How much does outsourced real estate photo editing cost?

About fifty cents a photo. A thirty-five-photo shoot is $17.50, and four shoots a week is roughly $70. Cineminn sends its editing to Anna at PixlMB in Vietnam at that rate.

When should a real estate photographer outsource editing?

When editing caps how many shoots you can take, or pushes delivery past 9 a.m. the next morning. Until then, editing your own keeps money in-house and teaches you what a good edit looks like.

How do I make sure an outsourced editor matches my style?

Put the standard in writing: straight verticals, windows pulled, a matched gallery, numbered in walk order. Send one listing with that page and compare the result to your own edit.

Answers › Running the business

Ask the agent

When should I hire my first real estate photo editor?

Four shoots a week and editing until midnight. Everyone says outsource, but who do you actually trust, and when?Asked by a photographer on Reddit, r/RealEstatePhotography

When editing caps your shoots or pushes delivery past 9 a.m. Not before. Editing is the one job you can do tired, in pajamas, and still deliver, so the question is when, not whether. Keep editing at midnight long enough and one night the gallery misses 9 a.m. The agent won’t know who edited it. She’ll know it was late.

Edit your own until you’re busy

Early on, editing your own is the right call. It keeps the money in-house when there isn’t much of it.

It also teaches you what a good edit is. You can’t judge someone else’s verticals if you’ve never straightened your own. That’s the skill you’ll need the day you hand it off, and there’s no other way to get it.

Two questions. Is editing capping your shoots? Is it pushing delivery past 9 a.m.? Two nos, keep editing. One yes, it’s time.

Four shoots a week and editing until midnight is one yes. The delivery still lands, but it lands on the back of your sleep, and that’s the night before it starts landing late.

Two nos, keep editing. One yes, it’s time.

Your nights cost more than the editor does

The number that ends the argument is fifty cents. Cineminn’s editing goes to Anna at PixlMB in Vietnam at fifty cents a photo.

A thirty-five-photo shoot is $17.50. Four shoots a week is about $70 to get your nights back. Put that next to what one evening of your own time is worth and the argument is over.

The turnaround matters as much as the price. The editor works while you’re asleep, and the gallery is sitting in your inbox before your first shoot, ready to QC and send.

Here’s the thing I learned on the other side of the table. In ten years as an agent I never knew who edited my listings. I knew whether they were in my inbox by nine. Nobody is paying you for the editing. They’re paying you for the clock.

I never knew who edited my listings. I knew whether they were in my inbox by nine.

Trust the standard, not the editor

Now the question you actually asked: who do you trust? Nobody, until it’s in writing. The editor isn’t the thing you trust. The standard is.

Four lines. Straight verticals. Windows pulled. A matched gallery, every room the same color and brightness. Numbered in walk order, the way the agent would tour it.

Hand that page over with the first listing and the edit comes back the way you’d do it. Hand over a folder with no page and you get the editor’s taste, not yours, and then you’re re-editing at midnight anyway.

One warning. This hire gets your nights. It won’t give you your life back. The person who takes your calendar gets your week. That’s a different hire, and it comes later.

The big lesson

Your midnight costs more than fifty cents a photo.

Do this

This week: send one listing to an outsourced editor with the four-line standard. Compare it to your own edit and keep whichever you’d deliver.

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 checklist Get my roadmap

Straight answers

How much does outsourced real estate photo editing cost?: About fifty cents a photo. A thirty-five-photo shoot is $17.50, and four shoots a week is roughly $70. Cineminn sends its editing to Anna at PixlMB in Vietnam at that rate.
When should a real estate photographer outsource editing?: When editing caps how many shoots you can take, or pushes delivery past 9 a.m. the next morning. Until then, editing your own keeps money in-house and teaches you what a good edit looks like.
How do I make sure an outsourced editor matches my style?: Put the standard in writing: straight verticals, windows pulled, a matched gallery, numbered in walk order. Send one listing with that page and compare the result to your own edit.