It’s Milk the Realtors week on the RE.net — with the shilling appeals for useless new “solutions” getting pretty close to actual sleaze — so I wanted to revisit a couple of themes we’ve hit before. Inherent in the Web 2.0 idea is a de-verticalization of real estate marketing. Big-budget interruption marketing doesn’t work, but intimate viral marketing does. Because of the Web 2.0 revolution, Realtors are free — at last — to control their own marketing — and their own costs.
“So,” say the shills and wannabe shills, “how can we cash in on that?” And the result is the Web 2.0 industry for Realtors: Vertical-market weblog vendors and vertical-market social marketing schemes.
Here’s a hint: You don’t need to pay someone money to “network” for referrals and agents to refer business to. All you need to do is network. If you’re paying attention to the RE.net, you already know three agents in every town in North America.
Here’s another hint: There is no such thing as an interesting amalgamation of hyper-local real estate weblogs. A hyper-local weblog is interesting because it’s hyper-local. Combining eight hyper-local weblogs is seven-eighths boring to every possible reader — as boring as the “Neighborhoods” section of the local newspaper, but harder to slog through.
You don’t need vendors to control your marketing, and getting in bed with vendors is potentially disastrous. These are my three simple rules for dealing with technology vendors:
- Avoid hosted software systems
For dedicated web site vendors, dedicated weblog vendors, dedicated virtual or video tour vendors, dedicated customer relationship management vendors, the money is in the blades — the monthly hosting fees — not the razor, the ostensible product. The initial outlay might be steep enough, but the gravy comes from taking money from you month after month for “services” for which the added incremental costs are almost nothing. Okayfine. Everybody’s gotta eat. The trouble with hosted software systems is not the pricing but, rather, who owns the data and what happens to it when you elect to take your business elsewhere. Is your data yours to take with you? Worse, is your confidential information truly confidential? If you do switch vendors, will your contact database, for example, find its way onto the spam market? Can you be sure that it won’t? The vendors in BloodhoundBlog’s audience will surely squeal that their integrity is being unfairly impugned. That’s fine. With what third parties do they share their confidential, proprietary information? Catch a clue: Do as they do and not as they say. - Avoid proprietary technology
Here’s the cute part about dealing with hosted software systems: They’re almost always built on proprietary software tools. Even if you can take your data with you at the door, you can’t take that software that you have paid for, month after month. Welcome to Ground Zero, where you get to start all over again. I am not arguing against intellectual property rights — far from it. But if you have paid for software, your right to use that software should not end with your relationship with the software vendor. If you have hardware that will still run Lotus 1-2-3, you have every right to see your P&L statement in glowing green digits. Ideally, any tools you use on hosted systems should be open source. Failing that, you should have a full-boat license to the functionality, not a license that is rent-based or contingent upon your continued commerce with the licensor. - Pursue commodity solutions — and prices
And thus we come to god’s gift to rational internet commerce, the Apache web server. If your net-based software systems are all built with standard Apache web server open source tools — like Perl, PHP, Ruby, MySQL and WordPress — your data is free from the bonds of avaricious vendors. Moving a decent sized real estate practice from one Apache server to another is not a task to be undertaken lightly. But it can be undertaken, with no loss of either your data or your software functionality. Moreover, because you are using commodity tools, your monthly hosting charges will reflect commodity prices. We pay less per month for all of our hosting — dozens of domains — than you will pay for one vendor-hosted web site.
Teri Lussier was gracious enough to cover the other half of this equation just last night:
What do I bring to this table? Since there is a bit of anarchy here, I could bring whatever I want to the table, but in the end I’m gonna shake what my mama gave me and dance with them what brung me. Today I’m bringing hyperlocal blogging.
Somewhere someone is reading this who is a new-ish Realtor, learning the business, and learning blogging, and working in a bit of a broken down market. Am I the only real estate agent in this situation? Hardly, although I am the only Bloodhound in this situation. Am I speaking of you? You are working to set yourself apart, to improve your odds of lasting in this business, and wondering how to work it in your market? This post is for you.
Greg’s advice for local RE weblogging has always been to remember the people we write for, who are not necessarily the people who comment, and certainly not the other Realtors who show up on MyBlogLog widgets. He also advised me to find local bloggers and link early and link often. All this advice is beginning to pay off for me, and in the Bloodhound spirit of sharing, I’m here to encourage the other hyperlocal bloggers to stick to your Be-the-Community guns.
In my neck of the woods, few people know what a blog is, nor do they care, and that disturbed me at first as I had some niggling thoughts about using a blog in Dayton to generate leads. On occasion, it was tough to hear about thousands of hits per day to some blogs, and still keep my head down and focused on blogging in the “be the community” way. Are you reading this and nodding your head? Let’s revisit this list of RE blogging objectives that Greg posted:
“Here is a hierarchy of objectives you can pursue with a true weblog, as opposed to a hand-crafted keyword-packed splog:
- Readers who like what you have to say
- Enough to return to read future posts
- Enough to subscribe by email or RSS feed
- Enough to promote your weblog to their friends or associates
- Enough to use you for a real estate transaction
- Enough to commit to you for their future transactions
- Enough to refer you to family and friends
- Enough to refer you to strangers
- Enough to actively campaign for you with anyone who has a real estate need”
Don’t you love that? It’s so Bloodhound.
A funny thing happened on the way to the online forum. What my blog is bringing me is opportunities to create leads, but first and foremost it’s relationship building. It’s Web 2.0, yes, but it’s also the same way my dad made connections- person to person. And being someone who really likes people, this is a fantastic thing. I prefer to step out from behind a computer and talk to people over coffee.
The surprising thing to me is I’m connecting with other bloggers. I do go to local meet-ups, I go to events, I get out and shake blogger’s hands and look them in the eyes. Some of these bloggers have begun to throw ideas and introductions my way, and I’m doing the same for them when I can. It’s using Web 2.0 to facilitate relationship building. TheBrickRanch is not a real estate splog and I think that is a key to connecting. The other bloggers in Dayton know I’m not blogging to shove real estate and ME down their throats. If my blog was all about ME, I wouldn’t be trusted, and I wouldn’t be welcomed.
These ideas are discussed in detail at Real Estate Weblogging 101.
And there are so many bad ideas being sold out there, I could just scream. It’s actually funny. Teri, in particular, actually demonstrates the best ideas in Web 2.0 marketing, and we give those ideas away for free. But if you want SEO scams or organized referrals trees or mutually-voluntary chain gangs, you have to pay your hard-earned money.
You are at a unique point in the history of humanity: You can broadcast — or narrowcast — your message without selling your soul to a broadcasting company. All you have to do to seize that opportunity is manage your own marketing and, as much as you can, your own marketing technology.
Shailesh Ghimire says:
Greg,
This is brilliant. Agents and most people in general are a bit overwhelmed by all this Web 2.0 stuff. They have the mindset to pay the guy who “knows” – well the guy who “knows” isn’t really selling you something the really needs a lot of “know-ing” – quite honestly, a few hours of effort on the agents part can put them smack daddy in the drivers seat of their own marketing (like you said). The vendors peddling these services are not really selling you anything but capitalizing on your own ignorance.
October 11, 2007 — 9:21 am
Greg Swann says:
> The vendors peddling these services are not really selling you anything but capitalizing on your own ignorance.
Indeed. Or, even worse, leading you in the wrong direction.
October 11, 2007 — 9:28 am
Teri Lussier says:
Greg, you brought up a point I had meant to bring up but neglected- this point in history.
I had been drafting my post in the wee hours of the morning, over the course of a three day getaway (25th anninversary!). I don’t sleep well in hotels, so thank god for the laptop, and a sound-sleeping husband with a sense of humor.
One thing that kept running through my head at 4 a.m. was what a remarkable time this was. What I was able to do in a relatively short period of time, without a company getting involved is what anyone could do. It’s extraordinarily exciting, and people only need to take advantage of the tools that are at their disposal. To fail to do that is truly, and quite frankly, beyond stoopid.
October 11, 2007 — 9:51 am
Brian Brady says:
Busy and/or struggling agents and originators,with “ignorance” in the interactive marketing arena, need to get in the game because the game is going to be big next year. So big that I believe the Brokers and Banks will limit agents’ and originators’ activities, in the name of compliance but with an eye towards control.
Your advice, while prescient, may become immaterial if this happens.
October 11, 2007 — 9:59 am
Teri Lussier says:
Brian- I think that day is coming as well.
October 11, 2007 — 10:02 am
Greg Swann says:
> Your advice, while prescient, may become immaterial if this happens.
Up your own organization. Hide and watch as the record labels disintegrate before your eyes. You don’t need Dave Liniger or Gary Keller or Glenn Kelman — and you certainly don’t need them telling you what you can and cannot do.
October 11, 2007 — 10:10 am
Sean M. Broderick, CCIM says:
Being a couple of months into this (blogging stuff).. There’s that feeling you have when you’re in control of your own “kingdom” and you don’t even know that you don’t know something (you know).. Then you find out that you don’t know, what you didn’t know, what you should have known.. Then you realize that you’re a fish out of water..
Thanks Greg.. Web 2.0?? any commercial questions?
October 11, 2007 — 10:16 am
Greg Swann says:
You’ll have to clarify that, Sean.
Here’s a post I wrote about Web 2.0 at The Phoenix Real Estate Technology Exchange. The linked post goes into Web 2.0 even more deeply.
October 11, 2007 — 10:20 am
Sean M. Broderick, CCIM says:
The “fish” is getting closer to shore.. I’m getting the picture now.. Most of what I understood about Web 2.0 was from the wiki side, not recognizing that I was doing it myself..
Thanks..
October 11, 2007 — 11:01 am
Brian Brady says:
“Up your own organization.”
Amen. The readers here are the exception, however, and not the rule.
Your advice begets a bigger question. Is independence in weblogging really a virture to the MASS consumer audience or is canned content, on a proprietary platform, sufficient to meet their demand for real estate and loan information?
More importantly, which is the more credible source to that mass consumer: Brian Brady or the Wells Fargo company-paid writer?
October 11, 2007 — 11:42 am
Greg Swann says:
> The readers here are the exception, however, and not the rule.
The readers here are the future.
> Is independence in weblogging really a virture to the MASS consumer audience or is canned content, on a proprietary platform, sufficient to meet their demand for real estate and loan information?
The viral hierarchy detailed above can only be achieved by authentic, visceral contact. There is no short-cut to that kind of trust/faith/enthusiasm, but, once you’ve achieved it, you are completely beyond competition.
October 11, 2007 — 12:03 pm
Tom Wolf says:
Brian, you took the words right out of my mouth. While I think Greg’s (and Teri’s) advice is solid, you simply can’t escape the fact that the HUGE majority of agents cannot successfully execute an online marketing plan by themselves. In the interest of disclosure, I’ll admit I’m biased because I work for a technology vendor, but the concept of “Do It Yourself” is pervasive everywhere you look. There are so many books and websites available today that allow you to Do it Yourself when it comes to such things as tiling a floor, plumbing, fixing a car, building a website, etc. It still doesn’t change the fact that many people simply can’t do those things for reasons ranging from time to skill level, which is why they use a professional. I also agree with the notion that those that can do it themselves are way ahead of the game and will have a leg up in future.
October 11, 2007 — 2:19 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Tom- (since you brought my name into this)Web 2.0, the way I’m talking about it, is not at all the same as fixing a car or tiling a floor. That’s the point here. What I am doing is creating a relationship, not a website. I cannot hire someone to do that for me. And what an insult to the people I’m trying to establish a relationship with.
Sure, you can get leads with a bought site, but if you think there is a similarity between a bought site and what I have created, except in the mechanics/ technology of the thing, then you have missed the whole point of Web 2.0.
I’m a bit offended that you would even suggest such a thing…
October 11, 2007 — 3:47 pm
Tom Wolf says:
Teri, I’m sorry if I offended you. I was actually agreeing with you, just not on as broad of a scale. I must have chosen my words poorly. I have no idea how you interact with your clients so it was not directed at you.
I agree that the relationship is the important thing. When I talk about a HUGE number of agents not being able to execute a marketing plan, I don’t mean that a huge majority of agents aren’t capable of building a relationship, nor am I suggesting that vendors can build that relationship for them. Like it or not though, the “technology and mechanics” is one of the things that allows you to do this, along with your writing/blogging skills, and quite frankly, a lot of people don’t have those skills. It doesn’t mean that they can’t effectively build a relationship with someone if they were standing face to face with them. It also doesn’t mean that they aren’t a good agent for their client.
A question was asked at Inman several months ago. The question was, “Should everyone blog?”. That’s sort of a different blog topic for another day, but I’ll tell you that the panel of “experts” was very divided on this topic. Sorry again. No offense intended.
October 11, 2007 — 4:17 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Okay Tom, I understand your comment wasn’t meant to offend.
I did not set up my blog- Greg did- that’s the mechanics we are talking about here. I could not have done that alone, BUT, the mechanics are now mine. Everything about the site is mine. There are places in Dayton that can set up a blog for me, and yes, I am fortunate that Greg is able to do this, but regardless of who sets up my blog, because it’s WordPress, it represents me- it’s my relationship building, AND MY CONTENT. No third party owns any of it, created any of it, has any rights to it and never will.
Is this a superior product? To me it is simply because it is me- visceral, authentic, transparent, immediate. Not me as seen through the eyes of a displaced, unattached, cold third party. As we might say around here- Ya can’t fake “real”. And, to repeat, I own it!
Should everyone blog? No. 🙂
October 11, 2007 — 4:56 pm
Greg Swann says:
> I did not set up my blog- Greg did- that’s the mechanics we are talking about here.
Nor did I do anything you could not have done. A self-hosted WP weblog is harder to set up than a WP.com site, but there are plenty of commodity-level vendors to bridge the gap. The dangers I see in getting involved with hosted vendors are detailed in this post and in BHB 1736. Communicating honestly on a less-than-five-star weblog will be more effective in the long run than trying to trick people from a tricked-out vendor’s site. Convincing people that they can’t do what we’re talking about starts with changing the subject. Anyone can tell the truth. It’s deception that takes a special effort.
October 11, 2007 — 5:11 pm
Brian Brady says:
“Should everyone blog? No”
But everyone will have one, Teri. I’m firmly in the Bloodhound Camp on this one but I see the benefits to buying a “blog in a box”.
Why do you blog, Brian? To connect viscerally with a potential customer.
Why do you blog, Bill the Top Producer? To connect with potential customers.
Brian’s connections are better but Bill’s are just as lasting if he closes a loan. The connection, while dramatically different, has the same result; a closed loan.
More importantly is the concept of leverage. If you read the Millionaire Real Estate Agent, it successfully exploits the law of numbers. If Bill buys a “blog in a box” and connects with 100 customers while I connect with 10, who wins?
Philosophically, I’m in the Bloodhound Camp. Pragmatically? I see the benefits of leverage.
October 11, 2007 — 5:14 pm
Tom Wolf says:
Thanks for that clarification and now that I’m on the same page I couldn’t agree more. I mentioned earlier that I work for a vendor. We build websites. One of the most frequent requests we get from agents is for us to fill their site up with content. Most of the real estate web dev. companies provide canned content to all of their clients. We don’t, and we get a lot of pushback. We try to educate the client that unique content is the most valuable part of the site for “individualizing” it (not to mention search engine rankings), but 9 times out of 10 they say that they understand and ask us to do it anyway.
By recognizing the importance of creating unique content, and using that content for your gain and that of your clients, you really are one step ahead. In my opinion, I don’t think the rest of the pack will be catching up very soon.
October 11, 2007 — 5:22 pm
Teri Lussier says:
Brian- Yes. I know. It’s sad.
I’m betting the farm that Greg’s right: “Communicating honestly on a less-than-five-star weblog will be more effective in the long run than trying to trick people from a tricked-out vendor’s site.”
October 11, 2007 — 5:24 pm
Teri Lussier says:
One more from me- or from Seth actually.
http://seedsofgrowth.com/how-to-create-a-great-website
October 11, 2007 — 5:58 pm
Real Estate Fort Collins says:
I can say this blog post is right on. Hosted software solutions for realty is ONLY a good idea if you do not plan on doing an online marketing campaign. But thats why we all build our own sites. If you ever decide to drop that hosting account because they make you mad or raise the price you loose all of your back links and have to edit all your online marketing material.
Using pripriatary software is just as bad. When that business shuts down or moves focus you are stuck holding a broken system.
You are a realtor not a web marketer. It is better if you concentrate on your business and have an expert run your marketing campaign. My website is just now getting built and I have hired a guy who seems extremely knowledgable. The price for my site plus a marketing campain will run me 2k but for everything he is doing it is well worth it. I know I will have great organic listings in search engines in the coming months
October 12, 2007 — 12:06 am
Todd Carpenter says:
Gregg,
I think you overestimate the technical prowess of most people. Setting up an Independent WP site requires knowledge of how to operate a FTP client, and text editor (for your config file). Most people out there still think you have to type “http://www” before every url. Most people don’t know what an RSS feed is.
Sure, they could learn. I didn’t go to school for any of this stuff. I figured it out. But most people are not willing to put the time in, so why shouldn’t the market come to the rescue.
Where I agree with you the most is that people worry to much about how their blog looks, how many widgets it has, and how it will capture leads. None of it’s relevant if you can’t actually write something worth reading. The beauty of Word Press is that anyone can spiffy up their blog later. Start writing, and worry about that stuff after you know blogging is something you can do long term.
October 12, 2007 — 12:46 am
Eddie D says:
Uhuh. So what you are saying is these people are selling you a service which with a little effort you could perform yourself. Kinda like buying or selling a house.
October 12, 2007 — 4:50 am
Greg Swann says:
> service which with a little effort you could perform yourself. Kinda like buying or selling a house.
If you can buy or sell a house more cheaply than a professional can do it for you, which includes lost income opportunities and opportunity costs, then your optimal strategy is to do it yourself. I can build many marketing tools better, faster and cheaper than I can pay to have them done. Even so, eventually I’ll stop doing this work, because my time will be more profitably spent elsewhere. If you can sell your house more economically than I can do it for you, it’s probably not a house we would list. Our marketing is hugely effective, but it tends to work best on pricier homes. The people we work for would lose a ton of money doing our job instead of their own. This is all a perfectly simple economic calculation.
October 12, 2007 — 7:10 am
Teri Lussier says:
>Kinda like buying or selling a house.
Greg is also discussing ownership issues. Is your home yours at the end of the transaction?
>For dedicated web site vendors, dedicated weblog vendors, dedicated virtual or video tour vendors, dedicated customer relationship management vendors, the money is in the blades — the monthly hosting fees —
It’s like renting a home in which you have done all the maintainence, upkeep, landscaping, updated the plumbing and electric…then you move… What goes with you?
October 12, 2007 — 7:38 am
Michael Price says:
Is this post directed at all technology vendors? To be sure, there are many out there ready to sell a bill of goods to any re professional willing to bite. To lump everyone that sells a tech solution into a single category of leisure suit Larry types that are stealing the hard earned cash of unsuspecting victims is becoming a tiresome thread of this blog. You’re in a category by yourself when it comes to understanding the use and implementation of technology tools. To assume that the average feet on the street agents have a clue what you mean by an Apache web server is absurd. Most don’t know their C from their M from their Y or their K and don’t care to learn how the process of printing a sign is done. They just want it done and they are willing to pay another professional to do it. I don’t run down to the campus bookstore and buy books on how to do a root canal. I go to the dentist. There are dentists willing to do only what needs done and at a fair price, there are also dentists that are more than willing to pick my pocket with a slew of services and unneeded and undesired, pocket draining crap. If I happen to be considered a “thought leader” in the category of dentistry, how responsible would it be for me to continually bash the entire industry of dental professionals as an undesirable element that exists only to prey upon an entire group of people that didn’t take the time over the last X number of years to gain the knowledge of how to do the job themselves?
Every large company with the resources to do so has their own “In-House” advertising and marketing department that uses their considerable knowledge and skill to implement their strategies. Guess what? Every last one of them still engage the use of marketing and advertising agencies to get it done. Why? They don’t know everything and actually value the time of people that do by compensating them for it. The people that invented the Ruby on Rails platform actually sell a hosted service that uses what they created. I use it myself even though I could easily have my own development staff use Ruby to develop it. It just doesn’t make sense to spend the time doing that.
There are a great deal of technology and marketing vendors that actually believe in the value that re professionals bring to the market place. They work hard to develop products and services to help deliver that message. In some cases they can do things with an economy of scale and skills that save money and generate a return on investment for their clients. I feel the same way about your self professed “Vendor Hostility” as some agents did about the portrayal of the industry in 60 minutes.
October 12, 2007 — 9:42 am
Greg Swann says:
Sorry, Mike, but I think you’re wrong. Take FeedBurner.com. Nice idea, and you get stats on the state of your feeds. But who owns it now? Oh, yeah. Can you get your feed subscribers back from Google? What happens to your list of subscribers when you quit? You’re a sweet guy, but I have no idea what will happen to my essential business information when you get bought out or move on. This is nothing like doing business with an ad agency — or a real estate brokerage. To the extent that Realtors get in bed with hosted vendors, they are putting their businesses at risk.
October 12, 2007 — 11:23 am
Tom Wolf says:
I respect your opinion Greg and in the ideal world, I think your theory would be absolutely correct. I tend to believe that one’s perception of the way the world works is shaped by their immediate surroundings. I’m generalizing here, but when a person lives in an upper class neighborhood, they start to assume that the average American drives a BMW and has a 52 inch plasma. The people that interact on this blog are all very astute individuals with a good understanding of technology and/or decent writing skills. I can say with 100% certainty that this group is in no way representative of the average agent.
Sure, blogging is a great way to connect with clients and sure it would be great to have everything “in-house”, but what if you can’t. Forget the technology for two seconds. There are plenty of other barriers. Not to toot my own horn, but I feel I have a pretty good grasp on the challenges facing the average agent and I could rattle off many reasons that inhibit their ability to do these things. The bottom line is that many of the vendors fill a specific need for a specific person. How else can you explain the fact that when you ask the clients of a particular vendor about their experience, you will hear 3 horror stories, 4 who are indifferent, and 3 who love it? All vendors are not created equal, but if their product doesn’t work, market forces and time will take care of the issue.
October 12, 2007 — 2:03 pm
Michael Price says:
Many hosted applications do so to facilitate the features of the product that is being provided to their clients. For instance, our back office system will be continually improved to provide more features and improved ways of doing business. In most cases those features will come at no additional cost to our client. Hosting content isn’t necessarily done with the intent to control anything. Smart business people approach their business dealings with an understanding of what it is they are buying and the risk/reward factor associated with it. How many people that set up an account with feedburner read the terms of service? It’s a free service. If they are concerned that Google owns the information now I say, so what? What did you sign on for in the first place? It’s the same as the Active Rainers that started whining about the Move.Com thing. I am thoroughly convinced, that the closer to free something costs, the more people expect out of it. It’s an conundrum I have never been able to wrap my mind around.
My comment had less to do with the type of product provided than the overall generalizations you’ve made in the past about your approach to tech vendors of any kind. Hosted or not, not all tech providers exist to “milk” Realtors. I guess I failed to make my point.
October 12, 2007 — 2:07 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Hosted or not, not all tech providers exist to “milk” Realtors.
And I joyfully concede that point, citing MLBroadcast as an excellent example of a vendor delivering phenomenal value for the buck. On the “blades” side of the ledger, particularly, the on-going monthly charges, MLBroadcast is more than fair. I know because I asked.
Most people will not take my absolute position on anything, Michael. But the better they understand my argument, the better their negotiation posture when they are making compromises that I, personally, would rather not make.
As much as I might like your product, when I’m done with you, my past work-product is no longer useful to me. But even though Teri’s weblog is hosted on BloodhoundRealty.com’s server at HostGator in Texas (my choice at my expense for the sake of my convenience), all she needs to do is redirect her DNS servers, copy her files and email herself a back-up of the database and she can move her weblog to any other Apache server anywhere in the world — including any OSX Macintosh if her ISP will allow her to host from home.
Teri might have just said, “Say what?” but BloodhoundBlog has moved this way twice already — incidentally, both times because we don’t off-load our RSS feeds to vendors.
There are trade-offs to everything, and I do acknowledge that other people will choose differently than I do. But the position I uphold toward self-hosting, owned or open source software and commodity-priced vendors makes sense in the long run for any web-based business. If you do end up buying a hosted solution, you should do so with your eyes open, know what you are buying, what you will not be able to retain upon exit, and what are the worst consequences that could befall you. This is just plain common sense, and I’m sure you undertake a similar sort of due diligence in your own quest for business solutions.
October 12, 2007 — 2:29 pm
Teri Lussier says:
No, Teri didn’t say “Say what”. I said, “Right on brother” or “Preach it, preacher”, or some such thing, because, even if I don’t understand the exact mechanics of what you are talking about, I get why it’s important. AND, due to my hyper-local blogging connections, it’s a cake-walk to find someone who will help me out, (in Dayton, no less!) free or for a fee, either way, the deed can easily get done, and I still own my stuff.
Fascinating discussion. I’m learning a lot.
October 12, 2007 — 3:06 pm
Michael Price says:
Yes Greg I remember your email and I do appreciate your effort to stay abreast of our offerings and services. I agree that self hosting makes good business sense in many situations, including blogs. We host our web blog on our corporate server. Not just because we can, but because it is over year’s worth of work and I won’t risk it to anyone, including Google. It really depends on the product and the service as to whether third party hosting makes any sense.
You are correct in your assumption that we carefully evaluate all agreements we enter into. I hope by engaging this sort of conversation that others do the same, particularly in the case of listing data feeds and social networks. I’ve said it many times before. Nothing is free. If you think the ability to generate ads along side your data is the only value proposition associated with free web services, think again. As Greg points out, what happens to your contact information when that company is acquired or goes down in flames could become an issue. For instance, we do not host credit card numbers. In fact our e-commerce system doesn’t even see them, they are encrypted and only the processing bank has that info. Some companies store the information to make it easier for you to reorder. We think your safety is worth the extra 2 minutes to reenter it and I sleep better at night not worrying about the bad guys coming to get it.
Yes Teri. It is important and you’re lucky to have a guy like Greg helping you with it.
Thanks for the link GS.
Cheers! MP
October 12, 2007 — 4:00 pm
Tom Wolf says:
I agree Teri, this was a fascinating discussion and a good, healthy debate. It certainly addresses the fact that both vendors and agents need to think carefully about how to address those potential long term issues and fears. In the end, you have to feel good about whichever solution you choose, and if you don’t, keep looking.
October 12, 2007 — 5:12 pm
Teri Lussier says:
>you’re lucky to have a guy like Greg helping you with it.
The beauty part of this whole thing is that Greg is blogging this for anyone to use- for free, I might add. Not to say that Greg hasn’t helped me, but if I was sitting in BFE, stumbling onto this site today, I could put 2 plus 2 together and get all this done next week. And. Own. My. Stuff.
October 12, 2007 — 5:39 pm
Jonathan Washburn says:
Gregg,
>”If your net-based software systems are all built with standard Apache web server open source tools — like Perl, PHP, Ruby, MySQL and WordPress — your data is free from the bonds of avaricious vendors.”
Just because a software program is built using an open source coding language, or database, does not mean it is “free from the bonds of avaricious vendors”. Really there are plenty of “avaricious vendors” that build products using open source tools.
Addressing another point of your post, agents should look at the services they purchase using a holistic approach.
Sure a tech savvy agent may choose to learn the ins and outs of open source web tools, and perhaps save some money, and maintain a higher level of control/ownership, but that approach may not work for everyone, or may not be important to everyone.
Another, less tech oriented agent is just as justified in choosing to outsource their tech related initiatives to consultants or paid services. Each agent should work towards their strengths.
October 14, 2007 — 2:46 am
Greg Swann says:
> Just because a software program is built using an open source coding language, or database, does not mean it is “free from the bonds of avaricious vendors”. Really there are plenty of “avaricious vendors” that build products using open source tools.
And you can escape their clutches as soon as you recognize them for what they are if you are using ubiquitous software on a ubiquitous web platform. Users of standard Apache solutions are free to change vendors whenever they want. User of proprietary solutions are stuck. This is all discussed in the post you are commenting on.
In the same respect, when Realtors hire a photographer, they should make sure they own all rights to the images, even if that means paying more. When they hire a graphic designer, they should own the finished files, even if they don’t have the software themselves to open those files. (QuarkXPress and/or Adobe Creative Suite only, by the way, using only mainstream fonts; owning files no one can open is a Phyrric victory.) Too many Realtors try to make a virtue out of their failure to engage the twenty-first century, but there is no excuse for having your own property held hostage.
Which, not coincidentally, brings us to Active Rain and a few thousand pairs of soiled underwear. If AR users had been paying attention — and many of them were — they would have been better off setting up their own WordPress weblogs. Then they wouldn’t have to fear what might happen to the content they gave away for nothing, never thinking about where it might end up.
Yes, I know, AR users can remove their content at will. But, as is discussed in the comments above, if that content had been written in a WordPress weblog, it could be moved at will — with zero negative SEO consequences, incidentally, not one broken link — not just removed.
October 14, 2007 — 7:54 am
Eric Blackwell says:
My two cents…
Greg…brilliant post and subject..
How can we as REALTORS tell our clients to own rather than rent and then RENT our web presence…
I just went through this in our office with a vendor who was offering “neighborhood sites” that look good, have a lot of copied content and essentially lack ANY of the individuality that will attract and retain clients.
I think I am just going to refer EVERY one of the agents in my office (and that 120 of ’em) here to read this BEFORE deciding what they want to do…then it is their own issue from there.
Tired of trying to keep explaining what you have said so eloquently.
October 18, 2007 — 3:24 pm