I started working with AgentView, formerly known as Source4Sellers, mid November 2006.  Since then much has changed with my business model and with AgentView.

My business grew from a fledgling concept to a full team model.  I had started the month before with HomeGain’s BuyerLink.  The traffic from BuyerLink helped build my faith in Internet marketing and build my lead database.  Even then, I knew that HomeGain was very interested in my success and building a true business partnership.

The AgentView product suite continues to develop and is now a full service ad-free solution which highlights and promotes the participating real estate agent.  When I first started with the product, the Source4Sellers solution contained an agent profile and a full CRM with built-in email campaigns.  Now AgentView is so very much more.  Some of the features include:

• Agent Profile
• Homes For Sale
• Home Values
• Agent Centric Blog
• Local Information
• Home Seller Tools

Agent Profile

The AgentView blog offers so much opportunity to help promote the area real estate agent and my Denver real estate website in an ad-free environment. This page is about the agent and their credentials.  The “Have a Real Estate Question for Brian?” is to the right of your contact information as a call to action.

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The problem with any product sold or given to real estate agents is, what I call THE MISSING MANUAL. Unlike the bikes I had to assemble at Christmas which had instructions – and still were tough to put together—the tools you get from vendors do not come with a manual of how to effectively use them. At best, you get the basics.

Let’s take blogging, for example. You can get a free blog from Wordpress or Blogger and strike out on your own. Or you can pay for a blog at any number of real estate websites. But there are 2 major problems.

1. The blog providers give you virtually no instructions on how to:

• Set up the blog
• Post content
• Add images, video, slideshows, listings widgets, etc. -– Do you know how to use an HTML editor -– Or know what the heck HTML is?
• Tag your posts (and images) -– did you know that images are indexed by Google?
• Categorize your posts -– did you know that choosing too many categories actually hurts you?

You have to learn by trial and error. That’s how I learned. It sucked. It took a long time and I made many mistakes, some of which I did not correct until years later — that’s right, years.

2. It takes time for Google to index new blogs.

You can write for months and months before folks can find your posts on Google, i.e. on the first page of Google. Let’s face it, no matter how great your content is, if no one can find it on Google, no one will read it. So you end of toiling without seeing real success and it’s discouraging. You’re likely to quit.

If only someone showed you how to write blog posts to effectively take advantage of SEO (search engine optimization)…………….

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HomeGain, the first website to offer free instant home valuations, just released instant home values and home sale maximizer widgets for free download.

There are three different versions of each of the Instant Home Valuation and Home Sale Maximizer widgets. (pictured below)

These widgets work best for HomeGain AgentView members. If you have a HomeGain AgentView membership and place one of these widgets on your site, when your visitors request a home valuation or to use the Home Sale Maximizer tool in the zip codes where you are featured, they will be sent to your AgentView module where they can review their home valuation or access the Home Sale Maximizer tool.

These widgets are a great way to attract visitors and to get them to come back. Used in conjunction with AgentView it allows AgentView members to keep their visitors engaged on their sites and on their AgentView sites.

The widgets are also a great addition to any website in need of quality home valuation or home improvement content.

If you are interested in getting these consumer-pleasing widgets for your website, click here.

Try HomeGain’s free instant Home Valuation Tool here

On December 30th Google updated its page rankings. According to Google “pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher Page Rank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search rankings“.

Google last updated its page rankings in February of 2008. Since then HomeGain launched the HomeGain Agent Blogging Network. In the latest Google page rank update, many HomeGain AgentView blogs scored page ranks of three and four! HomeGain AgentView blogs are also appearing at the top of Google search results for the key words “[city name] real estate blog”

The HomeGain Agent Blogging Network provides each AgentView subscriber with a blog, along with a place to post their profiles and listings in an exclusive and advertising free environment.   Upon launch of the HomeGain Agent Blogging Network, many were skeptical “Why pay for a blogging platform when you can set up your own word press blog for free?” The answer is page rank and higher placement in the search engine results pages (SERPs) and built in traffic from your instant home values tool.

AgentView subscribers blogging on the HomeGain Agent Blogging Network benefit from HomeGain’s and the HomeGain Real Estate Blog’s high Google page ranking.

Here are a few examples of some highly ranked HomeGain AgentView blogs:

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We launched a new “what if” feature to our instant home valuation tool earlier this evening. The new feature allows users to receive an instant home value estimate. Once the user gets their estimate they can play “what if” and hypothetically add an extra bedroom, bathroom and/or some extra square footage. After entering the “what if” data the user gets a new home value estimate.

HomeGain’s home valuation tool is part of our AgentView offering that features real estate agent profiles, blogs and listings in an advertising free environment. Continue reading this post

Just wanted to drop in to share my thoughts on HomeGain’s AgentView product, a tool I’ve been testing for the past several months.  No better place to share my two cents than with the HomeGain community…

Why I use AgentView for my real estate business:

1. Making Sure My Team Can “Talk The Talk”. My team’s newer agents get fast and furious experience with Denver real estate home valuations.
2. Metrics/Statistics Win Business: Sooner or Later! Even if we are not able to provide a value the home owner(s)’ can “stomach”, AgentView statistics have helped us justify our valuations and “value-add” as a group, often leading to the listing later on.
3. “Personalized” Email Campaigns. Many times we offer to keep a prospective seller updated with the market activity in their neighborhood by setting up email listing alerts.  Incorporation of AgentView in these campaigns help keeps the prospective seller apprised (and hopefully realistic!).
4. Drip Mail. We’re fine-tuning an offline drip marketing campaign with AgentView integration.  What better than to add another robust tool to keep in front of the potential home sellers.  The key to any successful system in my opinion is consistent follow up.
5. Progression & Innovation. HomeGain continues to enhance the AgentView package.  While I admittedly need to invest more time keying in listings and posting to my AgentView blog, I believe investing my time into an ever-evolving AgentView suite of tools helps enhance our team’s branding and credibility. 

So that’s the scoop from my point of view.  And before I forget I must complement HomeGain’s Blogging School and the efforts of instructor Joseph Ferrara.  I use this invaluable tutorial as one of my key real estate blogging reference guides.

Thoughts???  For those of you who haven’t had enough much experience AgentView and would like to pick my brain, feel free to contact me.  For those of you who are more acquainted with the product, I’d love to know how/if you’ve integrated it in your own marketing campaign…

Check out Brian’s AgentView Blog.

Read Briank Kinkade’s Blog

To learn more about AgentView click here.