Expand the real estate photography services you offer your clients in order to save your clients more time and make yourself more money.
There are outstanding opportunities for photographers all across the United States to succeed in the world of real estate photography. As the Work From Home movement gathers steam across the nation, more and more professionals are looking to exit major cities and casting their eyes towards smaller towns where real estate is booming.
For photographers with a good eye, there’s never been a better time to get into real estate photography. Once you’ve mastered the art of photographing homes, then you should definitely consider adding some additional services to your portfolio. There are additional services that aren’t time-consuming and allow you to maximize the value of your time while you’re on a shoot.
But be aware that you’re getting the job first and foremost because of your photography skills. Focus on the photos before adding additional services that are an extra bonus for landing the job.
Additional Real Estate Photography Services
For a small investment of time and money, you can start offering your clients a number of options that are well suited to today’s digital marketing landscape, for instance:
- Drone/Aerial Photography
- 3D Photography / Virtual Tours
- Floor Plans
- Single Property Websites
- Virtual staging
The good news is that there is a lot of educational content on the web that will show you exactly what you need to do to become proficient in offering those services. Three of the best resources for more information on real estate photography services are listed below.
Armed with additional knowledge, you can partner up with a real estate photo editing service that takes over most of the hard, time-consuming work of processing and editing and lets you, the photographer, focus on the creative aspects of the business.
The Ultimate All-in-One
Real Estate Photographer Business Platform
Grow a successful real estate photography business with PhotoUp.
3D Photography / 3D Virtual Tours
The only downside is that most of the additional services you will be offering don’t require a great deal of creativity. For example, 3D photography or virtual 3D tours are achieved through a hi-tech camera and sophisticated software. All you need to do is position the 3D camera in the right place, click the button on the app and let the camera do its thing for the next few minutes.
Floor Plans
Floor plans also require the right visual tools and technology to produce good results. Some services allow you to map out the entire floor plan of a house using your iPhone, while others will have you provide a drawn sample of the floor plan so that they can convert it into a visually appealing 2D or 3D rendering.
Single Property Websites
Single property websites are a bit simpler. Once you’ve chosen a template for your single property website, all you’ll have to do is add the house information, realtor information, and media and then you’re ready to send it off to your client. Most property websites cost somewhere from $10-15 and you can sell them to your clients for $30-50.
Drone Photography
Drone photography does require more involvement and creativity. For drone photography, you need to obtain an FAA 107 Certificate in order to operate a drone in the U.S. The good news is that it’s very affordable and easy to do. The creativity comes in when you’re lining up your shots. Determining the correct height, angle, lighting, and wind speed, and direction all come into play when you’re working with aerial photography.
Virtual Staging
Virtual staging can be as hands-on as you want it to be. For example, some services allow you to pick the furniture and actually place it inside of the room yourself. More advanced services, like PhotoUp’s virtual staging, let you pick a furniture set or individual furniture pieces and then have their team of editors place, edit, and even remove clutter from the original image. Within 24-48 hours, you’ll receive back a final virtually staged image that looks 100% realistic.
Videography
The most creatively challenging of all of these additional services is video. That requires a great deal of time and equipment and knowledge to get it right. You should think and long and hard about how much time and energy you have available before offering video services to a realtor.
Adding Real Value for Realtors
With a little bit of time and effort, you can start to offer these services to your clients and add significant additional revenue to your business. The fact of the matter is this… if you don’t offer it, the realtor is simply going to go ask someone else to do the job. You’re there on-site, so if you don’t do the additional work, then you’re just leaving money on the table.
Do it right and you’ll have paid back the investment in time, knowledge, and equipment within a few months and you’ll be making more money without having to drive around to multiple locations to earn it.
But remember this… these additional services are not going to get you new clients. You still need to apply most of your time and creativity to the business of superior real estate photography if you’re going to succeed.
As real estate photography guru Brian Berkowitz says on his Shooting Spaces podcast “Your photography is going to bring clients to you. The rest is a bonus.”
Don’t give your valuable client a reason to go and hire another photographer. Partner with PhotoUp today, and discover how we can help you add additional services to your business, and get your photos looking better than ever before.
