Real Estate Marketing SEO Blog

The Founder of the Web on Social Media

I said the web, not the internet.  Marc Andreessen invented the modern browser. He speaks about the death of print media and Facebook and Twitter to name a few. Listen in and as one of the web's big thinkers gives his view of the future.

How To Blog Comment For Profit

Yesterday I posted an article on affiliate marketing for real estate and mortgage pros. It was in response to a post on another RENet vendor website 4Realz.net

I had left a comment on Dustin Luther's post that was in opposition to posting affiliate ads all over one's brand.

Since the comment has been deleted I post it here:

I think this is a bad idea in so many ways I cannot count them all.
Let me begin by going back to the movement towards localism.
Why did that have to be?
Because many of the posts had nothing to do with the real estate in that agents town.
I remember seeing ( and still do at times) agents writing about SEO or Online Marketing. As a marketer and SEO vendor I find those posts interesting. However, it diminishes that authors brand. What are you an SEO or a Realtor?

 In the case of affiliate marketing it is very tempting to slap a moving company up on ones blog. Moving.com, Foreclosure.com, Forsalebyowner.com are some places that would make easy fits.

For a few sheckles you just diminished your message.
You would be much better served to offer this stuff on the back end of sequencing or an email campaign.

And in fact even better off to partner with local vendors to offer tips and strategies and commissions(textual, video, etc) as content for your front end and backend lead marketing.(I let you deal with the legalities one way or another as I have no idea how that would work)

In the end, why would you dilute your brand and message with other brands, stronger than yours stealing screen real estate?

I am not sure why Dustin deleted my comment post. Perhaps it was by mistake. However, presenting other's opinions are the point of comments. And in fact allowing for commentary that fly's opposite of yours is an opportunity to bolster your standing amongst your "tribe".

I discuss this in my next installment of free videos at the RealEstateGuerilla.com

Making Some Extra Coin in a Down Market

Real Estate Blogs and Affiliate Marketing-Monetizing in a Down Market

There has been lots of talk here and there lately with affiliate marketing and real estate blogs.

Short answer:don't.

Long answer....

What is affiliate marketing? Many believe that the term was invented by Amazon who actually coined  the phrase "associate marketing". They liked their new word so much they wouldn't let anyone else use it so they had to use "affiliate". Each Associate  gets a small fee for listing Amazon's ad or widget on your webpage or site.  For a site like Amazon the payment is near 5-10% (depending on their terms).

If that answer didn't get you to think twice about doing affiliate marketing on your site then run the numbers.

How many leads do you get now? Compare that to your visitors and you have the Tootsie Roll Pop Ratio. That is how many visitors to get to a lead?

Now add another message called an advertisement for Amazon and now you just split your message in two. But more than likely you will even get less of a return than before because your message is no longer focused.

The types of sites you might use are foreclosure.com, forsalebyowner.com, moving.com, etc. Probably the largest affiliate network can be found at CommissionJunction.com.

FOCUS

The challenge I find with most real estate websites especially blogs is that they lack a slippery chute. In other words, no call to action. No, "I wanna get to you better" offer. And I must admit I have been guilty of this myself. 

It amazes me however that often times the RE NET, are more than happy to discuss passing off traffic to an affiliate. Which in turn hoses their branding, while refusing to ask the visitor to sign up for any kind of email sequencing/drip. All for a few bucks, maybe. Its absurd.

If you are going to do affiliate marketing this way then I would suggest that you send the ads as recommendations through email. The conversions will be better for you this way. But still I wouldn't do it.

The Real Way to Do Affiliate Marketing and Real Estate

Do not step over Dollars thinking you will make Dimes with the traditional online affiliate networks and companies.  Instead...

You know that Title guy that bugs you for business weekly? The Escrow and Pest Control. You know all those affiliate people that have jobs on the backs of your transactions?

They owe you. Make them add some value to your business. Here is how:
Have them help you create back end and front end educational services. Please, I do not want to here about various legalities.( Or any other legal excuse not to market. That is for you to figure out with your Legal people.)

• Set up email sequencing
• Free Reports
• Blog interviews
• Video Interviews
• Podcasts

Now the buyer or seller will insist on these guys and actually have a reason to pay for them down the road.

You can also go to your local Moving Company, Furniture Company, etc and create offers that either pay you through affiliate commissions or in barter, trade, etc. Get creative. I like where you can get the affiliates to help with the upfront content as that is where most agents suffer. If they have materials in print all you have to do is digitize and repurpose them into useful online content.

So be creative and do not step over Dollars for Dimes. Not when you can create a team of affiliates that you can leverage for multiple payoffs instead of just one small fee.

We will discuss these concepts in much more depth at http://www.RealEstateGuerilla.com

Website Stimulus

The web is getting larger daily. Consider this scenario: If you have 1 oodle of value today and the total value of the web is 100 oodles. And Tomorrow you still hold your 1 oodle, while the web value increased to 500 oodles. Your web value just decreased by several hundred percent. This is not unlike what happens daily as the web grows. Are you growing with it?

How To Change The Real Estate Market With Your Blog

What Are You Emoting In Your Marketing?

I just penned a post over at the PositiveonRealEstate Blog on perceptions and the way they influence our decisions and more importantly how perceptions drive the real estate marketplace.

The issue being at its core is how are you as a publisher influencing the real estate conversation?

I see Realtors on FaceBook or Twitter report their number of showings or 4 offers for the day are implying that their marketplace is robust. The article I wrote goes even beyond that in discussing how language can move people. Of course I steal mostly from political examples as they are the most obvious.

Consider the following scenario:
If the market comes back you want to be already prepared.

WHEN the market comes back NOW you will profit from the turnaround. Face it most people do not even know the market has turned around before it is too late.

When is stronger than if, and Now puts people into the moment and more of an action oriented place.

How To Get More Commissions With a Simple Lesson

Real Estate Alchemy
There is a good chance that your clients are missing thousands of dollars of cash flow. All you have to do is show them where it is.

What if you could offer your favorite Investor clients the knowledge that they are sitting on  tens of thousands of dollars in untapped equity? There is a very good chance that your client has never heard of these rules, while you just might have created a client for life.

The first half of the interview is how AmiLynne Carrol and I met on FaceBook and how she saved me from the bizarre ID theft a few weeks ago.

But more importantly she will share with you how she uses FaceBook for networking to build her business. Not for Socialization per se.

The Facebook stuff is in the beginning while the Investor stuff is about half way through the interview.

Here is AmiLynne's information:
AmiLynne Carroll
RUI Financial Services
Specializing in the Application of Cost Segregation
office-818 883-8304
Cell-818-585-5676