A lot of Realtors® complain about lead generating services, many of which have aggressive and misleading sales tactics. For example, you haven’t been in business very long if you haven’t fielded a call offering you a unique opportunity to lock in your exclusive territory before someone else does. For only $400 per month, let’s say, you can own the zip code 95682 on the world famous SellMeAHouseNowPrettyPlease.com. Of course, it may turn out that SellMeAHouseNowPrettyPlease.com generates a lead for 95682 every 174 years, in which case you’ve paid $835,200 for the opportunity to generate a $25,000 commission by the year 2181.

Most of us would agree that there are more effective ad buys one could make.

In addition to the bad feeling left by scam operators like this, many Realtors® object to the idea of such big-budget “real estate interlopers” charging them for the privilege of doing transactions that would otherwise be “theirs”. Of course, embedded in that objection is the naive idea that if Realtor.com and Yahoo Real Estate weren’t around, you’d be at the top of the search engine enjoying the well deserved fruits of your license. Enter scam artist #2, who’ll “guarantee” to put you there. Again, for a very modest fee.

My Early Revelation

When I’d been in the business maybe four months or so, I was working my broker’s “floor time” one day when this short, old, bald guy who worked in my office came in and offered to sell me some leads “from his web site” — 30% referral fee on the first one and 25% thereafter. Now at the time I was failing in real estate after about ten years of (for the most part) succeeding in professional software development. Though I hadn’t yet seriously begun marketing to consumers online at this point, it took me about a minute and twenty-three seconds to figure out that if the short old bald guy could generate enough leads from the Internet to sell them off, Johnnie software developer could figure out how to the same thing, being younger, taller, still in possession of my hair, etc.

For the next several months, and for many, many hours over the five intervening years, I worked on surpassing this fellow’s business model, beating him first at his own search engine positions and later acquiring more valuable ones which into which he hadn’t even made inroads. SEO plus IDX was the basic formula, then as now.

It took a lot of time.

I don’t think I could replicate a lot of what I did today, but fortunately, as in the military, it’s significantly easier to defend an entrenched position than it is to attack one.

A Balanced Model

As much as I have swung from the extreme of potential lead consumer to “interloper” (which is another word for broker, by the way), I admit that there are two limitations to my own marketing strategy.

The first is that it is extremely time and labor intensive, and it hasn’t gotten any easier to do. I don’t think I could replicate a lot of what I did today, but fortunately, as in the military, it’s significantly easier to defend an entrenched position than it is to attack one. On the flip side, this means potential growth is harder to achieve.

The second limitation is that there’s no guarantee that major search engines will continue to rank me as they do now.

I believe that the problem with paying for leads is not that the big bad interlopers make us do it. We’re always doing it, one way or another — even when we buy yard signs or business cards. What’s truly at issue is how much do we have to pay, and what’s the return on what we pay?

I admit, I don’t have the specific numbers to tell tell you what the “right answer” here is. All I can suggest is keeping an open mind to the different ways to generate business online. I have used both pay-per-click and SEO to good effect, and I would definitely add pay-per-click into the mix if you need to start getting leads in right away. I also wouldn’t discount well known lead resellers like HomeGain, though I need to learn more about this aspect of the business. If you’ve used these firms successfully, please let me know.

Recently I announced a new guest author series entitled "What’s Your Internet Real Estate Marketing Strategy?"  The point of that series is to hear from Realtors® who are successful in their online marketing efforts but who have a view of Internet marketing that’s different from mine.

One of the ways it’s possible to be successful online that’s about as different as it can be from the way I do it is to use online lead reseller companies like HomeGain.com.  On Monday I’ll have an article that talks about how my own Internet marketing evolution is a response against a "lead reseller" agent in my office, and how I swung to the other extreme to become highly focused on Search Engine Optimization and content development.

With this in mind, this week I started looking into information about these companies and looking for Realtors® with an opinion on them one way or another.  Minnesota’s Josyln Panka sparked an excellent discussion, the comments of which serve as a sort of introduction to Realtor® opinions about HomeGain.  One commenter there, Nevada Broker, Sue Nelson, had some very positive things to say about her HomeGain results, so I stopped by and invited her to talk about her marketing strategy in our forthcoming series. Another person weighing in on this thread was Louis Cammarosano, HomeGain’s general manager.  Googling his name will bring you to all sorts of other interesting links about HomeGain versus Zillow.

Former HomeGain Sales Director Chris Hendricks defended HomeGain’s switch to a monthly-subscription model for its AgentEvaulator product by discussing an absolutely crucial element to successful online marketing — successful follow-up. 

Perhaps the best single source for discussion of HomeGain and other lead generation companies that I found was on Realtown.com’s Lead Generation Blog.  An excellent guide to who the players are is the "View by Vendor" blogroll on the left hand side, and the articles here are a good mix of criticisms of the Lead Generation companies and success stories.

Do you remember the anti-social Internet, where nothing was connected to anything and no one communicated using it?

Neither do I.

From its outset, the Internet has been about people sharing and communicating information and ideas. In the late 1980s, Tim Berners-Lee first conceived of a hypertext project at CERN as a means for researchers information. In August of 1991 the first web site was put online at CERN, and we’ve been all typing up a storm ever since. In addition to web sites and the tools to browse them, the first killer app of the Internet was e-mail.

In addition to email and web sites, electronic bulletin board systems (BBSs) like the ones I frequented on Fidonet in the eighties were, as the Wikipedia article correctly points out, a precursor to the World Wide Web. You could say that we had a social Internet before we had an Internet, and the latter was just a bunch of protocols to run it on.

Enter The Web 2.0 Now Here’s Something We Hope You’ll Really Like Social Internet

For the last few years a lot of people have been spending a great deal of time on various social networking sites. In 2006, Myspace allegedly reached the 100 million user mark — a number that at least one geek has debunked. The popular real estate social networking site, ActiveRain, also launched in 2006, and many agents and brokers including me have invested (squandered?) a great deal of time there. More recently, I’ve been amazed by how many messages I have whenever I log in at Facebook or Cre8Buzz or one of the other social networks I’ve participated in — and I’m not really that popular a guy. Ann Cummings invites me to use FunWall. David Smith pokes me. Oliver Muoto received a can of Whoop Ass.

Poor guy.

For awhile there I was getting email daily updates from Facebook, telling me the most inane things

I turned that off eventually.

Seven Criticisms of the Social Internet

1. It’s Amateur, in the sense that you don’t get paid for it.
   Andrew Keen has probably written more about this criticism than anyone. As a corollary, I agree with this argument, insofar as I’ve made a decent living off of several web sites I’ve created and maintained, but no money at all off of ActiveRain. Even the referrals I’ve received have not come from ActiveRain, but from people finding my own web sites.
2. Someone’s might be getting paid for it, but it won’t be you.
   One of the most amusing incidents in Move.com’s failed acquisition of ActiveRain was this ActiveRain apologia about who owns the content on ActiveRain. Still, I don’t recall any discussion about how the thirty-million would have been shared if the transaction went through. Oh. See also, this article about remodeling the kitchen in a house you rent.
3. It’s Amateur, in the sense of incompetent or unskilled
   Think: Myspace web pages. Pink on purple, anyone?
4. It’s Amateur, in the sense of trivial or unimportant
   OK, this one’s almost built in. In order to socialize, human beings have to lighten up a bit on their seriousness. Still, it does seem to me that one can base an adult friendship on banter a bit more sophisticated than throwing sheep at one another.
5. You Can’t Optimize for Every Web Site There Is
   Every web site has its own rules for getting to a top ranked listing. I prefer to shoot for the top of Google, Yahoo, and MSN in that order. These are sites that buyers and sellers use when they’re buying and selling, not socializing. Yes, this means I’ve had to give up my coveted #2 spot on ActiveRain. So far I haven’t noticed a difference.
6. It’s Anonymous
   Having their cake and eating it too, social Internet socialites believing in the absolute sanctity of open information (thou shalt not ever censor me), even if they don’t sign their names or take responsibility for their actions. Human-Powered Search Engine Mahalo goes a step further and recommends that instead of a photo of your human self, you “Be Cool” and use a Wee-Me Avatar instead. Apparently being Human-Powered wasn’t cool enough in its own right.
7. It Confuses Grouchiness with Erudition
   With a hat tip to Quote of the Day and the Vicomte de Chateaubriand (famous consumer of steak), “You Are Not superior just because you see the world in an odious light”. And yes, I do apply that criticism to myself as well, and see this as one of my less useful posts. I can never get enough of the Internet Commenter Business Meeting. To be sure, that’s not new, either. We had the same sort of thing going on in Fidonet. To puree a metaphor, there’s something about sitting behind a keyboard without a real face in front of you that makes it harder to wag your tail.

This week I finally published the video Windows Live Writer Tutorial that I’ve been meaning to do for some time. This tutorial goes through getting up and running, but I didn’t yet get into some of the really neat Live Writer features that would make you want to get up and running. As a supplement to my tutorial in the meantime you might check out some of the other reviews and articles out there. Phil Waineright’s Writer is Microsoft’s first Live Killer App has an older (but still good) overview of the features — and Live Writer now supports tags, which was missing when he wrote that post. Paul Stamatiou also wrote an excellent Live Writer Review with several screen shots based on the beta. Paul also mentions a few of the drawbacks of the software that I hadn’t noticed. Finally, Michael Pick has produced an excellent Windows Live Writer Video Review — which shows among other things that I need to work on my Camtasia to Youtube skills (no, I don’t think I will link to my Youtube video — that’s the point).

Aside from Live Writer goodies, the other news is that it is almost Christmas, which means it’s also almost New Years, so it’s time to start thinking about things like business planning and goal setting. There are only about two shopping days left to participate in DailyBlogTips’s Group Writing Project, 2008 Blogging Goals.

Finally, I installed a new theme for this site earlier this week, ParticleWave_01, a custom theme I designed recently. One of the items on what’s getting to be a rather long ParticleWave “to do list” is to make a version of that theme available.

Here is a tutorial about getting started with Windows Live Writer. It takes you through the process of downloading and installing the software and configuring it for your Wordpress Blog. Enjoy!

One of the certainties of the Internet is that if you write long enough, some idiot will eventually try to steal your material.

Remember grade school, where the world was divided into people who did their homework so they’d be able to pass the test, and those who tried to copy the answers? Well sure enough, the world is still divided that way.

This morning when I logged into my Sacramento Real Estate Blog I found an incoming link to one of my posts, and the title of the link was a jumbled title based on the original title of the post. Sure enough, when I went over to check out the post, everything except the title had been copied verbatim from the original post. Not only had this moron copied my post — they copied what I consider to have been one of the worst posts I’ve written in several weeks.

Fortunately, Google has a relatively easy way to respond to copyright violations on that you find on Blogger blogs (typically with a URL like ImAnIdiotCopyingYourWork.blogspot.com). I’ve read other bloggers complain that the process takes some time because you have to submit the request by mail or fax, but I just submitted a complaint following the instructions there, and it took no more than about twenty minutes.

Peter Thompson, author of Illinois Mortgage Rates and News, was kind enough to write testimonial below and send it along over the weekend. Wow, this is really nice. I appreciate you putting this together, Pete. It was a pleasure working with you!

If you are even thinking about starting your own blog site, you need to talk with John Lockwood. John helped me with my blog, Illinois Mortgage Rates and News. When I started blogging on Active Rain a couple of months back, I felt I was really on to something. I was new to blogging, but I knew the mortgage market and writing was both a hobby and a compulsion. This seemed like the right fit.

One of the best things about Active Rain is that it is a great resource for information about anything related to real estate, including real estate marketing. I knew nothing about blogging or search engine optimization but I found several experts in the community and read everything I could find to get me up to speed on the ways to make my blog a success. The posts on John’s blog, Elite Properties Sacramento were a real help and he was one of my first subscriptions.

As I learned more, it seemed that starting my own stand-alone blog was the best way to gain an audience and increase my exposure in my target market. I made a couple of calls to experts I found on Active Rain. One of the calls was to a leading name in the industry. A representative called back and we had a nice conversation. He emphasized how their company trained bloggers by teaching them to blog from the ground up with a several month long course with a set lesson plan. It sounded interesting, but my impression was that they had a one size fits all program, and I wasn’t sure it fit my needs. My other concern was the price. He quoted a number high enough to make me gasp.

As luck would have it, I came across a post on Active Rain from a Realtor who was thinking of starting her own blog but had no clue on how to start. In the comments section, John said that he was expanding his business into this area. I knew John from reading his blog and I respected his expertise, so I decided to give him a call. We hit it off and I knew right away that he was the right choice.

My first goal was to get the blog site set up and running, but he offered much more. By researching key words he was able to give me some targets where I had a chance to dominate in my competitive market. He listened to my goals and helped me to devise a strategy for long term success. We talked about ways to promote my blog and build traffic as well as what I needed to do to get ranked higher with the search engines. It was a lot of information, but it was focused on my specific needs.

John had the technical knowledge to make the most of setting up the site. He helped me pick a Wordpress template that was easy to use and easy to read. He customized the template with my personal info, added widgets, set up contact boxes and a navigation bar that integrated my blog with my web site and optimized the site for search engine traffic. The site looks great, better than I imagined.

John got me off to a great start. Long term success is up to me, but I don’t know where I would be if I tried to do this on my own. If you are even thinking of starting a new blog you really should give him a call.

One of the things that always interests me is hearing from others about what sorts of things they’re doing to make business happen. Naturally, the piece that I’m most interested in is what sort of things they’re doing on the Internet to make things happen, since Internet real estate marketing is my passion, specialty, and business.

Those who’ve read me know that I have some pretty strong opinions as to what one’s strategy should be, and about what works and what doesn’t. But the reason it’s so interesting to hear from others is that I certainly don’t think what I’m doing is the only way to get it right. I’m passionate about sharing what I am doing because it’s worked so well, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing that works. There are other approaches that either are completely different or complementary. Even while I’m working on my core strategy, I always find myself wondering if there isn’t some other technique or project I should be incorporating to help my business grow.

What I’d like to do in a future post, therefore, is to try to take a really comprehensive look at my own marketing strategy, and talk about what I think works and what I’ve always felt were the strengths as well as the limitations of my approach. After that, I’m going to be inviting other Realtors® and mortgage brokers to share what sorts of approaches have worked for them. I’ll put together a list of questions as a guide for authors so that you won’t have to start completely from scratch unless you want to. I already have some ideas in mind about people I’d like to invite, but if you have some ideas and would like to contribute an article on this topic, please let me know.

When I first got into Real Estate, I came from a background in software development (including, most recently, web site development). Because of this background, as soon as I learned that people were meeting real estate clients on-line, it became my goal to create a profitable web site. Soon afterwards, I set out to create and maintain several profitable web sites.

When I first heard about blogging in 2003, I thought of blogging software as a way to do help me do just that. They say if the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see everything as a nail. In my case I saw my task as content development, so every type of software I looked to me like a content management system.

With the rise of social networking, I began noticing a shift away from creating your own content on your own site to hanging around with your friends. In the last year or so, I’ve been repeatedly surprised by the extent to which people — including my colleagues, other Realtors® — are content to rent instead of own their online properties. This was driven home today by an outstanding article by CopyBlogger’s Brian Clark, Are You Someone’s User Generated Content? Clark points to many articles by leading bloggers discussing the regrets people have felt when they neglected their own Internet properties — their blogs — to explore social networking.

Clark sums up my own feelings about frittering one’s time on Facebook, (or mismanaging it on MySpace, if you prefer):

For me, there’s really no appeal in spending a lot of time creating “user-generated” content via a social networking application. That’s like remodeling the kitchen in a house you rent.

This metaphor should be especially apt to Realtors®, who know first hand the benefits our clients can derive from their own sweat equity.

Is your sweat equity being invested in your own online real estate, or are you remodeling someone else’s kitchen for free?

RELATED ARTICLES

Real Estate Social Networks, Their Lure and Limitations

Comparing Real Estate Blogging Platforms

I don’t usually like blogs with a lot of Adsense ads staring you in the face.  However, I did enjoy Brandon Cornett’s article on How to Write a Real Estate Ad - Magazine Ad Writing 101.  Too often we speak in generalities like “excellent customer service”, and Brandon talks about how to get down to specific real estate stories of interest and calls to action. 

Brandon’s example of an online real estate forum is an interesting idea and might be useful as a lead incubation strategy.  One reason I’ve never launched such a forum myself, however, is the issue of size.  I wonder if one can run a successful forum when the number of people buying or selling a home is fairly small.  Even in a great month in my area, for example, there are only a couple of thousand homes changing hands.  I guess on the one hand you don’t care how many people are there, as long as some of them turn into customers, but to me the most interesting forums are the ones with lots of members.

Speaking of interesting forums, RealEstateWebmasters.com just announced a fairly major upgrade to their free real estate blogs.  Real Estate Webmasters blogs provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your content, and they have very good search engine authority as well so you might link back to your other site from your Real Estate Webmaster blog.  Don’t overdo it, though — remember the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

At the same time, ActiveRain recently announced a sneak preview of their new outside blogs.  I’m sure they’ll sell a lot of them if they price them right, because they have the ideal audience for such an upsell, but I do admit I take issue with two items on their feature list.  First is the idea of not learning a new blogging platform.  Well, that’d be ok if their platform was the superior one, but I imagine I might get Pete Thompson to vouch for how much easier the Livewriter / Wordpress combination is to use, and the latest (finally not beta) version of Live Writer makes it really easy to set up for your Wordpress blog. 

Secondly, the outside blog announcement said, “You will be able to benefit from the SEO knowledge and power of ActiveRain.”   The myth of ActiveRain’s SEO mojo is an oft-repeated one — Mike Jones boasts that “Active Rain works (brings Google to your door) regardless of your ability to write or your desire to blog”.  Wow, that’s not only incredible, it’s not credible.   Mike cites his Tucson area colleagues, including Marsee Wilhems, “one of Tucson’s most successful REALTORS”.  OK, I’ll bite, let’s see where the first ActiveRain blog is for the key words “Tucson real estate”, shall we?  I tried “Tucson Real Estate” on Google, and got to page 10 without finding ActiveRain anywhere.  (And yes, I tried “localism”, too.  If any true believers wants to begin the hunt for ActiveRain results starting at page 11, let me know).  I’m sure Marsee Williams is successful, but I suspect her success is minimally related to ActiveRain’s content-free Google fairy dust.

There is no silver bullet, folks, sorry.  The alternatives are:  open wallet, pay Google or Yahoo, or massive content published over a long period of time combined with sensible link building.

And that’s the week in review.  Have a great weekend.