Instead of just trading links like we normally do to increase our seo, I wanted to see if you're interested in beta-testing something that seems to be about ten times as effective (with about one-tenth the effort ).
In a nutshell, there is a company that has developed a "Cost of Commuting" calculator that is extremely useful to our clients. So much so, that other Realtors began asking them how they could get it for their sites. At first, they decided they were going to sell it for $297, but then they came up with a way that skyrocketed their linking efforts AS WELL as those who are using the calculator -- so they developed a way for anyone using it to give it away for free and build unlimited links to THEIR real estate sites. Everyone wins.
To see the calculator in action, check out my site at www.View-MLS-Homes.com (scroll down to Buying A Home). Then if you are interested in adding it to ANY page on your site, simply click on the Download it here hyperlink. Then by becoming one of my link partners, I will see that the $297 fee be waived forever!!!
Check it out - your feedback is appreciated!
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Has anyone else signed up for PPP? You may not have heard about this yet but high traffic sites could easily generate enough income to offset their monthly hosting fees and even more! You can earn revenue on 100% of your website traffic by tapping into a network of big-name advertisers like Burger King, Taco Bell, Harley-Davidson, and HBO. You can also monetize 100% of your web traffic without anyone having to click anything, complete any forms, or buy anything. I've already got it added to many of my sites for the early February release. You can read about it HERE
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Why are agents bothering to include photos that can't be seen in their tours and gallery? How does it benefit the viewer and what is the viewers impression of the agent who posts these useless photos? I have several photo editing programs including PhotoExplosion and Adobe Photoshop but I recently came across an online editor that is worth mentioning called Picnik http://www.picnik.com
This is currently a beta program and sign up is free. Since it operates on the web without any downloads, it gets upgrades without you having to do anything. I tried several photos and even some that I thought looked good looked even greater after I ran them through the program. You can also do neat things with the cropping feature including rounding the borders and adding the same color as your website background to fill in the cropped area. Resizing photos includes automatic sizes for YouTube, Google, aviators, etc. You can also save to different formats such as .jpg, bmp, giff, etc.
They don't currently offer any storage albums but that is something being planned in the future. Give it a try, especially if you don't currently have a decent photo editing program since it works equally well on both Windows and Macintosh as well as all browsers including IE, Mozilla, and Safari.
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I have had a lot of fun using this free email program. It allows you to send an email that is timed to 'disappear' in as little as 30 seconds after being opened by the recipient. It also can be prgrammed to delete the email after a day or two, lets you see how many times the email is viewed, keeps (private) emails from being printed or forwarded, recall an email that you sent, control the number of times the message can be read, and many other neat things. I have had other agents send me an email saying that they must have 'accidently' deleted the message since it is 'gone'. It can simply fade out or go up in smoke like the old Mission Impossible tapes. I'm surprised the Feds haven't bought into this software to protect their files. Imagine the pedophiles that would love to erase their emails once they are read. I would think that it is a good candidate to be bought up by a larger company (currently trades on the pink sheets for $.28, and Yes I do own it) Anybody wanting to receive an email to see how it works can email me at BigString @ GeneCarey.com
(From their site)
Bigstring.com allows you to take control of your email. Until now, email messages that you send stay as a permanent record on countless mail servers, inboxes, delete boxes and more. Bigstring.com's patent pending technology allows our email users to recall, modify or set an expiration date for emails that have already been sent. These emails can be erased, modified or expired even if the recipient has read them. There is an article that explains this very well. You can read that article here: New York Times Article The email is not "deleted" from the recipient's computer. The message that the email refers to is dynamically generated, and therefore you have full control over it. Sign up for an account today and try it out for yourself! There is no obligation to buy.
http://www.bigstring.com/mail/main.php
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I was just sitting here blogging with the TV on in the background when a very stupid commercial came on showing what looked to be a person in a bumble-bee outfit suggesting to the viewers "Are you tired of paying a Realtor so much commission when you are doing the work?" (or something like that). So, out of curiousity, since I'm a Realtor, I wrote down the URL and visited their site. Someone in the office that went to a recent meeting brought back information on something like this where the listing agent is contacted by a buyer to view a property and the buyer winds up making an offer through a third party company that offers up to 75% commission credit paid back to the buyer after closing. In most cases they are NOT saying anything about working with someone like Buy Side until AFTER you are at the property, at which time they hand you a business card they printed up from that outfit. Here is some information from their site:
http://www.buysiderealty.com
All BuySide Agents are members of the National Association of REALTORS®. While your BuySide Agent is there to assist you every step of the way, they do not show houses “in the field” like a traditional agent.
It is easy to request a personal showing of a home or request an Open House schedule. However, for BuySide to schedule a showing with the listing agent, we require you to have a mortgage pre-approval from a qualified lender. Since our agents do not show houses “in the field”, it is important that the listing agents know that we are only sending them the most qualified buyers. Obviously, to receive an Open House schedule, you do not have to be pre-approved.
When you are ready to make an offer on a home, simply fill out the necessary information online and submit it to one of BuySide’s licensed real estate agents with a simple click. BuySide’s licensed agents then prepare the official offer documents and return them to the homebuyer to review and sign
(Instructions)
Make an appointment to see a home?
Print a business card or make an offer?
All you have to do is register.
It's quick and easy.
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Today's RisMedia and Lowes featured this article regarding a National MLS.
Quote: "Many think that the notion of a national MLS is a good one. According to Jim Sherry, technically there is no reason a national MLS would not work. He says it's more about getting the egos out of the way first."
"David Charron says a national MLS is a great idea, but the creation thereof is complex as it will have to take into consideration local licensing laws, nomenclature, customs, governance and compliance management" (end quotes)
Isn't it amazing that P2 was able to overcome all the 'complex' issues with their National Listing Service (NLS) ?.
http://www.rismedia.com/wp/2007-05-31/is-a-national-mls-the-way-to-go-2/
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Here is a great article from the recent Realtor Magazine Online regarding 'Short Sales' that you may find very helpful. It should answer a lot of questions and concerns when it comes to dealing with them.
http://www.realtor.org/rmomag.NSF/pages/Feat1200706?OpenDocument
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Since I haven't been able to get any information on why my other real estate site, hosted by Advanced Access, has been down all day, I thought others here who may also have an AA site might be interested in knowing the reason. I finally found this posted on their blog. I'm sure a lot of agents email is affected as well.
Advanced Access Outage
At this time, Advanced Access is having significant power issues at our offices and all services are currently down. 100% of our resources are dedicated to solving this problem with many various solutions being implemented at this time. There has been no data loss or corruption of your services.
We are expecting that all services will be shut off for the rest of the day. We do anticipate all services to be running tomorrow, Tuesday May 22. We sincerely apologize for the downtime and are doing our best to get you up and running as quickly as possible.
Thank you for your business and support. We will continue to post updates at our Advanced Access Blog as we receive them and are able to post them from sources outside the office.
- Kristina
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I was doing a Google keyword search today for Gurnee Relocation to see how my Worldwide-Relocation site was doing and was shocked to find that my recent post on REliberation was AHEAD of my relo site as well as my P2 site. What was even better was that I was on page #1 THREE times!! WOOO-HOOO!
RELibertaion #7
Worldwide-Relocation #9 www.Worldwide-Relocation.com (Still FREE, get onboard!)
ShowcaseYourHome #10
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This Agent-To-Agent Referral site was created less than three months ago and is already showing some impressive results. Although it runs on Wordpress as a free blog with no way to tweak the keywords, it may be bringing those who have already signed up some relocation buyers without them even knowing it. For example, using "city+relocation" as keywords, Google returned the following results (and P2 sites were getting the most exposure):
Grayslake Relocation = #5, beating my P2 at #7 (both beating NationalRelocation.com at #8)
Gurnee Relocation = #5, beating my P2 at #9
Here are some areas I pulled at random from the interior of some of the entries. Those that included the word 'relocation' in their input seemed to help W-R come up higher on Google by helping the Title keyword:
Broward Beach Relocation #1 (WOW!)
Fenton Relocation #5
Northern Idaho Relocation #10
Southern Idaho Relocation #21
Gulfport Relocation #15
Pasco Relocation #15
Ellijay Relocation #14
Shelby Relocation Page 3
Sugar Hill Relocation Page 3
Greater Tampa Relocation Page 3
You might want to consider adding your information to this site (must be done on the site, not here). In many cases it comes up higher on the searches than the submitted sites themselves. It gets crawled every two days and the homepage content is always fresh since new entries appear there initially and gradually get moved down as new ones are added.
It's available to ALL agents! What have you got to lose? It's free! 
www.Worldwide-Relocation.com
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I received this email today and it made me think about how a good drip campaign along with a great listing notification system can help our business. Hopefully you are utilizing both since some buyers just need some space to figure out their next move and don't want an in-your-face agent calling them constantly. Their 'new' area of interest will wind up being an outbound referral since I do not service that area.
Dear GENE,
First off I want to thank you very much for leaving me up on the MLS this past year because while we have not made the move to purchase anything yet, we are still actively looking and your daily emails with updates have been VERY helpful. In fact you are the ONLY agent to understand that it takes time - perhaps you just forgot we were signed up but either way, I do look forward to the automated emails and its duly noted that you have been the only agent of the many we spoke to that actually LISTENED to our requests.... got to give credit where credit is due :)
We are still in the midst of figuring out if this might be our year... and one question I had for you was this. In addition to looking in the area we have set up we are also thinking of looking at single family homes in the Logan Square neighborhood as well. Is it possible to add that neighborhood to this search or perhaps to set up another one in addition to this?
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I've been approached by a major "lead interceptor", as I like to refer to them, who wants to partner with me to buy my buyer and seller leads in areas that I don't service. Since I have the entire Chicagoland MLS system on my site, I get 100's of leads per month in far-reaching areas. We are talking about $4,000 and up per month based on my current two website's traffic which is low compared to upcoming spring and summer months. Has anyone ever partnered with the likes of Lending Tree, HomeGain, HouseValues, etc. to sell their incoming leads? Overall, it seems like it might be easier than having to continually track every lead referred out to see if a sale took place and trying to get your check. It wouldn't result in nearly as much income but would be enough to maintain a decent income stream. Anybody ever done this? I'm more interested in hearing from anyone who has done this rather than why I would be selling my soul to the devil. 
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This appeared in our recent Affiliate Newsletter compliments of David Sobel and I thought it was worth sharing:.
Negotiating the offer can be a real estate professional's most daunting task. Good negotiating skills are a must for every agent because according to The 2006 National Association of REALTORS® Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, the second most important reason why a homebuyer uses a REALTOR® is to help them negotiate the terms of the sale. You are the professional and your number one priority should be to negotiate the best deal for your clients.
Here are a few negotiating tactics that almost always work (adapted from 1,200 Great Sales Tips for the Real Estate Pros by the National Association of REALTORS® (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 2007). Try them out when negotiating your next offer.
Strategy #1 - The Silent Treatment. Silence makes people uncomfortable. After you've made an important point, look directly at the other party, smile, and wait. The longer you go without saying anything, the more uncomfortable the party will get. Eventually, someone will say something - anything just to break the silence and the response will often be unguarded and will give you valuable information for your next strategy.
Strategy #2 - The Flinch. The flinch is a small sound or facial expression that communicates displeasure. Although the flinch is subtle, it can plant serious doubts in the other person's mind. Try flinching in reaction to a monetary offer or when the other party starts negotiating too aggressively. Don't be surprised if even the most experienced negotiator becomes more flexible!
Strategy #3 - The Deadline. Deadlines are a must when negotiating. They keep situations under control and get results. Begin a meeting by saying that you must leave in an hour, or, if negotiating over the phone, tell the other party that you need to be somewhere at a certain time and that they won't hear back from you for a few hours. Try setting a date when the offer will expire; this will motivate people to take decisive action.
Strategy #4 - The Competition. Competition is a good thing and mentioning that there are other parties interested in the property will keep the other side from feeling too secure. If you are the buyer's agent, remind the listing agent and the seller that the buyer also liked several properties in addition to theirs. If you are the listing agent, hint that another offer may be on the way. Don't lie, but don't miss the opportunity to use the competition to your advantage.
Strategy #5 - The Departure. Preparing to walk away from the negotiation table can get dramatic results when the other party is being non-committal or refusing to make a counteroffer. It can also backfire at times as well and if the sellers or buyer rejects the offer; you may have a very upset client on your hands. In a buyer's market, the seller may be more willing to negotiate because buyers are few and far between. There will always be another property for sale that the buyer may be interested in.
Strategy #6 - The Perk. You can negotiate valuable non-monetary perks in the contract that will satisfy the buyer while keeping the seller's bottom line in tact. Perks, such as a quicker close or a free home warranty to the buyer if items in the home should happen to break after close. Talk with your buyer first before presenting the offer. He or she may be happy with a home warranty because of the uncertainty of an older appliance or mechanical system in the home. If you represent the seller, explain to them that the home warranty can limit any post-sale liabilities after close. You can offer to pay for the warranty as a closing gift to the buyer. This will definitely get you referrals!
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(Also posted in the Message Boards) Here's an idea I came up with today that I haven't seen used on any P2 sites. My Wordpress site for http://www.Worldwide-Relocation.com shows a preview of any website links when you hover over them with your mouse. I tried adding the code to my P2 site and it works GREAT! Try hovering over the village website links in the right column of my site and you will see what I am referring to:
http://www.ShowcaseYourHome.com
If you liked that and want to do this to your site, including the ability to apply it to all of your pages, here is the procedure I used:
1) Go to http://www.snap.com/about/spa1B.php to sign up and get your free code
2) You will come to a part where you are asked to select the Icon and Trigger you wish to use. I selected "Snap Link Icon: Off" and "Trigger: Link Only"
3) In your Online Office, select Edit "TEMPLATE" page
4) Choose Header and ADD CONTENT, selecting Advanced Content (for HTML code only)
5) Remove the Advanced Content header verbiage and don't display the separator line and click on NEXT
6) In the HTML box, type <HEAD> paste in your SNAP Preview code, then type </HEAD> and save.
7) Now EDIT your HOME page and select Advanced Visibility Settings
8) Check the Header Template and Apply To Every Page.
Now, any link to another site (not your own interior page links) will display a small SNAP Preview when they are hovered over. Don't forget that it may take a short period of time for the previews to display for the rest of us to see while the site propogates, although you will be able to see it in action in your Edit menu right away.
I was so excited to see this work on my P2 site that I just had to post here also. :-) Gene
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After reading an article in RISMedia today, I started thinking about my own EXIT strategy and areas that needed addressing in order to continue with an income stream once I retire. One of the main goals I have had since starting my website presence is that they all be saleable just like you would sell a business along with the phone number which already appears in the yellow pages. With that in mind, I have purposely kept them very generic and useable in any local. I have also thought of hiring someone to handle the leads the sites generate and become strictly a referral network since there are still many agents willing to pay for qualified buyer leads. What are you doing to continue with an income stream from your real estate career after you decide to 'kick back'?
http://www.rismedia.com/wp/2007-02-19/what-is-your-exit-strategy/
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