Video Hosting Alternatives to Youtube
From the Contra Costa Times, creative Realtors are turning to YouTube:
Then she watched a video of a man taking viewers on a walking tour of his hometown on YouTube and had an idea: She would film a tour of her client’s home and be one of the first handful of agents to put it on YouTube.
“I ran it by my seller, who was a 30-something, and he was excited,” she said. “It’s so important for a listing agent to get more creative. You have to because it’s a lot harder to sell a house now.”
Although many may use YouTube to watch embarrassing celebrity moments or quirky videos, many real estate agents see it as an effective way to sell houses.
I’ve written about using Youtube to host your videos in the past (see Tip Tuesday: Creating a Killer Listing Presentation), but these days there are many more options available to Realtors who want to adopt a similar marketing angle.
Try any of the following:
blip.tv
Break
iFilm
Jumpcut
Metacafe
Revver
Vimeo
Soapbox (in Beta now)
Popularity: 33% [?]
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16 Comment(s)
6 Trackback(s)
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Dustin | Dec 14, 2006 | Reply
Not wanting to go the Google route, I posted my latest video to Revver because they were the only alternative I found that let for big (100MB) video uploads… Thanks for the list of other alternative sites!
Although I would also add VideoEgg (http://www.videoegg.com/) to the list because they seem to be popular among the crowd at Move.
Fred Light | Dec 14, 2006 | Reply
The best part is the incredible search engine placement - usually within DAYS after submission - and always in the top ten results. See some examples of real estate video search engine placement here.
Danilo Bogdanovic - real/diaBlog | Dec 17, 2006 | Reply
I believe that videos will replace virtual tours next year and that videos will make looking for properties that much easier and more convenient for all buyers.
Americans are very convenience driven. Videos are definitely more convenient than calling an agent, getting in your car and driving to the property to find out what it looks like inside.
The sellers who don’t have a video of their property may easily be left off of a buyers’ list of homes to consider much like most buyers today skip over properties without pictures or a virtual tour.
Thanks for the list!
Sean | Dec 18, 2006 | Reply
Hey Joel, its Sean @ Trulia. Here are a bunch of other video sites: Grouper.com (sony), Google Video, Yahoo Video, MySpace Video, MSN Video, AOL Video, MSN Video, Heavy.com, eBaumsworld.com, AtomFilms.com, Veoh.com.
Some other online video editing sites in addition to JumpCut are VideoEgg and Eyespot.com.
Hope this helps.
Josh | Dec 27, 2006 | Reply
We’re note real estate people, just a couple selling a place (a furnished reclaimed loft in coastal Maine) who put together a site on our own to supplement our agent’s efforts, using Flickr and YouTube - http://www.MaineLoft.com for anyone interested (go to a page at the top of the site – each page has a YouTube video and a Flickr slideshow).
After considering different tools we opted for YouTube for the same reason as Flickr: wide audience with good tagging tools. Simply put we’ve had numerous people find the site (you can always check by setting up a Google analytics account) through searching for keywords/tags in YouTube itself – same with Flickr.
It’s a good idea to load up the media on other/start up sites as supplements but YouTube and Flickr, when effectively tagged, offer you a fantastic, and free, marketing opportunity, particularly effective in “mash upsâ€? - when looking to facilitate viral marketing, that’s something that shouldn’t be ignored.
Joe Chapuis | Feb 19, 2007 | Reply
Hope you don’t mind me tooting our own horn here, but you may want to take a look at our web video hosting service. It’s a part of our “Big3″ web video system, which includes a web-based Flash 8 FLV converter, interactive web video player maker, and web video hosting.
We’re starting to see a lot of realtors who are marketing properties with video who are concerned that the freebie video players (e.g., YouTube, Google Video, etc.) make their web sites look cheap and unprofessional.
Those sites are excellent for getting traffic TO your site. But when it comes to displaying videos on your site itself, it can serve you well to consider a more high-quality, professional option.
Thank you for allowing me introduce our site and service to your community. Feel free to contact me with any questions.
-Joe Chapuis
http://www.WebVideoZone.com
Audrey | Mar 29, 2007 | Reply
HI
I am a strong believer of technology and moving with the times. I like many other realtors have a website and have found that by adding video or slideshows of the properties to be a real hit on my site allowing a quick sale.
At first I considered all the free hosts like Youtube etc, but their quality sucks, hey I know it’s free but you want a sale right!? and who wants to be associated with those guys at the moment!
So anyway, I found this great site called mydeo.com, you can upload a video length of like 90 minutes, wereas with others it’s like 10 minutes!
All I did was upload my video to a personal account which only I can access and then I used the html to paste into my site, if your not as advanced they offer a tool which lets you e mail the client the video in stead! It’s totally worth it and I would recommend it to all realtors.
The first month is free, so you can see if you like it or not - the quality is great, I will never go back to those other sites!
Check it out http://www.mydeo.com/?xsc=7
Thanks for reading, from a very happy realtor
Caroyn | Apr 23, 2007 | Reply
Thank you for the sample real estate VIDEOs posted here. What I mean is the samples were not a slide show or a virtual tour and then called video, they were actual video footage. I heard a rumor that realtor.com will have an “add a video feature” . That will give 3 seperate forms of media to post to your listing. Still Photos, Virtual Tours, and Videos. Be advised, when you advertise your video footage don’t send the customer off to another website to view it. Bye Bye Buyer! Disconnecting from the buyer is never a good idea. YouTube is a pro at connecting people with other videos, that’s the purpose of their website and yu my never see that person again. It’ up to the agent to keep the buyer enrolled in themselves or the product they are selling. Try to find a way to post the video directly on your website.
Virtual & Video Real Estate Tour Services are available from us in Ahwatukee, Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Maricopa and other Phoenix Arizona Metro Areas.
Carolyn | Apr 25, 2007 | Reply
oops! http://www.virtualndustry.com Virtual & Video Real Estate Tour Services are available from us in Ahwatukee, Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Maricopa and other Phoenix Arizona Metro Areas.
Carolyn | Apr 25, 2007 | Reply
oops! http://www.virtualNdustry.com has Virtual & Video Real Estate Tour Services available from us in Ahwatukee, Chandler, Gilbert, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa, Maricopa and other Phoenix Arizona Metro Areas.
Photographer of 360 Vision, Authorized RealTourVision Dealer
Rob | May 29, 2007 | Reply
Another opportunity for hosting real estate videos is a new startup website called imoondo.com. They are doing video classifieds and have a budding real estate section.
Christopher Walkey | Sep 13, 2007 | Reply
Another new website dedicated to marketing worldwide property using video footage to aid marketing is http://www.OneStopView.com
They are completely free to use, no fees or commission to pay. Private sellers and agents can use the website.
Upload your video for free along with photos if desired and start marketing your property for free to a worldwide audience.
http://www.OneStopView.com
View worldwide property already listed with us.
Regards,
Christopher Walkey.
Johny | Oct 19, 2007 | Reply
i use recently one that is http://Placetour.com
Good one…Good Quality Video
Tony North | Nov 21, 2007 | Reply
Yes, I have used that website http://www.onestopview.com to advertise my property in Spain after seeing the name on this forum.
Rather like youtube, you list your house for sale for free. They didn’t charge me a fee to list the house which is a bonus.
Tony.
Hans | Feb 14, 2008 | Reply
I use RealtyVid.com to host. They have a very easy to use system and they produce both Flash and Windows Media video of my listings. The best news is it is FREE!
Duke Lane | Apr 2, 2008 | Reply
RE: “I believe that videos will replace virtual tours next year …
“Americans are very convenience driven. Videos are definitely more convenient than calling an agent, getting in your car and driving to the property to find out what it looks like inside.
“The sellers who don’t have a video of their property may easily be left off of a buyers’ list of homes to consider much like most buyers today skip over properties without pictures or a virtual tour.”
I would tend to agree with these comments … except that over 10 years, I’ve seen the so-called popularity - and the price - of virtual tours drop tremendously. The trend has gone from professionally produced tours - in which we’ll include “the future of real estate videos” - toward flash slideshows with music in the background, as many as you want for $30 per month.
Why? Because while “Americans are very convenience driven,” many agents - the majority of whom make only about $40K/year - are very price driven. If they don’t want to pay $100 for a full 360×360° virtual tour and think slide shows take the place of them, they’re unlikely to want to pay $200 or more for a video simply because it’s “cool.”
Likewise, I don’t foresee an awful lot of videographers wanting to travel across town to a $2 million property (in some areas, that’s a LARGE home!) to get paid $50 for their trouble, not to mention their talent!
A local (Top 20) newspaper has been offering a professional video package as an enhancement to its online real estate listings. While it’s pricey (about $1K when all is said and done), it has not been popular except to builders and a small handful of high-end resale properties.
This is where I get to put in a plug, too: although it is a far cry from a professional video and much closer to the slideshows I’ve decried, its advantages are that it’s totally automated, very, very inexpensive, and can be used on every listing on a website, including cooperating brokers’.
Here is a sample over a JPEG screen shot; viewing the source shows how easy it is to implement on a web page. The verbiage is translated into conversational English directly from MLS (or other) data, no user intervention involved once the schema is set up.
It is a true video format, meaning that it can be published directly to YouTube and similar sites: a sample, and of course, keyworded to be picked up by Google.
Imagine driving by a home and seeing a sign rider: “Google this address for a video tour.” You pull over and pull up the video on your iPhone, see the agent’s phone number, decide you like the house, and call for a showing. They you wait for the agent to show up.
While video purists might have issues with this being (or not being) a “video” in their eyes, tell me where else anyone can populate their entire website with these productions for well under a buck apiece!
… Which will be “too much money” for some people!