If you write a blog, it is safe to presume that you want other people to read it. Unless of course you have blocked the search engines and are allowing only certain people to see your blog. From what I can gather when it comes to the real estate blogs, most of us would like our blogs to be read. In fact some of us have set a goal to turn first time visitor to our blogs into regular one or even a subscriber. In fact in some other niches, the value and the influence of a blog is determined by the number of subscribers.

In real estate, blog can also be responsible for the growth of your business. In fact, many real estate blogs are highly monetized digital “properties” on the internet, while others contribute to the successful real estate transactions outside of the Internet. In either case the subscribers to your blog may have something to do with the dollars in your pocket at the end of the day.

In this tutorial, I will show you one way you can track a specific goal (lets call it “subscriber goal” for the sake of the argument) using Google Analytics. If you are not familiar with Google Analytics but are serious about your online marketing efforts I strongly suggest opening an account. Learn as much as you can about what Google Analytics has to offer, it will only benefit you in the long run.

Before I get into technical part, which will require some minimal knowledge of HTML, I would like you to sit down a determine following. Think about the past month. How much income (preferably net income) can you contribute directly to your blog? Now divide that amount by the number of subscribers- the result will be used in Google Analytics as “goal value”. For example if your net income was $1000 and your blog has 265 subscribers, dividing $1000 by 265 will give you $3.77- when setting your gaol at Google Analytics you will use this amount to indicate your “subscriber goal”.

Setting The (Subscriber) Goal In Google Analytics.

If do not have an account with Google Analytics, you might want to register first and implement the tracking codes in the template of your website.

In order to track your subscriber you need to know who many people had actually clicked the subscription button or link. However, I highly discourage against placing Google Analytics tracking code int the feed of your blog. Also, if you are directing your visitors to your blogs feed at FeedBurner, you may not be able to implement the tracking code even if you advanced in programing.

In order to capture these statistics you will need to implement what is known as a jump page. You can do that by using a simple text editor such ad Notepad. Create a file a name in subscribe.html. Then copy and paste the code below, but make sure to replace few lines of that code with your own info (explained below the code):

Make sure to replace YOURFEEDSURL with actual URL of your blog’s feed and the line that says to replace it with Google Analytics Code.

Upload the file (subscribe.html) into the root directory of your blog. The meta refresh in the “head” of this HTML file will redirect users to your blog’s feed wile Google Analytics will capture necessary data.

Login into your Google Analytics account. In the dashboard area you will see the list of your websites in the table called “Website Profiles”. Then click “Edit” link for the blog you are about to implement a “conversion goal”. You can set up up to 4 different goal for each website. If you followed my instructions in creating the jump page and uploading it to your server, your conversion gaol configuration should look like this:

Note that 3.77 is the result of calculation we did dividing your net income by the number of your existing subscribers.

I know that it sounds some what complicated. But it is not as hard as it looks and the benefit of having these statistics measured should supersede any fear of tackling Google Analytics and a little bit of HTML coding.

Depending on the popularity and traffic to your blog you can see results within day or two. However to have more accurate statistics, you might need to wait longer than just one day.

Here is an example of how this is working for my website:

The figures in “Per Visit Goal Value” column offer me clear idea how much I can pay per each visitor and still profit if I were to strike advertising deals with the referring websites and blogs.

Warning: The above describe method should only be used in conjunction with other statistics. It maybe that some visitors may not actually subscribe eve after clicking the subscription button or link. You will also need to factor in unsubscribe rate and never ever use the gross income in calculating the goal value. Being very conservative when assigning the goal value will shorten the range of the error margin. You should also be conservative with your subscribers numbers, it’s better to err on the side of lower number of subscribers.

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:

Are you in the 21st century yet?

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:

1. It would change the attitude of clients. People tend to value more the services they pay for.
2. 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:

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:

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.

Among all different statistics that Hittail is able to provide you with, what is listed under “suggestions” proved to be by far the most beneficial information. Working with the suggestions can help you dramatically increase the traffic from natural search results while saving you some money on PPC campaigns.

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.