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Welcome Home Real Estate Media
Just wanted to say hello to everyone and introduce myself. I'm Kevin Coleman, owner of Welcome Home Real Estate Media in Bossier City, LA.
We are a new start up company, just beginning to get our feet wet in the business, and I'm sure we'll have plenty of questions for you old pros. Hopefully we can offer some good comment and insight on discussions as well. Looking forward to making new friends in the industry!
Are you guys planning on hosting your own video or will you be using wellcomemat for your clients video? (if wellcomemat how are you incorporating the cost into what you're charging your client?)
All the best of luck to you as you start your new venture.
Thanks for the well wishes! You bring up an excellent question. One that I was just discussing with another videographer yesterday. Maybe you could help point us in the right direction.
Our local MLS requires an unbranded version of the media, surrounded by a frame that by state law must include at minimum the realtor's company name and phone number.
I'm thinking its going to be cost prohibitive for us to set up our own servers in the beginning, and we're looking for a solution to this. I like WellcomeMat's player..but I don't believe it includes a customizable frame?
Any direction you could point me in would be greatly appreciated!
Here's what I've done:
WellcomeMat hosts the videos. I create a web page for each listing and use the MLS compliant player provided by WellcomeMat-- I just embed it on that page which has the agent's information on it (WellcomeMat's link structure is not compliant with my local MLS, so I have to have the pages on my website, but the player is embedded). It works great! :)
Bossier City...cool...grew up in Alexandria..good luck with the new company...
Wellcome Kevin - All the best with your new venture, Wellcomemat is a great place.
Cheers, scon.
Dustin,
WellcomeMat's MLS player is not compliant with your local MLS? Really? Thought we had them all nailed down my now...
Kevin,
If you have questions about our current cost structure (or costs associated with our upcoming product for individual listings, called "Uno,"), please let us know via support@wellcomemat.com.
Also, we do a weekly, front to back demo of our platform, every Thursday at 4PM EST. Register here:
@Christian
The PLAYER is compliant, the LINK STRUCTURE is not compliant, so I have to set up my own web pages and embed the player on my website in order to be MLS compliant. My MLS has pretty specific rules about links.
Let me clarify that-- it's kinda confusing (to me too). The URL for the local MLS here has to be consistent, meaning the only part of the URL that can change is the MLS number. Also, my vendor agreement states that I have to maintain the website... so I don't know how that would define WellcomeMat.
Hate to be a pain about this, but where on the WM website is a complete explanation of the unbranded MLS player. I am still trying to decide the best place to host videos. From what I can tell the unbranded version allows you to cut the front and end of a video. Is there anything else? Does the video still need to be embeded on your own webpage, or is there some customizable URL that is available. Sorry, but this is not really clear to me.
WellcomeMat allows you to cut the beginning and end from a video via the "unbrander" (found by clicking "manage videos" > edit/preview > unbrander tab
Our MLS compliant player can be used in 3 different ways currently: a straight up link, a popup link and embeddable player. These tools are found by clicking Video Tools and Widgets > MLS Compiant Player
We have found that this tool set has positioned us well, with the goal being to ahdere to 900 different MLS(s) standards/rules. If there is more we can be doing, we will always review it, but without fail-when we make changes to the MLS player for speicific members-we end up messing up compliance with another MLS and hurting other members. We just went through another round of this a few months ago...painful.
Still a few more questions about the PRO account. There appears to be a 30 day free trial for new users - is there no such thing for existing members?
What is the policy regarding canceling? I cannot seem to find anything about the policy regarding this.
When you mention that HD works better - how and why? My biggest concern is to find a place (hosting) that can result in videos that reall play well. No jerking and stuttering.
This video appears to play well EXAMPLE, but would it play better in the HD version?
Thanks
Everyone that has signed on since we released WellcomeMat Pro had a free 30 day trial of Pro. Those whom were on our site before we released Pro have been enjoying a lot of what we offer at Pro level all along.
You can cancel Pro services at any time.
If you are looking to have your videos play back consistently, without any jerkiness, HD is likely not the way to go. This doesn't have much to do with WellcomeMat, but is rather a function of people's connection speeds and the power of their machines. HD is more data to process and download. Additionally, WellcomeMat SD (standard definition) settings are very high quality as is...
Hope I am answering all your questions.
Yes Christian, thanks for your input. I will probably give the Pro version a try in the next few days. I am interested in how customizable the player is and the overall best solution for hosting videos. I am a realtor (my wife and I have a pretty good size team) who is into doing our own video not to be cheap, but rather because I personally like the technology. So, still learning! No one in my market is into this currently.
