Written by Tal Ariel who was previously HomeGain’s AIMS (Advanced Internet Marketing Solution) Product Manager.

Many of the agents subscribing to the AIMS program have enjoyed success, some closing as many as five contracts in their first six months.

Some of those who were less successful initially and decided to cancel actually came back after enough time was given for their leads to pan out.

As with any product or idea, there are bound to be obstacles and problems, both for the customer and the provider.

Interestingly, the biggest obstacles thus far with our AIMS product have nothing to do with features, functionality, guarantee fulfillment or customer service.

Rather it has been the MLS boards’ rules and regulations around IDX that often prevent an interested and willing agent from signing up.

Usually this is due to several possible issues:

• Brokers-only boards – there are the MLS boards that do not allow their agent members to get their own IDX feed from a 3rd party IDX provider. Instead they

Continue reading this post

Dear Matt,

I currently pay for driving visits to my web site (with the BuyerLink program), but have a limited budget. Are there any free ways I can get more visits to my web site in addition to what I do with HomeGain?

- Sally Dalhgren, Minnesota (real estate agent)

Dear Sally,

What you’re referring to is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), the art of making your site more findable by the search engines (and therefore getting free traffic!).

While you could get a 4-year degree in SEO and still not know everything there it to know, one of the easiest things to do is improve your site HTML tags. Continue reading this post

No matter what industry you’re in, success in the online marketplace is determined by conversion.

Sites like Amazon and Wal-Mart measure not only how many visitors view an item, but how many place the item in their shopping carts and then actually purchase it.

Even though you aren’t selling goods on your real estate site, you should always be concerned with how well your site is converting visitors into leads.

Many of the real estate sites that we see convert visitors somewhere in the range of 3%-5%.

That’s really low.

(We regularly take an interest in our customers’ lead capture web page because if they don’t do well, they certainly won’t continue as a HomeGain subscriber.)

Some of the other real estate agents’ sites convert higher, but most fail to convince its visitors that it is worth their time to leave their contact information in exchange for a glimpse at local listings, and, therefore, fail to produce a good ROI.

You really only have a few seconds before a reader moves on!

Due to the low conversion we know some real estate agents are experiencing, we always keep our eyes open for websites that convert at much higher rates to provide as examples to agents wanting to know how they can get better their ROI.

Guess what? We just figured out how to increase the conversion rate to an amazing 15%! Continue reading this post

This year something significant took place that resulted in a huge increase in my business.

In fact, it became necessary for me to transition from being a “part-timer” into becoming a full-time REALTOR® in order to accommodate all my new clients!

Here’s how it happened.

Until recently, my business efforts were based primarily on what other agents were doing, and frankly, my business wasn’t growing like I wanted. I was doing a mediocre job at working Internet leads from a “so-so” website.

It wasn’t until I found Myers and HomeGain that my business started growing exponentially. This is all about the power of the Internet. Continue reading this post

It’s been a fun couple of years watching the real estate world trying to catch on to the realities of the “New” Real Estate and the importance of the Internet.

On a weekly basis I get many phone calls about how agents can maximize their websites and Internet Leads. It still amazes me that most Realtors® do not use the Internet.

Of course if you are using HomeGain’s BuyerLink program you are heading in the right direction.

How many of you have Real Estate Websites? Go ahead, raise your hands! Ok, now how many of you actually get business from your Websites? I don’t see many hands out there. So let’s take a few minutes and look at why that is so.

Lead Capture

I am on the Web probably too much these days to see what the competition is doing. To my joy, they still don’t get it and aren’t doing anything except taking listings and more listings and more listings.

Wow! I must be missing something because the last I looked listings weren’t selling.

Anyway, the Internet, in my mind, is the best way to capture home buyers. Remember, sales is a numbers game and Real Estate is no different. If you want to work, then the Internet is the place to be. Continue reading this post