Figuratively speaking of course…
Many of you know that I have been involved in a project 100 Top Real Estate Blogs. Again, 100- figuratively speaking. If you visited the listed lately you probably know that there are more than100 blogs on the list.
If you blog about real estate and related issues, feel free to submit your blog. I know that this list was criticized quiet a bit for using unreliable statistics. While we attempt to rank your blog, it is not the ranking that matters. It is an extra exposure your blog will get. By submitting your blog, you get a link and we ask nothing in return.
To “make in” for the next update, all blogs must be submitted by 6:00 PM (Eastern Time) tomorrow (April 13).
Posted in Blogging, Real Estate Websites, Top Real Estate Blogs
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Thousands of people today are blogging, twittering, making friends on Facebook…
We may not fully appreciate this new emerging force on the internet, but we indeed have already embraced it and even gave it a name- “Social Media”.
This new force is changing the Internet and is writing new rules of engagement, if you wish, for a successful business. And the new rules are rather simple- transparency and honesty.
In my opinion today businesses and inviduals have three basic choices they can make:
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Embrace thins new movement and follow the new rules. This some times will require to face and engage your worst critics. Most of the criticism out there can be reduced to “this item sucks” or “this is the worst wireless provider”? But if face your critics in an honorable and honest way, trying to improve your products, chances are you will disarm your critics and maybe even turn some of the them into your best allies. Just think about it, most of the times companies are criticized over the type of services or products they offer.
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Do nothing about it. It looks like many companies out there are so afraid to step out of their shell. The fear is so great that it keeps them “frozen”. These are the companies that we will not remember two years from now.
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And the of course you can chose to ignore the emerging social media or/and continue to be a complete asshole as far as transparency and honesty are concerned.
You are probably looking in between the lines trying to figure out if the next few paragraphs will follow with the examples. The answer is no. I had different goal in mind…
We have a golden opportunity today. With today technology and the Internet, we have an unprecedented opportunity for promoting our brand. On opportunity that was not available to many just short ten years ago. Unless you and I take on this opportunity and just do two things, be transparent and honest, we are wasting our time and other peoples patience.
Posted in Blogging, Social Media
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Fizber announced today introduction of API (Application Programing Interface). Very smart use by Fizber I must add. If marketed properly this can explode in new widgets, just like the one you see to the right.
It would be interesting to see this development. At this early stage Fizber APIs will allow web masters to pull in the data about climate, schools, unemployment some other general neighborhood information.
Julia Foster, Fizber.com VP of marketing, in a low key press release was quoted say: “This new API access is going to be a useful tool for every agent and site that wants to offer something special in their real estate portfolio.”
I personally think many web masters should pay attention to this development. It also should be as warning sign to many of the local MLSs. Instead of fighting real estate agents over stupid trademark use, why don’t you guys pay attention and develop the API for your own members.
Posted in Real Estate Websites, Software, Technology
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When I came across RealBird Listing Widget on Wallingford Wired Blog, it immediately grabbed my attention. It is not a secrete that many real estate gents can be very protective of their listing. If you don’t believe me, read the blog post by Greg Swann about a listing that was not his own.
I can’t blame Realtors for being overprotective about their listings. You don’t want your inventory to be misrepresented. However, at the same time many real estate websites have their local Multiple Listing System integrated into their websites so when visitor searches for the property, he can browse through hundreds of listings without leaving the website. Of course this can result in a lead where you can work as a seller’s agent on a property that you did not list.
But what about offering an opportunity just to any webmaster to “advertise” for you for free? Going back to Wayne and Pat, below is an example of a listing served via Realird.com Listing Widget I was able to grab right from their blog:
Why would you consider RealBrid.com? Simple. Viral marketing. There are many bloggers like myself that are on the constant lookout for good content for their blog. This can create an exponential exposure for you listing.
Posted in Blogging, Marketing, Real Estate Websites
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It has been few months since this website was “quantified” on qunatcast.com. There are some interesting and surprising statistics about this blog. But first things first. What is Quantcast what does it mean to be quantified?
Quancast is an internet rating service. In other words they provide data about traffic to the websites. Currently they have over rated over 20 millions websites. They get their data? It’s done by estimates (please do not ask me how they do it) or by direct measurements. When you visit the Quantcast.com you will notice that the good number of websites are “quantified”. Those are the websites that are being measured directly. And yes I recommend you to quantify your site. It’s very simple to register, and all you need to do to quantify your website is to place a peace of code into the template of your website or blog, similar of what you do with the code from Google Analytics.
Since this blog is hardly known by any one, it took about two months for Quantcast to report demographic data of the visors to this website. This demographic data about visitors to this website was the main reason I ever registered with Qunatcast.
Here are just few snapshots.
Gender and Age Of Go Beyond MLS Visitors
I thought that more women are visiting my blog. The real estate industry is dominated by women. Even when I was active in the real estate, out of 15 agents in our office there were only 5 men. Since real estate agents is my target audience I naturally thought that most of my visitors are women.
The age of the visitors completely surprised me. I belong in the 25-34 age group so I though my visitors would be of the same age. I turns out my site is more popular among 55-64 age group. This of course is very humbling to know that more experienced people find my blog interesting enough to visit.
Household Income and Ethnicity of Go Beyond MLS Visitors
I had really no expectation about these statistics. Still don’t know if this knowledge will have any real effect on how I develop this blog. But there you go:
Education and Children of Go Beyond MLS Visitors
Again, had no expectations whatsoever about these statistics. I guess they can be useful as far as advertising is concerned. But since the demand for advertising on my website is minimal, I will just look at it and say: “Hmm, interesting”.
So why would you want to know this sort of data about you website? I think above data can be extremely useful if you are trying to target a specific audience.
Quantcast provides some great reports on geographic location of your visitors. You can see where do your visitors come from by country, state and city. This of course can very useful for the real estate websites.
How reliable is Quancast data? I would say that the data on “qualified” websites, or directly measured websites, is right on target. But why should you believe me, try it for yourself. 
You can see the entire report for my website here. If you care to share similar statistics about your blog or website, feel tree to leave a link the the comments.
Posted in Analytics, Software, Statistics
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I have decided to play around with Google Custom Search. Now you can find pages and documents on this domain using the big “G”. Since this website is powered by WordPress, many who read this post will wonder why? Do I trust Google more? The answer to this question is yeas and no. Mos of the WordPress themes today include a “search box”. This default search in WordPress will serve your visitors the most up to date results, since there maybe some latest posts on our website that Google has not yet discovered. So why on earth would some one consider using Google?
There few reasons to consider.
It may help you to avoid duplicate content. Unfortunately some of the WordPress themes are written poorly. Some times it can happen that what suppose to a “search” results can be indexed in the search engines. In fact, there is no way for a search engine to tell a regular page apart from a page produced by your on site “search function”. I am not sure if this is a common problem but it does happen.
If you have several similar websites, you can tell Google Custom Search to serve results from the all of your websites. You can even include websites that do not belong to you, but you think that your visitors would benefit from the results.
You can refine the results so your visitors after performing a search will be served with the most relevant search results.
I also think that the “native” search option of WordPress is underutilized. When you place the Google Custom Search code on your website, the text box has Google’s logo in it. Don’t forget that word google had become a verb, it is associated with search. Don’t tell me you have never said: “Let me Google this or that out”!
Many of the visitors to your website will recognize Google’s loge before recognizing anything else on your website.
I personally have chosen to serve the search results via an AJAX Search API interface, I just thought it looked really sharp. So go ahead try my new search box and let me know what do you think.
Posted in Blogging, Searc Engines, Software
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When I received cease and desist notice from ePerks lawyer, I had a gut feeling that my problems associated with this company were far from over. I was not that far off. What I though would be a problem turned into a nightmare which I am still enduring.
When the commenting activity was at it’s peak on one of my posts, I had kept very close watch on those who commented on my blog. I warned few individuals that their behavior was unacceptable and if they did not stop, I would ban them from my website. I do find suspicious if a person leave more than one comment on my blog during one visit, leaving different name for each comment. When my warnings were ignored, I in fact banned some one who identified himself as “John”. I emailed this individual to notify him that he was banned, here is the answer I have received:
From: Jaffar Sadighi sadighij@yahoo.com
To: Vlad Zablotskyy vladzablotskyy@gmail.com
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2008 2:48:08 PM
Hehe. Vlad, I want you to know I eat people like you for breakfast. You are simply pouring fuel. I will enjoy this one.
—– Original Message —-
From: Vlad Zablotskyy vladzablotskyy@gmail.com
To: Jaffar Sadighi sadighij@yahoo.com
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:48:08 PM
Subject: One word for you: BANNED
You are banned from leaving further comments on my blogs. Enjoy your life.
It turns out that Mr. Jaffar did not stop there. Evidently he decided to use Yahoo! Answers as his weapon of choice:
Strangely enough, the cease and desist notice from ePerks lawyer included the following:
Our research also shows that negative remarks are not only invited, but are posted without a challenge. Conversely, favorable remarks are met with hostility and belittlement, including demands that the posting party either prove they are participating agents, or do not work for ePERKS.
I am very curious to know the methods employed to the above mentioned “research”. If Mr. Cook were to read the comment thread on the post in question, he would quickly realize that I did not challenge every “positive” remark. I challenged only those left by the suspicious individual like Mr. Sadighi.
The Yahoo! Answers had since deleted the despicable posts, and from what I can tell they have also deleted profile of “Jaffar S”. It will take a few days or maybe weeks for the search engines to delete these pages from their index. But I will never rest to protect myself and my family. I hope now you can understand how much I appreciate bloggers like Matt Brown who just few days ago have started a campaign he called Save Vlad Zablotskyy.
I hope I am the last blogger ever who had gone through this sort of vicious attacks. But the nature of the internet is such that no one really has any guarantee against finding themselves in a similar situation.
My hope is that my case, and maybe other cases out there would would result in some sort “bloggers coalition” that would allow us to defend ourselves against such disgusting tactics.
It is my opinion that no blogger who have ever made a remotely negative remarks about this company is safe. My advise to you is to immediately set up Google Alerts for your own name so you will be notified a soon as your name is mentioned on the Internet. In the past I thought it was too vain to have such an alert. You can see how mistaken my thinking was. I am in particular worried about Greg Swann of BloodhoundBlog, Marlow Harris of 360digest, Lydia Player of North Dallas Homes, Jay Thompson of Agentgenius, Matt Brown of The Fantastic Site Of Lord Matt, Pat and Wayne of Willingford Wired. These bloggers have either publicly supported me or were critical of ePerks, and I am afraid may have invited upon themselves the fury of individuals like “Mr. Jaffar Sadighi”. Please, I am begging you, set up Google alerts for your own name.
Am I inviting unnecessary attention to an issue that could go away on it’s own? I stopped believing it such a notion due to the above described attacks. As long as my case will prevent other bloggers from going through such and ordeal, it is all worthed. Silence on my part may do more damage not only to me, but to a larger community of bloggers.
Posted in Blogging
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April 12, 2008 
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