I have a ~$5K Budget total for designing and developing a website for my RE market niche.

I've made several false starts to the tune of $500 or so. I have a 'vision' for a rather complex site and have most of it on paper. But I worry that my communication skills are lacking and that the service provider doesn't really understand what I'm looking for.

I was thinking of earmarking about $1K for getting help developing the web specifications document as well as marketing approach/content.

Thoughts?

Often Realtors develop their vision for their own site based on taking/modifying ideas (features, colors, layouts, etc.) from several other sites they have seen. It is probably easiest if you bookmark some of these sites and let your web developer see them to get a better picture of what it is you are looking for. That would certainly help the developer understand what you are looking for.

Make sure you install a WordPress blog, configure it correctly (especially for pings) and post at least once a week. This will give you alot of exposure for free! WordPress is free. Its easy to install if your web host has cpanel. Contact me if you want a great ping list. The better your blog content is the more traffic you will get.

Heres an one example of a blog that I have, it looks like a helpful website,,, but is a wordpress blog with an "abtheme". http://www.winatmoney.com I post about once a week, I get a flood of traffic after posting, then the posts get indexed in google, msn and yahoo, thus bringing in more traffic for ever.

Make sure your posts contain keywords or key phrases so you get indexed correctly. Dont repeat keywords, it does not work. Mor quality content works, plus pinging correctly. Be sure to learn about technorati(a blog search engine) and save your money!