Professional Photography

[Mike V.]

Hello everyone!

Our company DMW HomeBuyers is looking for a professional photographer in the Anne Arundel County / PG County area of Maryland. We are looking for someone willing to travel and who has experience in Real Estate photography. Our company Maryland HomeBuyers Network Realty is also looking for a photographer we can recommend to our clients when they sell their home. Their is nothing more important than a first impression and with everyone shopping online first, pictures are a big deal! 

Please be outgoing, resourceful, and creative as well as accountable, punctual, and ambitious. You can private message me if you would like, but we would need to see some of your past work and your price as well. If we really like your work, we will be using you for all our Fix and Flips as well as recommending you to all our clients and family.

Thank you so much. Looking forward to doing business with you.

[Jerry W.]

Nice add and great idea to keep things moving.

[Michel Lee]

Hey Mike is DMW HomeBuyers a relatively new company? Can't seem to find a history of guys online...

[Mike V.]

Originally posted by @Michel Lee:

Hey Mike is DMW HomeBuyers a relatively new company? Can't seem to find a history of guys online...

Yes sir. We are a newer company. We started around 16 - 18 months ago. I have two other partners, one of which has been in the business since '02 and has also been a top selling realtor for most of his 27 years in business. We are in the process of building our website right now and currently have 3 properties, 2 under contract and a subdivision we aquired from one of the other properties. 

Is there any information I can help you with?

[Michel Lee]

Very nice! @Mike Vakas

Yeah, its pretty important to have a website now a days, or else nobody can find you. 

Speaking of websites, you said you're in the process of getting yours done. If you like I can take a look at yours and give some professional feed back.

[Mike V.]

Originally posted by @Michel Lee:

Very nice! @Mike Vakas

Yeah, its pretty important to have a website now a days, or else nobody can find you. 

Speaking of websites, you said you're in the process of getting yours done. If you like I can take a look at yours and give some professional feed back.

 We have a ways to go, but we have been working closely with a company who is designing it. We have actually negotiated into a sort of partnership with our business. He thinks he can make us money digitally and we aren't sure that's possible. He asked us to give him a chance at a highly reduced fee and other benefits in return for a piece of the pie he claims he will make us. We agreed. I can show you when we have a little more complete.

Do you have a portfolio. Do you do anything else besides designing websites?

[Dimitar Yankov]

Hi Mike, I've been doing non-real estate photography as a hobby for several years now (I have a 9 to 5 in NOVA), but if you want sent me a message and I will give you a link to some of my work. I am also looking to invest (but and hold) so I am naturally interested in real estate as well. 

[Russell Brazil]

@Mike V. Use a reputable realtor. We typically have professional photographers that we use, that specifically shoot real estate.  That is pretty standard operating procedure with most good Realtors.

[Mike V.]

Originally posted by @Russell Brazil:

@Mike V. Use a reputable realtor. We typically have professional photographers that we use, that specifically shoot real estate.  That is pretty standard operating procedure with most good Realtors.

Photography is an art though and it doesn't necessarily mean that because your a good real estate photographer that you are a good or reputable realtor. I know a few amazing realtors who are technologically impaired but sell a ton of houses and who get lots of referrals  . I want someone who can see the true essence of the house and is able to show someone through a picture.

[Russell Brazil]

Originally posted by @Mike V.:

Originally posted by @Russell Brazil:

@Mike V. Use a reputable realtor. We typically have professional photographers that we use, that specifically shoot real estate.  That is pretty standard operating procedure with most good Realtors.

Photography is an art though and it doesn't necessarily mean that because your a good real estate photographer that you are a good or reputable realtor. I know a few amazing realtors who are technologically impaired but sell a ton of houses and who get lots of referrals  . I want someone who can see the true essence of the house and is able to show someone through a picture.

 Im not saying have a Realtor take the pictures....I use a professional photographer when I list houses. Most Realtors (Good ones) do. Im just saying there isnt much of a need to reach out and find your own photographer, just let the Realtor handle getting one to you.

[Mike V.]

Originally posted by @Russell Brazil:

Originally posted by @Mike V.:

Originally posted by @Russell Brazil:

@Mike V. Use a reputable realtor. We typically have professional photographers that we use, that specifically shoot real estate.  That is pretty standard operating procedure with most good Realtors.

Photography is an art though and it doesn't necessarily mean that because your a good real estate photographer that you are a good or reputable realtor. I know a few amazing realtors who are technologically impaired but sell a ton of houses and who get lots of referrals  . I want someone who can see the true essence of the house and is able to show someone through a picture.

 Im not saying have a Realtor take the pictures....I use a professional photographer when I list houses. Most Realtors (Good ones) do. Im just saying there isnt much of a need to reach out and find your own photographer, just let the Realtor handle getting one to you.

 ok. I understand what you are saying now. Our realtor is our business partner and he doesn't really have a great photograph in my opinion or the opinion of our other partner. He still seems to sell houses though. We actually just found one temporarily. His photography is so good and he helped us sell the house we currently have under contract, but he does it as a hobby and if it's 'worth his time', he will do it again. We need consistency and for it to be affordable. If you don't mind me asking, since you have some experience in the area, around how much do you typically pay for a photographer / house?

[Russell Brazil]

@Mike V. I think I pay something like $250-$300 for the photography,brochures (50  I think?) and the virtual tour depending on the size of the house. It's something I dont pay that much attention to since my brokerage just charges it to my credit card. I also have not really explored pricing in this arena. I just get it through my brokerage since that is the simplest way for me to do it. I imagine we may get a discounted rate from the vendors for that since we have a particularly big market share.

[Michel Lee]

Originally posted by @Mike V.:

We have a ways to go, but we have been working closely with a company who is designing it. We have actually negotiated into a sort of partnership with our business. He thinks he can make us money digitally and we aren't sure that's possible. He asked us to give him a chance at a highly reduced fee and other benefits in return for a piece of the pie he claims he will make us. We agreed. I can show you when we have a little more complete.

Do you have a portfolio. Do you do anything else besides designing websites?

Well I actually invest in real estate myself, about to close my 6th home this year and convert it into another rental property. 

Web design wise, you can take a look at one of our single property websites 

http://4745pinetree.com/

Is actually a real home currently on the market, listing price is somewhere around 14 million for the Halda group. 

https://www.gorealesite.com/

Will have the full collection. The design work, domain name and hosting are all included, for as long you want or until the home is sold.

What is very intriguing to me is how you can "make us money digitally"? Lol what is that suppose to even mean. 

[Mike V.]

Wow. That's really nice. Is that your property?

Also how long have you been designing websites? I also tried looking for your pricing? Is it listed on your website? How does your program work? Does it actually sell houses? and Are you able to attract local buyers etc?

hahaha as far as the 'make us money digitally', what I've gather is that he is confident in his ability to  attract sellers very similar to 'we buy houses' signs to our website asking us what we would pay for their house or something like that. He thinks he may also be able to attract passive lender investors as well so we can accumulate the capital to do more deals. I'm not sure what all that entails and quite frankly this is only my 4th property, so I still feel I have a ton to learn, but what are your thoughts? Do you think all that is possible? Do you think he may have a way. What would be your strategy? What has been successful for you?

Our team saying for hiring people is "the best people play and tryouts are always open". If your the best Quarterback on your football team you'll be starting quarterback our mentor always says, so we integrate that into our business.

[George P.]

Originally posted by @Michel Lee:

Very nice! @Mike Vakas

Yeah, its pretty important to have a website now a days, or else nobody can find you. 

Speaking of websites, you said you're in the process of getting yours done. If you like I can take a look at yours and give some professional feed back.

 you are welcome to give me feedback on my site any day. 

[Manolo D.]

@Michel Lee Sorry but I had to notice, 14.75M selling and the owner has an aol as his email/net service provider, I had to laugh though. lol.

@Mike V. It might, or might not. Let us say you have a website, each and every lead, does not matter where / who acquired it, will most likely at 80-95% rate look at your website and initiate contact there, if they email or call, how would you know they are generated by the website itself or you generated the lead, or your team did? --- In the other side of the coin, let say he is really good at his job, he can get adwords and pay per click ads running, gets you on the top 1 when you search a simple phrase like "SFH for sale in Maryland" (in short, a very broad choice and you top it, say in my case if I search "Construction Company in California" I am #1), how would you determine that it was not your team who created the lead? He might generate 50% of your leads now, but how could you differentiate the success of your team vs of digital.

Say in 2 years, you have 10 purchases a month instead of 1 a quarter. He could now sit back and relax, then claim everything that is going your way through the website.  Now I have a couple of questions before you launch, who owns the domain? who controls the website? who controls the emails? what prevents him from looking at your emails? who determines that he closed the transaction and/or generated the lead or your team?

[Mike V.]

Originally posted by @Manolo D.:

@Michel Lee Sorry but I had to notice, 14.75M selling and the owner has an aol as his email/net service provider, I had to laugh though. lol.

@Mike V. It might, or might not. Let us say you have a website, each and every lead, does not matter where / who acquired it, will most likely at 80-95% rate look at your website and initiate contact there, if they email or call, how would you know they are generated by the website itself or you generated the lead, or your team did? --- In the other side of the coin, let say he is really good at his job, he can get adwords and pay per click ads running, gets you on the top 1 when you search a simple phrase like "SFH for sale in Maryland" (in short, a very broad choice and you top it, say in my case if I search "Construction Company in California" I am #1), how would you determine that it was not your team who created the lead? He might generate 50% of your leads now, but how could you differentiate the success of your team vs of digital.

Say in 2 years, you have 10 purchases a month instead of 1 a quarter. He could now sit back and relax, then claim everything that is going your way through the website.  Now I have a couple of questions before you launch, who owns the domain? who controls the website? who controls the emails? what prevents him from looking at your emails? who determines that he closed the transaction and/or generated the lead or your team?

 We asked ourselves the same question: How would we know where it came from. Forgive me for my ignorance about internet marketing and building websites etc, but he said it would have to be an honor system. He wouldn't be able to take credit for anything unless we acknowledged that's where it came from. He wouldn't even know we were working with the people technically right? However, we will do the right thing and ask them where they found out about us. If they say the internet, and we do anything, we would mark it down and he would get his cut. This is our starting point. If there is a better way, we want to immediately incorporate that. We are all for him making money as we will be making money as well. It's our domain name and we host with a company he suggested "dream host" I think? Dream Host is not his company although I think he said he may store our information on his server if we would like. Forgive me if that sounds incorrect.

To answer your other questions, he would never close the transaction, we would and more specifically our senior partner Dave at this point.

As far as the e-mails go, wouldn't they be forwarded from the contact us page to our e-mail or somewhere different? As far as him reading the e-mails, what would be the dangers in him doing that? Why would we want to prevent him?

We want to determine who generated the lead however I'm not sure there is a better or more integral way of doing it other than an honor system. I think we also talked about creating another website that links to the main one. If he marketed that and anyone asked to be contact, we would know it came from that website which is the one connected to him. I'm not exactly sure that's going to work, but any other ideas or concerns. 

Just so you know from the point of completion, we signed a one year agreement to see how it works for us. But he's taking over all the expenses from social media marketing to blog writing etc (although I'm not sure I want him to write them, we will see). He sees this as a huge opportunity to make more money than he would charge us and we see it as an opportunity to get an inexpensive quality website and a chance for us to build our business in a myriad of ways.

Any and all constructive criticism is welcome. If we are headed in the wrong direction, we would rather know that now. Thanks for all the great questions

[Gabriel G.]

@Mike V. I am planning on using this company called truplace. I learned about them at my brokers office and they not only take quality pictures but they also do interactive floor plans (the ones that show the picture while your mouse hovers over the different rooms) and also virtual tours. A lot of people in my office use them and I think they are worth every penny. (usually around 250-350)

[Michel Lee]

Originally posted by @George P.:

 you are welcome to give me feedback on my site any day. 

Home Page

https://www.gorealesite.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

The sites looks good, only big suggestion is to guide the viewer better to the resource they are seeking. If I was a new client looking to rent I would want to directly view your available properties. If I was currently renting from you I would want to see the resources you provide and how I can pay online etc. Also add more CTAs, other than that its pretty solid.

Oh and the payment page.

https://www.gorealesite.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

Cut the text and just make them pay. Link it directly to the payment page for your account (if that's possible) so you get the money asap, the less steps the better!  :) 

[George P.]

Originally posted by @Michel Lee:

Originally posted by @George P.:

 you are welcome to give me feedback on my site any day. 

Home Page

https://www.gorealesite.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

The sites looks good, only big suggestion is to guide the viewer better to the resource they are seeking. If I was a new client looking to rent I would want to directly view your available properties. If I was currently renting from you I would want to see the resources you provide and how I can pay online etc. Also add more CTAs, other than that its pretty solid.

Oh and the payment page.

https://www.gorealesite.com/wp-content/uploads/201...

Cut the text and just make them pay. Link it directly to the payment page for your account (if that's possible) so you get the money asap, the less steps the better!  :) 

 this is good stuff. i like how you took notes with the site and all. can you please PM me (dont want to hijack the thread even further) and let me know how much to do something like that?

[Manolo D.]

@Mike V. I used to own and operate a website business, a few years ago. The bad thing about owning someone's domain is, I could see their emails, confidential or not, see what the contents of everything you upload, not that I do all those things, but these are just potential confidentiality risks, especially in this business where contacts, deals, contracts, credit cards, and all those information are transmitted, remember if you can read your email, so can he, whatever you sent, he can see them too. I would suggest giving him only blog/wp access, anything above that is your risk. If you only need one site, go with godaddy.com or webhostingbuzz.com something with CPanel access, own the domain and everything on it, just install wordpress and a blog software via Softaculous. Do NOT give him access to anything above those softwares mentioned.

Blogs - remember if someone writes something that is your partner or connected to you, you can't stop them, however, since you are connected, you might want to control his publication, approval before posting.

Lead Generated - I can't advice you on this, but one of the friends I know, someone made a website for his company free of charge and all that, but orders from online are credited to him, now my friend is not the smartest in the world, and since he doesn't have any significant sales, trusted an individual to do online marketing for him. Now the problem is, each and every sales independent contractor must call in that an order is incoming, they had to write down the items and amount, just for them to get their commission, otherwise, it will get credited to the individual who created the site. Long story short, they now have a successful business, people are searching them by brand or go directly to their site (you don't need to do online marketing if you know the web address), and the individual who made the site does not do nothing and takes his commission while watching tv. This is not meant to scare you but it might be good if you think about it. Making another website that could properly determine might be a good idea.

[Michel Lee]

 @George P.:

I sent you a pm. Tell me if you got it.