Milestones in the Rain! The road to 500,000 points began with a single step, a single peep into what Active Rain was all about. There are some pretty nasty real estate forums out here in blogosphere. Those nasties like to put down Active Rain members as living in a safety net in our own little ( not so little anymore!) world. What I like to ask of those who put down Active Rain is how many listings did you get this past year from just your blog? Nothing more, nothing less, yes, just your blog!  You can talk the talk but do you walk the walk? Hey,  I am all for whatever works, but let's make sure it really works!

So why have I stayed actively blogging ten posts per week on Active Rain ( missing the mark only 3 or 4 weeks in this time period) since I joined in late June of 2007?

500,000 points is nothing to sneeze at. Seeing that most members quit blogging before they reach 10,000 points and many never even write their first blog post- the staying power grows beyond points.

Active Rain feels safe. I felt welcomed and comforted coming from some nasty and lonely forums and blogs outside of the rain. I had an outside coaching blog that was like blogging from and in a closet. People were reading but no one commented. Imagine my surprise when I received my first comment on my first post that I ever wrote on Active Rain. That was all I needed. After all, the only reason I even put up with the nasties was for the link juice I got from them to our website. So adios to them and hola to Active Rain!

You can read my post here to see how we all start at the beginning. I did not know that we could use the bold tab and did not even know how to add an image! So if you have been too shy to write your first post, just do it. Write from your heart and then it will all work out in the end. It always does. Your heart will not steer you down the wrong path. I was once new too. I was once nervous too. I was once scared to press that publish button too. It only takes a second, then it is done and you are on your way!

Do we get business from our blog? You bet we do! We currently have 52 listings, 33 are active on the mls and the others all have offers on them. 19 of those 52 are in CTG status (offers on short sales). Where did we get these listings? From 3 places: This very Active Rain blog, our expired mailing letter and from referrals. I love what I do because I am the one that gets to live my passion of writing!

I started my journey on Active Rain with a form of shyness, not sure what to expect or what would come my way. The one thing that kept my sights on the goal was creating the strategy like stated in my very first post, that I would pay it forward on the rain. I would reach out, comment on blogs, make friends and add value. I would forget about myself and plunge into service for others because in doing that I would not be focused on what others thought of me or my writing but rather my thoughts would be on how could I add value to members on Active Rain.

Then confidence grows and transparency was formed. This transparency is the key to our success on Active Rain and on getting listings from our online blogging. We just received an email from a couple who is moving back to Florida. They have been reading and following our blog. They said that they wanted us to represent them when they do move here, no matter when that will be, because of the passion in our blog, the sharing of our beliefs and even how we felt about politics, family, religion and taxes.. For in polarizing your audience you gain true loyalty!

This is further evidenced by the fact that we have 1,374 subscribers and are Active Rain Top Bloggers; top 3 most subscribed to bloggers. That means more to me than points because it keeps me on my toes in always balancing the content I put out on our blog and measuring it against what you may want to read and learn from without sacrificing localism posts and posts geared towards getting more listings.

There are the fringe benefits of being a member of Active Rain. When I discovered by accident that you get points to blog and add your profile- I was hooked! The carrot gets me going every time!

But to my surprise beyond the genius of the point system was a group of guys that really care about their members. I want to thank Bob Stewart and Jonathan Washburn for all of their hard work. I am happy to take this journey with them.  

The friendships I have made along the way are priceless. Knowing that I can count on so many of my friends on Active Rain for prayers when we need them, encouragement when we need it and to help us with physical chores that we need done in other states. Sally Cheeseman of Hawaii drove back and forth to Honolulu with traffic for me- getting my marriage certificate notarized and apostilled for Latvia and Scott Cowan driving to Olympia, the capital of Washington to get documents that we needed apostilled for Latvia. From Patricia Kennedy offering me a place to stay since she lives doors away from the Latvian embassy in D.C. to many other members offering me a place to stay if I needed to head their way. Simon Conway dropped everything he was doing to pick us up when our car had a malfunction in Orlando to get us to the car rental place on Labor Day when everything was closed. The list goes on and on.


To share this journey of 500,000 points:

Here is my 400,000 point post.
Here is my 300,000 point post.
Here is my 200,000 point post. ( My favorite milestone post)
Here is my 100,000 point post.

500,000 Ways Active Rain Rocks! by Katerina Gasset is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

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