Comments on: Announcing PFREtour.com Real Estate Photography Tours Beta Test

By: Phil

Phil — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 05:40:55 +0000

Sorry Larry, but I find it average with minimal features… Ok to showcase work but not competitive enough for Virtual Tours. Not sure why you think 360s are not useful… It is a perfect add-on for a complete tour of a home… better than video and much less time consuming. Also a great up-sell for photographers to make a bit more on every listing they do!

I don’t use my own platform anymore, the platform I currently use also gives agents full login access with full marketing features such as free professional brochure creation tool, gallery access, web tracker, CD label and CD slideshow, branded/non branded, photo and flyer tour links…and much much more!!

It’s hard to compete with companies that have spent 100k developing the perfect Virtual Tour platform…

By: larry

larry — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:47:40 +0000

@Joshua- Yes. both branded and unbranded tours are currently generated for pfretour.com tours.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:59:50 +0000

Great looking system that you are setting up Larry! I noticed that the tours have agent info on them, which I am guessing is an optional feature (enter it if you want it, don’t enter it if you don’t want it). I’m newer to RE (been following the blog for about 8 mths though) but my first several agents have specifically asked for non-agent-branded tours because the MLS doesn’t allow branding. Is the branding restriction a regional thing, or are agents using the branded tours only on direct links from their own sites? If that’s the case, would it be possible for the PFREtour to generate two tours at one time (one branded for agent site, one not branded for MLS)? Love the blog! Thanks!

By: Christian

Christian — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:22:39 +0000

Good to hear larry, i do all of our slideshows with the 1600×1000 fullscreen option and actually upload photos 1728×1152 so they look awesome when the agent chooses fullscreen.

Nice work by the way ( i forgot to say earlier)

By: larry

larry — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:53:36 +0000

@Dylan- Yes, Slideshow Pro (the slide show software we are using) has many features that we have not exposed yet. Text display is one of them. Our goal is to use as many of the great features of SSP without having quite the complexity there is when you use it directly from lightroom.

@Christian- We started using SSP fairly recently so there are features like full screen that right this minute aren’t completely integrated. Before we started using SSP we limited the upload image size. We are in the process of changing that right now. In the near future you’ll be able to upload larger (1600×1000) images so the full size image will be used for full screen and smaller images will be used for the smaller views. Some people love fullscreen and some never use it.

By: Brian Allen

Brian Allen — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:06:46 +0000

Larry,

Great columns lately.

By: Christian

Christian — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:22:36 +0000

Larry – Is there really the need for the full screen option?, it doesnt take the photos and make them full screen at all but rather just everything around it.

The slideshow height and width are set the same as the fullscreen height and width, making it kinda pointless to offer the option of going fullscreen.

By: Dylan Darling

Dylan Darling — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:10:01 +0000

The example looks good. I like being able to add text to real estate tours though. I have mine set up to add text to each photo. As the photo changes, new text appears. This way Realtors can write about the features of each photo.

By: Mike Gardner

Mike Gardner — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:05:41 +0000

I should have done some reading first! Price is great. So domain will need to registered then pointed to your url? So 9 bucks for a site and roughly 10 bucks for a domain? Thats a great price especially if you incorporate syndication. Maybe you can get a domain deal going to skip this step?

By: Mike Gardner

Mike Gardner — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 06:00:24 +0000

Really nice start. Will it have the option on not have the moving images? Im starting prefer large hd images that fade in and out smoothly and quickly. I’m a SSP user and just replicate my Dreamweaver file over and over again and make minor changes, like background color and agent info.. For this to be successful I think you are going to have to offer it at a great price so photogs will be tempted to use yours instead of building their own. Agencylogic may not have the best look for high end homes, like your flash based site with SSP, it still is an incredible value at $35 (purchased in bulk) for hosting 12mos., domain, and website. I think you are on to something great but price will be a big factor.