Progress Report: Almost At One Million Total Real Estate Videos Watched

I thought that we would pass one million videos total real estate videos watched before the end of 2007 but we’ll just miss making the deadline.  The property video views for November dropped off towards the end of the month and we only ended with just above 60,000 videos watched for the month.  We’ve been between 75,000 videos views and 90,000 videos viewed each month since about August 2007 (over 80% of our total views since Spring 2007  have been property videos)

The views for December are already beginning to taper off as people begin to focus on the holidays.  I suspect that we’ll be 30,000 to 35,000 views shy of a million as the big ball begins to fall in Times Square.  No complaints.  It’s been a rocking year though…we continue to do a lot of private label video and services work, the version 1 infrastructure is just about complete and, if we can stay profitable as we have in a falling market, that can only bode well for whenever the market does spring back.

Since I am rambling on anyway, I’ll take this opportunity to congratulate the wellcomemat guys on the newest release of their flash video player and their upcoming real estate video widgets.

Administrative Delay On New Beta Functionality

The functionality is coded and has been tested. That’s supposed to be the hard part, however, we are still wading our way through two non-technical things – the administrative text/documentation (which both are a bit light according to very recent feedback that we have received) and some design changes to the user control panel which recent feedback also told us did not match some of the functionality changes. Although we will be in beta when we release, we dont want it to feel like “really beta” functionality.

Given that we’d like the functionality to be live for the three international real estate fairs/conferences that we will be attending this month (Brasil, USA, and Bolivia), we are making the appropriate administrative changes based on the feedback. Of course, the text changes will have to also be propagated across various languages.  In all, it’ll be a few days yet.

TheMoveChannel.com Partners With ForSaleByLocals And Vidlisting.com

***NOTE: After almost a year of working closely with the management and staff of The Move Channel (part of On The Move, Ltd.) in the UK on software development, video, and SEO projects, we can no longer recommend them in good conscience to our readers as a trusted real estate partner based on our experience with them. (18 May 2008)***

(This post also available in español)

–Original post removed–

Launching Four New Real Estate Video Websites Focused 100% on Property Videos

We’ve said before that our data shows that prospective buyers actually like to watch property videos.  Now, its time to put our money where our mouth is.

We already have three real estate video websites with property videos, real estate video interviews, and video podcasts mixed together.  These sites are http://vidlisting.com (English), http://bienesraicesvideo.com (Spanish), and http://imoveisvideo.com (Portuguese).

By Tuesday of next week, we’ll be able to start leveraging our contextual real estate video infrastructure to launch four new real estate video sites that will be focused 100% on real estate property tours.  Prospective buyers will be able to focus on searching for and finding properties without having to be distracted by real estate video interviews,  neighborhood drivethroughs, podcasts, or attempts at viral real estate videos.  They’ll find an aggregated set of property videos for sale that were filmed/narrated by us or made available via corporate partners that they can watch online  or download to their computer, iPod, iPhone, AppleTV, or other device.

Here is how the new sites will be focused:

– One real estate video site will be in English and focused on US and international properties (the split between the two will be more obvious as will the differences in properties that we film and that we license and do not film)

– A second site in English will focus 100% on property tours in the United States (no international properties will be available)

– A spanish language site (http://inmueblevideo.com) and a portuguese language site (http://emvenda.com – which means “for sale” in portuguese) that will also focus on U.S. prioritized property tours with an obvious split between US, European, and other international properties. Neither of these sites are online yet.

We build our sites on top of our own ForSaleByLocals infrastructure. The changes that will make these sites possible are a key next step in laying the foundation for distribution and integration of property tours. Our plan is that real estate videos from partner property tour sites throughout the world can leverage our distribution model and can be searchable along with our own property tour offerings on these four websites.  Expect to start seeing links to the English language sites coming online in beta status on Tuesday or so.

ACOBIR Implements BienesRaicesVideo.com Real Estate Video Infrastructure For Panama

We are pleased to announce that ACOBIR (the Panama Association of Real Estate Agents and Promoters)  is the first announced beta partner to implement the BienesRaicesVideo.com real estate video infrastructure.  The implementation brings a significant real estate video capability to the ACOBIR website without any of the traditional bandwidth or management problems.

The implementation consists of three elements:

– A self updating real estate video bar on the home page of http://acobir.com.  Even though the site is in spanish, you’ll see the bar near the bottom of the home page. This element retains the look and feel of the overall page, is entirely geolocated without the need for Google maps, and is implemented with one line of HTML code. All video listings are managed by the bienesraicesvideo.com servers.  ACOBIR will be able to use their system of listing IDs.  UPDATED: We know that we have some work to do on this bar tomorrow with Firefox and likely Safari.  Fixed on both – tested on 5 browsers.

– A full size real estate video player page in multiple languages that retains the overall look and feel of the ACOBIR website.  Again, the visible content of the entire page is implemented with a single line of HTML code. You’ll see this page when you click on the video bar on the ACOBIR home page.  All content and bandwidth for the videos is provided by bienesraicesvideo.com servers.

– A video bar for the listing detail page: This functionality is not yet fully implemented due to some requirements on ACOBIR’s part.  But each listing will have the range of languages in which a given video is available.  This also is a one line implementation of HTML code that can easily be dynamically generated. The bar will look like the following on each detail page that has videos available: (nothing will appear on listings without videos)

ACOBIR members will be able to film properties themselves or contact the bienesraicesvideo.com office in Panama City for complete video services.  Congratulations to ACOBIR for implementing a fully functional video infrastructure that requires minimal administration and is managed externally while providing benefits to ACOBIR members and visitors to the ACOBIR web domain.  We have a number of other partner sites as we can now literally extend a subset of our videos to other websites with just a single line of HTML code.

June 2007 Results For Our Real Estate Video Websites

June 2007 was a good month for us.  The numbers are validating our approach and also the changes that we are working to implement.  Here are the important numbers:

Overall Metrics

– Overall site traffic in June increased by 47% from May 2007

– Unique IPs in June increased 103%  from May 2007

– Real estate video views grew by 23%  from May 2007

Video Analysis

June 2007 marks the last month of an insular real estate video infrastructure. We expect to see a bigger jump in real estate videos views next month with the extension of our video infrastructure to other sites.  For instance, we already have 61% more video views in the first three days of July than we had in the first three days of June and we have only been beta testing on a few sites.

We also went over 500,000 total real estate videos watched in early June 2007. Not bad for 7 months…

Breakdown by Language

                              English              Spanish             Portuguese 

June 2007 

All pages                18%                      57%                      24%

Videos                    26%                       53%                      20%

May 2007

All pages                27%                      48%                      24%

Videos                    32%                       44%                      24%

Language Analysis

Spanish: I’m not surprised by the high amount of Spanish language traffic given our current content mix on http://vidlisting.com.  We also had a very successful trip to Spain which likely accounts for some of the 10% rise in Spanish percentages. This language percentage will remain high as we work through our inital corporate betas with primarily spanish language portals.

Portuguese: We posted very little new portuguese content in June which is something that we need to fix moving forward – clearly the numbers above show that our portuguese audience checked in to see what was new, didnt find much, and left without watching videos.

English: We were focusing on business development in June rather than developing a lot of english language content such as interviews.  Although overall english language numbers were still sizable for the month in terms of raw numbers, we are executing against a plan to attract a larger english language audience mix- announcements coming soon as we can make them. We are also expecting to see dramatic shifts upwards in the english language percentages once we begin to post US properties.   

See you next month…

Our Multiple Language Real Estate Video Infrastructure Extended To Other Websites

We now have the FSBL real estate video infrastructure running within several other websites as part of our beta testing with commercial and organizational partners. This is a key step in preparing for broad entry into the US market.  Basically, the player pages are available under the partner’s domain but all of the infrastructure and bandwidth is provided by our servers.  We’ve cleared up most of the small issues (on both sides), simplifed the overall process, and have been successful in abstracting away the fact that the property videos are actually using the Vidlisting.com video infrastructure.  The look and feel of the real estate video infrastructure is exactly the same as the partner page. In short, the real estate video beta has been very successful to this point.

We’ll be providing a few links in the next week once we have run through our full range of beta testing and, in certain cases, once our business relationship with some of these organizations becomes public.

Profitability Goals For June Met Solely on Real Estate Video Revenues

http://vidlisting.com , http://bienesraicesvideo.com (spanish), and http://imoveisvideo.com (portuguese) as well as the entire ForSaleByLocals network of websites is pleased to announce that we have met our profitability goals for the month of June 2007. We have been close for some time.

In short, income directly related to real estate video for June will exceed total costs. This includes indirect non-real estate video related costs such as travel, administrative costs such as advertising, and spinning up a new office in Panama – we are only counting the revenues for production and hosting real estate video as well as providing narration for real estate video in alternative languages. 

This was a huge accomplishment for us and the entire team deserves credit. It also marks a key inflection point in establishing and proving a sustainable business model.

Real Estate Video Office In Panama Now Open

We’ve opened our real estate video office in the El Cangrejo area of Panama now.  We’ve had a few small logistics and administrative difficulties that will be remedied in the coming week.  Things like having the electricity connected can be important to long term sustained business operations  😛  We are getting along for the moment although it took a while to find an internet cafe that didnt block access to ports used our database.  If you are waiting for a call from me, now you know why. Feel free to call me on my Panama cell at Country code 507 and the number 6436-1591.  I am currently on US central time.

We’ve done quite a bit of local filming already and have more real estate property videos for ACOBIR members to film next week. 

Fixed A Bunch Of Fit And Finish Issues

We fixed a bunch of fit and finish issues on our pages that have been bothering me for some time.  I was up early this morning, checked off on each fix, and the fixes are now live on the site.  Nothing big….just some alignment issues, euro symbol inclusion, and other nagging issues in the interface for several of the pages ( including the long time burr in my side, the real estate video player page).

We didnt want any of these little issues to be focus of our beta testing of new functionality that should start later this week.