I’d like to kick off what I hope will be a short series on the basics of selling anything at all. Of course this applies to selling real estate but it equally applies to selling cakes, CDs or cars.

I am going to start with USP – Unique Selling Point. Now if you know even 1% of what you need to succeed online this should be like teaching grandmother how to suck eggs. However, we all, even me, need to be reminded of the basics.

What is it about the real estate (or necklaces, watches, computer cases or greeting cards) that you are promoting that no one else offers? Why would Mr Joe Public choose you over the other six or seven thousand people in the country offering the same or similar services?

If you don’t know the answer to this question then your business in in trouble. Read more »

Go Beyond Facebook

What I am going to do int his first article is simply look at the Facebook fan page for this website and use it to explore Facebook pages in general and what they can do for your blog (regardless of niche).

Vlad tells me that apart from setting up the page he has not actually done very much with it least of all tell anyone about it.

This, for this article’s purposes, is fantastic! It means that we can actively measure what I am about to have said (keep on reading or you might miss it) and watch what happens as we implement the theory. Over the next few months I’ll revisit the topic of Facebook and representing your blog therein reporting on our efforts to go beyond just having a page and to actually getting traffic from it.

As I write there are 3 fans. In three months let us see if we can get over 100.

The page as it is

Go Beyond Facebook Page

In other words we have settles down to making Facebook a very expensive feed reader. That’s fine but it’s not exciting enough to get the average Facebook user to do much by way of interaction.

According to something I was reading (somewhere) the average Facebook user fans two pages a month. That means to see growth in the page’s fan base some work is going to be needed.

Then the page must add value to the user’s day and if that was not enough it must actually be interactive enough to get enough interaction to show up in the news feed of the fans who have added it.

Facebook promotion is no walk in the park. Keep reading for an insight into using pages.

Read more »

One of the blogs I enjoy reading, and highly recommend it to anyone interested in on line marketing and social media, is that written by Chris Brogan. Not sure if Chris is hunting for a house these days or maybe just helping some one in real estate to marketed their website, the title of his latest his latest post certainly jumped at me- If I Were A Realtor.

If any real estate agent would set up to do only first three things from Chris’ list they, without a doubt, can dominate in their market:

• I’d write a blog about the location where I was selling.
• I’d take tons of pictures and post them on the blog.
• I’d shoot walking tour videos all the time with a Flip camera and post them.

You can read Chris’ entire list at his blog, make sure to subscribe to his latest posts while you there.

I think it is always refreshing to hear a different perspective from someone who is not necessarily in our “niche” or industry. Yeah, I hear you. Any one could write a list like that, right?.. Wrong! While Chris is a marketing genius he also represents the mindset of today’s home buyer or seller. Home buyers and sellers no longer have little choice where to go. Plus, you are no longer the guy or the gall with “the book” in town.

On this note I would like to wish all the readers of this blog Happy Holidays and may the next year be the best year you have ever had!

Have you ever considered allowing your client to schedule appointments with you right on your website? In search for such solution for my and for my friends and clients websites I came across Appointy, a Florida based startup. You can see the implementation of Appointy scheduling feature on my other website where I allow clients to reserve my interpreting and translating services online.

While Appointy offers an easy integration for WordPress websites via a plugin, their system can be implemented just on about any website through an “ifame” code.

Appointy comes “PayPal ready” allowing you to charge a fee for the appointment at the time of scheduling- either full amount or partial. You are of course free to not charge your clients for appointments, as it would be the case with most real estate agents I know. But if you would like to prevent “no shows”, you might want to implement a minimal fee refundable at the time of the appointment.

Currently Appointy offers four different plans:

• FREE plan- this basic plan has some limits and you have no option to charge your clients for the appointment at the time of scheduling. Appointy also will inject some ads into your calendar – hey they need to pay their engineers and developers.
• PLUS plan comes at $9.99 per moth and is ad free but it does not allow you for branding nor accepting pre-payments.
• PRO plan will set you back about $19.99 per month- the plan I am looking forward to use. You can brand your calendar and accept pre-payments with this plan. This plan includes e-mail marketing tool that allows you to send different e-mails to confirm, remind or even cancel the appointments. The best thing of course that when you sing up for Appointy, you get to try this plan absolutely free for 30 days.
• Finally the BUSINESS plan wich comes at $39.99 is the top level plan from Appointy. I would recommend this plan for businesses that have several staff members accepting appointments, the plan allows a separate logins for administrator and for the staff.

If you are looking for a solution that would allow your clients to book an appointment with you right on your website, Appointy should be given frist consideration.

As I have pointed out, I am using Appointy myself, although I am only beginning to test many of it’s features and probably have not seen yet what Appointy can really do for my business. I will report on the results about one month from now, so stay tuned.

UPDATE May13, 2010: Things pertaining to LeapFish.com, their founders and management, along with related startups are no longer of interest to me, therefore no further comments are allowed on this post. There are also more reliable sources out there (such as Better Business Bureau) to help you make an informed decision about LeapFish.

***You may also want to know that the Law Firm of Daniel Bakondi, in San Francisco, CA, is investigating a possible Class Action Law Suit Against LeapFish.

Many internet startups find it privileged to be reviewed by TechCrunch. But even if TechCrunch’s verdict for you is a deadpool, although the author did not tagged that post with “deadpool“, it is still an opportunity for dialog. LeapFish’s employees screwed up so badly that opportunity that TechChrunch team had to ban their IPs from posting comments. Here are the snapshots of some parts of that exchange:

Please note that Robin Wauters is the author of the original article on TechCrunch.

Here is another warning by Robin which LeapFish employees completely ignore:

Finally TechCrunch blocks the IPs from where the shill comments appear to originate:

Later the CEO of LeapFish showed up and “apologized” for his employees- you can read the entire exchange on TechCrunch.

Back in May, United Kingdom legislators have made it illegal for businesses to engage in the above described deceptive marketing.

It may not be such a bad idea to prohibit and criminalize such behavior here in the US as well. Don’t you think?

Update: Bellow are the links to more LeapFish reviews.

LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau. Note that BBB.org rates LeapFish at C- on a A+ to F scale.

A Brief Tale Of Sleaze- LeapFish should take Rob Shore’s advise and never lie to their potential clients.

Three Scams and Rip-Offs to Report – Kit Eliot describes his “encounter” with LeapFish.

Leapfish: Google Competitor or Flash In The Pan?- i think it is rather funny, or insane, to think that LeapFish can actually be viewed as Google’s competitor. But it sure makes a good headline. Well put article, a must read.

LeapFish Affiliate Program. Can Giveaways Keep It Afloat?- a post by yours truly. I thought it was a mistake to link their affiliate program to the basic function of their website- the search function. Their widgets also contain SEO friendly links back to their website- my conclusion their affiliate program is really a linking scheme to gain rankings in search engines.

Leapfish is a scam…maybe?- Patrick Sullivan Jr is offering his opinion about leapfish. The blog have attracted number of comments- well worth reading.

LeapFish Sucks- a take on LeapFish by Cole Pannell- a web designer and a SEO professional.

LeapFish.com advertisers beware – yet another account of dealing with LeapFish sale people.

Leapfish Review – Is LeapFish.com an opportunity, scam, or just another meta search site?- short but to the point rundown about advertising on LeapFish- needless to say the author passes on the opportunity to advertise or invest in LeapFIsh.