WGAN-TV: How to Make Money Publishing to Google Street View with Google Street View Product Manager Charles Armstrong | Video: Paulo @Tosolini


WGAN-TV Neil Tocher, co-founder and Chief Technical Officer of NCTech | Video courtesy of @TrustedPhotoDC

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How to Make Money Selling Google Street View “Map Updates”

Start thinking about charging by the mile in addition to square feet.

That’s my big takeaway from the 2018 Google Street View Summit in San Francisco last week (30-31 May 2018): and perhaps obvious when you view the two WGAN-TV interviews above.

Google Street View Product Manager Charles Armstrong sums up the why in this WGAN-TV interview:

✓ Exponential demand for Google Street View content creation – “Map Updates” – powered by Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) such as travel and tourism boards and visitor and convention bureaus.
✓ Exponentially better new tools – better image and data capture quality at lower cost – for content creation that enable large capture at a city or state scale

In this WGAN-TV interview, NCTech Co-Founder and CTO Neil Tocher discusses the iStar Pulsar – first announced onstage at the 2017 Google Street View Summit in Tokyo, unveiled at GEO Business and officially launched at the 2018 Google Street View Summit – the soon-to-be-go-to digitizer Pro camera to help map the world at scale.

It’s telling that half the audience for the 2018 Google Street View Summit were Members of DMOs. In the past, the audience has been nearly all Google Trusted Photographers. Google is signaling that it is helping create exponentially growing demand for the professional photographer Community (that is growing linearly).

It may be hard to imagine today, but coming soon is the inflection point where content creation demand exceeds the pool of professional photographers to create the content.

That’s the point that we all get to charge more for our professional capture services.

And, while the easy-of-use of the NCTech iStar Pulsar will help democratize mapping the world through Google Street View, Pros will be able to charge a premium for their content creation services for at least the next few years. Despite all the talk about easy, fast and simple - it still takes Pro that knows what they are doing to take the initiative to invest in the camera, gear and accessories (still pricy for hobbyists), develop the expertise and market their GSV "Map Updates" services.

Ironically, the advantage of living in a major city – real estate agents that can afford to pay us to scan homes for sale – may swing to less populated areas where Google Street View official updates happens less frequently (or not at all) and DMOs will pay us by the mile to do “map updates” of their corner of the world.

2018 Google Street View Keynote Speaker – Futurist Ray Kurzweil – predicted that the world of outdoor spaces will be completely mapped within 3-5 years. (It's been reported that his predictions are right 86 percent of the time.)

As Googler Charles Armstrong summed up, we all need to be thinking bigger than (just) selling virtual tours. Offering Google Street View “Map Updates” represents the next exponential growth opportunity for all of us.

Are you thinking about being among the first to buy the NCTech iStar Pulsar - starts shipping 15 June 2018 – to begin offering Google Street View "Map Updates"? Or, if not, why not?

Best,

Dan