Kevin boer at 3oceansrealestate has started a thread about the most marketing property on the internet. When Kevin first spoke to me about this project, I couldn't believe it is 2007 and finally someone has started this…IMO Realtors should have been doing this for years, but I guess it just flew under the radar.

I'm not going to predict the future…again, but I will say this is going to send property marketing into the next phase. We are going to see properties with some pretty amazing marketing soon. Not just video, not just podcasts, not cellphone text messages…I'm talking cool stuff that will knock your socks off.

One of the first things to do when you get a listing is buy a domain name for the property. For example 123greenst.com

Now how do you use it?

There are 3 ways to add a listing to your website. for the following examples, let's assume your domain name is agent.com

1. Subdomains:  123green.agent.com. I would recommend this over the other 2 types. subdomains are considered as different websites, so 123green.agent.com is considered a different website then agent.com. So for every subdomain you make, the links back to your main site (agent.com) boosts the page rank for the main site.

2. top level domain names: 123greenst.com. I would recommend buying it, but only using it for the sign rider at the listing. You can park this domain name on top of the subdomain name, so you still use the subdomain for google juice. It is a lot easier to remember 123greenst.com on a sign rider, then 123green.agent.com or agent.com/123green
3. trailing folder: www.agent.com/123greenst. This domain will just be another page in your website, so there really is no benefits to this.
   

   EDIT:
   I shouldn't say there are no benefits to the 3rd type. The more pages you have in your blog the better the google rankings. I meant, out of the 3 choices, I would go after the first 2. I was thinking about this after I wrote it and was wondering how a redirect would work for this? make the trailing folder redirect to the top level domain? Hmmm…maybe another post about this will be coming soon.

The main argument from SEO Guru's (not me) is that subdomains do not help anymore, especially after one guy got 5 billion websites indexed by google in less then 3 weeks. Since you are not going to spam, and all your subdomains will be realivent relevant website, subdomains will help your main site with google juice.

5 Billion pages on google, put some adwords, and imagine making a penny per page.
As Borat would say "That's Niiice"

Popularity: 12% [?]

my buddy Paul Javier gave me a good tip to make your online photos look great. Crank up the exposure levels on your camera or use an image editing tool to make the photo look brighter.

Before

After

which one looks better? I definitely think the raised exposure makes a world of difference. The kitchen cabinets just pop, and everything just looks more appealing and inviting. I have a typical point and shoot personal camera, so for ease of use, I normally leave it on automatic. I raised the exposure levels in this photo with Photoshop CS2. Of course most people don't have Photoshop, but most image editors have an exposure adjustment.

To make the image pop in Photoshop, open the image, then look on the menu bar:
Images->Adjustments->Exposure

In this example I just raised the exposure +1 

Popularity: 6% [?]

Photos are the most important thing when it comes to marketing your property online. So, you need a good camera. The best cameras to get are SLR's. SLR stands for single-lens reflex. These cameras can get pretty expensive, but in recent years have come down in price. One major benefit of using the SLR is the ability to change lenses. For real estate a good wide angle lens is very helpful. The wide angle lens really opens up rooms, and makes the space look large.

Here is a good site with example pictures using wide angle lens 

A new cool way to find a camera is to check out photos on flickr.com based on user reviews and photos.
This D40 is an Digital SLR for $499.00

I own a Canon Powershot S2 IS. When I bought it, I had no idea what an SLR was. When I looked at real estate images online I noticed some were better then others, and upon doing research, I found that the SLR was the product of choice for professional photographers. Of course, I immediately wanted to sell my camera and get an SLR, but I figure my camera is still very good for your typical point and shoot camera. Maybe I'll get an SLR for Christmas. 

I thought no lenses fit my camera, but I was wrong…they do make adapters for wide-angle and telephoto lenses for my camera. So maybe I don't need to get an SLR. Here are some examples of lens adapters for the S2 IS. I think I just need to get an extended mount and the lenses screw on…I'm excited. I find photography a lot of fun, and usually use photostitch to make wide shots. I looked on Ebay for a S2 IS wide angle lens, but there were none. There were telephoto and fisheye lenses. I’m going to check out Wolf Camera to see if I can get more info, and possibly pick one up.

Here is another creative way to take a wide angle shot using a home made lens

Popularity: 5% [?]

Ebay announce a new Title, CDO, Chief Disruptive Officer. The first postition holder is Max Mancini, and his true role is Senior Director of Disruptive Innovation, which means there are probably smaller disrupters under him.
Videos: Max discussing the future of Ebay

What is Ebay up to? Sounds like they are planning to destroy all other e-commerce platforms, but they are not…CDO is a good thing. Looks like "disruptive" is a new flashy keyword for innovation. Max's job is to take the previous models set forth by years and years of user interface design and create new more functional UI's. Largely based around (You guessed it) communities, relationships, and trust.

Sounds familiar? it should, it is exactly a role that Realtors MUST take to grow their business…build relationships, and communities on trust. But, in real estate "disruptive" does not always mean nice things to agents. To agents "disruptive" means new models that challenge the commission structures, and new companies that will do the job better and for less money. So how can a Realtor be disruptive…Easy, they get honest.

I think the face painted onto a Realtor is one of "Happy-go-lucky", especially on the internet. Realtors are portrayed as never seeing a bad market, never telling bad news, always pushing to buy…Remember this is on the internet…IMO things are completely different face to face with a Realtor. Why? because usually when you are face to face with a realtor, it's business time. It is time to run the credit, it's time to make decisions, it's time for stress and excitement (at the same time). disruptive companies give more then enough data to consumers, but this can be overwhelming to the consumer, and in most cases the consumer still needs to get a Realtor to decipher the data.

So, in essence, the consumer is spending more time looking at data, searching for homes (unguided), and ultimately grabbing a Realtor to complete a transaction…sounds like disruptive is costing the consumer time and money? After all technology in general is making us all work more hours, it's not getting easier as new technologies come out.

My point, the faster a consumer sits down with an agent, the better. Build a game plan to search for homes, and then unleash the terabytes of data onto them. Teach them how to search for homes. Basically be a consultant.

So new terms:

I'm leaning towards changing my title from CTO to CDO, BUT, I also really like KB
Kaptain Badass (I know, the "K" give a hip hop vibe, very popular). "Hi, My name is Matt Dunlap, KB of Realivent"

MOP – Master of puppets. I like it because I grew up listening to Metallica, but maybe MOTU would be better. Master of the Universe…or is that too much He-Man for you?

Maybe I should play by the rules and take the title CTO2.0-Beta

Popularity: 6% [?]

The biggest concern about advertising with google adwords is what stops competitors and criminals from clicking on my ads and driving up my advertising costs. Looks like very little, but google is working on it, and currently, even though less then 10% of all clicks are due to fraud this adds up to billions

“At Google’s current revenue rate, every percentage point of invalid clicks we throw out represents over $100 million/year in potential revenue foregone,” said Google. Add it up and Google forgoes roughly $1 billion in revenue due to click fraud.
Source:ZDNET

I have stopped our adwords campaigns for 2 reasons. First, it is getting too expensive to use adwords, secondly You can clicks to website using other free methods, it just takes more time.

I stopped using adwords late 2006, and we recently started them back up, but to my surprise they added minimum bid requirements and for most of the San Francisco keywords I wanted to use, the minimum bid was $5.00 and most clicks coming from those was $2.00 to $3.00. On a budget of $20.00 per day, that is only 10 clicks a day and with a 50% conversion rate to leads, that is only 5 a day…compare that to our other means of getting leads and it is just not worth it. I think I would just have to study the system for a couple hours to understand the google adword system again, but I’m going to put that off for now, especially after this report.

Miriam L. Kauterman, owner of Premier Homes Real Estate LLC, a vacation rental home and sales firm in Avalon, N.J., said she spent more than $27,000 advertising with Google for two years, but stopped in August after she saw a suspiciously high number of clicks. When she asked Google to investigate, the search engine refunded her only $56 — much less than what she thought she was owed. She has joined the lawsuit filed against Google last month in Pennsylvania. “I feel like I’ve been robbed and there’s nothing I can do about it,” she said. “It’s infuriating.”
Source: Washington Post

How does click fraud get committed?

It’s really quite simple…Fraudsters start an adsense account. From this adsense account, they will earn roughly 15 cents per click (Real estate is high price advertisment, so real estate ads bring in closer to 40-50 cents). Now they create a group to click on the ads and pay them roughly 1 penny per click. although some pay half a penny per click. Why people do it? I have no Idea. The same amount of time it takes to make minimal profits could be spent working at a normal job and making minimum wage would be ten fold.

This problem of click fraud is really just the second coming of web 1.0, remember the first internet. I use to do a lot of affiliate marketing around 1997, before text ads. Back then it was all image banners. The method of payment back then was pay-per-click, roughly 10 cents per click on a banner in your website…This model eventually gave way to a pay-per-signup, or pay-per-purchase. Looks like the current trend in online advertising might be headed the same direction.

in 1997, click fraud came from websites that allowed free Warez. Warez is hacked programs to run without serials, mp3, appz, images, etc…This is before Napster and torrents so we had to get our mp3’s somehow. There were sites that allows you to download unlimited mp3’s from their site, but you had to login to access the music. To get a username and password you would have to go to their site, click on a banner, and then find the username and password on the advertisers page. There would be instructions like, username is the 3rd word in the website title, and the password is the last word on the page. Don’t forget these are caveman days as compared to the internet of today.
Other sources:
Adwords Blog

SearchEngineLand.com

Popularity: 7% [?]

There are many websites popping up that will take your listing and create an HTML ad on Craiglsist and other online classified sites, but none of them actaully capture leads directly from Craiglsist. My company is totally focused on getting you leads. Not only am I the CTO of Realivent, but I’m also the Co-founder of a top producing Real Estate Team (Top Producing in less then one year of business). The key is leads…you can never get too many.
Using a pretty HTML post on Craigslist will get you business, because when sellers see your add compared to all the typical text ads, it really makes you shine…and it looks like you spend the time to market your listings.

Again, there are many companies that do this, Now lets look at what Realivent does:

Our listing designer takes your listing information and creates a gorgeous post for Craigslist. We have the only tool that allows you to easily add related documents to your post. For example, you can add PDF’s docs of market stats, comparable info, buyer or seller reports, etc…The Craigslist user clicks on the document and then enters their email address, and the document gets sent as an attachment to their email account…bad email, no docs. Along with the documents, your email message gets sent. You can fully customize the email message…

So lets review. You have taken a normal Craigslist ad and create a powerful marketing tool. You are sending 3 times the amount of information to potential clients as compared to all the other posts on Craigslist.

Sure, pretty Craigslist posts help, but the Realivent Listing Designer GETS YOU LEADS!

We have also opened up our listing designer api and allow you to upload your own templates, plug in our information and you now have a custom Craigslist post branded to your marketing material and allows lead capture.

We also have a tool that allows you to post the full website created by our virtual tour editor…But I warn you, when you use this tool, you are posting a full website on Craigslist, complete with 800 IVR, lead capture, Zillow comps, unlimited images, etc…YOU MIGHT GET FLAGGED!. Why, I really don’t know…I mean I think I know why. It’s because you are posting a full website on Craigslist. To see this tool, add a listing to Realivent and then checkout the virtual tour section of “My Realivent” you will see the new Tool

Popularity: 11% [?]

I went the tech seminar at KW reunion. There was basically a panel of agents that have good results from their online marketing. I can’t believe I sat through the entire seminar and did not hear one comment about blogging. Unbelievable!!!

A lot of talk about google adwords, and drip campaigns, and immediate follow-up.

1. Google adwords…If you have a template website that you have from your broker, or really any other type of template website, DO NOT USE GOOGLE ADWORDS. You are wasting your money.
IF you want to get leads off the internet, make sure you have lead capture on your site, and items that catch attention. Offer e-books on investing, buying fixers, etc…

2. One of the panelists talked about how she had a link on her site that allowed people to call her??????
Are you paying for this? If I’m not mistaken, she made it sound like a button that would open a window and you could then add your phone number which will get texted to the agents phone. The agent then has to call the person back.

This reminds me on when I was trying to set my 90 year old grandmother with an email account. I explained all the benefits how she can communicate with us at anytime, and we can send her messages…she then said, “If I want to talk to you, I will pick up the phone” I was dumbfounded. What a concept. I had no comeback. She was right. Just Think if I did set her up? She probably would have sent some hacker her bank account number because she would have received a Paypal spoof email. I was going to set her up with a Myspace account, but decided to pass.

So instead of putting a link to add a phone number to call them back, why not just put your phone number???
Again, I hope your not paying for that. Don’t get me wrong I think IVR is a must, but this sounded like a bad product. She did not know the company she was using.

3. Remember, your website is not an end, it is a beginning. You now have to market your website. So many people talk about Top-producer, for follow-up and drip email (which we do not use BTW). Do not focus on Your CRM, focus on getting leads. I think a lot of agents want to be ready for the thousands of leads they are going to get from the internet even before they have 1 website. My advice, use outlook, set up a manual system, then focus on the marketing you will need to do for your website.

4. Don’t put adwords on your real estate site if you want leads. If you want to monetize your site, that’s fine, but you cannot get leads, and monetize. I really mean you can but why? One of the panelist talked about he had had adwords on his stealth site because for him, it made money and took money from their competitors. This is true, he made about 50 cents when that person clicked on the adwords, and the other agent paid about $2.00 for the click, but you just sent someone to another agents site???? was that lead worth the 50 cents you got?

based on a typical commission, $5,000. At 50 cents each, you would send 10,000 potential clients to other websites. How many people out of that 10,000 might have used you to buy or sell a home?

Bottom line, don’t pass leads to other sites… Very bad advice!

At the end, it was time for question and answer, so I asked the question, “Do any of you blog?”. They all did. One had 3 blogs. The other said he loved blogging, because its free, and you can blog about stuff that you don’t normally talk about. This means good keywords…So why did none of them talk about during the seminar?

Popularity: 3% [?]

Given all the marketing tools that Realtors use to market properties, I would take the listing designer over anything.

website, blogs, email, CRM, video, etc…

If you market your property well on Craigslist you will get business over and over.

1. Craiglist is in the top 25 of all website, yet only 10% of Realtors post their listings on it.
2. most the posts are plain text with just 4 pictures.
3. Sellers are more likely to list their property with an agent that looks like they market better then the others

There is a saying at KW (Where I spend most my time) and at most brokerages. “List to Last”, the more listings you get, the more business you have. This is completely true. How does the listing designer help? When people are thinking about selling their house, they start surfing Real Estate websites. Inevitably they will hit Craigslist and see text ad after text ad and all the posts look the same. Then, they run across a listing that is highlighted in HTML, and has additional documents to download, and 800 numbers, and pictures, don’t you think they will be impressed and be more likely to use that agent that spends the time to really highlight their clients properties?

Bottom line, you are a professional, people are paying you thousands to market their property, you should work your hardest to make it look like the best house on the market and a plain text ad on CL, does not convey this.

Now let’s look at the Listing Designer. You enter your listing and add some photos, or set up a feed from your website, and the pretty HTML post gets created automatically for you. I just finished updating it and now you can make your own templates, and brand your own posts. You can actually take your blog or website, copy the code, add our tags, and you can post your website on CL…


It’s so simple even a caveman could do it!

Check out this sample post.

Another aspect that sets our Listing Designer apart from Postlets or VFlyer is that you can add document downloads directly to your Craigslist post, providing even more information.

for example, my partner Trang just got a co-listing from an agent in Sacramento. Trang used the listing designer to add 2 documents for download. One was for comps and the other was “How to do a lease option”. The second document gets tons of downloads because Sacramento is getting hit be a lot of investors and for Trang to provide this information is very valuable. The documents get attached to an email and sent immediately to the person that requested it. Along with the document, Trang’s e-newsletter gets sent, and the person that received the email can select to sign up for Trang’s newsletter.

We can also set it up for automatic drip email. As soon as a lead comes in, they get set up on a set number of automatic emails. We do not use this, but it is available. e-newsletters are much better at communicating with your audience.

I’m constantly adding features to the listing designer, and if anyone wants their website copied into a Craigslist post, I’ll do it, just email me.

I have another huge feature coming soon, so stay tuned!

Popularity: 5% [?]

How many agents out there us Top Producer to manage all their customers? A lot right…I tried it for The Legacy Group, but do not use it anymore. Unfortunately they make you buy a year contract so I’m still paying for it…When I buy a product I expect it to do everything I need, and top producer just doesn’t. It crashed all the time, it was a bad interface, and it was browser specific.

Since I love open source, and I love FREE, I want to introduce SugarCRM. a Free, open source, customer relationship manager. If you think free mean “bad, or cheap” you have to look at this product. It is a commercial grade product, that can seriously compete with Top Producer, Act, Outlook, etc…

The current version is 4.5.0 which is very nice. I started using Sugar around 4.2 and liked it then, and the new version is very nice. Version 4.5.1 is coming out at the end of December with 2 added features that I can’t wait to use.

• Newsletter manager – timed delivery of e-newsletters
• Auto create web based lead forms – drag and drop form creator

The one problem with SugarCRM is that it might be overwhelming for most Realtors. We actually do not use the full product, we only use the Campaign manager. The campaign mananger allows you to send a one shot email to all your leads. We use this for our newsletter. Sugar can track views, clicks, forwards, bounces, and opt-outs. Very nice, even if you don’t plan to use the entire product, the campaign manager is great, and with the new implementation of the newsletter manager, we will be using this product more and more.

Also, since it is open source, you have access to the code. Of course, I don’t expect you to start hacking sugar, but if you think you can improve the product, you can hire someone or go to Sugar’s forums and see if someone will help you out. There are already a lot of add-ons for Sugar including mailmerge extensions, mapping, organizing…

If all you want is a newsletter manager, you might want to think about PHPlist. A small newlsetter manager, that handle sign-ups, delivery, and opt-outs. I will probably use both to capture leads this year.

I just wanted to touch on some really good products…later on i will show some more detailed examples of using these products, but right now, I have to get ready for Hawaii.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Let’s start podcasting, it’s not hard, and you don’t have to buy anything…except a computer. I’m going to show you how to create a podcast using a couple Free tools that you can get from the internet, and show you have to then add to your blog, and then I will subscribe them to Itunes.

Before we start, here is what you need for the most simple podcast.

• A Working Microphone, A broken microphone will not work in this situation… I tried.
• Sound Recorder – This is a free application that comes with Windows. To access the Sound Recorder go to Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> Entertainment -> Sound Recorder
• A blog, or another way to create an RSS feed. If you need to build a blog, go to http://realivent.com/wp-signup.php
• Itunes to play the podcast. You can also play the mp3 directly from your blog, but Itunes will let you see how other will view and subscribe to your podcast. Get this from www.itunes.com. There is also a good explanation of what podcasting is.
  http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcasts.html

Ok, you ready…Sound recorder is very simple, just get your mic and click on record.

If this is your first podcast, I bet you said “testing, testing, 1, 2, 3″ everyone says that the first time. I don’t know why…but I bet you did.

You have to save the file as an mp3…you can’t podcast the default .wav file that sound recorder tries to save it as. Make your recording and then click on save. You have to change a couple setting on the save file box. Change “Save As Type” from “.wav” to “All Files”. Click on “Change”, below “Save As Type”. This will open a Sound Selection box. Use the drop down to save the output as an mp3. Click “OK” and the sound selection box will close, and you can save the new recording as an mp3.

**Make sure you use the full file name. If you only use the filename “podcast” it will still save it as a .wav file. You have to type “podcast.mp3″ to save the recording as an MP3.

Now that you have you a shiny new mp3, you need to get it out to the public. There are millions of people just waiting for your information. The easiest way to syndicate is to add it to a blog. If you don’t have a blog, just go to realivent.com and create a free one. I created pods.realivent.com. To add your mp3 to your blog is easy, just go to the admin section of the blog, write a new post, upload the mp3 using the file uploader, and then send to post. Once it’s in a post, people can subscribe to it, just like they subscribe to your blog. Itunes is able to parse blogs and find only the mp3’s. When a new podcast is available it will not download it, but you can see that there are new podcasts, and then you can choose to download the mp3 and listen.

If you open up Itunes, you can subscribe to my podcast at http://pods.realivent.com/feed

I was hoping to finish this post earlier and continue to talk about enhancing the podcast, but I think I will do that later. There is a very cool music editor that you can use for free called Audacity. I will take my simple podcast and add some background music to it. Then once we get the editing down we will look at using Skype to create podcasts. When you use Skype you can create podcasts with multiple people from all around the world…should be good.

Popularity: 10% [?]