Free: Not Always Worth What You Pay

As I mentioned in my previous blog, I recently attended the Keller Williams Family Reunion in Atlanta, GA. The featured speaker was author Seth Godin who spoke about his book, The Dip. He made some great points about the current market and I would recommend it as a good read. Seth recently posted a blog of his own where he spoke about a new service from Squidoo called "Mayor of Your Zip Code".

The idea behind "Mayor of Your Zip Code" is that agents can create a small site using Squidoo's servers with lots of links to information about the towns they work in. You can post links about the town's history, the local government and schools, etc. Basically, it's a free and instant branding opportunity for agents. What could possibly be bad about that?

Well, apparently a lot of things...

It has been reported by many e-PRO certified agents through the e-PRO forums that people have seen a "significant" spike in their spam mail to the address used to register for this service. I know that I get enough junk email already that I do not want to have to deal with more.

Also, the mini-branding websites generated have advertising for competing companies all over them. Squidoo uses Google AdSense advertising to help defray the cost of offering the "Mayor of Your Zip Code" service to agents in general. The problem is that they allow any real estate related ads to appear on your site. Many people have complained that they have links to their direct competitors or limited service companies at the top of their page.

It seems that in this situation, the benefit of a free branding site is outweighed by the appearance of heavy, competitive advertising. Sometimes it's better to limit your branding opportunities to the ones that you can directly control. I know that I wouldn't want my clients to get a mixed message of who I am and what I stand for based on third-party advertising that I have no control over.

Free? Sometimes it just isn't worth it...