Realtor.com Virtual Tour / PicturePath Links
Every Realtor’s listings are shown on REALTOR.com – they are sent there automatically by your MLS.
One of the enhancement services that Realtor.com offers is to add a Virtual Tour Link to your listing. If you have paid REALTOR.COM for a Showcase Listing Enhancement service, then there is NO fee for linking your Single Property Sites.
However, even if you have not paid for the Enhanced service, you may still add a Virtual Tour link, but you ill need to purchase this and SPS will help you do this.
Homestore operates Realtor.com, and they have a fee-per-listing service called PicturePath which is designed to enhance the visibility of your listings by linking a virtual tour to it. This fee currently is $24.00 PER TOUR for this service. We collect this fee and pass the majority of it along to Homestore as it is their policy to charge for this service only through approved virtual tour companies, rather than directly charging the Realtor who has the listing. This service is completely optional on each of your listings.
What do you get for $24.00 on your listing? When you pay for PicturePath, your listing will appear when people choose to “Display listings with virtual tours first,” and the small “spinning red house” logo will appear prominently near the top of your listing indicating that your listing has a virtual tour for consumers to view. According to Homestore, listings with virtual tours receive 40% more views than listings without a virtual tour. So you’re gaining advertising visibility for your seller and your listing, along with pre-qualifying more buyers.
Linking Benefits
- Your Single Property Site is linked to your listing on Realtor.com. Because your Single Property Site will be linked to REALTOR.com®, you will gain maximum personal promotion benefits as every consumer will see your branding, photo and contact information!
- Your contact information is now shown with your tour! This means that the person viewing your listing (and your tour) can now contact you via phone, email, pager or even be directed to your website by using the links and information displayed on your Single Property Site that’s linked to your listing.
- Viewing statistics count too! Since your Single Property Site will stay on our servers, we can count all of the views your tours get on Realtor.com! And we include this on your Viewing Statistics page which you can view in real time and even share with your sellers. More proof for you to have for sellers of the effectiveness of your Internet marketing strategy!
- Visibility. Your listing will appear when customers search for homes with virtual tours on REALTOR.com®, and the “spinning red house” icon will appear near the top of the listing indicating that it has a virtual tour.
- Pay per tour. Any REALTOR can take advantage of this service – you do not have to have a REALTOR.com® Showcase Listing Enhancement service account in order to gain personal promotion benefits on REALTOR.com®. And if you just want to highlight your virtual tours on REALTOR.com® occasionally, you can use this PicturePath linking service only on those occasions.
- Increased Distribution of your tours. Homestore’s distribution network has agreements in place with many national franchise gateway sites (e.g. www.REMAX.com, www.Prudential.com), portals such as AOL.com, MSN.com, Netscape.com, Excite.com and several websites for local real estate companies, etc. This distribution network allows your tour to be automatically linked to the listing data sent to the appropriate sites on this distribution list. Click here for a complete list of distribution sites.