I am about to become an agent in the Phoenix area.Can anyone recommend a website developer that they have actually used? Thanks in advance for any information you can give to me.

If you've got a lot of money to burn, realestatewebmasters does good work. On the other end, you do it yourself on wordpress for under a $100. Check out my work in the signature, and I'll be glad to answer any questions.

Thanks for the information Steve. I passed my test today so I am going to try and figure out the best approach and way to spend my marketing money.

Check out Solutions real estate, they give you some of the best website around, teach you how to build your own WP sites and will train you to convert and close deals. OH ya and it's all free.

Don't get caught up in creating an elaborate website in your first year.

ActiveRain is a good solution for your first year. You can blog to your heart's content on your niche market. You get a profile page. And the blog posts show on Google for you in searches.

Do YouTube videos talking about your niche market and put a link in youtube description to your blog.

Get on Twitter and post tweets specific to your market. Have a link to your blog on Twittter.

I have seen a lot of Agents waste money on websites early in their career and nowadays with Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, youtube and now Google + you can do so much online for free.

Good luck!

Thanks,

Mario

I'm teaching a website class on August 4th. Let me know if you can stop by. Do you know where you're hanging your license yet?

You are saying newer agents should concentrate on social media marketing ahead of your own personal website? Maybe it's just me but I think it is highly unlikely and a bad business model to try to sell real estate from social media....

I have to say you need to use the method that works best for you! There is no one size fits all here, if you are not going to tap in to social media and work it right and to its full potential, then you will be very disappointed. I started off straight SPAMMING (I know it's an online sin) with social media and the results were cr@p! Now it is an important part of my marketing, note I say part.

So with that said I would recommend to anyone just starting or seasoned is to evaluate what you will enjoy doing, start doing it with a set time frame 3 to 6 months is my minimum recommendation (results do take time) and monitor your ROI. Also ask others to evaluate your efforts, I know I could have used a ton of the tips and tricks I have learned over the years back when I began.

I am always happy to take a look and give input so just ask, you will be shocked how many others will help as well.

Peace and Love!

Just to offer my 2 cents...

If you are going to hold off on setting up a true "professional" website, be sure to at least register your chosen domain name ASAP (but it's best to use one you already own), and register it for at least 3 years - the more the merrier. Once registered, setup a very, very basic blog on that domain - preferably somewhat real estate related. Don't worry about how it looks at this stage - the content is the important thing.

This isn't for client/prospect consumption. Rather, it will give your domain at least a starting point where it concerns the domain's "reputation and authority." Doing this will definitely payoff in the future when it comes to website visibility and rankings.

Anthony is right about the "if you can't afford to get anything done professionally or possess the talent yourself then it's not worth doing" but a little misguided about the whole domain thing. While he is right that domain age is a factor when it comes to pagerank/authority, you won't be building either of those 2 things if you're not getting links back to your site showing Google what it's relevant for.

Easiest way to go about building your relevance around the web is getting listed in popular Yellow Page directories with links back to your site, forums just like this one with links back to your site, blog comments from other relevant real estate blogs, facebook and twitter don't necessarily help in the link dept. because their links aren't followed by Google for obvious spam reasons but they can be a good traffic source if you build up enough "likes" or "followers" and traffic should always be your goal.

If you'd like more specifics about examples or how to get started just pm me and I can shoot you in the right direction.

You don't have to build links to start gaining age on your domain, but it will need to be attached to a live site and get indexed and if you know how to it will only take a few hours to get it indexed and you can set up a WP site for a few bucks a month.

Really none of this even matters if you are not going to focus on it. Domain age is almost irrelevant, I get my new websites ranking on page 1 of G in 6 to 8 weeks and they stick. With the new panda update it has made it even easier, if you create and distribute great content.

Domain age does mean something, if it's been an established domain with a decent link base and been live and crawled regularly which is always the case if you have a quality link base pointing back at your site.

To your second point, domain age is far from irrelevant and you don't get any site on page 1 of Google in 6 to 8 weeks for anything "RELEVANT" which is evidence in the fact that none of the sites in your signature are on page 1 for the key terms you are targeting in their anchor text. I can get on page 1 in 30 minutes for long tail phrases by writing a couple paragraphs from a credible Press Release site.

http://www.ecreativeim.com/blog/2011/02/is-domain-age-important-for-google-rankings/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1_1NQWQJ2Q

Here it is from Matt Cutts himself, I still don't care about domain age much at all because it is such a small piece of the equation.

On the second comment by homesocial, of course the links in my signature aren't ranking on page 1 yet, that's because I just started working on these ones. I started with a ton of easy long tail searches and am now moving in to the broader searches. One of my sites has been up for less than 30 days and is ranked # 16 already, so it is well on its way.

Ranking a press release is not the same as ranking your money site, I can rank an Active rain blog for long tail in less then 30 seconds but that's not ranking my money site. I do see value in both of those activities for driving traffic and links.

OK I think this went way off topic, we all have our own thought and opinions and at the end of the day it is about getting leads and closing deals, so if it works for you keep doing it.

Peace and Love.