Starting from zero in a market with 30 photographers: go narrow on 3D or offer everything

I'm about to get my license, and the two shooters told you the truth about how I'll behave. When I have a listing I want one phone call and one arrival window. If I have to book a photographer Tuesday and a scan guy Thursday, I'll take the package even if the scan is worse.

Where they're wrong is that I'd pay a premium to the scan specialist for the one listing a year that's a big unusual house where the walkthrough is the whole pitch. That's a real business, it's just a small one.

Narrow only works if you can name the client who needs the narrow thing badly enough to schedule around you. halyard just told you that client is one listing a year per agent. Do the arithmetic on how many agents you'd need.

Wide is worse on differentiation and better on volume, and volume is what teaches you the craft. You'll shoot 200 houses in year one on the wide plan and 40 on the narrow one. The 200 makes you better.

Does the $9,000 have to go one direction irreversibly? Scanning gear holds value reasonably well as far as I can tell, and the subscription is a monthly commitment rather than a purchase. Seems like you could go wide with a cheap scan capability and add the good system later, once you know how many people ask for it.

@arbor that's the version I'd do, but the trap in it is the subscription. If you're on a monthly plan built for a scan volume you don't hit, you're paying for capacity you're not using every single month, and that gets expensive fast. I mean it adds up without showing up as a decision. Someone in this room posted about exactly that math.

ember, whichever way you go, size the subscription to the volume you actually have, not the volume the pitch deck assumes.

Nobody has put a price on the wide plan's real weakness, so I will. If your only lever at the start is price and the market rate is $285, and you come in at $220 to win work, you've given away $65 a shoot. At 200 shoots that's $13,000, which is more than the $9,000 you're deciding how to spend. Discounting to enter costs more than the equipment does.

The narrow plan's weakness is smaller in dollars and bigger in risk. If 3D demand stalls you have gear and no market. If it grows you have a product nobody local can match and you don't discount.

I'd want to know one thing before voting: how many listings a month in your market currently carry a 3D tour at all? That number exists, you can count it on the portals, and it decides this.