You’ve heard of engagement photoshoots. And maternity photoshoots. But new home photo shoots?
We’re living in an increasingly Instagram-able world. And millennials are willing to spend good money to have these special moments in their lives documented and shared.
So serve your clients by offering new home photoshoots as an additional service!
This new home photoshoot idea was listed as one of our 25+ Ways to Make Money as a Real Estate Agent. And we’ve received some interest from readers wanting to learn more about it. So today we’ll dig into some of the details of exactly how to add this income stream to your business.
We’ll cover:
- the basics of how to make money offering new home photoshoots
- why this income stream is so easy for real estate professionals to add to their businesses
- the 6 keys to making this income stream productive
- how to get started
- how to push this idea further
Quick note: this post was originally published in February 2018. This is the new and improved version.
The Basics of How to Make Money Offering New Home Photo Shoots
To make money with new home photoshoots, you simply position yourself as a photographer specializing in new home photo packages. You can charge an hourly fee or a session fee, which would include post-shoot photo editing to make sure the images are properly cropped, colored, and retouched as needed.
We’re not talking about the courtesy photos you would take in your role as a real estate agent. We’re talking a full hour-long session, complete with props, resulting in professional-quality photos.
What kind of photos would you take? There are so many fun options! Here are just a few ideas:
- the buyers accepting the keys in front of the house
- the buyers carrying each other over the threshold
- a champagne picnic on a bare living room floor
Just look at these beautiful shots on Tidewater and Tulle, Anna Lynn Hughes Photography, and even in this Huffington Post article.
So the process is simple: take the photos, edit them, and provide the finished photo set (minus unflattering shots and photos similar enough to be duplicates) on a company-branded USB drive.
What’s in it for you?
Sure you’d be offering a service to your clients; photos your buyers will cherish for years to come! But what’s in it for you (I mean, besides the added income stream)?
New home photoshoots are still a pretty novel idea. Until they catch on like wildfire, offering this service will distinguish you as the agent for millennial buyers. You’re offering something that speaks specifically to that generation, which they will appreciate. And if you get in early, you’ll have more experience and a greater portfolio than your competition by the time they arrive in the game.
You’ll also get free marketing for your real estate business. Your buyers will be posting these photos all over their social media accounts, on their house-warming party invitations, and on their “we moved” new address postcards to friends and family. Their purchase serves as social proof to their peers that it’s time to buy a house. And that you’re just the agent to help them.
Why New Home Photo Shoots are an Easy Addition to Your Real Estate Business
Adding new home photo shoots to your existing real estate business is pretty easy because you’re already in a prime position to offer this service.
You probably already have:
- basic photography skills and some experience (from your listings if nothing else)
- relationships with buyers who would be interested in this service (your own buyers and your colleagues’ buyers)
- access to a good camera (cell phone photos aren’t going to cut it if you’re going to provide a professional photo package)
So for now you just need practice, practice, practice to hone your photography skills. Maybe bring a friend or family member when you shoot your new listings so you can take some practice portrait shots. Or follow your family around your house taking portraits.
As you grow into this new business and learn more, you’ll probably want to take a few photography classes, learn more about lighting equipment, and get experience with more specialized editing software. There will be plenty of time for that in the future. And you’ll be able to increase your rates as your skills increase!
Photo by Erinn Hargis
5 Keys to Making the New Home Photo Shoot Income Stream Productive
1. Start improving your photography, and then keep improving it
This income stream is only sustainable if you get to the point where your images are just as good as the professional photographers in town. So start learning everything you can about shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Experiment with your camera to find out what works. You’ll also need to experiment with people. What poses make for the best shots?
This requires a substantial upfront time investment, but you’ll soon be able to make your manual adjustments and pose your subjects without even thinking about it.
2. Have the right equipment
First, you need a DSLR camera. If you don’t already have one, you can get a good DSLR camera, complete with accessories, for under $500. You may also want a basic studio lighting setup to improve the quality of the photos and show your clients that you mean business.
Want to make the photoshoot extra special? Bring more props than just the keys and a sold sign. Here are a few prop ideas:
a bottle of champagne and 2 glasses for a toast
a picnic set to lay out on the bare floor
a chalkboard with the closing date
an envelope addressed to the buyers at the new address
3. Build the right portfolio
Your portfolio will start small. That’s perfectly fine. But try to vary the images. Different poses, different styles, different lighting, etc. The sooner you can vary your subjects, the better. Your prospective clients will notice if your portfolio images are all of the same people.
This sounds terrible to say, but it’s a fact: prospective customers want to see beautiful people in your photos.
It’s sort of like haircuts. People see a person with an attractive face and think that haircut will make them look like that model. They think the same way about photographers. If they see beautiful models in your photos, they subconsciously think you single-handed made the models beautiful, and you can do the same for them.
When they see average-looking people in your portfolio, they think the photographer just couldn’t capture that subject’s beauty. I know, it doesn’t make sense. You’re a photographer, not a magician. But the harsh truth is that you’ll convert more shoppers into customers if you feature beautiful people in many of your portfolio photos.
So once you’re confident in your ability to produce portfolio-quality images, consider hiring a couple of models for a shoot. New models may be willing to trade their services for copies of the images if it will help with their commercial modeling resume and/or portfolio.
4. Price appropriately
If you’re brand new to photography, I strongly recommend offering starter rates to your first few clients. $25-$50 for a 60-minute session plus photo editing. You can reasonably expect to spend about 30 minutes editing for every 60 minutes spent shooting. Then price your local photographers. How much are they charging for senior pictures, engagement shoots, maternity shoots? That will help you gauge an appropriate rate once you feel confident in calling yourself a professional.
5. Promote, promote, promote
You have a website, right? Use it to promote your new photography business. Add a page just to advertise your services.
If you’ve been following Real Estate Side Hustles, you understand the importance of having a blog, both to grow your real estate business and to bring in its own stream of income. And your blog is a great place to promote your new home photoshoot service. Write a post like Top 10 New Home Photo Shoot Ideas. And update your Closing Checklist for Buyers to include the photoshoot.
Reach out to recent buyers to see if they’d be interested in a photoshoot. The window for photographing them in an empty house may be gone, but you can still photograph them with the keys, in front of the house, and going about their idealized domestic life (the family cooking together, playing with the pets, running around the yard, etc). And ask your colleagues to let their clients know about your new service offering.
Maybe hold off on social media marketing in the beginning. Your images may not be quite up to par, and you don’t want to tip your hand to your competitors before you’ve had a chance to brand yourself as the original new home photographer in your market. Once you’re a little more settled in this position, plaster your services all over social media!
Photo by Erinn Hargis
How to Get Started in New Home Photo Shoots
Like most things, to get started, you just have to start! Sure, you should probably read a few starter articles like How to Become a Photographer or Beginner Tips for Posing People with Confidence. But you’ll probably learn more in a single session than you would in a hundred articles. So jump in!
Ask your recent buyers if they’d be interested in having you take photos of them in their home for a small fee. The fee should just be enough to cover your time, not so much that your buyers would expect professional-level photos (yet!). I’d have been thrilled to pay $25 for someone to take 10 or 20 decent amateur photos as we moved into our first home. The thought just never occurred to me at the time!
If you’re not comfortable accepting money for your first few sessions, use this service to close a few clients. Offer a complimentary mini-shoot at closing. Are other agents offering that?
A few sessions like this will help you build a bit of a portfolio. Then you can increase your prices incrementally. After each session, you can bump your pricing a bit until you’re making professional photographer money for professional photographer images.
How to Push this Idea Further
There are two ways to push the new home photoshoot income stream further: offer products and sell some of the images online as stock photos.
Offer Photo Products
Your client may want a set of “we moved” postcards to notify friends and family of their new address. And your new home photoshoot images would look great on those postcards! Save your clients the hassle of designing and ordering the postcards themselves. Just let them choose between a few designs from your supplier, and take care of it for them. With a reasonable markup for your time of course.
Thanks to the many personalization options online, you could offer lots of products to your clients. Here are just a few more examples:
- key chains for their new house keys
- a canvas print to display in their new home
- holiday ornaments
- calendars
- mugs
- throw blankets and pillows
- decorative photo blocks and other wall art
Sell Stock Photos Online
Want to get paid over and over again for the same pictures? Consider selling some of your photos online as stock photos.
While editing the photos from a shoot, ask yourself if any of the images would be appropriate for other real estate professionals and bloggers to use in their marketing or on their websites. If so, you could sell those photos on stock sites like:
Of course you would absolutely need your client’s permission to sell these images online, both because it’s the right thing to do and because these stock sites will require written releases for each photo.
Your clients will need to sign a property release for each photo because the photos were taken on their private property. They’ll also need to sign a model release for any image in which they appear and can be recognized.
You might be thinking why would my clients agree to let me sell their personal new home photos online? That’s a fair question! Not all of them will. And that’s fine. We certainly don’t want to pressure anyone to release the rights to images of themselves and their home. But there’s a way to approach the ask to increase the chances of getting their approval.
A simple process for getting client approval to sell the images from their shoot as stock photos.
- Review the images first for commercial appeal.
- When you take the USB drive to your client, let them know that you thought their photos turned out exceptionally well.
- Explain that you sell commercial stock photos in your spare time, and in your experience, a few of the photos could be impressive enough to sell as commercial stock images.
- Assure the client that you would never do anything with the photos without their written approval.
- Ask if the client would be at all interested in allowing you to post a few of the images for sale online.
- You could offer to give them a percentage of any sales (making sure they understand that most individual sales earn only $0.25-$1.00, but that the images could potentially be sold hundreds of times).
- Have the releases for your selected images prepared in advance so the client can sign then and there if interested.
- If they seem hesitant, confirm that there’s no pressure, and it’s completely up to them. Tell them to take a few days to think it over and offer to follow back up later if you don’t hear from them.
Get a Small Win Today
Interested in adding this service to your business? Reach out to your first starter model today! Contact a recent client to let them know you’re considering adding new home photo shoots to your list of service offerings, and ask if they’d be interested in having you take photos of them in their home for a low fee. You have nothing to lose, and a whole new income stream to gain!
