7 SEO Secrets to Dominate your Local Market - 01/29/09 11:41 PM
All of these suggestions are free to implement and will generate very high quality incoming links and a pretty healthy amount of traffic.
You can use your ActiveRain profile just fine with each of these items but you will likely generate the best results with your own Individual Blog. (If you don't have an Individual Blog yet click here to get one.)
Please note that pretty much all of the items below require that you have a free account with the applicable website.
1. Submit yourself to Google Local. Make sure to put in your blog or profile URL in the … (90 comments)

Are we statesmen or politicians? Honest Assessments of the Housing Market - 01/26/09 01:35 PM
“A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service.”
A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation.... - Thomas Jefferson On Friday I put out a post asking for suggestions on what messages I should bring our NAR elected officials.  One line of response I got was that we should quit with the messaging that "Now is a good time to buy", and that the NAR has lost all credibility by calling false bottoms to … (36 comments)

I show up to work terrified, everyday. - 01/25/09 03:17 PM
I started my first real mini-business in 1994 when I was still in high school. It was called Paradigm Interactive Media (pimedia.com) and we were a web site development company. Since I didn't know anything about developing websites, my job was to go out and sell the websites to local business; jewelery shops, hair salons, restaurants, etc. 
Every time I entered one of those businesses looking for a sale, I was terrified.

Right after high school, my family went through some financial setbacks and I wanted to do what I could to help, so I got my real estate license … (44 comments)

What can the NAR do for you? This is your chance to tell them and know they'll hear it. - 01/25/09 02:25 PM
Next week I will be speaking to the NAR Strategic Planning Committee in Washington DC.  The committee consists of all of the NAR top brass and other influential leaders.  I am putting together my presentation this weekend and I want to reach out to our membership to see what types of things you would like addressed with our leadership.
Please think big. My sole focus in going to Washington DC is to speak on behalf of our members and I am not afraid to be bold.
To learn more about the NAR's current Strategic Plan click here: http://www.realtor.org/research/research/strategicplanning
… (114 comments)

ActiveRain Mission Statement: Help us create it - 01/24/09 08:15 AM
I asked our team to come up with a mission statement today.  Although they were not very happy with the short deadline, on a Friday no less, they all pitched in and came up with some good ideas. Now I am taking these ideas to our membership to help us refine what we currently have and hopefully eventually derive at the perfect statement that crystallizes where we will take our network.

The only parameters that I established was that it must be shorter than 30 words.
Here are some of the possibilities our team came up with:
1. ActiveRain is … (72 comments)

ActiveRain from 97 feet up - 01/21/09 03:21 PM
ActiveRain moves fast.  So fast that I know of only a few people who really have a clear picture of everything that ActiveRain has to offer.  AR is now averaging a site upgrade at least once a week.  To put that in proper context, most software companies are on a quarterly or 1/2 yearly deployment schedule. 
We've done five separate deploys in the last 10 days alone, so I thought it would be beneficial to do a high level overview of the different products and services available on ActiveRain, while focusing on our core business components.
1. Blogging:  There is a … (102 comments)

Traditional Real Estate Brokerages vs. Online : Online is winning - 01/16/09 05:13 PM

The real estate brokerages website traffic represented in this chart that are not dropping off a cliff are all of the online, "non-traditional" variety.
Little tiny 100 person company Redfin is about to surpass Coldwell Banker?  Zip Realty has almost as much traffic as the next three largest brokerages combined?  What does this mean on the local level? What are the big brokerages doing to correct this?
They must recognize this is a serious problem and innaction is not an option.
(Note: Please don't talk about what you charge for commissions or what should be charged on ActiveRain. Price fixing … (81 comments)

Lenn let's talk, I'm always looking to hire hard workers! - 01/15/09 08:43 AM

For years I've been a believer that it was best to "Work smart so you don't have to work hard". 
Lenn,
I am sorry to hear that you've been unsuccessful in your endeavors to not have to work hard. Obviously you are extremely successful, but even after all of your success you are still one of the hardest working people I know.  Surely if you were as smart as you are a hard worker, you would be one of the smartest people in the world. Any observant person can see that you are one of the hardest working.
Let's take … (24 comments)

Smart work is overrated: Hard work is where the top producers are. - 01/15/09 04:11 AM
It is a great deficit to start with. Being smart, or God forbid "extremely talented", has to be one of the single greatest impediments to becoming successful in real estate.
No, it's not that real estate is a special field; there are in fact only a few highly specialized fields where brains end up doing more good than harm. For example, it is good if you want to be a rocket scientist, university professor, doctor, or consultant. In pretty much any other field it just gets in the way. Here's why:

1. Smart people use their brains to make the … (33 comments)

Do consumers even visit ActiveRain? - 01/14/09 02:37 AM

I just stumbled upon the comment above that was a part of a post where people were debating the returns on various online real estate websites.  I have heard the sentiments of the comment above numerous times since founding ActiveRain. Because of the rich professional-to-professional networking that happens everyday on ActiveRain some people dismiss the great consumer reach of the site.  This is likely our fault as we tend not to toot our own horn regarding our accomplishments. As a result we have done a poor job educating the industry as to the power inherent in ActiveRain to connect real … (125 comments)

 

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