The percieved U-Tube audience does not seem to be the right audience for results (Sale or Lease).  It is on the other hand a great source for hits, views, and search engine results.  But the two do go hand in hand.  I'm going to check out your link and see about recommending to others.  Cheers.

Matt Locke 

1-877-MattLocke

http://www.georgiahomeinsurance.com/

http://www.georgiainvestorinsurance.com/

I went to the vidlisting site. Can you explain that at all? If you have time. Thanks.

Matt:  Thanks. I hope that you like what you see.

Mother: No problem. Vidlisting is a site focused on maximising your marketing reach by displaying property videos in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. We started in South America, have agreements in the valuable 2nd and retirement home of Central America, and now are poised to bring this approach to the US.

Did you know that almost 50% of all US real estate transactions in the US are to immigrants or foreigners?  Here is a short video of the CEO of the National Assocation of REALTORS (NAR) as the source: http://activerain.com/blogsview/112311/NAR-CEO-International-Roundtable.  The strength of the Euro to the dollar has a lot to do with that increase in foreign transactions.  In short, the http://vidlisting.com site can help U.S. based REALTORS adapt to changing demographics and economics by using videos that have descriptions in a familiar language as their medium to attract the widest possible set of buyers.

Cheers

Tony

YouTube is a venue for video. Real estate agents are turning more and more to video.  The ease of posting to YouTube makes the effort painless, though the initial ROI seems 0.  But I would not base a decision to post a real estate video on YouTube based on any present stats.  It's the future you should be considering and your ability to create innovative real estate videos----it can be done and once you see it you'll raise your palm to you forehead and say "Why didn;t I think of that".  A venue with those many eyeballs can;t be ignored.

 PS I think I know what real estate videos will work there.  For a small consultant's fee I can tell you :)

jf.sellsius:  Thanks for the response.  I'm surmising that when you refer to the future and todays ROI being essentially zero that you are referring to delivering something other than property videos. My guess is only because we track the performance of non-property videos on our site as well. 

Property videos have a fairly predictable viewership curve on our site but so do at least two other forms of real estate video content (dont worry, you did such a good job of raising the question that I wont give away the secret if I am correct here [grin :) ] ). Some could easily fall into the category of "almost timeless content" - five years from now, I'm sure that people will still be searching for it.  So, not nearly the upfront video views upfront, but a regular stream of visitors over some longer term - we are seeing that pattern today as well with certain types of video that we filmed months ago.  Its a bit like the song, "Stairway To Heaven" - never number one or even number ten but one of the top selling albums of all time.

Property videos though do have a rather limited shelf life. The first two weeks are critical. Thats our focus area and the hard part of building the right audience - the near timeless content seems to do a good job of taking care of itself.

If anyone is having sustained success with property videos on YouTube, please let us know...

Tony

try yahoo video.we recieve almost as many hits per week there as we do with our MLS direct hits.

eric: I'm not a big fan of the Yahoo video interface. I must be an idiot because I cant seem to find a way to sort the videos by date using their interface.   Plus there's no views to analyze  :)

 Tony 

I think that there is alot more than just property videos. It's all about creating something viral. A shaky video of  a kitchen taken by someone who is a little too trigger happy on the zoom is not very viral. I don't think YouTube is the the outlet for that. But viral video (such as the real estate roller coaster viewed over 100k times) is where the big payoff is. It has a much longer shelf live and a killer RIO.

Tony,

I don't like the yahoo interface either, however, it is a place where there are a LOT of people watching real estate video's. And they do offer a view counter of your own uploaded videos....try it...i GUARANTEE you will see serious results!

eric

Here is the link to the video that Brad refers to: http://youtube.com/watch?v=kUldGc06S3U

Brad:  Agreed about the viral nature of this particular video. Ultimately the public defines what is viral despite the video creator's best intentions.  The public also seems quite fickle - there isnt any formula for determining what will be "viral". To me, viral signifies entertainment. Not everyone can break the code that the guys that blend anything did to boost sales of their product.

A more successful strategy for video providers might be building a focused audience of people that want to buy properties - not just to be entertained.   I'd also like to better understand how viral videos will consistently generate buyers - to se a baseball analogy, I'd rather a player that consistently gets on base than the home run hitter who strikes out a lot.  In the case of viral videos, people would be lucky to only get one HR in their entire career...and just a brief spike that may not ultimately translate to revenues. 

Tony

eric: have any hard data to share?

Quality comes before content.

Content must follow marketing.

Consumers follow aggregation.

Marketing is not activity, it is achievement.

You cannot make chicken salad out of chicken guano.

Well, O'man.

We keep reading these criticisms...without any direct response to those of us who steer you repeatedly toward:

-quality video production
-interesting video content
-video aggregation sites
-skillfully presented and marketed offerings
-delicious chicken salad made from prime cuts!

If you'd care to offer constructive criticism of leading-edge sites with quality content where passionate producers are providing a consumer-focused experience, we're all ears...and eyes!

Norvell Rose
www.RexNet.tv

obeoman,

please keep the comments on a positive note. active rain is about bringing INTELLIGENT real estate minded individuals together in a place where they can share ideas, and hopefully learn to be more successful in and around the field of real estate.

your comments tend to be more from the ignorant, uninformed, and threatened side. competition is what fuels business in America.

didn't you mother ever tell you that if you don't have anything nice to say, do not say anything at all?

Adam:  feedback is a good thing.  However, there are better ways to provide feedback than posting essentially the same comment on multiple posts, please call me directly. My number is on the sidebar.

Tony

 To the anonymous poster:

...My comments are on a positive note - with a bit of humor thrown in. It's great to debate and exchange ideas. I author my comments.

Hiding behind a curtain of anonymity and sniping is not debate.

As far as intelligence goes, money follows results: Obeo gets over 1 million unique visitors per month-pick Alexa and Quantcast and our tour can take up to 30% off time-on-market for listings.

The basic question of RE video revolves around ease of production, quality of product and a stated maketing program that provides measurable results. Unfortunately - and it would see many agree with me - the vast majority of RE video is so incredibly mediocre it just doesn't help sell homes. Technical quality is weak, aggregation is poor -(a hogpile on googletube or yahoo does not count) and distribution seems haphazard.

There are exceptions to this. As stated, RE web video is just learning to roll over. I will keep watching - and listinening.

Obeoman

I'm hoping that since you usually end up on our blog that perhaps we are one of the companies that you are paying attention to.

Tony