Re: ‘Rookie Realtor lost in cyberspace‘ (July 13)
Dear Rookie:
I would suggest some tools such as those provided by Relocation Essentials or Bert Sperling to draw people to your site. Most studies indicate that consumers are looking for listings and neighborhood information when they visit a site, not your resume.
Just an idea.
Pam
pamgregw@comcast.net
Dear Rookie:
Well, as you’ve learned, the days of “if you build it, they will come” are over. In fact, they ended in, oh, 1999-2000. I know. I started putting up real estate sites in 1997, and it became progressively harder to crack the top 10. I stopped. My earlier sites are still enjoying phenomenal results because I spent a lot of time getting them up on the search engines, and, I guess, longevity counts.
I spent $3,000 last year on one of my sites to a “search engine positioning” company. Although traffic is up, leads are down. Go figure.
As an aside, I didn’t sell a property for the first 15 months after getting my license. This was in Beverly Hills (Los Angeles County) during a period when prices dropped 35 percent over a five-year period, and I was a listing agent! Dumb! But, buyers were low-balling everything. After five years, and finally making six figures, I got involved in some board/mls vs. big company politics and trashed my business in the process. Found out I hated real estate and that the past five years had been the worst of my life.
I went to Las Vegas and played poker for six months to decompress. The good news? I broke even. The bad news? Figured I wasn’t going to be a professional poker player.
Here’s how to have a successful Web site: remember, the Internet is just one part of your marketing. You need to integrate it with all your other marketing. All your other marketing needs to be teasers to get people to your Web site where you must offer them some value–enough so that they will be willing to part with their contact info, or at least their e-mail address.
Also, after eight years dealing with Internet leads, here are the cold hard facts:
- Successful agents will convert between 3 percent to 5 percent of their gross leads.
- 98 percent of leads will be buyers.
Good luck!
Rick Campbell
Real Estate Reports
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Got tips, ideas or advice for the Rookie Realtor? Send them to Rookie@inman.com.
