Mike Parker

Mike Parker mparker@theblackwatercg.com Dear Bernice, I know you mean well, but sending people to obscure portals and telling them that it will help their online marketing dilutes what little chance most agents have of online success. 880,000,000 real estate related searches are entered online, monthly, and 65% of them are on Google. These people who are going to be "better than Google" won't be, for that simple reason. No real estate portal gets over 5 million true visits a month: Google gets about 57.2 million (not to mention Yahoo and MSN). But, more importantly, page views aren't the be all end all; it's unique visitors and conversion that matter. I said it about Facebook over a year ago, and I will say it about SearchMe today: While these boutique little businesses may (and that is a big MAY) survive, how many homes will they help sell? People like simple, as in go to their browser and enter what they are trying to find. Only students of the Internet, propeller heads and IT people even will know about SearchMe, and within a year or two, they will have burned through their start up money and then what? Selling real estate online is not about "the next big thing." Selling real estate online is about harnessing what already has changed the entire paradigm about house buying; that is organic search from any browser. In atonement for disagreeing with you, I promise to give you a full blown demonstration of what I am talking about any time, at your convenience.

Mike Parker mparker@theblackwatercg.com Not much of a surprise, here. The surprise is that although the Times now knows that real estate in nespapers is dead, so many brokers don't. Just watch this weekend's Coldwell Banker Supplement, the usual Real Estate ad supplement--why, when you look at that, you'd think newspapers were still the 'go to' spot for real estate advertising. The paradigm has changed: real estate is shopped online, now. Maybe some day soon, the brokers who justify spending six figures in newspaper ads each month will wake up and smell the Internet!

Mike Parker mparker@theblackwatercg.com It has been our experience that the three major things that determine online marketing success are simple: 1) One needs a good template site with adequate syndication and sales tools; 2) that site must be properly optimized for your LOCAL market; 3) You must employ soft lead capture and convert about 10+% of your site unique visitors to sign ins, where they can be farmed and worked with. Less than 10% of agents sites do this. The simple fact is that what the consumer wants is simple confirmation that they have landed at the place that they entered that search engine trying to find, that where they landed has the information they want and that if they inquire, response time is as close to instant as possible. All that is needed to implement this is available for under $300 a month. Why every single agent in America isn't all over this is something I will never completely understand; sure, so many have been misled and disappointed that there is an unhealthy skepticism infecting everything about the web, but heck: there are so many success stories in the news that they should motivate the majority to do something and climb onboard the Internet marketing bus. So many agents today are STILL prospering, due to their foresight and effort to mine the web, that it is a shame that so many have given up trying to make it work for them. NAR says 84% of homes sales start on the web, but only <10% of agents are happy with their web production. BULLETIN: Turn your attention to online marketing services for Realtors and join the successful Internet Realtors before the entire industry makes even this advantage redundant.