Lance Selgo, Author at Tips for Real Estate Photography

Gift Ideas for the Real Estate Photographer

Need some last minute gift ideas for a real estate photographer in your life? Or perhaps you are a real estate photographer and you want some ideas on things to get yourself as a gift? Here are a few small items that I think all real estate photographers should think about having in their camera bags.

I am very adamant and clear that I do not stage properties. Clients know ahead of time that I am expected to focus on taking great photos when I arrive – not rearrange furniture or clean up after messy home sellers. Utilizing a professional home stager is one of the best things agents can do to increase the level of service they provide to sellers, however a lot of Realtors still don’t take advantage of the amazing results a stager brings to the table.

To protect myself from having to do anything I don’t want to do and also to promote the hiring of professional stagers, I created a prep/todo list website that I pass along to clients when appointments are booked.

Whether you realize it or not, you probably have a very big marketing tool at your disposal that you may or may not have thought about. What is it? Teaching! By teaching and educating potential clients, you show yourself as the expert and willing to share your knowledge. Let’s take a look at one way you can teach your way to new business.

I’ve had my Manfrotto 190XPROB (Note: Manfrotto has discontinued this model and have replaced it with the Manfrotto 190XPRO3) tripod for over 4 years and haven’t had any issues with it, until the other week. The thumb screw that goes into the center column to hold the center pole in place stripped. I had to order a new thumb screw from Manfrotto (call them – their online contact form is worthless) and thought it would be a great time to clean my tripod while it was down for the count.

One of the things you can do to extend outstanding service to your Realtor clients is offer to submit your virtual tour links to Realtor.com for them. Although it’s not as prominent today as it was in the past, Realtor.com labels listings with a Tour link to let buyers know additional content is available for them to view.

It was a long time coming. And I was terrified. As a small business owner, we have a hard time believing we are worth every penny (Amazon aff link to a good book to motivate you). We feel the need to help people, which results in low pricing and discounted services. The time will come when you need to raise your prices and you’ll need to come up with a plan to get your clients on board.

It took me a couple of years of running my real estate photography business before I ran into a situation where I needed to color calibrate my monitor. All of the photos that I took were uploaded to MLS and viewed online, right? And everything can see the photos like I see them, we don’t have a printer getting in the way, so what’s the point of color calibration?

Being a professional real estate photographer is not only about providing awesome home photos. A business needs to be run professionally and clients need to be treated appropriately. Customer service goes a long way in helping your business grow and keeping happy clients on your list means you’ll continue to have work.

It’s hard (especially when first starting a real estate photography business) to not devote 100% of your time to your business. But as you grow and become successful, you may need to look at what direction you want to take your business. Your happiness is important, and for some people that means growing their business into the biggest entity possible. For others, they realize they don’t have to create a huge business to be happy.

I have previously discussed file management for real estate photography to show how I organize all of my files. But I’ve received questions about it and had requests from readers that I put together a video to show my folder structure.