Join us for a Webinar

Well we took a little break to let you digest part one of The FORMULA Setting up Shop and now the gang is back for more action in part two of this series.

Have you been wondering if you’re setting up your virtual tour company the right way?

Ever ask yourself what you could do right out of the gate to set yourself apart?

Are you a bit confused as to what to do next and where to put your precious company dollars?

Has your business slowed down and are you in need of an overhaul of your virtual tour products and virtual tour service offerings?

Do you just need to put a little more steam into your virtual tour & property marketing sales?

If you answered yes, and you're an RTV virtual tour provider you MUST attend part 2 of Setting up Shop next week for The FORMULA 21.

We have arranged to have guest appearances from Graves Carey of Delaware Virtual Tours http://www.360Visions.com, Alan Fon of Corpus Christi Virtual Tours http://www.IslandDigitalImages.com, Mike Thompson of Detroit Virtual Tours http://www.RealVisionStudio.com and of course Jason LaVanture of Traverse City Virtual Tours and http://www.BlueLaVaMedia.com.

This combined panel has produced a total of 6314 virtual tours with “Kid Dynamite” Graves Carey leading the pack with over 2600 tours produced!

Please join us on Tuesday February 2nd at 7:00 PM EST as we engage in a round table discussion on “Setting up Shop”. This is an Inner Circle Only Event. See you at the show!

~RTV

Reserve your Webinar seat now by logging into your TMS!

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Preparing for a Virtual Tour

On a recent trip to Florida, we had dinner on the beach during a beautiful sunset. The sky looked like it was on fire as gorgeous shades of red and orange lit the horizon. Wanting to capture the moment, we asked a friend to take our picture. In the picture, you can see the sunset if you look hard enough but unfortunately, the first and potentially only thing you see is my pretty but very distracting pink and orange paisley shirt.

Preparing for a virtual tour is just like preparing for any photo shoot…it’s vitally important that nothing distracts the viewer from the big picture. Virtual tours allow prospective buyers, renters or customers to step into your venue and literally take a look around. After you live in a space for a while, you often don’t see your own clutter or distractions. Problem is that someone who sees it for the first time often has a tough time seeing anything BUT the clutter and distractions.

We recently shot some Helen virtual tours where the homeowners had a large carousel horse. While it was beautiful and unique in person, in the 360º photographs it became a distraction from what was otherwise an elegant and classy living room.

We understand you usually have to live in your home while it is for sale but keep in mine, once your house is on the market, you must view it as a commodity and not as “your” home. Take a look around your house and see what prospective buyers may see. Go to open houses in your neighborhood and see what stands out to you.

Some of the things that can be visual stumbling blocks include:

Personal photographs
Office clutter
Kitchen counter catch-alls
Large or unique decorative pieces
Bookshelf or built-in displays
Refrigerator magnets and art
Distinct wall colors and accent walls

Remember that the objective is to showcase your home…not your stuff. If necessary, ask a friend to come over and objectively walk through your house. Chances are they will see things that you miss.

For more tips on showcasing your home or business, please check our website www.vquestmedia.com

Greg Mitts
White County Virtual Tours
www.vquestmedia.com
Order a Virtual Tour: 706-973-9056

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Virtual Tour Success Starts Here

I have been involved in land development, on the CAD (Computer Aided Design) side, for over 20 years. When the economic downturn occurred, the land development industry slowed to a crawl, forcing many engineering firms to have layoffs. I was one of several thousand engineers in the industry who was affected by this.

One always has to be open and ready for change. Now was the time to be proactive. With the absolute belief that I am in control of my own success or failure in life, I began to make some changes. I had always wanted to start a business involving video, and photography. With 20 years of computer work and engineering under my belt, I wanted to incorporate that experience somehow and knew I wanted to do this with the help of a successful franchise. Thus began the search for a suitable partner.

Enter RTV (Real Tour Vision).


Jason LaVanture, the founder of RTV, answered all my questions thoroughly. RTV waited patiently with no pressure for many months for me to make an informed decision. After looking over all the information I chose to invest and become a full service virtual tour provider with RTV. They are the largest virtual tour company and property marketing network in the world. They have the best virtual tour software, property marketing training and technical support. They even hold many national and International contracts with hotel chains which feeds business back into the virtual tour dealer network. How cool is that!!??

With Real Tour Vision servicing over sixty thousand real estate agents worldwide and over 1500 virtual tour providers in his network, Jason knows what services and functionality are needed on a local or national level. I am very excited to be moving forward in my new Harrison virtual tour business business venture, Virtual Tour Success, with RTV at my side. I can’t wait to be up in full force and to be providing my own clients with the best the industry has to offer in marketing and solutions to their problems.

The competition in the Real Estate Industry is fierce now. Quality virtual tours will give my clients the edge not only at the local level, but at the national and international levels.
To give your property the edge contact Virtual Tour Success today.

Virtual Tour Company Testimonial by:
Buffy Crosby
Owner
Harrison Virtual Tours
www.virtualtoursuccess.com
Order a virtual tour: 916-690-1786

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Florida Mobile Marketing System

Virtual Florida Tours is presenting the new text messaging service for real estate marketing. This is the best service provided since the advent of virtual tours.
Virtual Florida Tours is always searching for the top notch technologies that will allow our customers top the market and provide their customers the best possible service available at the lowest prices possible.

We made an exhaustive research of all the providers of this service and selected the one that gives the best quality service available on the market. Our provider offers this service on all the United States and Canada. That is a greater coverage that you can obtain with most of the companies. Allowing prospector to text the number to friends and family that are willing to relocate to the area and they will be able to see the property and the realtor will receive immediately information on the telephones that have contacted their advertisement.

If you will like to receive a better idea of the service we are presenting just SMS prop123 to 43766 or click to see a little presentation.


Gabriel Duque
Miami Virtual Tours
www.VirtualFloridaTours.com
Order a virtual tour today: 305 331 8960

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Life in the Mountains - A Virtual Tour Photographers Dream

I want to thank Ben Knorr for our virtual tour IMAGE Webinar this past Tues. evening, having a 2nd flash available on a shoot is really a valuable idea. I’ve been carrying a 2nd flash around for a while and I’ve had a few instances where I needed it.

www.knoxtours.net is shooting a lot of virtual tours in the resort rental cabins in the Great Smokey Mountains area, more exactly in Wears Valley right outside Pigeon Forge, all this just down the road from Knoxville, TN. It’s really great, I get to see some really beautiful mountain and valley views while shooting my virtual tours and also visit some awesome rental Log Cabins, values range from $100,000 to well over $1,000,000.

There’s all designs and different themes for these cabins, mostly these are homes away from homes and are rented to vacationers when the owners aren’t in the area. With our situation with the economy, a very many of these cabins are for sale, creating a pretty good situation for my Knoxville virtual tour company.

I recently shot a virtual tour of a cabin that was named “Me Tarzan You Jane”. Right in the very middle of this cabin was a good size tree! complete with branches and leaves, it did look very real. I always try to shoot cabins with a diffused flash, around f5.6 or so and a slow shutter speed - it helps bring out ambient light in the virtual tour. My biggest problem is white balance, the rooms already have a pretty warm glow, and unless I come in with several flashes and blow out the lights, this warm glow gets pretty intense. I put a #82 blue filter on it in photoshop, that helps a bit but that red is pretty hard to minimize and opening up a bit loses me depth of field.

Balancing the light coming in thru the windows while shooting your virtual tour is pretty easy unless it’s really bright outside, like direct sunlight on the windows, I find I get a happy balance averaging readings from the windows and the inside. I also try and stage a bit - Setting up the pool table to play, sometimes setting out dinner ware in the eating area, and such. I’m an “old Newspaper Photographer”, my clients like that I take lots of photos and on a virtual tour shoot.

Running a virtual tour company through RTV is such a great way to make a living, all I need now is more customers and I’m set for life!

I hope everybody has a very prosperous 2010.

Mike O'Neill
Knoxville Virtual Tours
www.knoxtours.net

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Scottsdale Virtual Tours by PowerVision360

Hello RTV Dealers out there! We are PowerVision360.com - Brad and Suzanne Feinberg - Real Estate Photographers in Scottsdale, Arizona

Just a quick hello to let you know that we are around. Our specialty is to produce Scottsdale virtual tours here for Arizona Real Estate Agents and Brokers. We also love servicing our clients in Mesa, Tempe, Gilbert, Chandler in the East Valley Real Estate Market. We love Phoenix, Arizona as well as the West Valley Real Estate Market and find ourselves in Surprise, Glendale, Peoria. We wouldn't want to forget all of the MLS listing agents in Carefree or Cave Creek either.

If we haven't mentioned your city, invite us to meet you and tell you about ourselves. We pride ourselves in treating every home for sale with the White Glove Treatment. As an architectural photography company, especially one that does real estate photography for homes for sale, PowerVision360.com is very excited to use only professional Canon camera, lens and lighting systems. Our software is the full Adobe CS4 and Nik Software packages. Our Virtual Tour software is provided by RTV and allows us to share the highest rated Virtual Tour software in the industry.

When you combine that power, with the power of the Photobiz engine that runs our website, you can understand how important quality, service and satisfaction are to our company.


Suzanne Feinberg
Scottsdale Virtual Tours
Order a Virtual Tour Today: 602-770-7149

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Great Job Baker B Solutions

BakerB Solutions, LLC. was established in 1997 as a website development firm. Over the years the company has grown and began to taylor it's services for our clients. We offers general business, marketing, technical and web based services to businesses of all sizes. Whether your company is a start-up or a well-established business, BakerB Solutions offers something for every business need.


Alex Saenger
Washington DC Virtual Tours
BakerB Solutions
Interactive Virtual Tours & Marketing Specialists

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Why are you Hiding?

Your relationship with your current and potential virtual tour client is somewhat of a personal one. Most of your business comes from real estate agents. Agents have personal relationships with their clients and vendors. I say this because I look on many virtual tour provider sites and on their about us or contact pages do not display the virtual tour providers name or their photo.

I think some providers are missing out by not displaying this very important information. What are you hiding from?? Real estate agents put their photos on just about every piece of marketing material they utilize from their websites, flyers, business cards, and their virtual tours. This is to develop a face/name recognition and just to show a potential client who they may be meeting or corresponding with.

A virtual tour provider should be no different. I am not saying put your photo on everything, but you should on your site and maybe your flyers and newsletters. Your potential clients want to know who they are dealing with.

At 360 Visions, provider of Delaware Virtual Tours, I am a two man business. I have a part time employee. Both mine and my employee’s name and photo are on the company website. I have a business name, but I am the business, and my clients deal with me personally. They aren’t dealing with a national company, and have to call a toll free number to talk to someone. They call me when they have a question, problem, or need a virtual tour. It’s personal relationship, and photos give clients somewhat a comfort level. When I pass out flyers, I have my photo on it. Agents recognize me after they have seen a flyer or two.

All I am saying is don’t be afraid to put your photo and name on your site and some marketing materials. It is not arrogant or cocky, it’s just a part of effective marketing. You may find people around town, or agents will recognize you and the business you are in. Give it a try. You may be surprised of the results.

Graves Carey
Delaware Virtual Tours
www.360visions.com

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Thailand Virtual Tours

Happy New Year from Koh Samui, Thailand Virtual Tours!

At JFK Enterprises, our main business is operating two pubs in Koh Samui, Thailand. But since I had a computing background (after spending more than 20 years in automatic identification solutions), I thought it would be good to continue providing some form of IT solutions.

We started with providing web hosting packages from Hostgator, one of the leading hosting providers in the industry. A few years ago we were introduced to Joomla, a content management system. After seeing the power of the solution, we decided to embrace it and include that into our offerings and hence, we started providing web site designing using Joomla.

We further branched into customization of another open platform system – vTiger, a CRM (customer relationship management). Of course, I continue to provide consultancy services in automatic identification solutions as that has been my expertise for over 20 years.

Over the past year we have seen and heard a lot about 360 virtual tours. John evaluated many different virtual tour solutions and finally decided that the solution provided by RTV was the best for us. One of the main reasons is because RTV does not just provide a 360 virtual tour that is embedded in the customer’s website. Rather, RTV provides a total package solution that is so different from all the other competitors that we see.

Since I am from the background of providing a solution, we both saw that the RTV solution is a good fit for the expansion of our business. Hence we signed up with RTV in September last year.
The information and guidance provided by Jason and his team has been great. We have enjoyed the webinars (especially those by Ben who is the host of The IMAGE a free photography webinar) as the information provided has been a great help to us.

Although it was difficult for us to wake up at 6am or 7am our time to catch the webinars (the difficulty is because we only get to bed after 3am when our pubs are closed), we always make a point to try and attend. In many cases, unfortunately, we are unable to and would just have to download the recorded version and view it.

Our first approach to launching this new venture was to offer a tourist guide site on Koh Samui. We thought we could offer a different way of viewing this beautiful island. Businesses in Koh Samui have been suffering badly due to the low number of tourists arrivals. Hence, we decided to create a street tour which we can include every business on a street as one scene. This way, we also help to reduce the cost of a tour to the business and yet are able to help promote the business.

We launched our web site, Koh Samui Virtual Tours, and our first 360 street virtual tour, Soi Green Mango on 1st November 2009. Within a month of our launch, we were impressed to see that our site is now in the top 10 of Google Search engine. We know that this is mainly due to the spider link technology provided by RTV.

Koh Samui (Koh in Thai means island) is a tourist island and our main efforts will be to promote the holiday resorts and rental villas on the island. We have made a reasonable start with a few orders, but cannot complete them until the middle of January because the beginning of December is the King of Thailand’s birthday and all the resorts install very large portraits’ of the King at the reception area and keep it there for two weeks and once it is taken down then up goes the Christmas decorations, so, our work will start in earnests from January. We continue to strive and look for new tours to add to our Thailand virtual tour business and we believe with the assistance of RTV we would be able to add a few more tours this month.

About John and myself:

I am a Malaysian Chinese from Penang and John is English, originating from Manchester. I met John while he was working in Malaysia as an electrical engineer and after a number of years we both decided to move to Thailand to the beautiful island of Koh Samui. Type ‘’Koh Samui” in any search engine and see what comes up. Pretty soon we will be #1 for Thailand Virtual Tours too!!

Judy Khoo
JFK Enterprises Co Ltd
Thailand Virtual Tours

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Bay Area Virtual Tours Save the World

Okay, prove it!!!

I learned a long time ago to take life One Day at a Time... Well to use that same philosophy, we plan on saving the world one house, one seller, one buyer, one property at a time...

Well, we may be exaggerating a little bit, but hopefully we got your attention! If we all do our part and focus on small improvements (Kaizen), we can make a difference. So, how do we all market and promote real estate today? Traditional methods include:

• Local Newspaper
• Local Real Estate Guides and Magazines
• Real Estate Flyer's (either mailed or hand delivered)
• Post Cards - Just Listed and Just Sold
• Online MLS Listing with a few agent produced digital pictures
• For Sale Sign in Yard
• Brokers Tour, Open House and of course networking...

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR) we are on pace for existing homes sales of over SIX MILLION homes sold during 2009 in the United States, (helped by the First Time Homebuyer Tax Credit). Every one of these homes used some form of property marketing.
If each buyer of these homes looked at 10 homes prior to making a buying decision and the buyers drove 10 miles to look at each house before narrowing their search to the 2 or 3 they were most interested in and then drove around to open houses for another 20 or 30 miles, they probably drove a minimum of 100 miles (conservative) before making a buying decision.

Staying on the conservative side, if we could cut this number in half, that would represent
SAVING over FIFTEEN MILLION GALLONS OF GAS PER YEAR!!!
Over 85% of home buyers last year say they used the Internet to search for homes. Bay Area Property Marketing Studios and virtual tours captures these home buyers and sellers and promotes a marketing program that reduces the need to drive around to every open house, and for real estate agents to reduce the number of newspaper ads, flyers and post cards that are polluting our environment, and SELL their properties FASTER!

And we haven't even gotten into the flyers, post cards, real estate guides, newspapers, etc... Well save that for another article. The point is, we all need to do our part to GO GREEN! And here in the Bay Area, Property Marketing Studios is doing our small part to SAVE THE WORLD!
Property Marketing Studios and virtual tours are the green alternative to home buying and selling. Let's take a look at some options home buyers and sellers in the San Francisco bay area and east bay can do to market, research, sell and buy real estate, both commercial and residential when they use Property Marketing Studios and our Super e-Distribution.

• We take professional, high-resolution still and 360 degree panorama photos of your property
• We produce a state-of-the-art virtual tour and slide show to highlight the properties features
• We include an online map and satellite view of the property
• We include a downloadable flyer, pictures and virtual tour
• We distribute your virtual tour and slide show to over the top real estate web sites, portals and search engines including Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, Homes, Backpage, Activerain, Google, Yahoo and so many more...
• Many of our tour packages include a YouTube production and a professional Craigslist Ad.
• We distribute your listing/virtual tour to over 500 local real estate agents and professionals.
• We include your property in blogs, Twitters and social networking distribution channels.

Property marketing is going green... are you? Visit our website, Property Marketing Studios and sign up to receive our trademark "Brokers Pajama Tour" email newsletter and see how you can save your buyers gas, your sellers time and money, promote yourself and your properties and at the same time... save the planet!




Tim Denbo
Property Marketing Studios
www.PMStudios360.com
Bay Area Virtual Tours
Visit our blog at: www.EastBayVirtualTours.com
Order a virtual tour: 925-549-0714

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We Love the IMAGE

I was pleased to participate in the Webinar last night, The IMAGE, about lighting and framing. Ben Knorr was extremely helpful with his tips about lighting and looking for artistic framing of our shots. As a new RTV dealer who has not done any Tour Track jobs, knowing settings of the camera that others use for these Hotel/Hospitality tours is very helpful.

I enjoy learning something new from each of the webinars I listen to. I hope that my images quickly reflect that. The Faststone Image viewer seems very helpful as well. What a great piece of software to get for free. I might need an entire webinar on how to use it.

I think that RTV does a great job of keeping the virtual tour dealers educated. New virtual tour technology and techniques are shared freely and that makes RTV a truly unique experience. Thanks for welcoming me into the RTV family.

Mary Jane Salopek
Pittsburgh Virtual Tours
www.picatour.com

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The Agent Video Connector Tip

Hey everyone out there. Don't forget to update the code on your website so your agent video connector works properly for you. Remember all you RTV virtual tour providers, The Agent Video Connector is a FREE service for everyone in our network. Go snag your code now and let's get some Video on our sites! You can see mine right now if you go to my Traverse City Virtual Tours Website.

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Client Appreciation Season

We all know how important it is to keep our virtual tour company name fresh in the minds of our clients. Throughout the year we send emails, newsletters, post cards, etc. advertising the benefits of RTV virtual tour technology, and marketing our new services. During the holiday season, don’t forget to take full advantage of this wonderful time of year to not only keep your name in front of them, but to also show your clients you truly appreciate their continued business.

Sending greeting cards during the holidays is a wonderful way of getting your name in front of your clients and letting them know you appreciate them; but you may also want to consider a face-to-face greeting in addition to a mailed greeting card. A great way to have the opportunity for that face-to-face is by being creative and putting together a small goodie package for each of your clients and then making personal deliveries. For example, I like to make cookies, fudge, candy, etc. and wrap them in colorful cellophane and tie them up with curly ribbon. Everyone appreciates homemade goodies, and the fact that they are hand delivered lets my clients know that their local North Dallas virtual tour provider is thinking about them this holiday season and personally appreciates them and their business. I have never had anyone too busy to personally accept homemade fudge!

I delivered my client goodie sacks this week and was thrilled with the experience. Not only did it make me feel good to give back to my clients, but during my visits I was given 2 virtual tour orders and was asked to give a quote on updating some photos for a few listings that have been on the market for a while. What a great day!

Trina Jackson
Take Me There! Virtual Tours and Photography
www.TakeMeThere360.com
Dallas Virtual Tour Company

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Lean on Your Fellow Virtual Tour Provider

As an RTV Virtual Tour Provider you must take advantage of the fact that you're part of a very large network of virtual tour providers. You're not alone out there. When you find an RTV provider that you know is having success take some time and look at their location, their city, their pricing and packages. Then take a moment and subscribe to their newsletter, their blog feed and more. When you surround yourself with successful people you will have a tendency to find the same success. Furthermore, when you spend too much time in social networks exchanging ideas with providers who are not advancing their technology or services and just getting by, you're more than likely to achieve the same level of success.

Our most successful virtual tour providers spend their days shooting virtual tours and working hard at rolling out new products and services. You should do the same. Before you copy and paste the text from a fellow RTV provider's site be sure that you ask the provider and always try to edit or modify the text before using it on your own site. The same protocol applies if a fellow RTV provider sends out an amazing news release and you would like to use it in your market for your own set of customers.

Take some time now and visit some of the more successful RTV provider's websites. Look for products and services that you might not be offering. Look for ways to sign up for their newsletters or blog feeds. There is great power in our numbers, especially when we mimic what our fellow successful RTV providers are doing.

Good luck out there!
Jason LaVanture
International MLS & Virtual Tours

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Happy Virtual Tour Campers

Dear RTV,

"OK, just so you know - we are very happy. It seems to me that we are getting quite a value for the money we paid to RTV. Even if there were no virtual tour software involved, just being associated with RTV has greatly enhanced our personal and business skills in the short time we have been dealers.

As far as I'm concerned, the tools you provide to enhance the dealership are far more advanced than anything else we have evaluated before making our decision to sign up. Specifically, your classes in SEO, your classes in Social Networking, your marketing tools and presentations and your webinars make it very easy to compete here in Arizona where the market is extremely crowded.

Your webinars from both The FORMULA and The IMAGE are something we look forward to on Tuesday afternoons. There is always a take-away from each webinar that we implement the next day. Additionally, we have found Ben Knorr to be a great communicator of technical knowledge which isn't a very easy thing to do. He is equally skilled in software and in photography. Everything is laid out perfectly and creates a good foundation for understanding new ideas and techniques.

Finally we must say that the RTV virtual tour software is put together so easy to use. We are excited and hope to become a very successful high end dealer of your product as well as high end photographers for the Tour Track system. You will need to sign up Brad Feinberg Photography, LLC for the Inner Circle because we are addicted to improving our business through the model you have established.

Please let me know when our "free" subscription is ending and when we need to upgrade to the Inner Circle. Once again, thank you very much for all of the help and the transfer of knowledge that you are providing.

Sincerely,
Brad and Suzanne Feinberg
Brad Feinberg Photography, LLC
Phoenix Virtual Tours

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Virtual Tour Marketing Pieces

Virtual Tour Marketing Update: January 2010

This month we decided to focus on a couple of markets that you may have overlooked in your virtual tour business. First off, winter is definitely here in Northern Michigan and that got me thinking about the year round attributes that ski resorts possess. They have moved beyond the ski hill with a rope tow and have become something more, a destination resort. This two page, half- fold brochure, highlights what your interactive virtual tours can do for such a resort.






Kennels are another nationwide business that may have been overlooked. It is a $3 + billion dollar industry per year. Next to children and sometimes in place of, pets are pampered, cared for and accessorized. People love their pets dearly and being able to view a virtual tour of a facility before booking can provide a much needed comfort level.


Each month we strive to help you become more efficient and better connected to existing and potential virtual tour customers. Our marketing pieces are easily customizable and typically just require you to insert your specific company information and logo. We recommend using Vistaprint for postcard printing and other printing needs. They seem to have fast service and extremely great rates.

Take a moment to read the text through and make sure your company can deliver the services delineated. If you can't or don't know how to provide a service such a bird's eye view shots or nighttime stills, contact us and we can set you in the right direction. If you have an idea for a piece, suggestions, or want to see something in the next few months send me an e-mail or simply use the RTV suggestion box when you login to http://www.rockpointemarketing.com

Best wishes, Jill K.
RTV Virtual Tour Marketing
National Virtual Tour Company

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British Columbia Virtual Tours

Hello from the West Coast of Canada! Well this is Randy from Direct Virtual Galleries in southeastern British Columbia. My wife Sherry and I own Fate Photography and have been in the Photography Biz for over 10 years now. We have started with RTV in Oct 2009 so, considered the newbies we are learning everyday on how to become the best at this new product.

Because we are getting setup to produce Kootenays Virtual Tours and it's a VERY rural area that we live in, it was a toss up on which way to take this. Some of the Realtors here use this type of product, but not alot. So, we have chosen to first do some tours and focus hospitality, businesses and smaller town city chambers and to pursue whole city virtual tours.

And we have some success with it as well already. Ya!! If you visit our site www.theDVG.com there are some of the local area Virtual Tours we've done. We have now picked up a few Realtors, and more will come as people talk here. The local papers and media have really embraced us doing many great articles for us.

Many great comments so far from clients and supporters. The Virtual Tour product here is very new to people but do believe this will be a great success and a wonderful assets to our community.

After a handful of technical issues, and the great support from Ben Knorr, Jason and all the staff at RTV we are off and running.

Well, That's my first blog ever. I will get more into it as we continue to build our virtual tour business.

We are here to stay!!!!

Randy,

www.theDVG.com
www.F-A-T-E.com
Kootenays Virtual Tours

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The FORMULA 20 | Protecting Your Business

There were 10 million victims of identity theft in 2008 in the United States.

1 in every 10 U.S. consumers has already been victimized by CC theft or identity theft.

1.6 million households experienced fraud.

The average Identity Theft life cycle lasted between 57 to 155 days of fraud or misuse.

10 percent of all victims spent at least 55 hours resolving their problems. The top 5 percent of victims spent at least 130 hours.

SOURCES: Javelin Strategy and Research, 2009

Ok, so you get the point. This stuff is bad and its happening all over the place. I think everyone knows at least one person that has experienced theft or fraud that had to spend a lot of time fixing it.

On this episode of The FORMULA we will be speaking with co-host John McGee on how to protect yourself, your family and your virtual tour business by using the popular LifeLock program.

RTV has worked out special pricing and a promotional code will be given out to anyone attending the live show.

Please join us on Tuesday January 19th at 7:00 PM EST as we talk about protecting your personal and business life from fraud and identity theft.

See you on the show!

Jason

Sign up now!

Real Tour Vision
International Virtual Tour Company

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Happy New Year From BlueLaVaMedia

Greetings from team BlueLaVaMedia. Jim, Heather and I want to wish you and your family a Happy New Year!

We are encouraged with the increasing number of our real estate client's closings in the last quarter of 2009. Equally heartening is the feedback that we are receiving from our property management clients as 2009 was a great rental year for them. Looking back at 2009 we are proud to have been chosen by nearly 100 real estate agents as their property marketing partner.

2010 promises to be an outstanding year as an improving environment is projected to provide growth for our marketing savvy clients. Our commitment to you is that we will continue to build on our exciting powerful property marketing tools and programs to further increase the value of the services that we offer to you.

In 2010 we have several enhancements planned:
• We will be soon launching our new FULL SCREEN HD Virtual Tour
• Jim will be stopping by to meet with you about our new TxT Connect Program which allows for mobile phone marketing with lead capture built in
• We will be expanding our service area to the Mackinac Bridge by adding additional staff
• We plan on further investigating a new Digital Staging product
• We're launching a new Interactive Floor Plan System
• And finally we will be soon announcing our new Agent Video Connector
Be on the lookout for Jim, our press releases and new technology announcements as we kick off the year. We will also be keeping your updated via our E-Newsletter.

In closing we understand that part of the value that we represent to you is that you can have confidence in us doing some of the heavy marketing lifting for you, enabling you to focus on your clients and prospects to further increase your sales. We appreciate your confidence and assure you that we will not be content as we strive to add growth in value with the services that we offer to you.

I hope that you have a great New Year, and thank you for choosing BlueLaVaMedia.

Jason LaVanture & Jim Blue
http://www.BlueLaVaMedia.com
Traverse Virtual
Order a Virtual Tour Today: 877-941-8687

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Are Your Tours Dial-Up Friendly?

Are your clients still on dial-up? Are most of your virtual tour clients customers still on dial-up or returning to dial-up? Believe it or not because of our economy many cash-strapped Americans are giving up their broadband connections and returning to snail-paced dial up modems. What does this mean for your virtual tour company?

ISPs admit that while dial-up in the United States is declining, it is not dropping that fast. Kevin Brand, senior vice president of product management at EarthLink was quoted as saying that there was still a big market out there and during these tough times, even customers who have bundles including broadband may be looking at their bill and wondering if they really need it.

The good news for you, as an RTV Dealer, is that RTV's virtual tours run flawlessly on a dial-up connection. This is a huge selling point especially for those potential clients that have seen our competitors sluggish tours on a dial-up connection.

Don't forget too that the best part about using the RTV virtual tour solution is that they are able to program in all of features that their virtual tour dealers like about the other virtual tour systems, keeping their technology on the cutting edge of the virtual tour technology, even for dial-up users.

Mike and Joy Thompson
Detroit Virtual Tours
www.realvisionstudio.com
Order a Virtual Tour Today: 734-727-2276

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The IMAGE Gets Lovin From Waikoloa

Mahalo Ben! Tuesday’s webinar on lighting and framing was just what I needed. Tucked right in between our two busiest holidays of the year, it was almost…I say almost missed. I’m so happy my Outlook alerted me in time with a reminder. Ben’s tips for lighting make me want to run out and get a couple of ‘slave lights’…would definitely save loads of post-processing time when doing the virtual tours. This is where we see the profits always getting lost. And the framing pointers are guiding me to really look at the works of others to see better views.

I always thought that you never wanted to take a ‘straight on’ shot, but after seeing David Palermo’s virtual tour photography work I can now see how this can work very much in favor. I’ll be practicing on that one! I did know that the lower shots help the viewers feel like they are comfortably sitting there, so Lucky I’m a shorty…I don’t have to lower my tripod too much. But another thing I sometimes do is actually sit on a chair to bring the viewer right into that ‘being there’ plane. Works for me!

Hau’oli Makahiki Ho’u!!!
Happy New Year all you RTV Dealers out there!

Debrasue Stutts
Vizit360 Photography by VizWizardz LLC
Waikoloa Virtual Tours
Order a Virtual Tour: 808-333-6458

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A New Years Resolution

This year we decided to make some New Year's Resolutions for our Corinth Virtual Tour Company. One of ours is to consciously schedule our work day. We recently spoke with a tourism magazine to determine what their advertising rates run. Part of our "pitch" to those advertisers will be a price comparison to again demonstrate how virtual tours are an excellent addition for an advertising budget. (The smallest ad, which is 1/6 of a page, runs $375 for one month, with lower rates as you increase the number of advertising months.) We plan on contacting advertisers in several of these high-end publications.

Another objective will be to "get past the gatekeeper". For a number of weeks we have tried to speak with one potential customer, only to have the "gatekeeper" run interference. So, we spoke to another person who has immediate access and she has promised to speak with the future customer on our behalf. Moral of the story: networking and constantly getting your virtual tour and property marketing products mentioned brings results.

We also plan on "clustering" some of our virtual tour sales calls to neighboring communities. One day a week we will travel and have a schedule of potential contacts to cold-call.

One year from now, our next New Year's resolution will be to sit back and take all of those incoming calls! Got to have dreams right?

Enjoyed this week's webinar the IMAGE and got many helpful pointers--thanks Ben.
Happy New Year to one and all.


Hugh Jordan
www.seeitsellstudios.com
Corinth Virtual Tour Company
Corinth, MS
Order a Virtual Tour Today:662-286-9334

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Lake Leelanau in the Winter

All the families in Lake Leelanau County are finishing their Christmas shopping and doing all the great Leelanau activities like downhill skiing, snowboarding, snow tubing, cross country skiing, but not ice fishing and ice boating. It is too early for that. We don't have the ice buildup yet. The Suttons Bay, Leland, Northport and Glen Arbor Villages are so unique with the decorations. In the morning when you wake up the fresh white snow on the trees. The fresh snow covers all the previous day's mush. What a delight on to have Lake Leelanau real estate this time of the year!

As you may or may not know, people who live in Leelanau County and those who have a Lake Leelanau home right there on the water begin to hunker down for the long sleep of the land. Winter starts in earnest on December 21st and by this time of the year many people have had their snow blowers revered up and primed at least once or twice. They have made sure all of the windows have been caulked and some put up clear plastic to give extra protection to keep those heating bills down.

Our duvets for our beds are fluffed and ready with lots of warmth. We had a Charter Communications outage for telephone, internet and TV on Friday so we are making sure our entertainment is worked over as we spend more time watching movies, working on computers and talking on the phone. Of course, one of the most important downtime activities is reading good books.

When you live in Leelanau County one of your most frequent activities in the spring and fall will be garage sales. I did my share here this fall and ended up getting quite a few more books than I thought I would get. Needless to say I’m in full stock this year for good reading material. Also, Leland Library has been providing me with the Pulitzer Prize winning novels beginning in 1917.
I have read 9 so far and it is so fascinating to start with "His Family" by Earnest Poole, the first novel that won. It is about a widower and his relationships with his three daughters and it is still relevant today.

For those of you who are currently shopping for your Leelanau Home please be sure to visit my website. I do virtual tours of each and every listing so you will be very happy to be able to preview these homes before placing your phone call to me.

Happy New Year from Judy Levin here on Lake Leelanau.

Judy Levin
Lake Leelanau Homes

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