In this video, Alex Serrao discusses strategies for increasing revenue in real estate media by offering additional services beyond standard photography. The key points include:
- Enhanced Services for Higher Revenue: Alex explains that his ability to charge $1,500 for an Airbnb shoot stems from offering a range of services, not just photography. This approach increases the order value and profits, as time spent on-site is more lucrative than time spent traveling.
- Zillow 3D Home Tour: An easy and quick add-on, using a RICO Theta Z1 camera, to create a 3D tour of a property. It’s less complex than Matterport and takes about 10-15 minutes, with charges starting at $125.
- Virtual Tours and the Zillow 3D Tour App: Initially daunting, virtual tours become straightforward with the right equipment and free apps like the Zillow 3D Tour app. This service offers high profitability due to low overhead costs.
- Aerial Photos with Drones: Essential for modern real estate marketing, especially for properties with scenic views. Alex stresses the importance of being a certified drone operator and charges around $95 for this service, which takes about 10 minutes.
- Floor Plans with Cubasa: Highlighting the importance of floor plans in real estate, Alex demonstrates how easy it is to create them using the Cubasa app. He emphasizes the appeal of 3D floor plans in marketing and charges $95 for 2D and $195 for 3D plans.
- Detail Shots for Enhanced Marketing: These shots, which focus on specific aspects of a property, add depth to the marketing material, particularly for social media and Airbnb listings. Alex charges $150 for up to 12 photos.
- Package Deals for Clients: Alex mentions bundling these services into packages for ease of client selection. The most popular package, including photos, aerials, a Zillow 3D tour, and a floor plan, significantly increases revenue compared to standard photo shoots.
- Growing as a Real Estate Media Company: The video concludes with Alex underscoring the importance of evolving from a photography company to a full-service real estate media company, benefiting both the business and its clients.
Alex also mentions his course “Real Estate Media Pro” for more in-depth information on these add-ons and running a real estate media company.
Transcript
This Airbnb that I’m shooting right now is about $1,500 for the order value, and I’m able to do that because I’m doing a lot more than just photos. If I was just a real estate photography company, that really wouldn’t be possible. We’re a full-service real estate media company, so that allows us to add on all kinds of other things. Because you’re not making money while you’re driving; you’re making money while you’re shooting. So if you can be at a house and add on more things to it so that you can increase that order value in your averages, that’s where you’re going to be seeing more profit and just a higher revenue company. So in this video, I’m going to go over the add-ons that are the easiest to do, fastest to do, and helps increase that order value. Let’s go.
The first add-on that’s easy to do and fast is a Zillow 3D home tour. This one we do with a RICO Theta Z1, this camera right here, and we have this nice little Rico Theta stand as well. It’s really nice because it goes wide so you can go outside or narrow so you can go upstairs like we have in this house. This is something that we charge $125 for a small house up to 1,500 ft, and it goes up from there. It doesn’t take long at all; this house right here will probably take me 10 to 15 minutes to do a Zillow 3D home tour. They’re very quick, very easy. It’s different from Matterport; you don’t have to align the scans quite as picky as Matterport makes you, and it’s just simple to do. It’s a really good one to increase that order value in a short amount of time.
When I was first thinking about adding virtual tours on as a service, I was pretty intimidated by it, to be honest. I wasn’t sure how to do it, and it’s just a whole lot different from taking a photo and making that look good. But as soon as you start to get into it, it’s honestly really simple. You buy the camera; you don’t need to do any editing afterward. You download the app, and it’s free. The Zillow 3D tour app is a free app to use, and so it’s all profit. You know your little bit of time that you put into it obviously accounts for something, but then the surface itself is free, so it’s a really good one to add in.
One of the things that you should absolutely have as an add-on is aerial photos. Like 5 years ago or so, it was pretty common for a real estate agent to hire a photographer and then also hire an aerial photographer. In today’s world, that’s really not the case. It’s kind of standard that if you’re a photographer, you’re also flying a drone. And if you haven’t gotten your part 107 yet, absolutely go do that. It’s very worth it. It doesn’t take that much time or energy to do. Just take a weekend, study, and go pass the test. For us, we charge $95 for 6 to 12 photos on a standard listing. For Airbnbs, it’s a little bit more. If it’s like a bigger property, lots of acreage, a lot of different things that we’re shooting, it’ll be a little bit more as well. But for a standard add-on, it’s $95, and it takes us 10 minutes to do.
So as you can see, at a shoot like this, it’s pretty essential that you have drone photos. I mean, we’re right on the ocean; you absolutely want to be showing everything that this particular house has to offer. And really, most of our shoots, I would say over 90% of them, do add drones. That probably has a lot to do with where I live, so a lot of our houses that we shoot are either on the river or have a water view or something like that. And I know that not everybody’s going to have that, but it’s definitely a feature of this area. Something else I want to make a point about drone is that you shouldn’t do it for free. I know a lot of people add it on, and they’re like, “Hey, it’s included. Photos are $250, and I’ll give you the drone photos for free.” And you’re really underselling yourself right there. This is a big value that they are not able to do, and you go in there and take really good photos. Knowing how to fly a drone is crucial for their marketing, and you should absolutely be charging for it.
Next up, let’s talk about floor plans. Cubasa is actually sponsoring this video. A couple of months ago, I bought a house, and the agent that was selling the house did not have a floor plan on there. I knew that I was going to go in and renovate this whole thing, and so I went into the house and made my own Cubasa floor plan. It took me 5 minutes to do, really quick and easy, and I, as a consumer, really wanted it so that I could look at it on a computer and go, “How do I move walls around? How do I make this renovation work for me?” If I didn’t have that floor plan, I probably wouldn’t have bought the house. For a long time, all we offered was 2D floor plans, and those are absolutely fantastic, and that’s what I personally made. However, Cubasa just started offering 3D floor plans, and these are beautiful floor plans that really are a showpiece in your marketing as an agent. And so for us, we’re able to offer a floor plan for $95 and then a 3D floor plan for $195. This is a great way for us to add revenue so quickly because the tour literally takes 5 minutes to do. I’m going to show you guys how to do that tour right now.
Okay, I’m going to go through how to do a Cubasa tour. You’re going to open the app, hit scan a space, click on single unit residential for this one. Next, it’s going to pull up the address; you’re going to hit confirm. So after you do that, you just say, “I understand.” It’s going to pull it up into a camera view. You’re going to turn it sideways and hit start scanning. So we’re going to go through this tour real quick in just a time-lapse fashion, and I’m going to go over the ordering options.
All right, guys, that’s literally it. That took 3 minutes and 45 seconds to create that entire thing, and now we have the ordering process. So what I’m going to do is hit send for processing, and it’s going to bring us a few different options. So first thing I like to do Earth Tone. You can select many different styles, and you can create custom Styles online, but I just do the Earth Tone one. Hit next, and now this is where you have a couple of different options. So we always do fixed furniture. I just think it’s really nice to be able to have that on there, show where the sinks are,
show where the oven is, things like that. I think it’s important. So we do that, but you could literally do all this for free if you just took that off. It’s a free floor plan. The next thing that you can do is go into your 3D products, and you have 3D floor plans, 3D video render, or you could do both or a CAD file. But right now, we’re just talking about the floor plans. So I’m going to go ahead and do a 3D floor plan and a 3D video render, and I’m going to show you guys exactly what those look like.
The last add-on is detail shots. This one is so fun because it’s just, it kind of brings out the photographer in you, you know, rather than just shooting wide shots all the time. So I have the 24 to 70 that I always carry in my camera case, and detail shots are one of those things that adds such a good kick to the marketing. It’s great for social media, it’s great for Airbnbs, especially, and this house right here is an Airbnb where they did add-on the detail shots. So for an Airbnb, we charge $150 for up to 12 photos. It’s 10 minutes to do it, really just adds a huge piece to the marketing. So these are the five add-ons that we regularly do that are fast and easy and add a good amount of revenue. There’s a big difference between doing four shoots a day that are just photos and then four shoots a day that are photos with all of these add-ons as well. It’s really simple to put these onto your orders because we put them into bundles or packages on our website. So when you go on there, we have kind of our most commonly ordered add-ons put into packages and make it really easy for your customers to see and click on.
Our most popular package is the Highlight package. So that is photos, Aerials, a Zillow 3D tour, and a floor plan, a floor plan that we create with Cubasa. Zillow 3D that’s free, Aerials that take us 10 minutes to do, and then the standard photos. So that shoot probably would have taken 45 minutes anyway; you add on those few other things, and it might be like an hour and 15 minutes total instead. So that drive time in between each one doesn’t change, and you’re only adding on a little bit more to the shoot TimeWise, and so really, you can fit about the same amount of shoots in a day, but you can probably 4x your revenue. A shoot like today, where it would have been around $300 for just the photos, and it’s $1,400, that’s a pretty good and substantial difference. As you’re growing your real estate photography company, you’re going to realize pretty quickly how important it is to become a real estate media company, not just a photography company. All of these add-ons are not only beneficial to you to increase that revenue, but it’s very valuable to your clients to help them market their homes.
That’s going to be it for this video, guys. I hope you found that helpful, talking about add-ons and the different ways to increase your average order value. If you want to learn more about all of these different add-ons, I talk about them in my course, Real Estate Media Pro. I’ll have the link down below. I put everything into that course over the last year and a half to make sure that it was as valuable as I possibly could and got you from A all the way to Z of running a real estate media company. So that’s going to be it. If you guys have any questions, leave a comment down below. I’ll see you in the next one.