I always balked at the prospect at paying the ridiculous prices for Featured Homes and Showcase Enhancements.  For me, there needs to be proof of return before I will spend my hard-earned money.  The office I currently work with has used both in the past and just received a call recently from Realtor.com to renew these services.  I have since taken over much of our marketing programs and fell off my seat when he announced their "special pricing".  Showcase Enhancements, maybe, but even that should be a service to Realtors being that the site is owned by NAR essentially.  I guess our outrageous dues aren't enough??  Featured listings though, is hard to justify.  In my opinion, if someone is seriously looking at a house, they aren't going to stop at the featured listing selection.  They will go through the whole inventory that suits their criteria.  After all, isn't that what the internet is truly about?  Second, you pay by zip code.  Our office covers parts of 4 counties and too many zip codes to count.  When I asked him their solution for that, his answer was "you would need to buy more zip codes."  Really??  I don't think so, not at that price.  Finally, the only reason the sales rep and everyone else that paid for the service gave me for using the service is "sellers like it and it helps get more listings."  As far as I'm concerned, it's a crutch.  The sellers like it because you tell them they should-because you need to justify to yourself the cost.  Is it a crutch for lack of a great personal/office website?  Even Trulia is much cheaper to use and I have actually closed sales leads that came from my FREE listings on Trulia.  Just had another one last week.  Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't there better ways to spend our listing marketing dollars (if featured homes can be considered "listing marketing" rather "agent marketing".)  Thoughts?  Ideas?