If you don’t know it yet, you soon will understand that real estate is a tough business.  As an independent contractor, no one is watching out for you; except you.  I would like to offer some words of wisdom and advice to the newby Realtors and others that I wish had been given to me back when I started my real estate career five years ago.

Having a real estate business is just like any other business.  You must protect your information including contact lists.  It is tempting to utilize all the tools that your brokerage may offer to stay in touch with clients and do marketing campaigns.

However, you should know that companies may take that information and use it for their own benefit if they choose. If you think your brokerage is above that, I recommend getting something in writing before you use the company products, computer and email.

It is easy enough to avoid the entire issue with a few simple practices:

1. Own your domain name.
2. Have your own website with an independent company that specializes in real estate products to host and maintain it.
3. Have an email address that is not managed by your brokerage.
4. If you want the convenience of a secondary company email, do not give the address to clients or publish the address on any websites.

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I’m not sure if it’s the real estate downturn, but my phone has been blowing up with online advertising vendors lately.  I monitor my advertising revenue very closely, so I ask a lot of questions when talking with their salespeople.

Salespeople like to throw around big numbers to entice you to buy, so it’s important to ask for the proper metrics when analyzing different potential advertising sources.

Here’s a breakdown of what you should measure, and what to ask:

1) ROI (Return on Investment) is the bottom line number that you need to use after you have given an advertising source long enough to perform.

ROI is simply how much you’ve earned on an advertising source divided by how much you’ve spent.  So, if you’ve earned one $6000 commission from Website A, and spent $2000 advertising there, your ROI is 3:1.  You’ve earned $3 for every $1 you spent.  Most advertising sources won’t track their customers’ ROI because there are so many “real world” variables that can create different results for different buyers - predominantly how well each customer can convert.

2) Conversion Rate is the number of leads you get per click.

If you have different types of leads (contact requests, registrations, property info requests) then it’s best to track the bottom line conversion rate, and then crunch it down to conversion rate for each lead type.  So, if you get 100 visitors in one month from a traffic source, and you get 5 registrations, 2 contact requests, and 3 property info requests, then your conversion rates are as follows:

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One of the questions that I get from REALTORS all of the time while consulting is something like this…

“Do I need to worry about ranking in Yahoo and MSN as well as Google?”

“How much attention should I pay to Yahoo and  MSN?”

While the questions vary slightly, the meaning is exactly the same. Each search engine is different. It is one thing to rank really well on one search engine. It is another thing entirely to rank on two (or more). In the past (before Bing and Yahoo announced that Bing would be powering Yahoo), the answer was splendidly easy. Just worry about Google. The rest do not matter. They simply do not have enough market share to matter.

But what about after Microsoft has spent over $100 million advertising Bing as the “decision engine”? What about once Yahoo is powered by Bing? Will they have enough market share to matter then?

A couple of insights are helpful. The first of them is to know how to get a monthly snapshot of the search engine market share. Continue reading this post

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is becoming more important to Realtors® each year. These lesson snippets, provided by Eric Blackwell, Director of Technology with RE/MAX Properties East, will help you understand the importance and how to leverage SEO to your advantage.

Let’s start with the TOPICAL INFORMATION. In the SEO business, this is what is known as On Page Optimization. Search Engines index your pages and the only thing that they can see is text so it is important to write/build web pages so that the text is visible to the search engines.

1. Provide QUALITY content.

2. Write search friendly titles for your posts, pages and articles that will attract readers and be something that they will search for. The title will show up on the search engine as a headline and that is what you need to keep in mind.

3. Avoid duplicate content. Why should Google, as the librarians of the internet, keep hundreds of copies of the same book or post or article on the front page? (Hint: They don’t.) When you write on your blogs, be original and unique. It will not only rank better, it will attract more readers.

To get the full lesson and receive the monthly SEO newsletter, sign up for AgentView.

Mr. Blackwell will be hosting a session titled “SEO Is A Team Sport” at HomeGain Live Nation in San Francisco on August 3rd at 2pm. Twitter @homegainnation

Here are some Google Search secrets to help you better find what you’re looking for: (wait, since I’m telling you, they’re no longer secret).

1. Use quotation marks to search for the exact phrase “co-op board rejection”

2. Use the pipe (|) (it’s above the backslash \) for an either/or search (or use the word “or”): fsbo|by owner.

3. Use two periods (..) to find information within a number range, including years: worst housing markets 1980..2006.

4. Use a minus sign (-) to exclude search results: worst housing markets 1980..2006 -best. (since the search without the minus sign usually includes best and worst, use the minus sign if you only want the bad news)

5. Find similar keywords with the tilde (~): ~cheap homes. You get auctions, foreclosures, investors, etc. The tilde is an under-appreciated stroke (which makes it good for passwords)

6. Use the wildcard star (*) if you don’t know the missing word: a man’s home is his *.

7. Get a definitions by typing “define:” before the word: define:foreclosure.

8. Math calculations (hey Realtors, it’s good for figuring a commission): 548,000 x6%.

9. To search a term in a particular blog or website use “site:” before the URL. Useful if a website or blog doesn’t have a search box: site:blog.sellsiusrealestate.com zillow.

10. Type in the area code or zip code to find out the city name: 646.

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According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and the Miami Herald first time home buyers are accounting for a large portion of the recent boost in existing home sales. The reports cite lower home prices and the provision in the Obama stimulus plan that gives first time home buyers an $8,000 credit.

Indeed, on a conference call following HomeGain’s release of its survey of Realtors on Home Values, HomeGain member Jeffrey Bastress of Starpoint Realty in Massachusettes cited that he had recently received numerous offers from first time home buyers citing the $8,000 credit as a reason for their interest in purchasing a home.

Andrew Duncan of Keller Williams of Tampa also cited the new tax incentives, lower home prices and great interest rates as driving new home buyers to make their first purchases.

Could it be however, the reason that first time home buyers are making up a good portion of existing home sales is that they haven’t been burned yet?

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