Does/Has anyone use, thought about using, or seen someone using their real estate web site to generate revenue outside of real estate (for example, referral link to amazon.com, or impementing adsense ads and receiving pay per click)? Granted, we are all real estate agents, and we are out to make money selling real estate, but if one has a successful web site that can earn some money using other revenue channels, why not using it? Is this legal? My concern is that, in the absolute strictist sense, could someone claim that referring a visitor to a real estate web site to buy a book at amazon and receiving a payment from amazon for that referral be similiar getting a kickback for referring a client to a lender, the latter of which we know is illegal. Thoughts?

I've had a small section on my website for many years titled: "Jim's Cyber Store" where I sell URL plates that go on your car to replace the dealer sticker on the rear and a couple of other things. It brings in 20-50 bucks a month in revenue which pays for my web hosting and a couple of lunches.

I don't really see how the RESPA police could construe this as any sort of 'kickback' because it is in no way related to a real estate transaction I might be involved in.

You're right, it would seem to make sense that if the referral has nothing to do with real estate then RESPA is not involved. Are there any other thoughts? The reason I ask, is the agent web site that I'm developing talks about a number of community resources and activities. In a couple of instances I can actually acquire a referral fee if one of my web site visitors chooses to make a purchase for a ticket to one of the community cultural activities that I provide information about. I'm trying to decide whether or not to take advantage of this. The same goes for google adsense. Why not put it on the site. If you have the confidence of knowing that your site is compelling enough to get them to come back, then you can have the confidence to post google adsense links.

We see nothing wrong using adsense to generate some revenue. You may find that it will also pay some of your hosting fees. Even a little bit helps.