I know you keep getting the same questions from us new members, but you know you love it ;-)

A  quick background first

I have sort of stumbled into this, I have a reasonable amount of photography experience, done 5/6 weddings and been a keen armature for years, my wife runs a holiday letting business, and i started taking some stills for her, adopting quite a strong hdr image to give a lot of punch in the listings,

I have 2 friends in the real estate business, who after seeing a set i did for a 1m villa said i should do this for MONEY

So I entered your world, very quickly it became apparent that VT are important, I just had no idea what was involved in making a good one,

Back to the Master Plan

I operate in Spain (come from the UK), real estate here works differently in that there is very few agents who Work exclusively, so your property might be on with 20 different agents, meaning no one agent will spend the money or time to take decent pictures let alone VTs,

here is my business opportunity, to provide professional photography to the person selling the house(not the agent), this will require a lot of sales and marketing effort, for this i have approached somebody(sales man) who will sell the product, because i would be useless at sales:-)

I am happy with the pictures I can produce, and the kit i have to do this with, whats being a large learning curve is these bloody virtual tours, I did a set for stitching, thought it took way to long on site and in post process, so i got a 360 one shot, Hmmm was that a mistake?

I have canon 40D, canon 20d, canon G9, canon 10-22, canon 24-70 2.8, 70-200 2.8, 2 good tripods/heads, 4 speedlights + transmitter, loads of other photography bits

I purchased a 15m extending tower to do low aerial shots,

I have a good fast computer and laptop

I have lightroom2, CS3, smartdraw, PtGiu, tourweaver3, photomatex, buisness class website,

I have just ordered  Sigma8mm3.5 Agno`s Tcpshort, and a tripod leveling base, is it worth getting the ringT for the 8mm?

A lot of you do this for a living, you have the benefit of experience, is there any major flaws in my plan?

introducing a salesperson will put my prices up by 30/40% and maybe another 10% to sweeten the agents for the introductions, but I dont think advertising and Internet will be enough, do any of you use a salesperson?

I think i am nearly there with the kit, or am i? shall i ditch the oneshot, or is there a market for quick cheap tours?

same with the software, is what i have adequate?

this forum has been a huge source of help and information for me, when you charge a client good money for being a professional you are supposed to know what you are doing, and with your continued help i may even get there

Many Thanks

Steve

I would recommend the ringT. I have it and leave my lens attached and all I have to do is attach the camera. From what I've read here it's best to have the lens attached to the rotor than the camera.
Sounds like you have a plan all set-up and you seem to own every piece of equipment and program know to man. Wish I had something to sell you.
As for the one-shot lens, if you already own it then you may want to keep it.. You never know when you might want to take a VT of that small but special walk-in closet that just doesn't have enough room for you and the camera.  

The panoramas are not the product.  The residential property is the clients product.   Like trying to see a high quality home through a dirty window with  1 Shot lens   1 image  fast post processing - My opinion this lens produces poor quality imaging, which does not reflect your clients high quality residential property.

Business Plan is a written document laying out all the core needs of the company expectation for staying in business.  It defines the companies product its competition, and forecast for annual revenue.  Oh yes, but then you probably already knew that requirement.

yea i thought the one shot was a bad investment

but i am on a learning curve here

above is not a business plan, just a few ramblings of somebody that has spent too much time in front of his pc than is probably good for him,

My competition

I cant find anybody else offering these services in this area, so that's either a very good or very bad thing

its hard to determine a price until i have an accurate time scale for my work flow, your comments in my other thread have been helpful with this,

ultimately the price will be determined by what the client are willing to pay, until we try to market the services this will be a bit of a guess,

i will order the ringT, this means i can leave the battery grip and tripod mounting plate on the camera, just switching lenses,

i am presming that the 8mm on a 40D will have too much distortion  to yield usable still shots?

in the UK it is mostly exclusive 95% one agent,

in Spain, it is rarely exclusive 95% the opposite of the UK, some of the agents have deals where the primary agent gets 50% and the selling agent gets 50%, this is for the coastal regions where the buyers are European