It's been over 2 years since I got my licensed however I was only active the first year. When I first started it was hard for me because I tried it full time and the income was not coming in and the bills were accumulating causing it to be very stressful. I did ok my first year but decided to put it aside for a while. I'm now thinking of going back, starting part time first and need some help. I would like to get a website but the information I'm receiving is that it is very expensive. I don't have much to invest but I need a website that will allow clients to search properties and give them information about the area they're interested in. Can one point me to a good place to get this website having to spend a million $$? How much should I expect to pay for such website? I also saw an ad on this website offering websites for $29.95/month, have anyone used them before? What do you think about them?

Trying going on USHUD.com to begin marketing yourself as an exclusive agent in your area. Homebuyers can contact you directly about properties available. The cost per month is $149/mo. but gives you an opportunity to expand your market and start working with certain bank oowed properties.

That's a great idea rlc12. Thanks. I went on the website and fill out the form but I didn't realized that it was an application and didn't put in too much information. Do you know how difficult it is to sign up with them? I would really like the opportunity to start there.

I have one more question. Have you worked with them before? Do you get any leads from them? How effective is the program? Thanks for your help

Zeth - That seems like an awefully high amount of money per month - usually if something sonnds too good to be true it is - it seems if it was getting people that much biz then everyone would do it - know what I mean? There are so many other places you could put $150 a month that I wouldn't ever put it into just 1 form of advertising.

I've seen a lot of agents use this site: http://www.point2agent.com - they start at free and work up... If you aren't an experienced web designer yourself, this seems to be a very cost effective and professional way to go.

Zeth-email me at rcook@heavyhammer.com. I can tell you what they offer besides they are working with a lot agents and lenders nationwide already that use the site to sell properties.

Zeth, FYI, my site is a Point2 site and it generates leads for me fairly well. Please feel free to call (you'll find my number all over my site) me locally, but please don't get scammed into a lengthy one-sided agreement. I'd question the motives of anyone that tries to get you to spend $149.00 per month your first year in RE on a website.

If the website does not offer a 100 percent money back guarantee and where you ar eonly obligated to pay month to month,Run!!!!!!!!!!!

There are too many good websites out there tp commit to year or multi year contracts.You know if you can leave at anytime month to month that they better be constantly updating there site or they will lose customers.With long term contracts it is bag them and tag them,why do they need to give service they ALREADY have your money!

good luck

Also, I've heard that some of these companies push hard for your credit card number and then you lose all control. They bill you and bill you and make it very difficult (if at all) for you to get any money back that you were unfairly billed.

Thank you guys for the advice, very helpful. I will try to get my website from Point2.

Solomon, super realtor, you're from GA, what do you think about advertising in the local newspaper. How much does it cost? I know there are alot of subscribers but I'm not sure if it generates any leads since there are so many houses for sale in the homefinders. I'm doing this part time now and would like to close at least 1-2 deals a month. What are some other low cost advertising methods you would suggest that would help generate some leads on timely basis. Thanks

In principle, Internet advertising is preferred over newspaper ads, from both an investment and results standpoint. Recent NAR survey results show that 80% of buyers from 7/05-6/06 started their search on line, so that suggests how important it is that we all have a strong web presence.

I've read articles indicating that newspaper readership is declining largely because customers are shifting to the Internet for their news coverage. I have never used an AJC print ad (I have used their ajchomefinder.com), but KW has a dedicated page in the Sunday Gwinnett Daily Post and I'll be trying something new there this Sunday. That costs us $25.00 per agent.

You are focused on lead generation and that is a great thing, it is what we do. I bought a $12.00 KW name badge that I wear everywhere and people often ask me about KW. When they do, I ask who they know that is looking to buy or sell, perhaps at church or at their kid's school. I walked into the barbershop and just mentioned to my barber about this property that would be great for an investor. The guy in the chair wound up selling his home through me and buying another through me. I'd seen several properties that day, but there wasn't any one particularly in mind at that time. It was just one way to get the word out to the guy in the chair that I'm a real estate agent.

I was at a Christmas parade the first week of December wearing my badge. There was some kind of trade show or something going on and I stopped at a table to talk with this lady representing a well-known retailer here in Atlanta. A little small talk revealed that not only was she looking to buy soon, but that she wanted me to come by and see if there were some home ownership opportunities that I could share with the store's 200 employees. I'll be putting fliers in their pay envelopes in January and helping her plan a housing show at her store in February.

I was at another trade show at the GWCC. After having broken away from all of the mortgage brokers, some of them telling me that hardly any REALTORS® had come to the show (probably secret agents, not wearing their badges), I met this lady from South Carolina. We talked for a few moments and exchanged cards, yada, yada, yada. Couple of weeks later, guess who calls? She has investment property in Decatur that she needs to sell, so that brief meeting turned into a listing.

Dude, the investment for the badge was $12.00. Get out, be seen and talk to people. It's the best lead generation tool in my arsenal. Close a deal and let the real estate business pay for itself.

I love my freewebs website. I have never had a problem and it is easy to use. I have not paid a dime, either. Feel free to have a look at it. I have had one for 2 years for my old business (dog grooming) but this one is only a few months old, so I still tweaking it.
http://freewebs.com/vtrealestate

These sites can be steep.

Mine has two elements 1) web space provider and 2)MLS info provider

I host my site with A Small Orange for about $10. I then pay propertyminders.com to provide my MLS access (which is integrated into my site) for about $30 a month.

Now, since my provider does not do anything but provide the space, I use a freeware portal software called Joomla to be the front end of my site. There are also lots of add-ons and extensions you can get for Joomla to give it more features. You can also pay someone to totall customize the look for your site. All I did was take the default template and replace the front page graphic with something very basic.

You also need to decide what kind of site you have. Will you post regular updates on the site or is it really just going to stay the same all the time?

Lots of good sites out there you can look at to see what fits with what you want.

R

After you've got the site , be sure to promote it! One of the neat little things i did was get cheap coroplast signs with my web address on them and post them around town (You'll have to check your zoning laws and such). As they say , someone has to see your name 7 times to really get it , so make sure the website is a great part of your marketing (but not the only thing).

Yeah.... 20something makes a good point.

My site was really only seeing about 20-30 unique visitors a day for a while. Because I am adding content regularly, I have seen a big increase in that number. My average is about 200 unique visitors a day and I have peaks of over 1300 unique visitors in a day sometimes.

You will also find that regularly updated content helps with your search engine ranking.

If you do the various combinations of morgan hill real estate or homes for sale, my site will usually come up in the top 10. It will even come up as #1 if you search for a morgan hill brew pub... go figure, I only wrote one article about this topic. But at least I have a lock on thirsty people looking for beer in Morgan Hill who might also be looking for a home to buy or sell demographic.

R

RebelBroker, are you making significant editorial changes? Also, how long has your site been up and working? I change my site rather frequently, but it may only be a text box. I'd love to get to where you are in hits per day.

If you're going with a "name" broker, wouldn't you get a website through them? Mine isn't all that yet, but I get 12 or so hits a day roughly and I've only been doing it for a few months.

I post 3 analysis articles per month plus some random number of articles relating to local, state or national events. If you take a look at the articles up there now, you can see what I am talking about.

The site, as it currently exists, has been up since july. I had a different site that was way more static before that.

One of the reasons I went with Joomla was that it was more search engine friendly and there are some great extensions to create google sitemaps and to analyze traffic to my site. When people visit my site, I know their IP address, if they found my site via a search engine and what search words they used, what link they clicked on to come to my site (if at all). For instance, I know that 4 people in the last 24 hours have clicked on the link in my signature on this site from this thread to visit my site. It also tells me all the pages on my site a visitor looks at. It's pretty cool.

As for building traffic, you can suddenly go from a few visitors a day to thousands. The big boost in the traffic to my site happened like that. I wrote an article about the practice of re-listing and a week or two after posting it, I suddenly got 1400 unique hits in a single day where I was normally getting 20 or 30. It was nuts. That single article is still one of the big things that draws people to my site. It is linked to by dozens of sites out on the net and for whatever strange reason, I will still get about 1 day a week where my unique visitors spikes up to over 1000.

Now, remember, I am talking about UNIQUE visitors... not hits. Hits is a much bigger number. My site tracks unique visitors by their IP address. So if one guy looks at 200 different pages of my site, that is 200 hits by only 1 unique hit.

As for the broker question, I do plan to offer my agents a website to help them get their business going. However, I strongly suggest you make sure and keep as much control of your online presence as possible. After all, if you get some great site going under your brokers umbrella, if you leave that office, you are likely to lose all that traffic you have built up.

The best solution for all agents is to get your own URL. For instance, mine is www.soldbyrobert.com (along with a few others I thought were good like soldinmorganhill.com, robertwhitelaw.com, etc.). Once you have those, you can "point" them anywhere. So let your broker provide that site, but make sure that people get to your portion of the site (which might have a url like www.mybroker.com/agents/ca/mysite.htm) by entering your URL address. That way, when/if you do leave that broker, you can take your sites traffic with you since you can point your urls wherever you want.

R

I have a fairly comprehensive list of web site vendors listed on my RealPinions.com web site.

When possible I've tried to document the initial fee, monthly fee and if they offer free trial sites.

Hopefully that will help agents filter thru the potential vendors without having to research each one themselves.

Point2 does seem to always be held in high regard. I'd love to see some agents post some reviews on them (or any other vendors) on realpinions so the better vendors would rise to the top.

Kevin

Thank you guys for your advice & information, they're really helpful.

RealBroker, who do you host with? Also, if you don't mind, can you let me know where you got the Joomla free software from. Thanks alot

RebelBroker, those are great numbers, you are doing something right!

I have been using a superlative site for a few years. It is inexspensive and very easy to maintain. They have hundreds of templates to choose from.

Here is the link

http://www.superlative.com/

Good luck...

Check out: http://alamode.com/products/Agent/Default.aspx

My husband and I did mine. We also host it as well. So the only thing we had to pay for was the domain name. I am betting my husband will be sorry he offered his computer skills.

TouchPoint...

Thanks for the heads up on alamode.com. I've documented them in the real estate vendor directory: RealPinions.com under Web Site Vendors (Template Based and for Brokers), Email Enhancement/Drip Programs, and also their FleXApp WebSite Loan product.

I'm wondering if you're using them as a web vendor so I could use your site as a live sample site from RealPinions.com?

If you are using them and have a chance, you can add a review of ALaMode on RealPinions.com as well.

Kevin