Ask the agent
Should I outsource my editing, and what’s a fair price?
Yes, once you’re busy, and fifty cents a photo is the price. The numbers are known. The real question is when to hand it off and what goes with it, because every night you edit is a night you don’t send the ten messages that pay next month.
Edit your own until you’re busy
You can’t judge an edit you’ve never done. The first few months of straightening your own verticals is what makes you able to tell a good editor from a cheap one.
Editing is the part you can do badly while tired. The night you catch yourself doing that is the sign to send it out.
And be clear about what handing it off gets you. It gives you your nights back. It doesn’t give you a business. That’s still the messages, and now you have the evening to send them.
That’s the order. Nights first, because they’re cheap to buy back. Business second, because it isn’t for sale.
Fifty cents a photo. That’s the price.
Here’s the real number, so nobody scams you in either direction.
Anna at PixlMB in Vietnam edits Cineminn’s photos at $0.50. Dominic in Texas pays $0.50, and $25 a video. Fotello runs about $1 a photo, which is fine for three free watermarked listings and expensive after that.
On the $149 basic shoot, 20 photos, editing costs me $10. The $0.30 editor isn’t a scam and neither is the $1 editor. You’re paying for different things. Fifty cents is where the work and the price meet, with a six-hour turnaround.
At fifty cents, the editing on a $390 package is under twenty dollars. That’s not a cost you need to think about. It’s a line that pays for itself the first night you spend sending messages instead.
Hand them a written look, not a folder
The price isn’t what goes wrong. This is.
The scam isn’t any of those prices. The scam is paying one of them and still re-editing the set at midnight because you never told them what you wanted.
One page: same exposure, same white balance, straight verticals, windows pulled. Send one listing to two editors with that page. Compare both against your own by Friday and keep the one you’d deliver.
Walk order, front door to back yard. Put that on the page too, and have the files numbered that way.
Here’s why walk order is on the page, from my Sunday nights as an agent. I uploaded to the MLS myself. Twenty-eight photos in walk order took four minutes. Forty-three in camera order took my evening. Your editor can give the agent her evening back, if the page says so.
Editing isn’t the job. It’s the part you can buy back for ten dollars.
This week: write the one-page look, send one listing to two editors at $0.50 a photo, and compare against your own by Friday.
The delivery checklist
What she actually needs when the files go out. Free. Then take the sixty-second roadmap quiz and I tell you what to fix first.
Get the checklistGet my roadmapStraight answers
- What is a fair price for outsourced real estate photo editing?
- About $0.50 a photo. Cineminn pays Anna at PixlMB in Vietnam that rate; Dominic in Texas pays $0.50 and $25 a video. Fotello runs about $1 a photo.
- When should I start outsourcing my real estate photo editing?
- Once you’re busy enough that you’re editing badly while tired. Before that, editing your own teaches you what to ask for.
- What should I send an outsourced editor?
- A one-page look: same exposure, same white balance, straight verticals, windows pulled, files numbered in walk order from front door to back yard. Then test two editors on the same listing.
Related questions
Julian Lundgren sold real estate for ten years before he shot a listing for money. He runs Cineminn, a Minneapolis real estate photography studio, and writes these answers from the agent’s side of the table. Send a question to info@cineminn.com.