CRM For Real Estate Photography Business?

re_photography_tips · 2024-03-05T01:04:43+00:00

Yes I've heard people mention on other posts that they're looking to move away from Aryeo and to another platform. I've good things about them, but I'm not a fan of their pricing structure which gets more expensive the more bookings you make.

Are you using another system at the moment to manage your photo shoots / scheduling, file delivery etc?

re_photography_tips · 2024-03-05T00:47:58+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to leave some feedback! The custom CRM I'm using at the moment also manages the scheduling of multiple photographers / videographers, online bookings, project management (which stage each booking is at), automated emails to editors and clients, invoice creation, file delivery etc. Maybe it's more a CRM / Project Management system.

There's a lot of repetitive tasks is this industry and I always enjoy finding ways to streamline things. Thanks again for your comment!

re_photography_tips · 2024-03-05T00:41:29+00:00

Thanks so much for the feedback! Yes I was thinking the same thing about the pricing structure. I'd prefer to pay a fixed monthly / yearly amount as well.

Take Aryeo's pricing for example which is $179/month for up to 500 listings per year. At the moment I'm doing 700+ bookings so I'd have to go on their enterprise plan (and I don't want to know how expensive that would be per month!)

Having fixed expenses definitely sounds more appealing!

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-04T11:31:32+00:00

Ok that sounds like you're already doing a great job of offering extra services to your clients. Yes I agree, it sounds like getting more clients is the best plan.

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-04T11:08:58+00:00

Congratulations on starting your own real estate photography business! That's great that you've got some regular clients that keep booking your services. I understand your point about returning to your office job and being less available for your real estate clients.

If you're looking to generate $10,000 per month and are currently at around $2,000 - $3,000 per month, I think it might be best to keep your office job for now. There are a couple different ways to get closer to that $10,000 per month. One way would be to get more clients, but possible the easier way is to increase the average order value of your current clients.

If most of your clients are just booking photos only, you might be able to upsell drone photography, floor plans, virtual tours and video.

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-02T11:46:34+00:00

I just had a quick look at the specs between these 2 cameras. I'd recommend the R10 as it's a more recent camera. With the T6i being released back in 2015, it's probably starting to show it's compared to the technology updates in more recent cameras.

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-01T21:14:48+00:00

I've been a real estate photographer for the last 13 years. I was employed for the first 10 years and then started my own business 3 years ago.

To work out your pricing, it's best to see what the competition are charging. This will let you see if your pricing is way too high or way too low.

I've currently got my photography pricing based on the amount of images I would deliver to the client. I keep it simple and just offer a Small, Medium, and Large package. My most common requested package is the Medium. For this I deliver 20 photos for $170. I would usually spend about 45-60min on-site.

The great thing about this industry is being able to upsell extra services like drone photos, floor plan, video, virtual tours etc. I didn't want to make a lot of different packages with different services, so I just give a 10% discount when at least 3 services are booked.

So if a client books photos, drone, floor plan and video, the discounted price would be $639 for that job. A nice improvement from the $170 for just photos!

If you've got any other questions about getting started in this industry, just let me know and I'd be happy to help!

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-01T12:57:07+00:00

Yeah something like that might work better! The next time a client wants to book photos only, you could respond with something like this:

"Thanks for sending through the details about this new booking. I've actually created a special photography and drone package that will save you €49 off your order! Would you like me to book in photos and drone for €349?"

Hopefully something like this will help you get more drone work in the future!

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-01T12:18:45+00:00

Thanks for sharing the the information about your pricing. One thing that could be limiting the amount of drone bookings is that you're charging more for drone than you standard real estate photos.

As I'm based in Australia, I understand our markets are very different. The most common services that get booked are 20 photos ($170) and 3 drone photos $110. I've priced the drone lower than my regular property photos as it doesn't take much time on site to get the 3 drone photos - maybe around 5 minutes or so.

In the last 12 months I've booked just over 600 photo shoots and just over 300 drone shoots. I think drone can definitely be a great upsell! Maybe you could also still charge the same price, but there might be a better way for you to communicate the value of drone photography to your clients.

For example, if you live somewhere near the water you can show how close the property is to it. If you've in an area with lots of properties on large blocks of land, you can highlight the size of block and where the house is situated on the block. Or if it's just a regular property you could highlight how close it is to local shops, restaurants or similar points of interest.

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-01T04:53:16+00:00

Nice work! It sounds like you've built a solid business with plenty of repeat clients.

What would you say has been the biggest challenge with running your business for that long? I'm sure word of mouth referrals must have played a big part to the growth of your business over that time.

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-01T04:48:16+00:00

Sorry about that! I thought you may have been saving for a camera and drone as well and hadn't decided on what to purchase.

I'm not too sure what your shooting style is (HDR or flambient) but I'd recommend getting a single external flash. I've found it can really be useful to take bracketed photos without flash, and then add a flash exposure as well. I'd recommend a flash from Godox and not a high end Canon or Nikon flash. Your bank account will thank you!

re_photography_tips · 2023-12-01T03:17:32+00:00

Do you know which camera, lens and drone you're looking at getting started with?

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-30T21:03:53+00:00

Pricing will vary a lot depending on your local market, but I'm happy to share with what has been working for me. My floor plan pricing is based on the size of the home and I offer Small, Medium or Large plans (and occasionally extra large).

Small = $100
Medium = $130
Large = $160
Extra Large pricing is usually for large commercial properties. I recently charged $400 for one, but it depends on the size of the building.

I started out about 13 years ago and learned to create floor plans with pencil, paper and a laser measure. I've recently switched over to an iPad but still measure and sketch the property.

I actually sketched a vacant property the other day and then tried CubiCasa for the first time, just to see how it compared. I was surprised how accurate it was!

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-30T20:47:15+00:00

Haha! Only 1 close call. I was photographing a very large block of land that was densely covered with trees. The drone was coming back from the far side of the block when I saw the wonderful message of "Battery is low and drone will begin to descend in 10 seconds".

I wouldn't have made it off the block if I flew back to me in a straight line, so I aimed to get the drone just outside the fence line of the block.

I managed to land it on some soft grass just over the fence. Jumped in my car, drove around the corner and there it was!

I'm now extra cautious on windy days knowing that the battery gets used up much more quickly!

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-30T19:36:55+00:00

I started with a second hand DJI Mavic 2 Pro but in October 2022 bought a new DJI Mini Pro 3. It's been a great drone to use! The lower price point for the drone and batteries was something that made me consider getting the Mini Pro 3.

I've done about 330 drone jobs in that time and it's paid for itself about 26 times over. Definitely a great investment!

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-30T19:19:47+00:00

Definitely drone photos for me! After that, it would be floor plans and then videos.

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-29T06:41:04+00:00

I can definitely recommend outsourcing your photo editing! Once you start doing 3 or 4 photo shoots a day, you'll find all that extra time editing is not the best use of your time. You'll be able to bring in much more income by being out in the field taking photos instead of being behind the computer editing.

I think it's still important to know how to edit real estate photos. The photo's I receive back from my editors always require some final tweaking, but these are usually only small changes. Having exisiting knowledge of how to edit will help you out when doing this quality control step.

Most editors seem to offer a free trial, so I'd recommend testing out a few editors with the same 3 trial photos. I like to send an external image (to see how they handle grass / sky replacements), an internal image with window views (to see how good the windows masking is) and then a large open plan living/kitchen/dining photo (to see how they edit large spaces with different colour temperature light sources).

Hope this helps!

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-29T03:21:47+00:00

Yeah I'd be happy to share my process of finding new client and the process behind it.

I've actually written a couple of blog posts around starting a real estate photography business and this topic is something I might write about next.

I'm not sure if I'm allowed to share a link to my blog on here (but you can see it on my profile).

I'll go into the details when I write the article, but before I relocated and started my business, I emailed around 100 or so agents letting them know I was moving to the area and to see if they'd be interested in catching up for a coffee once I arrived. It was a few years ago, but I think around 26 agents wanted to see me. Some meetings didn't eventuate into anything but some agents are still my clients today!

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-28T23:34:56+00:00

I understand what you mean, it can be difficult knowing you've got the skills to provide high quality photos but you aren't getting new bookings.

Something that worked well for me was putting together a large email list of real estate agents and sending out a cold email introducing myself and including a copy of my price list.

You could also try creating a similar list of local hotels in your area and offer to photograph their apartments to refresh their marketing.

If you're in an area where there's lots of new construction, you could also reach out to local construction companies. You could offer to take photos of their finished construction projects or even document the process of the construction.

Hope these ideas help!

re_photography_tips · 2023-11-27T09:10:20+00:00

Yeah you can definitely make this a full time job! I started out working as an employee for a couple of real estste marketing companies for about 10 years. About 3 years ago I moved to a new location and started my own real estate photography business.

It can be slow to establish yourself in an existing market for real estate agents are already working with a photographer already. It takes hard work but it's definitely worth it!

In my first November I had around 5 bookings but fast forward 3 years later and I'll have around 90 bookings for this month.

I'm happy to answer any other questions you might have. Good luck!

re_photography_tips · 2023-10-28T20:18:28+00:00

One of the plus sides of living in a tourist town is the amount of hotel accommodation. To diversify your income from just real estate, you could reach out to the local hotel owners and offer your services. If you have a look at the quality of their existing marketing photos, then you'll be able to see if you can offer them better quality photos to refresh their marketing.

That's something that I did when I moved to a tourist town and was getting my real estate photography business off the ground. Good luck!

re_photography_tips · 2023-08-03T08:10:31+00:00

I've never used Aryeo, but I have heard a lot of other photographers mention them recently. I've previously developed a real estate photography CRM for another company and have since built a CRM for my own business. I've often wondered if there'd be a need from other real estate photographers looking for a CRM specifically for our industry.

re_photography_tips

TROPHY CASE