I’m thinking that I should take a much larger role in the growth of the RE.net. Many people are convinced that hundreds of agents and lenders will be starting real estate weblogs in the coming year. That may or may not be so, but it is a certainty that the sharks are circling in the water, looking for another pound of flesh. I don’t absolutely hate vendor involvement in the real estate blogging world, but I’d like to do what I can to make sure people are getting what they’re paying for — and not paying to have smoke blown up their… noses.
Moreover, I am very concerned that new entrants will miss the forest in a quest for leads. There is nothing wrong with forging business relationships through weblogs, but we will kill everything if the RE.net comes to be seen, in consumers’ eyes, as just another spamvertising channel. Weblogging is about the good, the true and the beautiful first, and only secondarily about commerce. If we screw this up, it won’t work — not for commerce and not for anything.
I’ve talked with Brian Brady about doing blogging seminars, and I’ve traded email with other RE.net luminaries on the subject. For the moment, I feel like this is overkill. Arranging an event is a logistical nightmare, and, even then, it’s tough to get enough people together to make a dent in the problem. Worse yet, somebody has to pay for a seminar, either the attendees or a sponsor.
But what’s really needed is already here: Weblogs, podcasts and video podcasts. For now, I’m going to start putting together a basic set of tools in weblog and podcast form. As these materials start to gel, we’ll go buy some video studio time and commit the more important ideas to video podcasts. Maybe in the long run, we’ll produce a DVD or CD, but my thinking, for now at least, is that the best medium for discussing the world wide web is the world wide web.
But wait. There’s more. I’m going to start a meme game that we can use to catalog the RE.net as it exists right now. I’ll add to the catalog later to permit self-entry, and, someday, I’ll add code to verify entries for 404tality (like mortality, but for web sites). What I want is a way of identifying everything that’s out there, all on one page. The upside for everyone is that a link from BloodhoundBlog is relatively potent.
Still more: I’d like to engineer a TopSites site for weblogs organized by individual categories of real estate professionals: agents, lenders, appraisers, investors, vendors. Many of us are using the Real Estate category of BlogTopSites right now, but that turns out to be a catch-all — bubble blogs, splogs, mainstream-media sites, etc. We can do this ourselves on the BloodhoundBlog server, but, if I can, I would prefer to offload the task. More on this later.
I don’t want to exclude vendors — those we know and like and bigger fish like Top Producer or Point2Agent — but I do want to expose the costs and benefits of working with particular vendors, all of this measured against doing things yourself or working with consultants.
(On that point, my son Cameron is willing to help you set up a WordPress weblog for $100: Domain and hosting at your expense, MySQL set-up, installation and customization of WordPress, everything up to your first post. I will supervise him at no cost. Email for more information.)
The point of all of this is to take everything we know at BloodhoundBlog and share it with the RE.net — extant and incipient — in order to cultivate the goodness in our garden, and, as much as possible, pluck any weeds that might crop up. I deeply love what we have made so far, each of us working on our own weblogs, each of us working in cognizance of what others are doing. This is a rare and beautiful thing. It is worth celebrating not just because transparent real estate weblogging is a lovely expression of the weblogging ideal, but because it is leading the way to the transparent practice of real estate itself. By ordering our thoughts in a certain way, we are lending a better order to the world around us. I want to work to grow this spirit…
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Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Dave Barnes says:
“On that point, my son Cameron is willing to help you set up a WordPress weblog for $100”
Way too little.
Tell him to charge more.
He should be billing his time at $80-125/hour.
January 17, 2007 — 3:51 pm
Tom says:
Dave has a point, but he will have a hard time getting a buyer at that rate. The curveball of the whole equation is that it is simple enough to do the tech side, but the layout tends to take a very long time as customers want a specific vision that they can not explain.
I would bump it up to 200 bucks, or 100 for the set up and 100 for the layout and theme. Trust me, that will be a bargain for the buyer.
January 17, 2007 — 6:05 pm
Tom says:
Also, the reality is hundreds of blogs have been created by real estate pros to get leads. Those that do so for purely selfish reasons wither up and die.
The ethos of blogging, give till it hurts and then reap the rewards will be understood by just a few. I have blogged in other categories going on 4 years now in different forms. Where I tried to get selfish, the sites withered and died. Where I had fun and gave, they have been very successful.
My fear is that if the process gets formalized too much, then there is a tendancy to become a club instead of a chance for all to enter. (look at tech blogs and their A list)
I guess what I am saying is that blogging is a free form sport. Anyone can join or make tools at anytime. There is no real cost to entry in dollars, but the time committment to be successful is huge and will winnow out the participants by itself.
January 17, 2007 — 6:10 pm
Greg Swann says:
When the time comes, Tom, we’re going to turn all your experience into a great podcast.
January 17, 2007 — 6:15 pm
Dave Barnes says:
I’m sorry. $200 is too much?!
My clients spend a minimum of $2500 on their websites and they are small companies.
Are these prospects [for Cameron] real players or not?
“but the layout tends to take a very long time as customers want a specific vision that they can not explain” is why I don’t do fixed price and only do T&M.
January 17, 2007 — 8:08 pm
Doug Quance says:
Part of the success is the mix.
Flavors that complement without overwhelming each other.
$100 is good… for a variety of basic themes. The devil is in the customization. Gotta charge more for that.
January 17, 2007 — 10:00 pm
Brian Brady says:
I think Greg is really onto something here. A podcast directory will bring something to the real estate community. I’m looking forward to Dan Green and I hosting interviews with mortgage originators.
There is a lot of useful information that can be dispensed here.
January 17, 2007 — 10:47 pm
Greg Swann says:
> I’m looking forward to Dan Green and I hosting interviews with mortgage originators.
There we go. I like that two ways, as blogging seminar, but also simply as shared praxis. The first one we do here is going to be Russell Shaw. Not blogging but the art and science of a mega-producing Realtor.
January 17, 2007 — 11:10 pm
Jim Cosgrove says:
I like Tom’s comment regarding blogging as a free form sport. True there are a lot of crappy blogs out there just as there are a lot of crappy web sites but they WILL wither and die simply because they won’t be relevant to anyone.
The market place will be self policing.
January 18, 2007 — 5:01 am
Drew Nichols says:
So I’m looking at this “Blog Top Sites” thing and not finding much substance. Is that the best resource out now for RE agents to find blogs?
It also depends on your target markets. Most RE bloggers want to reach out to their local community (you’ve covered this) so having them in a centralized database will do them no good.
January 18, 2007 — 6:39 am
Tom says:
Dave
I was referring to the perceived quality of labor. If his son who is weaker in web design does it for 200 dollars as a teenager, it will allow for the extra time and learning curve of designing the site. His time is worth a great deal less than an adults.
Think of the kid mowing the lawn analogy. He does not charge the same as the full time landscaper. But he also is not in a position to tell you if you have a problem or fix the problem either. He just mows the lawn and gets paid the “discounted” rate.
While when you do the work, it takes 1/5 the time and the customer will know exactly what issues will be out there and have full confidence that you can fix it immediately. Thus, you deserve your rate, but Cameron could not aspire to the same rate.
Kind of funny, this sort of sounds like the full service – discount broker arguments.
January 18, 2007 — 7:25 am