How To Get Beautiful Images For Your Listings And Do You Need Them?

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, thelandgeek.com and on this week's roundtable, we have all the usual suspects. A full crowd. We've got the Zen master. Breathe in the mailing, Breathe out the marketing. Mike Zano. Mike, how are you?

Great and getting better, sir.

Good to see you. We've got your partner in crime at Nightcap, the nightcap OG dude, buddy. Scott Bossman.

Scott.

How are you, Mark? I'm great. Good to be here.

Good to see you. We've got the technician, Eric Peterson, whom, by the way, we have now discovered rarely eats ribs. It's a rare thing. Maybe a nice grilled smoked salmon. Perhaps that's it. Perhaps. Eric, how are you?

I'm good. Happy to be here today.

Good to see you. We got Terea putting in the ribs. Harris. Tria. How are things in Atlanta?

They are cooling off. Getting a little cold. We've hit fall.

All right, well, speaking of cooling off, I love it when you call me Big Papa. Tate. Litchfield Tate. How are you?

Doing really well. Thanks.

Good to see you. Last but not least, the brain, the professor, your flight school Sherpa. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd. How are you?

Mark?

I'm great. How are you?

I'm great. I'm great. I feel like when we're all here, it's a long intro, but maybe we gotta abbreviate it. You know what, though? If it's your first time listening to the podcast, now you get to know everybody and they're a nickname. If it's your millionth time listening to the podcast, you just fast forward through it. Either way, you don't want to miss this incredible topic that we have for today. Scott Todd. What's our topic?

All right, so look, here's the deal. I think we all know it's not cool to kind of, like, take copyrighted pictures that someone went out and, I don't know, worked on. And, you know, they make their buck by being a photographer. So the question is, like, how do you get pictures for your listings? You know, like, how do you get these beautiful pictures?

What.

What do you guys do? And do you even need them?

So, number one, how do you get pictures?

How do you get the pictures? Number two, you just take them off of any website.

And number three. And Scott, I know this hits home for you, your dad was a professional photographer. Don't steal. Don't steal. The photographer's work?

Yeah, legit. So how do you get your pictures? And do you even need to, like, send a photographer out there? Is there another way of doing it?

All right, well, I feel like we're going to switch it up today and we'll start with Dude Buddy, the nightcap OG Scott Bossman. Scott, what are your thoughts?

Well, we definitely stay away from any copyrighted photos. And we have a number of sources for photos. I mean, there are free stock photos online that you can use for marketing purposes to get people's attention. We use screenshots from the GIS website, Google Earth, panoramic views on Google Earth, that type of thing. We have hired people to go take pictures. The great thing about this business is a lot of us work in areas for a really long period of time. And when you know one parcel of land, you kind of know them all. So I am using, I continue to use, or we continue to use pictures that I got five, six years ago in the same county and we reuse them over and over and over again. So do I think you need to get pictures for every single property? I do not. I think you can use some of those things I already mentioned or photos from the same area if you have pictures from the past. But I have sold properties also with just aerial shots of the property, so it's not absolutely necessary. Although they may move a little bit faster if you have photos of the properties.

I love it. Land just like the menu at In N Out Burger rarely changes, so you can just use those for years and years. The Zen master breathe in the mailing without the marketing. Mike Zano, what are your thoughts on pictures?

Think Scott had a pretty amazing answer. But we have a VA and they just, you know, take satellite images, they draw lines, they just manipulate public data that you can gather online and make it look presentable and nice. And rarely do we have the photographer go out and take photos of the property. If sometimes maybe if we have a little higher value property, we might want to do that with some drone footage. But we don't need that to sell property. We can sell it with just what our va. We have a VA that handles that aspect of it and they do a great job. They just go online and I think they use like Google Earth and those type of public and just sort of go down and create some little images around you, you know, do the outline of it and so on and so forth and just to give someone an idea. And yeah, it works really well.

No infringement answered. Answer that first question really well and really definitively about, you know, how you get your pictures. But let's pick on the technician, Eric Peterson, and have him answer the question definitively. Do you even need pictures?

You don't need pictures to sell land. I think some kind of image to represent the property is a good thing to have when you're out there marketing. But that could be just a GIS image. Maybe it's a GIS image with some text or other graphics over the top. But depending on the property and its location, having real pictures of the property might be beneficial. It might make the property look more attractive, if indeed it is more attractive when it's photographed. And sometimes if you can tell a buyer that they're looking at the exact property that they'd be buying, they're a little more apt to move quickly. Otherwise, they might have objections like, hey, I want to go visit the property, what have you. So while it's not necessary, it may speed up the sales process for the right individual. I don't think it's guaranteed. But it may also help you stand out amongst competition. Potentially, if you have real nice photos of your property, everybody else is out there advertising with a maps image or something, you're going to stand out as something that looks different. Hopefully it looks attractive and it's going to draw people in.

Okay, well, so if I'm understanding you correctly, you don't need it. But if you want to sell the property faster, maybe get a higher price for the property, you want to stand out from your competition, it's a really good idea to have them. I'll agree with that. Okay. Terea putting in the reps. Harris, would you like to expound upon that idea of do you need to have pictures?

Yes, I agree with Eric. I don't think it's a necessity. We do like to use pictures. We market both. So there have been some properties where it was best not to have pictures of the property. We worked in certain areas where it doesn't look as attractive on pictures. So we chose not to put some pictures up and we use GIS and then ones that we feel would be more beneficial. We definitely get a photographer out there. Having worked in our counties, we have photographers in these counties, so we've set up pretty good rapport. They've been a couple times where we've needed the photographer just to go out and be boots on the ground for us. Just go take a look at this area for us and see if it's something that we're not going to get in trouble if we purchase. But we Typically use pictures. We have a big photo bank. So, like Bossman, we don't need pictures for each property. We have photos that will represent a certain type of property. So in this area with trees, in this area without trees, and so on, but we do both. We use pictures that are from a photographer, and we also have GIS pictures that we use.

All right. I love it. I love it when you call me Big Papa. Tate Litchfield, We've already answered the question. Now how you get pictures? The second question, do you need pictures? And those are answered so thoroughly, I don't even remember what the third question was.

Well, I just have a confession. How about that Mark?

Okay, spill it.

On the topic of should you steal photos? I have gotten in trouble for this many, many years ago. I can remember, you know, maybe a little more reckless than I should have been. We used to go and find properties in areas where other people were selling them and steal their photos. And I never really thought a big deal. It was a big deal until I met Eric Peterson, and he informed me that not only that was. Was it a big deal, but it was really, really rude. And, you know, he's laughing because he knows what I'm talking about. It is rude. And I got slapped on the wrist, basically. I personally didn't steal the photos, but I had a VA who went out and put together marketing material, and they. They took some images from another source. I don't think they were necessarily copyrighted or anything like that, but somebody had spent money to go out and pay a photographer to go get those images, and we took them without permission. And at the end of the day, that individual called me up. I apologized, I said, I'm sorry. I offered to buy those photos off them, in which they replied, look, if you wanted the photos, simply ask me, and we could have arranged something, worked something else. And so, you know, we smoothed things over. No hard feelings. I've continued to work with this individual since then as well. But I did learn a very valuable lesson. And the thing that I learned was that, you know, what I perceive as maybe not a big deal might be a big deal for someone else. And so should you steal photos? No. Right. That's the short and sweet answer to it. And I was able to walk away problem free. But that might not always be the case. Right. You might get into a situation that is far more complicated than that. Fortunately, this investor was a friend, and after a nice steak dinner, it was all resolved. But that can't always be the case. So that's my confession. That's my story. Don't steal photos. Since then, we can use GIS images. We'll pay to have somebody go out there occasionally. Or we'll use Google Street View. They're not always the most attractive photos, but they're placeholders. They get the job done.

Mike Zana, what are your thoughts?

Sure.

That wasn't a rib dinner. Steak dinner. I'm just wondering, is that as rude as reclining your plane seat, taking someone else's photos, like, in the level of.

You know, that's not rude. That's not rude. That is expected, hence the button. But stealing photos, that is rude. That is rude and uncalled for. But the button, the, you know, recliner, that's. That's fine. I mean, Scott Todd does it. I've seen video of him doing it.

Does your seat recline, Scott? On the airplane that you own, do you. Can you recline as the pilot?

Yeah, I can.

And in fact, he does it. Video that Tate saw. I finally asked the person who was sitting behind me if I was able to recline, and they didn't say, no.

No, that wasn't involved. There was no audio there, Scott.

No, Clearly. Clearly. I asked the person behind me, is it okay if I recline? There was nobody there, so I proceeded to recline. Now, had they said no, I would have been like, okay, I'll stay in my position. You would have been like, what?

Too bad it's my button.

I can tell you I've been flying a ton lately. I've learned two things. Number one, all these flights I'm taking, no one reclines. Hasn't happened to me. I don't recline. No one's reclining. Number two, if you have seaboarding on Southwest, all you have to do is look for the couple. The couple that's together. One's on the aisle, one's on the window. As soon as you say, can I take that. That middle seat, they go to right Together, you've got yourself a nice aisle seat, and you've saved yourself a cool 20 bucks. There you go.

C is for center, right? C is for center.

Center. If you don't know what you're doing. But, Scott Todd, you got the final word on the picture question.

I think it's been killed. I think we killed the answer or the question here. But look, here's the thing. Kind of another topic here, you might say. But, Scott, I didn't do it. Like Kate said, I didn't do it. My VA did it.

Okay?

And my advice would be like, you have to set the tone in the organization, you have to set it very strongly by saying, listen, if your job is to go get these pictures, if that's your job, your job is not to steal them, you can use, you know, Creative Commons. If you don't know what that is, Google it. Creative Commons is where people put into the public domain. You can use those as long as it says for commercial purposes. Your VA should know this stuff, right? And you know, like I would hold my VA accountable. Listen, if this happens, I'm going to hold you financially responsible for this. And you, you, you have a zero tolerance policy. So if you find out that a picture was in fact a copyrighted picture, you have to terminate your contract with them immediately because otherwise they will just continue to go get, go, go do it. And it's on you. You own it, it's your va, it's your company, it's your process. If they violate the law, that's on you. I would say there you go.

Well, I thought this was a great topic and now we're at that point in the podcast where we get to ask Treea Harris. Treea put in the reps Harris for her tip of the week. A website, a resource, maybe a book, something else actionable for the auto passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. But before she gives her tip of the week, discuss our wonderful sponsor this week which is. Drumroll please. Flight school. Learn how the next 16 weeks can literally transform your life. Build passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations or rodents. Go up that mountain of land, investing with a mentor who's done it thousands of times. He'll take you up there quickly, safely, efficiently with Scott Todd. Oh yeah, that flight school tuition, nothing guaranteed. You're going to make it all back. 180 days or less. Follow the recipe, show us your work. No worries. Learn more. Get on a call, go to landgeek.com training and get a free consultation call. Learn more. Taria Harris, what is your tip of the week?

My tip? Ok, so one is a throwback tip just in case there are new listeners. 4Pictures, a website that we found that's really good pictures, good quality is unsplash.com great. They're free. You can download them. You can find some that may represent your property. As long as you are clear in the property details that this is not an actual picture of your property, you should be fine. But another thing that we've done, we've had someone go out to the property and just take a video of it. It doesn't Even have to be a fancy video. They can have their iPhone and. And take a video of the property, kind of stand and do a 360 around the property, and then we create pictures from the video. We just run the video, take a screenshot, there's a picture, run the video, take a screenshot, there are the pictures. So if you do hire someone to go out and take pictures, get the pictures, but then also ask for a video of the property, and then you kind of have an unlimited amount of pictures that you can create from that.

Okay, there you go. So unsplash.com.

Yep.

Great tip, Tate. You seem happy about that tip.

No, I think it's a smart tip. You know, I like it. Nothing wrong with that. Images are. Images are images. And if you're not going to get in trouble with these ones, you know where to start, everybody.

All right, well, I want to thank the listeners and remind them the only way we're going to be constantly cajole, intimidate, browbeat, terea, putting in the rep terrace to each week give us an incredible tip of the week is if you do us three little favors. Follow rate, review the podcast, send us a screenshot of that review. Supporthelangey.com and I'm going to send you a signed copy of Dirt Rich, which Eric Peterson on the secondary market right now in the NFT world. What's that worth?

Last I saw was over 3 million.

$3 million. Again, it's not dollars, but it isn't cryptocurrency, which you can learn more about. So there you go. All right. Please do it. It really helps my fragile ego and we'd appreciate it. All right, we ready to do this? 1, 2, 3. 3. Let's let freedom bring that bad at all. So am I the only one that has finished the second season of Ted Lasso on Apple tv?

I'm close.

I'm almost there. Almost there.

Better than season one, I'd say, which is.

Which is high praise. Season one was amazing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, any tears shed by anybody here watching second season of Ted Lasso?

I'll admit it, you know, it was salty. It was delicious, though. Felt good.

You saw the ending coming, though, right? Like the final season? The final episode. You kind of saw it coming.

Don't give it away. I got one left.

Oh, you haven't seen it. Okay.

All right, who's the favorite character? Who's your favorite character? Mom. I mean, other than Ted Lasso.

Other than Ted Lasso. I mean, I. I like Roy, I like Keely. We Need Roy on the podcast.

I do.

I do like Higgins a lot. I'll tell you what. They're all, you know, even the boss, Ms. Welton. I like them. I like them all. They're all like a close. I like the beard.

I even like Roy impersonation. Mark. Like Mark. Someone just defaults on your land note.

Roy. No, don't, don't, don't. Don't impersonate Roy.

Oy, Oy, mate. And then it's just expletive after expletive. Exactly.

Exactly.

Not bad, though, right? And I want to just apologize to all our listeners in Britain right now. That horrible accent. Scott. Todd. You're not watching Ted Lasso?

Oh, you're done with it. I've been done with it.

You've been done with it. Okay.

Yeah.

We were watching it in real time, you know?

I mean, I know Christine cried. Come on, admit it.

Maybe I didn't.

I don't.

What is there to cry about? I must have missed something.

I mean, there's. I don't want to spoil it, but there are some.

I guess I have no. I guess I have no empathy.

I guess Scott looks more like a Mosquito coast kind of guy.

No, no, I haven't seen that one. No, no.

I don't really.

I don't really get into the whole TV thing. Like, there's shows I'll watch, but not so much. I am enjoying Acapulco, though, and the morning show.

Yeah, For All Mankind is really good.

Okay. So my parents, I went to visit them St. Louis, and they're about the most frugal people you'll ever meet.

Right?

Apple TV is five bucks a month, and they have Dish, which is, like, one of the few people that still have Dish and Netflix and hbo. Okay? So I said, look, dad, mom, you're gonna love Ted Lasso. Get Apple tv their response. What do we need more for? I'm like, no, no. It's a really good show. I'm like, it's five bucks a month. So I had to go on my phone. I'm not joking. And beam it to their TV and have them binge Ted Lasso. I want to apologize for Apple tv. I owe you an extra five bucks.

I don't think you do. I don't think. I think you. I think that's legit.

Yeah, that's legit.

They love it. Allow that now.

And they loved it. But now they have to wait until they come here in January to visit me to see the second season. Just so you guys are getting an idea of How I grew up.

Holidays. You got a holiday gift idea?

What is it? Get the Apple tv. Oh, get them the actual Apple tv.

Or at least a subscription.

Why not?

Where they're. No problem. He can fly out and fix it for them and tell them the different remotes. I, on the other hand, I'm not going to discuss hdmi. Too many remotes.

No, that's something you deliver in person, Mark.

That's a valid point.

That is valid.

And then when something goes wrong again.

In person, think about it. That will be their favorite gift.

Of.

All the gifts they ever see you hand delivering this.

Or.

Or to make life easy, you could get them a tv. Like, my daughter just got a TV that has Apple TV built into it, so it's not a separate device. Now you get them a TV with Apple TV built into it.

I got them Roku, which actually has Apple tv, but you got to pay.

So pay. Pay for them a subscription.

What am I going to do? Write them a check for 60 bucks for the year? I'm not. I'm not giving them my Apple id. Oh, you.

You can. You can send them an Apple gift card.

Oh, okay. Done and done. That was easy. Thank you. See, this is why I bring up these things. This is way cheaper than therapy. All right, thanks, everybody.

Thanks for listening to the Art of Passive Income podcast. Are you ready to learn how you can start building a passive income without renters, rehabs, renovations, or rodents? Schedule a free consultation@thelandgeek.com forward slash training. Let freedom ring.