The free listing sites are worth the amount that you pay. I do not know of any that receive a lot of traffic. However, some for pay listings site can be very useful. Look for sites that have good market saturation in the local area. Go for a local site instead of a nation wide site for general real estate. (This does not apply to specialty real estate)

I would say I have had maybe a dozen or so serious enquiries from free sites in teh last year.

But I have seen them climb up in the results as a result of our listings.

If you rank below them, and they rank above competition, then maybe ad listings is a good idea.

yup submitting on free sites helps your site to optimize searching in Search engines and also boost up your Search engine rankings...

What sites are you referring to? Craigslist? If so, i have gotten a ton of business from craigs... I also sold my first listing through Craigs, since i did not have it on the MLS (it was out of my range and i was a new agent). I also get a bunch of inquires about our present listings through craigs.

Craigslist is one of the best sites out there. This site is a little different. The profile that you are able to create about yourself and the cities you serve is really unique. You are able to use do-follow links to send people to your website and or blog. There are several things that you can do to that will strengthen the link(s) back to your website.

I think you need to have a central website you own. Once that's in place with your listings, having them on other sites is great exposure, especially if it's free and you can get a link back to your main website, building your web equity.

Another downer is having to much information in front of the potential buyer. If you do that then IMO makes the sale harder. You are not getting to talk to the buyer face to face.

I got my last listing from the seller seeing me advertising everywhere she looked on the internet. Has it lead to a sale? Yes. Will I continue to use a shotgun type marketing on the internet? Yes! My job as a listing agent is to use every method possible to let potential buyers know about the property.

I may never have the time to compete as far as PR and search results to beat the big time RE websites. So what if my listings are already on these same sites, with links back to my little site. My job is not to be the number one RE site in search results, my job is to sell my clients property for the most money in the shortest time possible with the least amount of hassle for them. Not become an internet guru! But I will admit I enjoy the whole aspect of internet marketing since it gives a little guy like me an equal footing with the big guys!

what he said.

FREE is all you need to know :)