Hello, my name is Brandon and my father is a realtor in KC, MO. I am going to begin working on a website for him because I realize how much a good one can do for his biz. I have a few questions for those of you that have had success online.

How many prospects is your site producing?

How many prospects go to contract?

What ways do you promote it?

Do you use PPC?

What provider did you use to create it? (No template sites!)

That's everything on the tip of my tongue. Thanks a lot for all of your help.

Google PPC seems to work the best.
Link exhchanges do some good.
Aplus.net web hosting
Produces loads of traffic via the Google PPC program.

I found mydirectties.com as a good way to market yourself. It has gotten me one lead so far, but I have just started. It is free, so my post in the Agents discussion for tips I have found so far... topic: Online Marketing Tool - pretty good

How many prospects is your site producing?
391 for the month of July.

How many prospects go to contract?
depends, but 3 closed this month (july) directly from website.

What ways do you promote it?
Search engine optimization, link exchanging.

Do you use PPC?
YES! about $400 to $700 a month.

What provider did you use to create it? (No template sites!)
DYI.

(don't be fooled... even "custom" sites start with a template! a GOOD programmer or designer NEVER starts from scratch... to save time/money, they start with a site that most matches what you're looking for and changes it... so you really start with a template)

Hey Greg,

Is that 391 people that actually contacted you to buy or sell a home, 391 hits, or 391 unique visitors???

BTW, this is still June. :p

Also Greg, (only becasue it's a beautiful hot day up here)

Are you a Realtor and are your "3 closed this month" ---house sales ?

The conversion rates between different industries on the net are not related.

If the 3 closed were for the basic package your web page offers, your SOL on the ROI of your PPC

Cheers

Sorry... that was stats for June, not July. We ended June with 431 new email address added to our prospecting data base. (which the prospect system automatically follows up with)

A "prospect" is how many people registered at our website, 431 people left us their email address (unique email addresses, we don't count duplicates). Of course many of those can't afford to purchase a home, many of those have unrealistic goals, many are for areas we don't service, and many of those we just don't want to work with for some reason or another.

I personally am not the Realtor, I am on the team as the team techie.

The 3 that closed were for homes, not websites. The NET from these 3 transactions is about $70,000, so the ROI from PPC is definetly not SOL, plus we get a bunch of traffic from non-PPC resources. (we're in Orange County, so the average price around here is $500,000) But even one sale at $100,000 per month would justify a $500 PPC budget.