I am unique as not only am I a realtor, but a professional photographer and would like to in corporate both into my real estate business ...
New RE agents often become a buyer's agents. They go out and find people who want to buy houses and then take them on tours to close sales. You could strengthen that process by having a visual portfolio of each house you present, but that's an inefficient use of your photography skills - For every client you would need to tour many houses with no guarantee of overlap.
While seller's agents tend to get a small cut of the commission, I think that's the point where your photography skills can be leveraged best. You could strengthen that process by having a visual portfolio of each house you represent - For every client who would need exactly one tour of their house photographing it.
The on-line version of MLS offers photographs of some but not all houses. Guess which sell better. Sure enough the ones with photos. The photos available range widely in quality. Guess which sell better. Sure enough the ones with the better quality photos.
I figure you can start out scrambling for any type of sale you can get but as rapidly as possible build yourself into a branded position - You're the guy whose pictures sell houses. Sell it externally as "My pictures sell houses faster and for better prices, ask to see my portfolio then list through me for faster and better results". I suspect you can leverage your photography to become the listing agent of choice in some agency. Sell it internally as "When I have a listing you have a better portfolio to present to your house buyers so your sales job is easier".
You'd bootstrap by finding buyers and building picture portfolios of houses to present and use that to bootstrap a marketing program to find houses to represent. Harder worker for lower results very early on to build your portfolio but it should build leverage rapidly.
There are also RE agents who specialize in closing rental leases and/or property management. The same picture portfolio concept works there as well because so many renters who the pictures on line to determine which places to look at. Thus you could use your photography to to convert your initial scramble for results into both types of listings. Rental management is small money up front but it's long term money. House representation is medium money but you get to focus on fewer end clients.
That's how I would think through the combination.
