be clear about that. [00:30:58] Joe Jesuele: What we're talking about there is, [00:31:00] Joe Jesuele: are images in more of the public realm: the parks, [00:31:04] Joe Jesuele: and commercial areas, [00:31:07] Joe Jesuele: and cities, or landmarks, things like that. [00:31:11] Joe Jesuele: Not people's houses, [00:31:12] Joe Jesuele: and we're not selling as NFTs. [00:31:15] Joe Jesuele: I don't think that's appropriate. [00:31:17] Joe Jesuele: I'm talking more about the stock images that you'd get of [00:31:20] Joe Jesuele: a nice skyline or a neighborhood and something like that. --- (Continued below...) |
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WGAN Forum Founder & WGAN-TV Podcast Host Atlanta, Georgia |
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| (Continued from above...) --- [00:31:27] Dan Smigrod: Thanks for that clarification. [00:31:28] Dan Smigrod: Do you think there's at some point that NFT meets Zillow, [00:31:33] Dan Smigrod: and therefore it will eventually be possible to say and control that... [00:31:39] Dan Smigrod: that content is owned by and that content needs to come down? [00:31:47] Joe Jesuele: Potentially yeah. If you wanted to come down from [00:31:51] Joe Jesuele: Zillow having digital proof that you are the owner of it, [00:31:58] Joe Jesuele: certainly that would be one way to go. [00:32:01] Joe Jesuele: If you're a photographer, you're doing a lot shoots. [00:32:03] Joe Jesuele: I don't know how realistic it is to do that consistently having an ongoing effort, [00:32:08] Joe Jesuele: you reach out to them about that. [00:32:15] Joe Jesuele: I think having that digital footprint and being [00:32:19] Joe Jesuele: verifiable on the blockchain publicly is a tool for the photographer in many respects. [00:32:27] Joe Jesuele: Zillow aside I think that it has a much broader market, [00:32:32] Joe Jesuele: and it creates a lot of opportunities for photographers to sell [00:32:36] Joe Jesuele: it and make money and have a recurring source of revenue. [00:32:43] Joe Jesuele: As it relates to Zillow, [00:32:44] Joe Jesuele: I don't think that, that's the business that they're looking to get into. [00:32:47] Joe Jesuele: I think they're in the advertising business [00:32:50] Joe Jesuele: and another in the buying and selling houses business. [00:32:56] Dan Smigrod: If we come back to what your beef is [00:33:01] Dan Smigrod: with Zillow that results in you saying, [00:33:08] Dan Smigrod: "Hey, on virtual tours, [00:33:11] Dan Smigrod: use a third-party platform so that it's not native [00:33:14] Dan Smigrod: within Zillow so that they don't have it in perpetuity," and "Hey, [00:33:18] Dan Smigrod: video: have it hosted by a different platform such as Vimeo or [00:33:23] Dan Smigrod: YouTube so that you can control when that video gets taken down." [00:33:30] Dan Smigrod: Are there other reasons why photographers should really obsess with this topic [00:33:37] Dan Smigrod: of stop using Zillow 3D Home [00:33:40] Dan Smigrod: and use a different virtual tour platform that's hosted elsewhere? [00:33:45] Joe Jesuele: I don't think photographers need to obsess over it. [00:33:48] Joe Jesuele: I'm certainly not obsessed over it. [00:33:52] Joe Jesuele: Again, as a photographer, [00:33:56] Joe Jesuele: you have to think about your customer too. [00:33:58] Joe Jesuele: The real estate agent. A lot of agents are [00:34:00] Joe Jesuele: obsessed over Zillow because they see what's happening. [00:34:06] Joe Jesuele: So it's something that you can help [00:34:11] Joe Jesuele: your customer with because they're looking for solutions outside of Zillow potentially. [00:34:15] Joe Jesuele: There's a huge market of agents that this thing resonates with, [00:34:20] Joe Jesuele: they don't want to be handing over data to Zillow if they don't have to. [00:34:26] Joe Jesuele: It's more about that, just a good business strategy [00:34:29] Joe Jesuele: as opposed to an obsession about Zillow. [00:34:32] Joe Jesuele: Zillow started out and it was a great solution. [00:34:36] Joe Jesuele: It empowered buyers with access to MLS data that they didn't have access to before. [00:34:46] Joe Jesuele: They've done a lot of good in the market. [00:34:49] Joe Jesuele: It's just natural for [00:34:51] Joe Jesuele: a Silicon Valley, venture funded, and now publicly funded company to ... [00:34:56] Joe Jesuele: "Okay, what's next? How do we expand? [00:34:59] Joe Jesuele: We're a $6 billion company, [00:35:01] Joe Jesuele: how do we become a $50 billion company?" [00:35:03] Joe Jesuele: In the process of doing that, [00:35:05] Joe Jesuele: a lot of the independent agents, [00:35:08] Joe Jesuele: the customers that photographers like us work with are going to have problems. [00:35:16] Joe Jesuele: That may or may not be inevitable, [00:35:18] Joe Jesuele: but what we're saying at HomeJab, [00:35:21] Joe Jesuele: and what we're telling photographers, [00:35:22] Joe Jesuele: and what we're telling our customers is don't let that happen. [00:35:28] Joe Jesuele: Do what you can to control your listing content and control the leads. [00:35:34] Joe Jesuele: The way that you do that is by making sure that the videos and the virtual tours, [00:35:40] Joe Jesuele: the content that people want to see when they're really serious; [00:35:43] Joe Jesuele: not just the photographs but the actual videos and the virtual tours, make sure that, [00:35:48] Joe Jesuele: that's hosted off Zillow and I think that would be really helpful. [00:35:55] Dan Smigrod: I guess if I was Zillow, [00:35:57] Dan Smigrod: I would think that it's actually a brilliant strategy to offer free virtual tours: [00:36:05] Dan Smigrod: Zillow 3D Home because if I can get the photographers to [00:36:10] Dan Smigrod: create the content using my app then I own that content in perpetuity. [00:36:17] Joe Jesuele: Maybe that's the best way to put it, Dan. [00:36:18] Joe Jesuele: I think you hit the nail on the head. [00:36:21] Joe Jesuele: Nothing is free. ... [00:36:28] Joe Jesuele: Zillow is a media company so what they feed off it is more media, [00:36:32] Joe Jesuele: and they need the content in order to sell the ads and [00:36:38] Joe Jesuele: then get the traffic and then convert [00:36:40] Joe Jesuele: that traffic into more leads that they can convert in their [00:36:44] Joe Jesuele: iBuyer model, but then also sell leads back to the agents. [00:36:51] Joe Jesuele: It's working for them and that's great, [00:36:54] Joe Jesuele: but it might not work that great for a lot of our customers that are [00:36:59] Joe Jesuele: the real estate agents out there [00:37:01] Joe Jesuele: that are trying to compete against Zillow and having a tough time. [00:37:07] Joe Jesuele: One thing that they can be doing and one thing we can do to help [00:37:10] Joe Jesuele: them is to shoot these beautiful virtual tours and videos, [00:37:14] Joe Jesuele: and then help them to market them on their own sites, [00:37:18] Joe Jesuele: on their own property pages, [00:37:19] Joe Jesuele: on their own hosting platforms, [00:37:21] Joe Jesuele: and keep it off of these big tech Silicon Valley platforms and that's the idea. [00:37:33] Dan Smigrod: When you're blog posts came out – [00:37:37] Dan Smigrod: How Agents and Photographers can Resist Zillow's Latest Threat to Monopolize Real Estate – [00:37:43] Dan Smigrod: did you get any interesting feedback from real estate agents? [00:37:47] Dan Smigrod: Agents that said, "Joe, thanks so much, [00:37:49] Dan Smigrod: that was really awesome and we appreciate you [00:37:51] Dan Smigrod: being an advocate on behalf of real estate agents." [00:37:55] Joe Jesuele: Yeah. It was the number one article that we've ever had [00:37:59] Joe Jesuele: and it was big on social media and we have a media partner. [00:38:04] Joe Jesuele: www.REtechnology.com that posted it, [00:38:06] Joe Jesuele: and they said it was the number one article that we've ever done with them. [00:38:11] Joe Jesuele: Then there's a lot of agents saying, [00:38:13] Joe Jesuele: "that was an exceptional thing." [00:38:17] Joe Jesuele: They not only agreed with it, [00:38:18] Joe Jesuele: but they started to comment on [00:38:22] Joe Jesuele: Facebook and Instagram and saying that some of the same things I'm saying now. [00:38:27] Joe Jesuele: It's like, "why are we giving up this information?" [00:38:29] Joe Jesuele: "Why are we doing this? We're feeding the beast" type of comments? [00:38:34] Joe Jesuele: From a real estate photographer's standpoint, again, [00:38:37] Joe Jesuele: I think it's helpful because this is the language of the customers. [00:38:41] Joe Jesuele: This is what the real estate agents are talking about. [00:38:43] Joe Jesuele: This is what they're concerned about. [00:38:47] Joe Jesuele: This is a major issue for them and it involves their livelihood. [00:38:52] Joe Jesuele: As a business person, [00:38:54] Joe Jesuele: as a photographer, [00:38:56] Joe Jesuele: that's what resonates. [00:39:03] Joe Jesuele: I think it's, not only is it the truth, [00:39:06] Joe Jesuele: and I think it's good for the industry, [00:39:09] Joe Jesuele: but it's also a good business strategy for the photographers to [00:39:12] Joe Jesuele: be doing this and telling their customers that [00:39:16] Joe Jesuele: Lola will help you to present [00:39:20] Joe Jesuele: this media off Zillow and it'll help you to help the industry, help your career. [00:39:28] Joe Jesuele: That's what the chatter is about. [00:39:32] Joe Jesuele: The real estate agents support it. [00:39:34] Joe Jesuele: I think the photographers, [00:39:36] Joe Jesuele: many of them that work for us, [00:39:38] Joe Jesuele: get it because we've been talking about this a long time. [00:39:40] Joe Jesuele: Many of the ones that don't work for us, [00:39:43] Joe Jesuele: I think some disagree. [00:39:45] Joe Jesuele: I think some think that it's nice to have a free app to use [00:39:48] Joe Jesuele: the tours and they think it's good quality, which it's fine. [00:39:51] Joe Jesuele: It's not bad technically. [00:39:55] Joe Jesuele: I mean, I'm not telling anyone to change anything, [00:39:58] Joe Jesuele: but just consider that it might be helpful for your business, [00:40:03] Joe Jesuele: and this is something that resonates well with real estate agents. [00:40:07] Dan Smigrod: Your clients are real estate agents. [00:40:09] Dan Smigrod: If real estate agent asks you to shoot a Zillow 3D Home tour, will you? [00:40:17] Joe Jesuele: I've gotten that request maybe twice. [00:40:21] Joe Jesuele: We have had talks like this with customers and they decided against it. [00:40:28] Joe Jesuele: When you talk to them and you show them not only the article, [00:40:31] Joe Jesuele: but you just have a conversation, [00:40:34] Joe Jesuele: they're like, "Okay. Just use whatever you want to use." [00:40:38] Joe Jesuele: Like I said, we're big fans of EyeSpy360. [00:40:40] Joe Jesuele: We enjoy working with them. [00:40:44] Joe Jesuele: They have a good platform. We've used Matterport too. [00:40:49] Joe Jesuele: I think that product is great but has its downfalls a little bit, in my view. [00:40:58] Joe Jesuele: I mean, the agents will understand what you're saying, [00:41:02] Joe Jesuele: and you don't get a lot of pushback on that one. [00:41:05] Dan Smigrod: Okay. That's www.EyeSpy360.com [00:41:09] Dan Smigrod: www.Eye360Spy.com [00:41:14] Dan Smigrod: Obviously, www.Matterport.com [00:41:17] Dan Smigrod: Let me see if I can tease out just a couple of directions here, [00:41:25] Dan Smigrod: or paths that real estate photographers could take based on what I'm hearing. [00:41:32] Dan Smigrod: The first is that the photographer could listen to their real estate agent client that says, [00:41:37] Dan Smigrod: "I don't want to use Zillow 3D Home" and now I know why: [00:41:43] Dan Smigrod: based on what you've described. [00:41:45] Dan Smigrod: Second is photographer could be proactive [00:41:51] Dan Smigrod: and just based on what you've described about not having the content owned by Zillow, [00:42:00] Dan Smigrod: but the photographer having the control by hosting [00:42:03] Dan Smigrod: it on a third-party platform or hosting it themselves for that matter. [00:42:12] Dan Smigrod: I guess I'm still in this middle ground where we have a lot of Members of the We Get [00:42:18] Dan Smigrod: Around Network Forum community that like and [00:42:21] Dan Smigrod: use Zillow 3D Home because they like it as a tool; [00:42:24] Dan Smigrod: they like it as a platform. [00:42:27] Dan Smigrod: They have not made any effort to raise this issue with their client: "Hey! [00:42:32] Dan Smigrod: At the end of the day, Zillow is your competitor. It's the wolf!" [00:42:39] Dan Smigrod: I'll mix my metaphors here with Little Red Riding Hood or something, [00:42:42] Dan Smigrod: but it really is, that wolf in sheep's clothing, [00:42:46] Dan Smigrod: so we really should start to move off of this platform. [00:42:53] Dan Smigrod: I think what I'm hearing is, [00:42:55] Dan Smigrod: if a real estate agent asks the photographer to use Zillow 3D Home, [00:43:00] Dan Smigrod: you'd rather than say, "No. [00:43:01] Dan Smigrod: I think you'd rather not, [00:43:04] Dan Smigrod: because they really are competing with you at the end of the day, [00:43:06] Dan Smigrod: Let's use a different virtual tour platform to create the tour." [00:43:14] Dan Smigrod: Anyway, I'm just struggling with that a little bit because my sense is in [00:43:18] Dan Smigrod: our community there are agents that request Zillow 3D Home. [00:43:22] Dan Smigrod: Our photographers go shoot it and the agent's happy and the photographer's happy. [00:43:28] Dan Smigrod: I'm guessing you're taking that perspective of, [00:43:31] Dan Smigrod: but that's not a good thing because you're feeding the beast by giving them [00:43:35] Dan Smigrod: content in perpetuity by shooting it natively within a Zillow app. [00:43:41] Joe Jesuele: It's not the best thing. It's not the worst thing either. [00:43:43] Joe Jesuele: I mean, it's not the worst thing in the world. [00:43:49] Joe Jesuele: If you have customers that are specifically saying, [00:43:55] Joe Jesuele: "Look. I need a Zillow 3D tour, I need it bad. [00:43:58] Joe Jesuele: It's only thing I want. Please give it to me." [00:44:02] Joe Jesuele: Fine, give it to them. But I haven't heard anyone like that. [00:44:05] Joe Jesuele: I don't know anyone saying that. [00:44:06] Joe Jesuele: I think they say Zillow 3D because it's something that they know. [00:44:11] Joe Jesuele: But when given an alternative, they're fine with that too. [00:44:15] Joe Jesuele: I don't know the percentage, but maybe half would be totally fine with something else. [00:44:20] Joe Jesuele: Maybe there are significant amount of agents that only want Zillow 3D, [00:44:26] Joe Jesuele: but I haven't come across any. [00:44:28] Joe Jesuele: We do thousands of shoots a months, [00:44:29] Joe Jesuele: so I just haven't seen it. [00:44:31] Joe Jesuele: Maybe it exists but I haven't. [00:44:33] Dan Smigrod: Well, I think based on today's show, [00:44:35] Dan Smigrod: we're actually going to see a rather lengthy post, [00:44:37] Dan Smigrod: in the We Ge Around Network Forum by a Member who is [00:44:40] Dan Smigrod: a real estate agent and also a real estate photographer. [00:44:47] Dan Smigrod: He's in the best position to actually be able to control which platform he's using and he [00:44:54] Dan Smigrod: uses Zillow 3D Home to shoot his tours for his listings, [00:45:01] Dan Smigrod: as well as other agents in his office. [00:45:04] Dan Smigrod: Let's see if today's program has swayed him in any way to say, [00:45:11] Dan Smigrod: "I really need to move off of using Zillow 3D Home [00:45:14] Dan Smigrod: and I need to use a different virtual tour platform." I'm curious. [00:45:18] Joe Jesuele: Well let's see. I mean, [00:45:19] Joe Jesuele: this is not the hole that we want to die unnecessarily. [00:45:25] Joe Jesuele: To me it's a significant thing that it would [00:45:27] Joe Jesuele: be a good business strategy to offer some other solutions, [00:45:30] Joe Jesuele: but to use their own. [00:45:32] Joe Jesuele: I mean, It's people will continue to use Zillow. [00:45:39] Joe Jesuele: But there's many other options. [00:45:42] Dan Smigrod: Awesome. One last question. [00:45:48] Dan Smigrod: What is your last parting thoughts on this topic of: How [00:45:52] Dan Smigrod: Photographers can Resist Zillow's Threat to Monopolize Real Estate? [00:46:00] Joe Jesuele: Well, I would say if there's anything to remember [00:46:04] Joe Jesuele: is: control your source files. Control the content. [00:46:10] Joe Jesuele: That is very valuable to the photographer. [00:46:14] Joe Jesuele: When you control the content, [00:46:18] Joe Jesuele: that puts you in a really valuable position. [00:46:21] Joe Jesuele: You can offer that to your customer. [00:46:23] Joe Jesuele: Then it'll put them in a very valuable position. [00:46:25] Joe Jesuele: If you partner with that customer, the real estate agent, [00:46:28] Joe Jesuele: the two of you can do a lot of business together, [00:46:33] Joe Jesuele: and that's, I think a really successful model. [00:46:36] Joe Jesuele: There are many other models and maybe Zillow 3D can fit into one of those, [00:46:39] Joe Jesuele: but that's what I would say. [00:46:42] Joe Jesuele: Make sure you control the content: control the files, [00:46:44] Joe Jesuele: and that will put you in a good position. And, be on [00:46:48] Joe Jesuele: the lookout for NFT marketplaces in real estate. [00:46:52] Joe Jesuele: Be open to learning about NFTs and blockchain. [00:46:55] Dan Smigrod: Joe, thanks for being on the show today. [00:46:58] Joe Jesuele: Well, thanks very much, Dan. [00:46:59] Dan Smigrod: We've been visiting with Joe Jesuele. [00:47:02] Dan Smigrod: Joe is the Founder and Owner of HomeJab based in the Greater Philadelphia area. [00:47:08] Dan Smigrod: Though, employees all over the country, [00:47:12] Dan Smigrod: you can find HomeJab at www.HomeJab.com... www.HomeJab.com [00:47:20] Dan Smigrod: Check out the blog post that we've been discussing today. [00:47:24] Dan Smigrod: For Joe in the Greater Philadelphia area, [00:47:27] Dan Smigrod: I'm Dan Smigrod founder of the, [00:47:29] Dan Smigrod: We Ge Around Network Forum and you've been watching WGAN-TV Live at 5. # # # # # |
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 WGAN Fan Club Member Gilroy, California |
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| Well, Dan, you put the bait in the water and I’m going to bite!... Let me offer a short “executive summary” at the beginning of my “opinion piece”. Every business must craft and promote their Unique Selling Proposition as the reason to do business with them over other options. In the case of HomeJab, I think they have focused upon a narrow and insignificant Benefit Set. The company expends a lot of ink attempting to create the perception of value for their target market, real estate photographers. I’m just not persuaded… Targeted Stakeholders - #1 - The Real Estate Listing Agent I see two distinct stakeholders involved here with separate concerns. The primary stakeholder creating the opportunity is the real estate agent who is representing a home owner, known as “the listing agent”. His fiduciary responsibility is to market the property to obtain the best deal available in the current market. There are lots of things involved: advising home preparation, improvements, staging, pricing, time of going on the market, negotiating offers, and taking the lead in marketing the property. The Listing Agent makes decisions about when to list the property, when to host open house times, and where to advertise (social media, magazines, brokerage TV programs, brokerage websites, print media, flyers, post cards mailed out to the neighborhood, etc.) Almost always, the listing agent posts the property on the local MLS board with photos (at least!) and often with other media: photo slideshow, 360 tour, video, drone, single-page website where these media assets can display the property with everything in one location for easy viewing. The information that the listing agent posts on the local MLS sometimes also gets posted by the brokerage (Coldwell Banker, Intero, ReMax, etc.). The listing information is “scraped” from either the listing brokerage site or the MLS and reposted to all the other search sites. This is where a savvy real estate agent will consider his options well (and some, admittedly, are oblivious to the details here in the deep weeds!). The agent’s fiduciary responsibility makes him responsible to place the property listing where it gets seen by the most eyeballs and for the most exposure time. Many listing agents post their listings to the local MLS and their brokerage automatically also posts the listing to their company website. And that’s the end of it. But where are the eyeballs searching for homes? Here is a screen shot showing website traffic for August 2020 for Zillow and three other real estate websites.  As Dan mentioned during the webinar with Joe, Zillow and Trulia (a subsidiary), received 39% of WORLDWIDE real estate traffic (Monthly Visits) of the top ten international sites. I know that we are talking about a pie that can be sliced lots of ways to get a desired statistic. Let me just point out that Zillow that month had 289 million total visits. The second place on the list was Realtor.com with 145.9 million visits – HALF the traffic! So if you are a big game hunter and you know that most of the animals in the area are hanging out around the biggest water hole, doesn’t it make sense that you’d want to get set up nearby? And if you had the choice of fishing at three different lakes but you heard that one lake was stocked last week with fish, where would you head? And, wouldn’t you think ahead about how to make best use of the opportunity to hunt at the big water hole or fish in the lake teeming with fish? I assert that Zillow is the big watering hole and the teeming lake of fish. A wise real estate photographer would be counseling his real estate agent-client how to make best use of the Zillow platform for promoting their property listing. Practically, to me that means optimizing the immersive media opportunities offered by the Zillow platform to present photos, 360 pics, and video in the most accessible manner. Photos are easy, they get scraped off the MLS site automatically. The 360 pics shot with the Zillow 3D Home app are featured in second position on the photo carousel. In the past couple months Zillow has also begun posting Matterport tours in the same spot. That’s nice because before, if you had put up a Matterport tour on the MLS, the link to it in the Zillow listing was buried as a text link down the right column in a place that required some searching to find. In addition to the 360 tour being featured on the Zillow listing, video can be uploaded to their platform and is displayed at the bottom of the photo carousel. Convenient! Now here is where I found a real gap in understanding by my fellow-agents in my Coldwell Banker office. I found that many had very nice single-page websites for their listings whose URLs they added into the media links on the MLS (my MLS has four fields for media links). The problem – Zillow didn’t scrape those URLs into their listing info and many Zillow listings SHOWED ONLY PHOTOS! I found that most of the smaller real estate platforms did scrape the URLs, but it’s small consolation when there is comparatively fractional volumes of traffic on those smaller sites seeing that wonderful media. Just to note where we are in our discussion, I am still focused on the first stakeholder, the real estate agent. What does HomeJab say to them to create value? Fear! “…they (Zillow) really are competing with you at the end of the day,” “At the end of the day, Zillow is your competitor. It's the wolf!” [00:35:28] “Do what you can to control your listing content and control the leads.” “The way that you do that is by making sure that the videos and the virtual tours, the content that people want to see when they're really serious; not just the photographs but the actual videos and the virtual tours, make sure that, that's hosted off Zillow and I think that would be really helpful.” [00:38:29] "Why are we doing this? We're feeding the beast" type of comments? From a real estate photographer's standpoint, again, I think it's helpful because this is the language of the customers. This is what the real estate agents are talking about. This is what they're concerned about. This is a major issue for them and it involves their livelihood." "As a business person, as a photographer, that's what resonates." "I think it's, not only is it the truth, and I think it's good for the industry, but it's also a good business strategy for the photographers to be doing this and telling their customers that “I will help you to present this media off Zillow and it'll help you to help the industry, help your career”. "One thing that they can be doing and one thing we can do to help them is to shoot these beautiful virtual tours and videos, and then help them to market them on their own sites, on their own property pages, on their own hosting platforms, and keep it off of these big tech Silicon Valley platforms and that's the idea.” I cordially disagree with the ideas quoted above. Strongly… Regarding the quote above “Do what you can to control your listing content and control the leads”, in the specific situation of a listing agent posting a property on Zillow, the main concern and main benefit of the Zillow platform for him is exposure to potentially interested buyers, not capturing leads! The listing agent’s phone number is shown in the listing’s right column information with a pop-up form to send a message. I call that a lead! There are real estate agents who love to hate Zillow, but I would contend that most of those Zillow-hating agents are NOT listing agents selling the properties. Zillow captures buyer leads and then sells them for an exorbitant price to agents, giving them a reason to complain. But for a listing agent, Zillow provides incredible FREE visibility for properties, especially if every opportunity is taken to optimize the media presentation. #2 - The Photographer Let’s talk about the other stakeholder in this situation, the real estate photographer. “By working with HomeJab, you have better control of your content.” “Controlling your content is a valuable thing to the photographer and the agent.” This pitch is not really creating a Unique Selling Proposition with perceived value for a photographer. First, HomeJab presents the illusion that Zillow somehow will “control your content”. I know for a fact that Zillow strongly supports the rights of photographers to their media. I heard that directly from a director-level employee at Zillow during a telephone conversation with another employee, the Photography Account Coordinator of the Rich Media Experience Growth Group. My experience is that once a listing is sold, the 360 tour and video are removed from the listing page. As Dan mentioned, the Zillow 3D Home tour can be easily placed onto another website with an embed code, unbranded without any indication of origination at Zillow (let them host it for free!). And I have found that the Zillow 3D Home tours I created are still accessible to me after they are removed from the listing page. So I can use them for addition to my portfolio site. Joe mentioned using EyeSpy360 as their platform of preference. I signed up for EyeSpy last year when it was first offered at a discount to members of the California Association of Realtors. It’s a great service with features beyond the Zillow 3D Home offering. But…. what benefit is a “better virtual tour” if it doesn’t get hits, displayed on a low-traffic brokerage site? EyeSpy just wasn’t providing enough incremental benefit to create a separate virtual tour in addition to the one I shot with the Zillow 3D Home app. I admit that there are some pretty slick alternative virtual tour platforms out there, but consider the cost/benefit situation. Fast and free is pretty compelling for a major segment of the housing market! Here’s where I developed a two-pronged approach to the quantity/quality conundrum. Shoot the Zillow 3D Home virtual tour, shoot the walk-through video and upload it to Zillow, with pro photos. Then create a single page website on the Show and Tours site to combine all the media assets, property description, agent contact info and map. Grab that web page URL and use that in all the fields on the MLS listing for media. That single page website shows up on most of the other real estate websites for that property. One click and the viewer sees all the media assets in one beautiful presentation page. And you maximize the opportunity on the Zillow site. With that idea, you could use EyeSpy360 or any other virtual platform on the single page website. But I find that simply adding the link to the unbranded Zillow 3D Home tour works fine. I discovered recently that Matterport tours were being positioned in the same location on the photo carousel as the Zillow 3D Home tours created with their app. I am exploring the cost/benefit equation on that option, might be worth it to have that as a higher-end offering to agents. Lastly, the mention by Joe of “NFT”. First time I’ve heard of that. I am not looking to resell any of my media photos for property listings. So that angle has no value to me. Anybody else? Waiting… Summary Here are the claims I addressed here: - Controlling your content - Posting media to Zillow gives it to them “in perpetuity” - Zillow being viewed as a competitor - Off-site hosting is better than using the Zillow platform - Traceability of copyright ownership using NFT and block chain technology. Epilog I will stick with the Zillow platform but I did sign up a while back with HomeJab as a photographer. No calls yet. Maybe they read my previous post on the initial interview with Joe… |
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