Talking to many friends and former colleagues in the real estate industry, I come to conclusion that generally blogging is misunderstood and therefor underutilized in the real estate industry. Unfortunately many still associate blog with MySpace pages - something that 13 years olds do. But when you look around you might be surprised to find out that many leading companies across different industries are using blogs. I have chosen following video to explain first of all to all my friends in real estate what blogging is. If you are reading this from your e-mail or a feed reader, chances are you will not be able to see the video, so please come and visit my website:
I am very excited to announce that this blog is listed at Show Your Ad Here- an advertising marketplace launched just two days ago. If you have a blog and are searching for easy solution to manage ads on your blog (or your website), you should seriously consider to become a Publisher at Show Your Ad Here. I will not however go into details of becoming a publisher besides saying it is free. Yes, you don’t have to pay a penny to use it.
I will however dedicate more time how Show Your Ad Here can benefit you as an advertiser. I can guarantee you will hear a lot more on different blogs about this new system. Here are just some highlights of what you can expect at Show Your Ad Here as an advertiser:
Your add can go live within minutes of purchasing as long as you adhere to advertiser guidelines. You do not need to wait hours or even days for your ad to be approved.
Your banners will be hosted by Show Your Ad Here.
Finally and most importantly you will have an opportunity to provide feedback about your publisher.
I have been searching for similar solution for quiet some time and intent to replace AdBrite ads on this blog with Show Your Ad Here in the near future. If you have purchased any ads via AdBrite I will still fulfill my part of the deal, however I will not approve any further AdBrite purchases.
Why Should You Consider Advertising On This Blog?
Not too long ago, this blog was in a “dormant” state. Lately, however, I have been concentrating more on this blog, sparking some lively discussions and increasing my efforts in promoting this blog. This of course began to translate nicely in the amount of visitors. Here are some figures:
To see other statistics about visitors to this website visit Quantcast.com
What kind of audience will you advertise to?Most of my subscribers and visitors are real estate agents who visit this blog for tips on internet marketing.
With that being said I invited you to advertise on my blog. Currently there are to ad zones that you can place your advertising in. One is on the very top just below the main navigation menu- you can place a 728×90 banner in that zone. The second zone is located on the side bar, just below the subscription options- this ad zone is for a 336×280 banner. The introductory price for each zone is $5 per week. You can reserve your spot for one, two, three or four weeks at a time.
There are many about running this website things I take for granted. Trackbacks are among those things. Thanks to a reader, who also happens to be the founder of Home Buying Assistance Program in Londonderry, NH I was reminded once again how beneficial the trackbacks are. In short trackbacks is a way of communicating with other blogs. Different platforms implement this technology in slightly different way, however the end result remains the same.
Video below (courtesy of Friday Traffic Report) explains how to implement trackbacks on your WordPress website:
Realty Lifeline- agent-to-agent free referral network was announced today at PRWeb. Website is aimed at providing real estate agents to share the referrals. Any agent can submit and bid on referrals for free. However every referral will expire in 90 days. When submitting a bid no personally identifiable info of your seller or buyer is required. After another agent successfully accepts the bid, you finalize your bid with that agent:
What are Bids?
When a referring agent posts a Rerrral on our site, it is available for all other agents to view. If you would like to get that lead (or Referral), you must place a “Bid” on it. When you place a Bid on a Referral, the referring agent can review your profile and reviews from past Realty Lifeline transactions.
How do I bid on Referrals?
You create a Bid by clicking on the Bid on this Referral button on the Referral Details page. The referring agent will review all of the Bids that he or she gets, then choose an agent that they want to work with. Who is selected is entirely dependent on the referring agent.
What are Active Bids?
A Bid is active on a Referral unless you withdraw it, or unless the Referral expires.
I’ve submitted my Bid… what’s next?
The Referring Agent will review Bids as they come in and make a decision on will get the Referral. When a Referral is awarded to you, you will see a message on the Home page and the Referral will appear under the Pending Transactions section.
This website indeed can become very popular among the real estate agents because it’s free and no third party is involved in the referral process.
Most of the real estate agents in the United States work for a commission- which means they do not get paid unless a property is sold. This of course can translate in endless hours of showing properties to clients who are not serious in purchasing a house. The work that real estate agents perform, in other industries can translate into $100 per hour or more. How do you think real estate industry would look if there was some sort of “hourly fee agreement” for using your services? People have no problem paying their doctors, accountants, lawyers and other professionals hourly fee. Why is real estate different?
I personally think an hourly fee agreement would accomplish two very important things:
It would change the attitude of clients. People tend to value more the services they pay for.
It would filter out serious buyers or sellers from those who are “just shopping around”.
What do you think? Feel free to leave comments as well as participating in the poll:
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If you are not an real estate agent, you are welcomed to participate in the above poll as well. It would be great to know your feedback.
Not so long ago Content Spooling Network came up with a great solution for Hittail users. The video below explains the product:
If you could not watch the above video, the Content Spooling Network is a solution for article marketers. Content Spooling Network allows you to submit your articles to variety of article marketing websites simultaneously, it offers “ghostwriting” services in case you do not have time to write the articles. But most importantly now it has integration with paid version of Hittail Puls account.
Being a huge Hittail fan, I knew I had to try Content Spooling Network. At the time they offered a 21 day free trial of their product. While I found product to be very innovative, I wish people behind Content Spooling Network would learn a thing or two from Hittail:
Offer a free version of the product or at least extend the length the trial period to 60 or 90 days. I believe that the 21 day trial is two short for an average website owner to notice any results. And if he decides to use the “ghostwriting” services, the 21 day trial can turn into an expensive adventure.
Pricing. I think more users would consider using Content Spooling Network if the monthly fee was let say $5.99 per month (or even free). If, with $29 monthly membership, you would like to submit 4 articles while using ghostwriting services to create 16 variation of 4 original articles you are likely to end up paying well over $60 per month for Content Spooling Network solution. If Content Spooling Network would consider a free version of their services, one of the way to defray costs would be to increase the price of ghostwriting services.
I see the value of the service provided by Content Spooling Network. However while considering my experience (which I think is above average) in article marketing, I have canceled my account with Content Spooling Network. But my decision is not final, and I still would recommend to look into what this company has to offer. Especially if you want to outsource article marketing. Do not forget to subscribe to to their blog where you can find more information about their product.
There are several things that can be done with Hittail suggestions in order to achieve the best results. For the sake of the argument I am going to presume that you have already installed Hittail code on your website or blog and there are already suggestions offered to you by Hittail. While every website will probably receive suggestions that are more relevant to your website, to make the example more vivid, I am presuming that one of your suggestions was “rentals in New York”.
Step 1: Create Content (Article) On Your Website That Will Contain The Hittail Suggestion
If your website permits to publish articles or you may even have a blog on your website, the first thing to do is to write an article about “rentals in New York”. If you are a real estate agent working New York such an article should not be that difficult to come up with. In fact you probably have enough knowledge and experience to write such an article on a monthly basis, maybe comparing the market condition specifically regarding rentals in New York. It is good idea if this suggested by Hittail keyword appears not only in the title of the article, but it is also found a few times in the body of the article as well as in the URL of the article. It would be also to your advantage if the key word is present in the title meta tag of the page containing the article.
Step 2: Write An Article For Article Directory Containing The Hittail Suggestion.
In one of the previous posts I have mentioned the importance of article marketing when working with Hittail Suggestions. In doing so I would advise to not submit an exact copy of the article you have created in the step one. Doing so will inevitable create what can be looked at as a duplicate content, which will not be into your favor as far as search engines are concerned. If you have no time for yet another article, you can consider modifying your original article from step one for the article directory of your choice. However you should be diligent enough to paraphrase your sentences so it does not appear like a duplicate of your original article.
Some article directories allow you to place links back to your website inside of the article. While others permit you to do so in so called “resource box” which generally appears at the end of your article. In either case it is an opportunity to gain an incoming link back to your website as soon as your article is accepted and published on of of the websites. When your articles are republished on other website, you will gain even additional incoming links.
When creating links that will point back to your website, it would be in your interest that those link use the suggestion offered by Hittail as the anchor text while linking back to your original article in step one. I know this may sound something like “and wheels on the bus go round and round….” But that is not necessarily a bad thing and may reinforce what Andy Beard calls a “link juice flow”. If you are new to SEO Andy’s article may be a little over the top, but I highly recommend to bookmark his article for the future. As you become more familiar with SEO, his article can help you in more than just one way.
Step 3: Increasing Number of Links pointing to Your Website Or Blog
Step number two on it’s own can increase the number of links pointing back to your website when other webmasters begin publishing your articles on their websites. However there are other ways to gain backlings to your website. Becoming active member of online forums can prove beneficial and can be used to gain some valuable links back to your website. After posting certain number of posts, some of these forums may offer you a privilege of including a signature along with your posts. I would like to underline the word privilege because it is very easy to show up at these forums begin leaving links. But doing so you will earn a reputation of a spammer. However if you earn some authority first among the members of the online forums, it may be more beneficial than an opportunity to have a link back to your website.
Afterthoughts
If you search the internet for information on how to increase incoming links to your website, you will inevitably come across websites that promote buying and selling links. While in the past this strategy worked, the search engines had become increasingly impatient with websites selling links. Personally I would discourage every real estate agent to buy links. There are other ways to increase incoming links without compromising the status of your website in the search engines.
I realize that not every real estate agent has a blog on their website nor do the agents have time to regularly write articles. However I am not stretching when I say that many real estate agents were skeptical about building e-mail lists just a few years ago. Today there are number of successful companies that help real estate agents with e-mail marketing.
January 31, 2008
Posted in Articles, Blogging, Internet Marketing 
1 Comment »
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