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ActiveRain "doesn't have anywhere near the juice"

Note: ANY NEWBIES or anyone confused by the comments here. Read the Guidelines before you follow the lead of some who have commented here. Yes a lot of what in the comments here is comment spam.

Community Guideline (on the bottom of every page in AR)

Blogging Etiquette 101 for Active Rain (Members Only)

Rules for Blogging: "The Core Rules of Netiquette"

Above was edited on 6-18-2007.

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Re: Active Rain

"That's what I figured. AR doesn't have anywhere near the juice of REW blogs (at least here in Atlanta) so I don't know that would be time well spent."

Orange Juice The Google Alert I have set up for "Active Rain" has sent me this thread on REW (realestatewebmasters.com) a couple of times. ActiveRain.com doesn't have the juice that REW blogs have in Atlanta Georgia?

REW vs. AR Juice Thread

I have visited REW (http://www.realestatewebmasters.com) a couple of times.... most recently whenever someone responds on this thread about ActiveRain.com.

Does REW have more juice than ActiveRain? Looking at Alexa (I know Alexa sucks) comparing REW and ActiveRain.com

Alexa Traffic Rank for realestatewebmasters.com: 9,372

Alexa Traffic Rank for activerain.com: 6,640

Alexa Traffic Rank is like golf good score low? Traffic Rank for realtor.com: 770. A low Alexa Traffic Rank (score) is good.

An Alexa Traffic Rank Chart for those like me who can't get enough charts and graphs: REW Traffic vs. ActiveRain Traffic.

How would you compare juice in a particular market? Could you?

In the thread a member of both REW and ActiveRain wrote of ActiveRain:

"I gave it up when I realized the SEO benefit of REW blogs and forums probably far out weighs AR. I have dropped to 4 now but who cares. I would rather spend my time in here with all of my new found SEO friends instead of talking about "Why agents shouldn't bring their pets to open houses" on Active Rain. LOL. Don't get me wrong, there are some great content writers in Active Rain, but most are spammy point-generating posts that have 0 value."

Now there's an ActiveRain.com entry I have not visited for awhile! Note: no dog ever went to an open house!!!! Rumors of ActiveRainers pooches attending open houses are totally overblown.

Hey, We Are Being Watched, And Not Everyone Likes What They See

Yesterday George T. asked: Active Rain - Is it Due To Explode Due To Realtor Magazine? Are members of REW being asked the same things by Realtor Magazine?

The thread about Active Rain on REW is kind of garbled. Some of the participants are talking about featured agents within a market on ActiveRain.com, others are referring to what posts get featured on ActiveRain.com.

Sadly I must disclose on the Blog Juice Calculator REW beats AR! Darn Technorati!

Googling for 'Atlanta homes'.... to me that is how you find out who has the juice... will someone on REW in Atlanta come up first? Or will the featured ActiveRain.com agents in Atlanta Georgia come up first? The original question on REW is:

" Active Rain

Both of the featured agents on the homepage are from Atlanta.

Anyone know what the criteria is to be the featured agent on the AR homepage?"

Google gave me a link to the person who is asking the question on his ActiveRain.com account. He is an ActiveRain.com member! His ActiveRain blog came up first, before the featured agents. Before his blog on REW. Before his other blog (I assume he has another blog... wouuldn't it be a prerequisite?)

The moral of this story?

ActiveRain.com has juice (traffic, search and it pops up on Google) but don't take your dog to open houses or talk about people taking their dog to an open house.....and if you want to discuss SEO you should be on REW rather than ActiveRain.com? Or not.

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Posted by Maureen McCabe Central OH Homes on 06/12/2007 06:19 AM

Comments (141)

activerain, alexa, google

141 Comments on ActiveRain "doesn't have anywhere near the juice"

JUN

2007

Hi Maureen-

Now I'm confused. I swear, I didn't bring Heidi to any Open House . . . While I'd love to, I just figured it was not a good idea. Do you think our membership has grown because Realtor Magazines mention of us? What is REW? Guess I will have to check that out as soon as I'm done with this comment. . . I'm still trying to see if I understand this SEO stuff. . . So much to keep straight, so little time. Thanks for the post.

MM,

Saw the same post several days ago and laughed.The discussion was indeed very funny. REW is a good site,but not A/R.

Cynthia: REW is Real Estate Webmasters realestatewebmasters.com I guess it is a network too. Obviously there is an overlap of members in the two networks. They don't blog about dogs though.

Do not take your dog to an Open House!!!! If you do people will talk. Even if you don't people will talk. Someone wrote on ActiveRain this week or last about buyers taking a dog to a showing. People will be watching us again... and won't be liking what they see.... paranoia!!!! (I am joking... I love Maureen F's entry... from last October. I hated it in October but I love to visit every couple of months or so. )

Scott: I really, really like SEO, maybe I belong there. I don't know though if I could curb my desire to blog about dogs..... It is a funny thread.

Maureen, I couldn't follow half of your knowlegeable "juice" discourse! However, I do have an anectodal observation. I have been a long-time participant in the ePRO listserv. Since March or April, I have seen many of the members of ePRO migrating to AR. There is much less discussion on ePRO now, and I'm not the only one who has commented on it. At the same time, AR continues to expand, with many ePRO members participating.

Maureen

This is a very provocative post with an interesting angle of approach. It's obviously something that you've thought about a great deal. I had to read it several times to appreciate all of it's dimensions. Maureen's post from last October was a real eye opener for me. I hadn't seen it before as I wasn't active on this site when it was published. Maureen's excellent post compliments your message very well. This post is excellent also.

Brian: I still subscribe to RealTalk but never comment there anymore. Usually I just delete the RT emails unread. I stopped doing ePROTalk long, long ago because it seemed like a broken record and was too narrow to hold my interest....

I confess I obsess about juice, stats and traffic entirely too much. I have an RealTown Blog and so have compared ActiveRain to RealTown blogs b4. I am not sure if I have obsessed about the traffic on RealTown.com now that the former IC Listservs are online along with RealTownBlogs or not.

To me Active Rain is more like RealTalk (a circus?) and REW is more like e-PROTalk (a library? "shhhhh.. be quiet" you can't bring a dog in here!") I read the real blogs of a few people on REW. Like some, some are much more dry than what I enjoy reading.... different strokes for different folks.

Ed: I just reread ALL the comments on Maureen Francis October entry and yes IT is in the comments... the legend of AR bloggers being proponents of taking their dog (s) to open houses and talk of "crappy" blogging. Blogging about blogging about blogging... convoluted? You betcha!

Thanks for the comments.

I have a real disconnect here. Seems to me that one, AR, is a real estate social related blog.

REW, OTOH, is a company selling web sites and SEO that has a blog online.

I don't see any connection other than both and many more can fuel Google juice.

Lenn

interesting post, I am a frequent user of Active Rain and REW Blogs. I feel that they both have their place, and have wondered if one was better than the other. To the point of posting similar blogs on both, Words changed and content changed enough so that they don't get tagged as duplicate content. The test was done for a non competitive town. Anyway withing 2 days, the REW Blog showed up #4 for that search, and the next day the AR blog showed up #5.

I think that they each have their own uses, and it is not a 1 or the other thing but both and even some other locals as well. For link love you don't want all your juicy links comming from the same place.

As for actual links, I look at my inbound links with a back link checker, and I have many REW back links showing up for my site. I have no Active Rain links showing up for my site, cannot figure that one out. It is like Active Rain has No follow tags on my links.

Oh, I will make my own blog with a link back to this blog and a link to its author. it is the nice thing to do. Keep me in mind for similar.

Just my 2 cents.

Lenn: They call the REW forum a "Real Estate Community" The individual members's blog. http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/ It looks like I can sign up to blog there without buying one of the companies websites, can't I? http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/signup/

" REW Blog Signup

Quick & Easy Publishing of Real Estate Content
Today's real estate professional knows that their time is at a premium. In a world of virtual assistants, answering services and automated responses few will tell you they have the time or inclination to learn and participate on the web. REW Blogs have changed all that.

An REW blog gives Realtors a voice on the web. Using REW Blogs, real estate professionals can now showcase their knowlege and expertise to the world.

Whatever you have to say, REW Blogs can help you say it."

Sounds similar to blogging on AR to me. I assume the participants in the thread on REW (who all seem to be AR members) think there is a comparison between blogging on REW and blogging on AR. Or at least that's the way I read the thread as Google sends me the alerts.

Hey James you are part of that particular discussion aren't you? I know I recognize you from a discussion on REW anyway. I get traffic to my two blogs from ActiveRain.

Can you blog on REW without owning one of their websites? Same RE Network / Community as AR, only different? More SEO? Less idle chatter?

It is a comical discussion to read because one person is talking local rank and blog juice and another is talking about featured posts on ActiveRain, Andrew Mooers? who is the #1 ActiveRainer in Maine wrote on the discussion on REW about AR:

"You just get picked...not a giant rhyme nor reason...sign up and read the thread. Some have tried for a long time...others featured even admit they are honored but have no clue!"

Yes, you can use their blogs, you can use the forum, with has much more useful info on SEO in a more concentrated form than AR does. They don't put up with useless posts though, so if you are just going to spam they will remove you. In other words if you are going to say something is needs to be a valid question, or it needs to add value to the conversation.

Make sense?

Jim

James: How many members on REW?

You can, indeed, sign up for their blog on to be included in their directory. All it takes is a link from your web site. That's where I stopped. I would have paid for the link, but a link from one of my web sites has significant value. OTOH, a link from their web site to my web sites, makes me one of many because, on their web site, you can only register for one state/city which is a significant dilution of the value of their link.

I suppose it's my almost congenital abhorrence to linking out from my web sites. But, that has served me well and I'm not ready to change.

Anyway, thanks Maureen for bringing all of this to my attention. I needed to look at some interesting web sites. I do not see this site as competition or even similar to Active Rain.

But, what do I know.

I am unsure, their webmaster will likely comment, I think that they passed 10,000 members a few months back.

As to Lenn Harley's comment, it seems he did not go far enough, getting into their directory is not a requirement of using the REW blogs, or the forum. The only requirments are that you create a profile much like you do with Active Rain, that you be a serious real estate professional or SEO person, and that you do not spam.

I will say that the people who run REW and the members who post are very very well versed in SEO and are EXTREEMLY helpful. I have not found a bad point yet with them.

Lenn wrote: But, what do I know.

You know an awful lot Lenn. You are my SEO idol. I enjoy what I get on AR. I don't have trouble finding what I need to learn here. Some people know a lot and share. Some people think they know a lot and share. I'm sure that is true of any forum.

James wrote: "I think that they passed 10,000 members a few months back."

10,000?

On REW I read:

"REW Blogs User Stats

Check out some of our stats to see why you should be on REW Blogs.

Blog Users:

590

Blog Entries:

1,547

Total Blog Views:

460,014

Blog Comments:

1,234 "

Is he 10,000 maybe the number of people who have their websites / blog on their system / a total users kind of number? Or am I reading above wrong?

That is certainly a more intimate group than AR. If their total members are 10,000 then it would still be about a third the site of AR. Today: Members: 33,361 although we know a very small % participates, there are just 864 on now. It is fun to read the AR entry I linked to last fall. I think in the comments there were 7,000 members... and we were talking about how big it was, how fast AR was growing.

I thought Ken Smith was active on REW but I only found a couple of real recent entries on his REW blog.

pssst Lenn Harley is a she.

Hey guys great topic!

Morgan Carey here AKA Webmaster over at REW Forums I am happy to answer any specific questions regarding the REW community.

Let's start with a few

Do you have to be a Real Estate Webmasters customer in order to participate in any of the social networking portions of the website (REW blogs, forums, directory etc) - Absolutely not :) In fact the majority of our members are NOT our customers. Some of the are web savvy Realtors who love to participate in their own web development and promotion. Others are complete newbies who are searching the web for answers (What is SEO, why do I need a website, what is the best franchise to join as a new agent etc) - Still more are competitors of REW, we have no problem with this. Although we do have a rule against shameless self promotion (Which promotes spam) - we allow anyone and everyone interested in real estate, web development or just a great community.

Oh man, it is 9 AM and I Am just realizing that this is going to turn into a HUGE reply, so I am going to have to comment in sections as time allows.

Which is better?

I really don't think there is a fair comparison here. Really I believe that any Realtor should use both, in fact if you look the the right of any page on the REW forum you will see that I promote Active Rain openly to all members. My interest is in helping people making the most of the web in terms of generating closings online. If Active Rain helps them do so (Which I believe it does) then I am going to tell them about it.

I think a more apt question would be "how are they different, and how can I use each to benefit my business"

Once again, there are many differences: Real Estate Webmasters forum is much more established as an online discussion community than AR, while AR has had a blogging platform for quite a lot longer than Real Estate Webmasters. In fact REW blogs were only officially released to the public on January 2nd, 2007

This is a very hard comparison for me to make, as admittedly I don't know as much as I would like to about AR and know everything about REW so I will try to stick to a few things for now.

Ownership experience:

As is my understanding, the owners of AR have a tech background and are in the Real Estate Industry, although I have learned a TON from the members of REW about real estate, I will happily admit it is a drop in the bucket compared to what they know, so AR is likely heavier on the "Real Estate" side of things in terms of real world experience and application.

On the flip side, I am the original SEO Guy, senior moderator of SEO Chat, and search engine optimization and web development is not only my passion, it is my career - so you will likely find a lot more "web development" help and experience at REW forums and the topics will be more balanced between internet marketing, web development etc with a healthy portion of Real Estate"

Active Rain has localism (Which is great btw) whereas REW has a directory - they are formatted differently and have different technology behind them. Both are very effective in driving traffic so both should be used. (Incidentally, the question was asked about the directory submission and requiring a link, not having a paid option etc) Let me clarify quickly about the directory.

#1: You do NOT have to be an REW customer in order to submit there.
#2: There is a paid option (Which comes with added benefits) and it does not require a link from you of any kind.
#3: There is a completely free option (Requires no payment, and no linkback) and that is for the neighborhoods section. The only thing that I ask is that you put effort into creating a great directory listing for yourself so that you can make the most of the listing. I try to help with advice, tips and instructions etc as much as I can: You can read one of my tutorials on creating a great listing here: http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/747/show/

Maureen,

We do in fact have 10,000 + members of our community, that is referring to our discussion boards which are much more established than the REW Blogs (Which are new, see note above) in fact, as of this moment, our community has the following stats, Posts: 108,579, Members: 10,231 - You can view these stats at the bottom of the REW Forum at any time.

Thanks Morgan.

A comment was made by one reader about reading a few blog posts, and them seeming dry or technical - I think anyone at AR that has experience will realize that the content of a blog is totally dependent on the poster - there is no limit on what you can post at your REW Blog (Just like AR) so you will see all kinds of interesting reads, and some that seem really lame and have all sorts of spelling and grammar (Not grammer) mistakes :)

Here are some recent (Hopefully interesting) reads:

Can an SEO sell his house faster than his Realtor (I would love some help on this one)
Missing Wife Found Alive after 7 1/2 hours
NAR To Blame for Third Party Listings Sites

Maureen,

First, I would like to say that this particular blog post is fun and interesting at the same time so thank you for taking the time to write it! I use both the REW blog and an AR blog. Both are used a little bit different to me so I feel that having 2 is better than having one. I believe I was actually mentioned (at least a thread on REW where I was commenting)in this original post and just for the record, and because I am trying to become an SEO nerd I am always trying to test one thing or another, by making comparisons. It's just what I do. So I have tested similar posts and the REW blog does seem to rank higher in Atlanta.

This is my REW blog and My Acgtive Rain blog. I will submit that it is possible to make one rank higher than the other by adding some quality additional links to the one in which you want to rank higher than the other and then you might find an AR blog that outranks an REW blog. Having said that, when I did this test, neither blog really had any additional "juice added by me" so they were basically "stock blogs" if you will. In this test, the REW blog post landed on page one of Google for the blog and the AR blog post was on the second page. This was my test result. Individual results may very!

The beauty of usng both blogs is that you just don't know what will drive traffic to your website and where a consumer might find you and the name of the game here is exposure, Correct? So, why not use both?

I don't see AR and REW as direct competitors and, in fact, complimentary to one another.

Full disclosure: I have one REW website and another on the way...

I'm sorry. I forgot one more thing. Check out the Google search below. The search term I used was my name and alpharetta real estate combined. you can see for yourself what Google thinks.:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ryan+ward+alpharetta+real+estate

Thanks for the clarification Ryan - there are also other factors involved such as content: Normally you would want to write a blog post on AR and REW Blogs differently avoiding duplicate content, but also and more importantly when blogging it is very important to tailor your message to the readership (Or perceived readership)

Why is this important? Because you aren't really comparing apples to apples here: You may have made mention of a phrase in one blog more than the other, or the proximity or latent cemantics of the content will be different, your title will likely be different, there are many onpage content factors that effect Google's ranking, and NOONE knows exactly what they are - so results will vary with 2 different posts on the same topic even if the two sites had identical "juice"

but in order to do that Ryan someone has to know you. Know your name to Google it.

Maybe that is a measure of Juice but I think Googling for a search like Atlanta homes and seeing which comes up first is a better measure... but I am no SEO expert so what do I know? I Googled Atlanta Homes this AM. I was sure Tim Maitski or whomever is number 2 (I can't remember who?) on AR would come up first for that search but instead it was you on Active Rain.

Thanks for your comments. I think you guys oughta spread it around though, James needs comments on his entry that he did off of this one. I am not sure whether he was telling me in his comment above that I ought to do a link here to him or not.

My favorite blogger on REW is http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/wayne-long

Maureen,

You really can't attribute his rankings like that. It is FAR more complicated than having a blog that he posts on frequently!

Try this search on for size - atlanta real estate blog:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=atlanta+real+estate+blog

I have checked many, many terms. I promise you, I have never found 2 blogs articles that are similarly written where the AR ranked above the REW.

What you are doing with Tim is comparing a website which has far more than complicated linking, rather than comparing actual blog posts.

I could give you several other examples, such as my website, which, unfortunately was hit by a penalty from Google for reciprocal links on state pages. I wrote a blog post about it here:

http://activerain.com/blogsview/105675/AA-Penalty-Over

Prior to the penalty, I ranked #3 for atlanta real estate. A far more competitive term than Atlanta homes. I do not attribute it to my REW blog. There is too much more involved than that.

Here's the real scoop. Google the term "real estate". See where REW is and see where AR sits in the Search results.

Since each of our blogs rests squarely behing the domain realestatewebmasters/myblog or activerain/myblog it is safe to assume that these blogs of ours are rank squarly on the domain which they reside.

That should pretty much allow everyone to draw the same conclusion as to which blog ranks higher for real estate.

"Googling for 'Atlanta homes'.... to me that is how you find out who has the juice... will someone on REW in Atlanta come up first? Or will the featured ActiveRain.com agents in Atlanta Georgia come up first?"

In your post it seems that you're implying that whichever "site" has the most juice (whatever that is) determines which "page" will rank higher in the SERPs for a given search term/phrase. Am I reading that right?

No Jeff I don't think you are reading that right but thanks for the comment anyway.

I was amazed after reading this that Ryan was on Active Rain and that is the link that came up. I was commented on a funny snippet of a conversation that has been ongoing in a forum about ActveRain. Obviously Ryan, Morgan and Jeff have proved REW "rocks" and that I am a complete idiot for having laughed at the funny conversation and having any opinion about anything.

Good thing I asked. :)

There's nothing wrong with having an opinion. :)

Small world! Just to be clear. I love my AR blog and enjoy reading through the social networking that goes on here. You can learn a lot about real estate from professionals who don't feel threatened because we are in different markets. Even for the guys here in Atlanta like Jim Crawford and Tim as well as several others, there is enough business for all of us!

I actually found AR from Morgan Carey speaking about it a few months ago...

Small world indeed! Yes, both sites have much to offer. :)

I'll go back and look again. My theory - leave no stone unturned. That said, it has got to show evidence of Internet synergy before it's worthwhile.

I spent the late morning today previewing lots for a prospective buyer who read my AR post about the home I sold in Purcellville Sunday.

THAT IS synergy and that's what we seek.

No doubt RealEstateWebsites.com is going to produce well in Georgia. Question is, how is it going to produce for me in Maryland and Virginia.

We'll see. I just signed up for the blog. I'll take a ride. Generally, these sites are complimentary and not in conflict with each other.

Thanks for bringing this to out attention Maureen

Good choice Lenn. I think we should all use both. It's realestatewebmasters.com, not websites.com. Make sure you are in the right place for your blog. You will be pleased with the results from both AR and REW

I'll be watching you Lenn.

I just wanted to comment again on this blog, It got me wondering, becouse everything here is so local that in order to get things to show up I have to write blogs for like Morristown, or Madison, or Chatham. I have done probably 2 blogs in AR for every 1 I have done at REW. The interesting thing was that I found more of my REW blogs in the top 6 pages of google for each of the searches than I did AR blogs. Not sure why that is, though my blogs at REW are sitting one page behind a PR5 page, where My blogs at AR are sitting behind a PR1 page so I guess that is playing a role in things.

This was a good blog you posted though, I hope that it highlighted to many of the Active Rain Members that diversification in blogging is a good thing.

Jim

Jim,

As far as rankings there are a lot of factors. The PR can on the Google toolbar can be very far off from what the actual PR of a page is so unless you follow that page carefully for some time, it's hard to really know the PR. Now as far as why you might have REW blog posts ranking higher than AR blog posts, there can be lots of factors some of which have been talked about, but, let's recap for clarity, mine as well.

We are writing about real estate related topics. Your blogs are hosted on the AR domain and thr REW domain. The REW domain outranks the AR domain for "real estate" so right off the bat the REW domain ranks higher for real estate than AR. Don't you think this would help a real estate article on your REW blog rank higher?

Content - if you write more content on two equal domains, the one with more content will rank higher - or at least for more terms, per blog post that is.

Keyword density - depending on how your keywords are discussed within your article and how often they are written has an effect.

Article title - If your article title is the keyword you are trying to rank for the blog post will rank higher for that term than it otherwise would.

There is more of course, but this is a start.

For me the most apparent reason seems to be the first one I discussed - The REW domain has more authority for "real estate" than AR.

I am right with you on all those points Ryan.

I did look at the PR for each at http://www.digpagerank.com/ becouse I put no weight in what the fool bar says.

I think that quite the opposite of what Maureen said in the blog itself, that REW is the better choice for a blog that you really want the public to see. It likly will hang in the Index for a while as well. I have one that I posted 2 months ago that is still showing up. I like Active Rain as well, heck I am here posting and I am not even getting points for the last 10 or so things I put up.

Jim

REW who?

Now seriously....how many places can we be at once? don't we have to work too? This is really interesting Maureen, you always open our eyes.

Maureen, hadn't heard of REW, but then again, I hadn't heard of ActiveRain until a friend referred me. Now I'm hooked on blogging. Thanks for the post!

JUN

2007

Maureen, I rated this a 5 and don't know why it isn't featured to get more readers. I love activerain but open to all options. I did find the nastly little comment about dogs. I think I'll take Dixie to my next open house.

Ines: AR and one blog all of my own is really all I want. I have two, or maybe not two depends on how you look at RT Blogs. I really want to kill one. I will have symptoms of Social Network Fatigue syndrome if I am not careful.

David: Welcome to ActiveRain. Glad to hear you are hooked on ActiveRain. I will check out your ActiveRain blog. Check out REW. IMHO heavy on SEO/ lite on write. I think ActiveRain is a much richer read. I heard first of REW I think when two of them came here and did some pretty anti-social kind of stuff to promote a blog on REW. Although I thought Ken Smith had a blog there, he used to write here, very good on the SEO techy stuff... when I looked yesterday he only had a few entries and they were recent. So he may be on some other network community that I had confused with REW. Or maybe I saw him on the forums there rather than blogging.....

Missy: Is Dixie a Chihuahua? Cute! Don't do it Missy! Don't take a dog to an open house. They have better things to do on a Sunday afternoon. Snoozing on the couch? Laying in a shady backyard. Playing with the kids. Were you with us in October? Two bloggers quit AR over the brouhaha.

Our dog growing up was named Missy. She was a Christmas gift so her real name was Mistletoe. A basset hound... stinky, slobbering. I will be dog blogging here on ActiveRain today.

I don't get featured much, which is OK, I can do without the "thanks for sharing it" with nothing more kind of comments or the chat room stuff... of course chat room is all relative. I think it is good that blogs can get comments without being featured.

Thanks all for the comments!

Marueen, thank you for this post! It was a great read, and is definitely quite thought provoking. I must admit that I had not heard of REW until I read your post a few moments ago. The discussion points that the AR members discuss above are great. I will continue to be an Active AR member as it is very effective for my business, and it also provides an encouraging and phenomenal group of professionals.

I am going to continue to research REW. I agree that you can not have enough exposure in this business, and if REW can offer additional expsosure I am going to check it out. My only concern is that in trying to run a real estate business, who has the time to be everywhere (on the net).

I'm a moderator at the REW forums and am a featured agent in Orland Park, IL here on AR. I love them both. I have multiple websites & blogs and with being very busy right now I am feeling that there just isn't enough time to post in everything. I'm hearing you, Amber!

I have never bothered comparing the two and feel they are both beneficial. My posts are different on each one, though. My blog posts on REW usually are more real estate agent related (with a little seo stuff) and on AR they are more local area and general real estate related.

As Morgan Carey stated, he does promote AR to all REW members so he is very open minded and hopes we all reach success with our websites.

JUN

2007

I did a little experiment and duplicated two articles to both my AR and REW blogs, just minutes apart last night. Today, in searching for the blog titles in Google - for one of the search terms REW came up #2, AR #3...and my own blog....#7. For the other, REW was #1 and AR #2.

Bottom line, they're both terrific blog platforms with lots of Google juice.

Before AR, REW was really the only real estate technology forum out there and I learned an incredible amount of information from the contributors at REW. There's a lot of good info there. But, they're not a social networking site nor do they have the quantity, variety or richness of topics that can be found on AR.

JUN

2007

Amber: I agree with your "My only concern is that in trying to run a real estate business, who has the time to be everywhere (on the net)." and so I will watch Lenn and Ben and a couple of others I trust as they investigate REW, I did not know Ben was on there. I enjoy learning about SEO but find some of the experts write keyword rich ho hum real estate ads rather than information rich blogs for consumers. Some get to caught up in playing games for position on AR and elsewhere... total waste of time IMHO.

In a comment above an REW member wrote "which, unfortunately was hit by a penalty from Google for reciprocal links on state pages." ... "Prior to the penalty, I ranked #3 for atlanta real estate."

Judy: Thanks for the comment.

Ben: Interesting experiment and one of the most unbiased (I guess that would be least biased) comments on this entry I believe.

Maureen, both platforms are good. However, if you want your message to be reached by consumers, it should rank as high as possible. So if your goal is to reach consumers, you should blog on the highest ranking platform possible....That means the REW blog platform...It will allow more consumers to read what you have said. Pretty simple really.

As for my comment about ranking #3 - you were the one who brought up rankings, not me...

Your whole blog post is about position...Which is the most important part about writing something for consumers....

Maureen, I am not sure what your motives are, but if you want to only blog in one place that is fine. Just don't knock what you don't know the full story about. I have been looking though my blogs that are showing up in Google for the search terms I need to succeed and I will tell you now, there are more REW blogs that are showing up then AR blogs. In fact there is a AR blogger who has posted several things for one of my towns and my REW blogs are well ahead of all of those. But if you prefer AR that is fine. AR is a easier place for people with very low technical skill to blog, it just happens that most of the blogs will never be seen by the intended audience.

JUN

2007

James: I blog in three places and have signed up to try a blog in a new community when it is introduced.

Lenn is trying REW. I trust Lenn I look forward to seeing what she thinks about REW. My motive is mixing orange juice and apple cider. I got nearly 50 comments out of it! I think you and Ryan are taking this entry MUCH too seriously. You seem defensive of REW, no one is attacking REW. I am making fun of a conversation on REW talking about ActiveRain. I refer to an earlier entry on ActiveRain entitledl "Hey, We Are Being Watched, And Not Everyone Likes What They See" The nuance of the conversation on REW and who is taking part in it may go over your head but it is a funny conversation that caught my eye with the "Active Rain" Google alerts,

Some people are not suited to ActiveRain and using it to it's potential. There are lots of opportunities to blog or not blog. Thanks for the comments. Bye.

Thanks for all of your thoughts on this. I do find it an interesting read. You would do well to leave your condescending attitude about what does or doesn't go over someones head out of your blog posts. It certainly won't win you any brownie points - or many blogging friends :-)

I could easily ignore a post like this, but, the better than everyone else attitude that I have read from some of the AR defenders here is at best, pathetic. It truly dissapoints me. I enjoy AR and this has left a sour taste in my mouth about the closed mindedness of some members. Certeinly not all...

That said, there is one very basic point to be made:

If you want your voice heard by the community, AR is not as good as REW because the REW blogs rank higher.

Again, thanks for the topic!

Ryan: Sorry you think my attitude is condescending. Feel free to move along and read elsewhere on AR, go back to REW, move freely around the internet. Bye.

Actually, the only thing I'm sorry about was thinking that I might be able to help you understand something with a little bit more clarity and that both communities are worthy. Fortunatley, I don't think that you represent the majority of people here at AR. Most people are actually willing to listen and learn without getting so defensive about their little spot on the www. It's quite sad, I think. Best of luck to you. Whenever you are ready to open your mind up and learn something, I'm sure you will find plenty of people who can help.

Take care,

Ryan

Your Attitude is kind of condescending, you seem to be a defender of something that is not under attack. Nobody said don't use Active Rain, in fact they said use Active Rain, Just know that there are other tools out there that you should be using as well.

Maureen, My ears were ringing and I just stumbled upon this post and saw my name mentioned. It is such a small world after all. I think Ryan actually lives or used to live in my neighborhood. I saw his site coming up in a lot of searches lately. I guess I'm going to have to start participating in REW again. I had participated in that site a year or two ago when it was only a few months old. It sounds like it has really taken off.

I'm surprised you didn't find me to be number one for "Atlanta homes" in Google. I've had that spot for years now. Maybe there are regional variations in the search results. I can't attribute anything to ActiveRain as far as rankings go. I just figure that it can't hurt. I find ActiveRain to be more fun. People don't seem to take themselves too seriously.

I tire of reading so much about SEO. There are so many things that go into the rankings and no one really knows anything for sure. On top of that, the rankings seem to be dynamic and ever changing. How can anyone be certain about cause and effect? It's really tough to run a controlled experiment. All you can do is look for patterns. But then there seems to be many exceptions to any pattern that you think you see. I do think Morgan Carey is pretty smart when it comes to SEO. But too many people who write in the forums and at ActiveRain act like they know things for certain when no one can ever be certain about anything. They'll do something and see a change and come to the conclusion that what they did was the cause of the effect. Too many times I have done absolutely nothing and have seen major changes.

For the real geeky stuff, I go and read the stuff at http://www.webmasterworld.com/ It's amazing the amount of information they have there. I used to like GoogleGuy showing up there every once in a while and giving some clues to what was going on. He was supposedly the inside guy at Google.

JUN

2007

How the heck did we all miss this one? Good post Maureen.

Click...

Right, my head hurts from all the SEO info, but I do find myself at the top of Google natural search time and time again directly from my AR points and clients are finding me so I am happy here. I will check out REW and see what it is about, same with Zillow and Realtors new bloging thing, but AR is my home.

Thanks for the comment Tim. I thought you would come up number one. To learn about SEO I prefer reading Tech blogs.

Mark I don't know how you guys missed it.

Hi guys,

I came in late. I hope the hurt feelings can be smoothed over -- I had some of those elsewhere and they feel just like they always do.

Anyway, regardless of that, my two cents, as someone who makes his living off his knowledge of SEO and a broker's license...

Tim's right that no one except for Google employees know their whole algorithm. (Given the amount of code, probably few if any inside Google know the whole thing either -- but at least they can use the source, Luke). So you have to be careful about who's juice is whom's.

I do think the case for REW having more "Google Juice" than AR is overstated. (I've been arguing that on my blog recently as well -- pardon my PLUG :). The thing is, you may have better PR more easily on REW, but if you look at whatever contextual link reputation comes from cached pages, AR's cache is 6,800 to REW's 1500 (Google), or on Yahoo, 179,910 for AR to 624 for REW. REW is also a bit behind the eight ball in my eyes, having historically focused on techniques that today only work on Yahoo and MSN. I doubt if this affects how much Google loves it as much as the relative size of the two, however. People tend to confuse PageRank and reputation and or serps, and neither comparison is valid.

Mr. Boyer was kind enough to stop by my blog the other day and recommend REW to me. His point that one should avail oneself of both is I think a wise one. Clearly part of the algorithm is that inbound links from the same site (or at least the same class C domain), eventually weigh less than the first few do.

I went over and signed up for an REW account, and I will certainly try to do a few posts there, though not as many as here, and finally not as many as on the sites I control personally. I sympathize with those who don't have time to be everything on the net. On the other hand I do think it's great to have inbound links from multiple sites with real estate reputation. Besides, some day for fun I'm going to put a page together of everywhere I geek out, and I want it to have enough links on it to make me look credible, otherwise I'll have to wear a Star Trek uniform. :)

I signed up at REW so I can check it out. Interesting, it doesn't look to be organized like AR so I'll have to see how easy it is to manouver around. One could spend all their time blogging and reading real estate websites and not actually doing any real estate. There are only so many hours in a day. I wonder how many of these kinds of websites there are.

John,

Quick question for you....If you find that one platform outranks the other and therfore generates more unique consumers to your blog that could lead to more leads which one would you focus on more? The question becomes what message are you trying to convey? If you are discussing real estate ideas for real estate pros, you might use AR. If you have a message that you want a consumer to hear, you should use REW.

This whole discussion is silly. Here are the basic realities:

AR might be better for discussing an sharing ideas with other professionals. - more interaction between members.

REW is better for conveying a message to consumers. - higher ranking.

Since you will be blogging soon at REW, you will find this out very quickly. The idea here is that both communities have something to offer and both offer different things. I believe it would be very unwise for any real estate pro to ignore some basic marketing principles because they "like" one platform better than the other. That is about as unprofessional and self seeking as anything and doesn't help anyones client. If your interest is becoming a better real estate professional via the internet you NEED to use as many good platforms as possible. If you don't, and all you care about is chatting it up with a bunch of people it doesn't really matter - do what you want.

I also disagree with you about the class C domains. It simply allows them to track things moe easily. There's no reason to devalue links just because they come from the same place. Also remember that what you see in the cache is secondary to the actual relevant issue - which is ranking. Google the term "real estate" (without quotes), you'll see what I mean. That is the most relevant term for all of us and you will see what actually matters. REW IS considered to be FAR more authoritative than AR. People can pontificate about this all day. Check the search engine results for yourself. Look to see where AR and REW rank respectively for that term.

You will find your answer very quickly.

I don't know. I signed up for the REW and posted one small article and got a comment from Morgan to review the rules and forum.

I guess I'll stick to Active Rain.

I very much liked the interface of REW, but if my simple post broke some rules, dang if I could figure it out.

Maureen.... wow... thanks for sharing this. Someone just recently told me about REW. But just from reading all of these comments, I just learned some new things from both James B. and Ryan W. So thanks for posting this in here.

Too bad I didn't have anything else to offer in here. I am still learning the SEO stuff. This was very helpful. thanks

jeff belonger

Phooey, Maureen. I love talking about my dog on ActiveRain. (Although I haven't brought him to any open houses, I do take him on showings occasionally--he is the office mascot, you know).

Zeke the Wonder Dog

At the very least, my self-imposed blinders are coming off now. I love AR but posts like this make me realize I have to step outside of it every once in a while and snoop around.

Ryan,

I'm not sure why you should head for my throat so quickly, unless, like me, you tend to get surly after too much keyboard time and not enough girl watching. What I just said above is that I intend to also participate in REW. To be honest, neither of your platforms do anything more than help me maintain dominance of serps I already created four to five years ago.

"If your interest is becoming a better real estate professional via the internet you NEED to use as many good platforms as possible. If you don't, and all you care about is chatting it up with a bunch of people it doesn't really matter - do what you want."

Excuse me? Again, if you were to actually read my comment you'd realize you don't need to shout the word NEED since I already said that's what I plan to do. I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself on the heatedness. As for the dilemna you pose, let me grab both horns and say that I care about maintaining the dominance of the SERPS that I've been creating and enjoying for the last four years and I care about chatting with my colleagues. To the extent there's any overlap in those activities, terrific.

The ranking of a community site for "Real Estate" would be of interest to me if the likey people searching for such a location-agnostic term weren't budding investors / licensees and prospecting loan officers. As for me, I care about people searching for "Sacramento Real Estate" (and a host of other location-specific keywords in my market). That and the fact that I had a background in software, worked hard, and started early is why I'm doing reasonably well for some of those terms. (Actually there was a bit of false modesty there, but given that's the only kind I have, I thought I'd sprinkle it in. :).

You're recommendation that I do what I want is well taken, however, no one who knows me well would ever accuse me of anything else.

Good luck to you in your marketing efforts.

Maureen, I am not sure I can worry about what mey be...AR works for me. Lenn got a "check the rules" note just think what I would get....a heve ho...deleted memo. Great post.

Very interesting, I will have to check out that site, never heard of it before. Have a great day!

I am late to the discussion and have enjoyed reading your blog and all the comments. It certainly seems that the most important thing is to find what is a good fit for the individual. If you have time, probably being on more than 1 forum would be good -- however, there is a bit of duplication from one venue to the next -- The important thing is to make blogging part of your marketing effort.

John,

My comments about market dominance were not directly aimed at you, just in general, I think it's best to attempt to create as much buzz as possible - sorry if you felt I was YELLING at you! - it wasn't my intention. I was trying to illustrate the point that many newcomers to the web may not understand. Also, I see that you have an open mind so I wish you the best there with both platforms. I hope you have as much success with both platforms as I have had.

The part about ranking for real estate was maybe not illustrated well enough. Let me try to expand:

There is a very natural correlation between real estate and Sacramento real estate. So, if you are talking about sacramento and real estate, then it will help your rankings to be on a more relevant real estate site. This is only part of a much larger part of how things are ranked, but, a very important part. Therefore it helps your rankings to blog about any real estate on a higher ranking real estate blog platform.

Remember John, these comments are for everyone to read. I realized when you were talking about class C that you knew what you were talking about. Sorry if you felt I directd hostility towards you.

My only problem with AR and I wrote about this on my post, "Is Being On AR Like Being Back In High School" is that it's obvious that there are the popular kids, who get featured every third article that they write regardless if it's worthy and the less popular ones who could write a great post but are doomed to have it fade within minutes of being posted.

My theory is that the moderators are over worked and that this favoritism is more of a short hand to get something posted as featured as opposed to taking the time to actually read all of the posts that we 30,000+ members spiel out each day.

As far as which platform has the juice. I can't complain about AR at all!

Bob Mitchell

ValueList Real Estate Services, Inc.

Ryan,

No worries. After all, we're all just blind men trying to describe the elephant so we can ride him to our next escrow instead of getting trampled by him. (The problem is compounded by the fact that there's more than one elephant, and one's a sheep, and the other a cow). I appreciate hearing your take on it, and look forwad to catching you again both here and there.

Bob,

It definitely is like being back in high school, but if you've read your Vonnegut, so is everything else in life. :)

Cheers,

John

Ryan, Doing a search for "real estate" has REW coming up #13. That is pretty impressive. I didn't see AR in the top 100.

So REW must have a lot of "authority" as far as the term "real estate" . Mix that in with your local city name and you have a great combination. I see that you are #43 for "Atlanta real estate". That's pretty good for a fairly new site. After the last Google update I was gone for the term, but I now see that I'm back up in the 20 something range. What did I do to get back? Nothing but do a little blogging on ActiveRain. Did this help? Who would ever know? If I had signed up at REW during this period I might have thought that that had an effect and I would have been totally wrong. This stuff will drive you crazy if you obsess over it too much.

The best thing that one can do is to have a diversity of sites that have different qualities. If one goes down, hopefully another will go up. That's a big reason I started blogging. I've read too many stories of people being number 1 for a term in Google and then being gone in a flash and losing all of their business.

Thanks for the insight about REW.

Maureen,

According to the traffic graphs on Alexa....AR has beaten REW hands down since Jan. 2007......

I think enough has been said on THAT!!

hehehehehe

=-)

Alexander, Keep in mind a good share of that traffic is Realtors and Mortgage people who come back every day for their commenting points. Are those the people you want to reach? Are any of those people going to do business with you, buy a house though you, get a mortgage through you???

On that point Alexa means nothing, It is not total traffic, it is, what is the quality of the traffic.

I have been trying to promote my squidoo lens as well as some of my stuff at REW by blogging at REW and AR. I have noticed consistently if the blog is similar with the same key words, my REW blogs will show up ahead of my AR blogs in google. Sometimes it will be REW #4 AR #5 sometimes it will be REW first page, AR 2nd or 3rd page. The point is the REW blog posts are doing better for me. Here is the ultimate though, I have gotten phone calls on the REW blogs, and one referral. I have gotten nothing from the AR blogs.

What does that say to you????

I am oversubscribing from this blog now becouse the level of ignorance by a few of the posters is getting a little high, and it is not my job to teach those who will not listen.

If you want to look at page rank here is a good free tool: http://www.digpagerank.com/

What I was talking about is and this is not totally accurate but it gives a close representation, the higher the page rank for the page your blog is sitting on, or the link for your website, the higher the PR the link will be, the higher the PR the link the more valuable it is to you, from what I under stand it is a order of magnitude kind of thing as well, a PR5 is not 5 points better than a PR1 but more like 50 times better. Just my understanding. So if you are not 1st page for your state in AR, your links on your profile are worth much less than if you were first page. If you use REW your links there are slightly stronger than first page on AR links.

You can look at sub pages as well, very interesting results.

Anyway, there are to many people posting in this blog who are the type who know a little and becouse of that have closed their minds to most everything else, and Maureen seems to be that type in spades.

Jim

Easy there Jim. Sometimes people don't understand as much as you.

Alexander,

Alexa is completely irrelevant for a numner of reasons. Too many for this thread. You guys make this too complicated. If it ranks higher, you will get more traffic and the REW blogs rank higher.

Tim,

Thanks for the comments would you mind if I called you? I would like to chat about this a little more but it's too hard over tgis forum. I was ranking #3 for Atlanta real estate until my site was penalized by Google for having reciprocal links. (I had about 100) in state directory pages. You owe it to yourself to check out this thread over at REW to learn more about it...You don't want what happened to me to happen to your site and all it takes is a spam report:

Here is the thread:

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread15738.html

Please keep your cool. This entry was NOT really about which was better REW vs. AR.

It has spawned an ActiveRain post by James T. Boyer about which is better and a new thread on REW about ActiveRain talking about REW, talking about Active Rain. That's the thing that I loved first in the vein of "Hey, We Are Being Watched, And Not Everyone Likes What They See" a classic post on AR that includes dog blogging, crappy blogging people talking about people taling about people and more.

June: Keep us posted on how you do on REW. Let us know what you find from your experience there.

Lenn: I would be so disappointed that you won't keep up the trial. Maybe Morgan sends that to all new bloggers. You dind't mention dogs on REW did you?

Joan: One size does not fit all does it? There are lots of places to blog about RE, networks, our own blogs. It is important the fit is there. Maybe after reading about REW the biggies on AR, Broker Bryant, Kristal Kraft, Karen George (does Karen blog there... Karen George is certainly in to SEO.), Maureen Francis, will all try it out. Or maybe they do already blog on REW for all I know.

Bob: But being featured isn't everything, I have a very low % of featured entries on AR. I always have since day one but maybe I just blog for points on AR. Mark F. found this entry almost 4 days after it was written and it was as Ed R said "provocative" since it already had 50+ commments without being featured.

Gary W: I think Lenn should persevere. She is my idol when it comes to SEO knowledge.

Leo: If you check REW out come back and let us know of your experiences!

Maggie: Dustin Luther wrote an entry on RCG long ago about not living in a bubble, not blogging in a bubble. Some on AR just read AR, others have a more varied diet. I think it is best to read outside AR on other networks as well as free standing blogs. If anyone just reads AR I think you get a lot more variety than you did a year ago if you weren't reading others blogs, interacting with other bloggers. Maybe the same is true on REW.

John L: Thanks for all your comments. "The thing is, you may have better PR more easily on REW, but if you look at whatever contextual link reputation comes from cached pages, AR's cache is 6,800 to REW's 1500 (Google), or on Yahoo, 179,910 for AR to 624 for REW." is interesting, provocative as Ed R. would say, but way over my head but I will be trying to figure out what it means so thanks for writing it. I mean that sincerely. Oh and I don't think anyone's feelings were ever hurt. Or does feeling condescended to constitute hurt feelings?

Ed: PR is Page rank, usually. I am not sure that I see it in James T. Boyer's comments to comment on what he meant by PR pages.

Stefan and Zeke?: Thanks for putting in the word for dogs and for highlighting my highlighting that facet of the REW conversation about AR. Have you read the classic "Hey, We Are Being Watched, And Not Everyone Likes What They See" a must read for all Michiganders. Maybe you are there in the comments, read all the comments last week... not going to do that again for another couple of weeks.

Tim: you wrote: "The best thing that one can do is to have a diversity of sites that have different qualities." Good advice, the eggs and the basket thing? Blogging on AR doesn't mean you can't try out other platforms. I have enjoyed the freedom on AR.

Alexander: I am addicted to traffic (but always remember Alexa sucks) but I believe "juice" is traffic plus so much more.

Thanks for the comments all.

Interesting post. Had not heard of REW before. Am spending a lot of time on AR and like meeting people here, which may very well be the best thing about it. It's like a convention, but here we know more about the person than the "name tag" just passing by. The goofy points keeps us coming back, and creates greater opportunity to know more about people attending as well.

I just went to REW and it is very different than A/R. Using both for different purposes might fit together quite well.

Having been on REW for a few years & on active rain less than a year I don't find them competitive in the least. I was unaware that there was now a blog feature on REW - I will check that out. I, like Lenn, did not like that in order to be in their 'directory' that you had to give them back a home page link to their site. On AR you can if you choose (want points) but don't have to. Yes, you can still use the forums, etc without a link. I have never received any 'leads' from REW but have received many referrals & leads from AR - but again I haven't set up a blog there either. Ok, so much for my 2 cents :)

Guess we had better look into this. Thanks for the tip Maureen!

Maureen,

Competition is good. Has always been and will always be. If REW has more juice than AR, that's not necessarily a bad thing at this point. It means we have to work a bit more to streamline our operations and catch up to REW. I see us making good improvements from time to time. I don't know how valid that pooch story in the open house is, but that kind of blogging wouldn't help in the juice department. Content.

Very interesting, as a newbie to the RE blogging world, this was a great post and great threads. Thanks to all the contributors.

Thanks for the info. I am always very interested with people's perception of the AR. Most people just blow it off and think it's a waste of time. My thought is, who cares, if you get one deal from it and learn from your peers, it's all good.

Darn one of the newer members deleted her comment from the conversation since she thought the "becouse the level of ignorance is getting a little high, and it is not my job to teach those who will not listen." was directed at her comment asking an SEO question.

I doubt the remark about ignorance was directed at her comment. I don't know what "oversubscribing from this blog" means but hopefully James has left this conversation since his frustrations over how ignorant others are, have rendered his contributions insulting to at least one person here trying to learn about SEO and REW. I am sorry that that anyone felt they were being called ignorant because of this entry when they were asking for simple clarification.

My idol Kathy Sierra has this before the comments on her blog and I try to use this mentality on all of my blogs.

"We LOVE to hear from you, and we think of this blog as a big dinner party. Y'all are our invited guests, but if you're being rude and obnoxious we'll let the bouncer toss you. So please, stick to debating and criticizing ideas rather than personal attacks."

Guys, I just wanted to respond to Lenn about the comment left on the blog post she made as I don't think my tone may have been clear.

When I looked at the blog post, I realized that Lenn did not know what the "related links" were for, or how to use them. I also noticed that she had a TON of websites in the left hand side navigation. This is typically a red flag for spam - 1 blog post, and 100 links to the left hand side navigation? Probably a spammer. I also looked at her description and it was totally keyword stuff (Another flag for spam) - Now I did not delete or suspend her account, in fact many people don't even know they are appearing spammy, they just simply have not learned best practices when it comes to SEO and building a reputation online. So instead, seeing as how this was her first post (I have never met her, and don't know her from AR) I invited her to the blogs forum pointed out the thread regarding related links, and also the rules.

Here is my exact comment:

"Lenn,
Welcome to REW Blogs, perhaps as this is your first post, I might direct you to the Blogs forum located at http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs.html

There you can learn how to best use your REW Blog, and also become aware of our rules, terms of service etc.

Specifically, just from looking at this post I would like to send you to http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/thread12071.html and http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/morgan-carey/rew-blog-rules.html"

I think we have established a HUGE difference in AR vs REW in the sense that REW Blogs are moderated much more heavily (Because of the staff we have) for both spam protection and for quality. We are not looking to ban everyone who doesn't have a perfect blog or understand SEO, we are looking to identify them, so that we can help teach them how to make the most out of using our free service. If someone is doing something wrong, or could be doing something better, often times another user, or a staff member will point it out and most of the time offer to help. I hope this isn't seen as a negative.

"don't know. I signed up for the REW and posted one small article and got a comment from Morgan to review the rules and forum.

I guess I'll stick to Active Rain.

I very much liked the interface of REW, but if my simple post broke some rules, dang if I could figure it out."

Just because it is the initial topic of conversation: http://www.google.ca/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGIH,GGIH:2006-51,GGIH:en&q=lennharley ;-)

Interesting data from REW:

Blog Users:

610

Blog Entries:

1,610

Total Blog Views:

471,754

Blog Comments:

1,274

AR - Members: 34,010 - 1,939 Online Now

How long has REW been out there? Sherry

More on the subject read http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/lastpostinthread16147.html

Boyer doesn't know "their" from "they're"

The forum discussion makes it look like all Morgan, Ryan and Boyer's rudeness and spamming here on Active Rain is to generate traffic on REW. I am not a member of either REW or Active Rain. I looked at REW based on this blog a few days ago. I did not think this blog was uncomplimentary to REW but after having looked at both networks for a couple of days I would never join REW.

Maybe I am not cut out for blogging, some of you are so nasty. Funny, the comments on REW about who is arrogant are totally turned around in my opinion.

Sherry, my participation in REW about 2 years or more ago started out on the REW forums. I believe the blogs started on REW after the Active Rain blogs. Some forum members do not utilize REW blogs and some of the blog users do not visit the forum. So REW was a real estate & seo forum first & then offered free blogs quite some time after that.

Well now I have to check out another real estate blog site. 10 more hours a week down the drain, you see what you have done?

The article from Maureen is one of the best posts ever published here on AR. I wish we had more writing like that. Who knows...maybe someday we'll have one of those "Where are They Now?" features...

REW isn't setup properly in my opinion and it is more spammy than AR. The people in that community I have found to be not as courteous either. Just my opinions of the short time I spent there.

I just signed up to REW to see what it is about - we really need to open our eyes to the different options out there. I do find it difficult to navigate, probably because it is a bit for "technically inclined". I will keep an open mind.

Wow these comments have gone from good to bad to good to bad again. I hope we can all find a way to convery our messages without disparaging each other any further. I find it funny that a little forum thread from REW that I posted my thougts about and Maureen found could stir something like this up, but, for all of us, it's a great lesson about what makes a good post. It seems to me that we have a wide and varied opinion of what blogging is and that is fine. What we shouldn't be doing is making judgements about each other the way some have done here defending either position. Both places and their members are worthy of more than that. For those who had never heard of REW, I hope that you have found another tool to help get your message out to the people you want to hear it. I was never hear to promote anything. In fact it was my comment in REW that started this fiasco so I I felt I had something to offer to the conversation, not spam. Some of you saw it that way, others did not. For those of you who emailed me with questions, thank you. I hope I was helpful in my responses.

We can have a good dialogue folks. It just needs to stay civil!

I actually discovered them right before i discovered AR. There weren't blogs more of a forum, mostly teckie talk. I think they wanted a link from my website which I don't do. Of course I now have links to A/R on my websites but they earned it. (Of course the points are not bad either)

Next time I have a spare minute maybe I'll check them out again.

I would imagine that we'll be getting more juice when Reator magazine has even more agents involved on the network...

Scott

Maureen. My sides are splitting. I just read the REW forum for the past few days. The problem with this forum format, IMO, is that it too closely resembles RealTalk.

I have to say, I VERY much liked their blogging presentation. Unfortunately, what I posted apparently didn't please a lot of folks and I became the subject of a lot of scorn. Not a problem. I'm used to it. The guy really knows what he's doing in terms of SEO although there may be a linking problem with reciprocal links. But, everyone knows what I think about reciprocal linking. I'm finally getting some support from Google with that. I've warned folks about that for years, but, what do I know??

I posted something about a local area and then filled in a bunch of links. I thought that was like a blogroll. Apparently there is an informal rule about linking to web sites because that caused some angst in some members. So, I just dumped everything I could. I can see folks remarking about opinion blogs, but location blogs??? That's RealTalk stuff.

So, it's the general consensus that lennharley is a hack. Again, not a problem, I'm used to it.

Let's see. lennharley is a hack. Maureen is arrogant. What else?? Oh, REW is better than AR. No surprise there.

Too bad. One of the gentlemen posting to the forum is in Arlington where I desparately need an experienced buyer's agent. I lose about 6-8 referral buyers every year because my referral agents in Northern Virginia just don't want to go to Arlington and Old Town Alexandria. But, Homefinders.com brings in some good buyers to those areas.

Why do folks junk Active Rain so?? I can't figure it. All we do is chat back and forth, post a few Localisms, and have some fun while working. For me, I've learned a lot about blogging. I might even get serious about it one of these days.

Got to go close my windows, we've got a big storm breaking.

AR and REW are certainly not competitors with each other... as a member of both I find enormous benefits and that's supposed to be the whole point. (REW certainly has more rules but there is a reason for that and if you take the time to read the forums you'll understand why.)

There is incredible knowledge about search engine marketing at the REW forums and an incredible amount of knowledge on real estate marketing at AR. Use information from both and apply it to your business and you certainly can't go wrong.

Certainly better then reading all of the trade magazines sitting in my Inbox!

IMO, REW is an SEO forum community with blogs that targets the real estate community and Active Rain is a social-networking real estate blogging community that features SEO. If you could distill it, REW is great for blogging and those who want the most out of SEO. On the other hand, Active Rain is great for blogging and real estate professionals who want to get the most out of social networking. In the end, both serve the purpose of generating more traffic to your site. SEO is tough enough, but greater still is answering the question: "What will turn all of this traffic coming to my site into people who will buy what I am selling?"

I have been quite impressed with Active Rain so far, and I have learned a great deal just from reading this blog and its comments!

Interesting post. Thanks for sharing this information. At this point I am only on AR, but may try REW as well when I have the time.

Wow..... I can't believe I read this whole thread... I don't even know where to start.

Comparing REW to AR is not comparing apples to oranges. It's not even comparing fruits to vegetables. They are two completely different formats and models.

There are some *brilliant* SEO minds on the REW forums. There are some *brilliant* writers on AR. (and vice versa). There are also some flat out wrong SEO ideas on REW (that are usually swiflty corrected) and there are some flat out bad entries on AR.

So what? That's to be expected with any public forum/social network. You have to take the good with the bad, the real with the fluff.

I don't spend much time posting to AR anymore, though I do still lurk and read. Nothing against AR, I just don't have time. Ditto with the REW forums/blogs. I devote most of my time to my own blog and website.

The personal attacks are however, completely uncalled for. And I must say I'm disappointed to see them here. It didn't use to be like that. But I joined AR when there were about 100 people here (and no blogs). I guess it's to be expected with ARs growth that crap like personal attacks comes along with it. Sad.

Bottom line (for me) is that neither AR nor REW is better than the other. They are different, and not easily compared.

Back to lurking!

This seems to fit the social network mold a bit more to me. So oI personnaly spend ore time here no at AR.

Diversify your time and use both REW Blogs and Active Rain.

I want to re-enforce the point about some members making their own blanket statements in this thread, and the one at REW which are not conducive to the membership as a whole. I to thought the user who was attacking Lenn in the thread was out of line, and you can read my unaltered response to him here http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/showpost.php?p=112845&postcount=35

If you don't wish to read it at REW Forums, here it is verbatim

"Technically, she is not breaking any rules, however her description is quite spammy, and I do not agree with her tactic in terms of SEO (Having that many poor quality mini sites)

Instead of attacking her, why don't we help her? She obviously has enthusiasm, and a love for the web, these people are rare and with guidence can end up being some of your best members, and referrals in the community.

It was not long ago, that you yourself were ignorant of SEO and didn't know much about the web, that is not a crime or sin of some kind. People wandering in the dark sometimes stub their toes on the corners of spammy tactics. They didn't know, they were just looking for the damn light switch

Hopefully she is as willing to learn as we are to teach her, I would imagine she has a lot to share and teach us as well. "

The point being is that (And this has been said by cooler heads throughout the thread) - we need to respect each other and our opinions without red herrings or other fallacy being used in conjunction with attacks or insults.

Both REW and AR are great resources for agents. Some fit certain users styles other than others and that is also perfectly fine. I think the members themselves becoming so passionate to defend each side exemplifies the quality and strength of each community - (And we are both strong quality communities)

For the user that asked about REW Blogs VS AR in terms of start times and membership, I posted that earlier in the thread but to recap. The forums have been open for several years and have over 10k members, the Blogs have only been officially open since the beginning of this year.

OK, I just skimmed most of the comments here and I am disappointed to know that now I have to go blog on REW too. I can barely keep up. As for "Nobody's Watching" I can't believe you have re-read the comments even once. Well, actually, I can believe it. :-)

My dog comment was not meant to be snippy. It was a quote from Greg's post, but, oh well...

I have to tell you that I joined and posted on the NEW MEMBER forum and received a nice welcome....that's a good start.

Maureen,

Something else to check out - who needs to sleep anyway?

Some of the comments make me wonder why we can't all just get along. If you like the other site better - great. If you like this one better - great. Then again, I have a laid back attitude when it comes to this kind of thing. AR has helped my SERPs a lot. If something else out there can help as well that is great, and I will certainly give it a try.

JUN

2007

you should use both, both are very powerfull. REW acually did my website, and managing my seo. I very happy with what they have offered me. Check it out http://www.bellingham-realestate.net

Your comment made me curious so I went to Google and checked the address of the house I have up for sale (You can also add your listings to your REW Blogs) I did not include the city, province or country I have the listing in, only querying 1007 thunderbird (Makes it a little more competitive) low and behold, my REW Blog listing came up #1 ahead of RE/Max and my realtor's website who both also have it listed. Google SERP results I have also added this listing to localism but it has not shown in Google yet

Ok guys, I just finished making an AR post about something great that I experienced on AR today, it's actually quite remarkable - those who are not convinced of the usefulness of AR and how it can truly effect their lives should read it, it honestly made my day. You can read the post here: http://activerain.com/blogsview/122362/Social-Networking-Online-creates

MF: I know you were innocent of snippiness.

Rita wrote "Some of the comments make me wonder why we can't all just get along. If you like the other site better - great. If you like this one better - great." Good point. but then I wouldn't have over 100 comments most defending REW as if this entry is an attack against Motherhood, baseball, apple pie and REW. It was a provacative topic.

Thanks for all the comment all.

I want to recommend a couple of links to some of the newer people here. The ActiiveRain Guidelines are always a fun read. It's on the bottom of every page.

There is a whole group about etiquette on ActiveRain for those who don't know right from wrong. A classic there is This is my Dance and that is yours... Lots of the rules broken in the comments here are unstated rules out on the blogosphere, basics like don't comment spam.

Not so much apropos Real Estate Webmaster's google juice as their general reputation, I should point out that I had some support issues that I needed help with, and got responses to them really quickly, at midnight. Now keep in mind, this is on a free account, and the answers and courtesy I received were better than many paid vendors I've worked with.

Being someone who's relatively new to both platforms, I may write some general comparative remarks soon.

Well, you all have my head spinning. I may have to go back and read this again - tomorrow. This is one heck of a post

This is definitely a post that keeps on giving. Thanks for clearing up the PR thing for me, Maureen:)

Keep us posted John!

Laurie I know it made me dizzy, oh no that's actually nausea.

You are most welcome Ed.

My Fairy Blogmother (and Mary Pope-Handy's Fairy Blogmother and Project Blogger Coach) Frances Flynn Thorsen wrote a wonderful piece recently about the secret to great blogging and it's not SEO.

What is the Secret to Publishing a Great Blog?

Hint: It Has Nothing to do with SEO or Widgets or Gadgets!

The ActiveRain fruit that came up on this comment box is "Passion!"

I love testing SERP.

Since Morgan has touted the benefits of listings in REW over the benefits of Localism, I thought I'd test it. Since he searched Google for the address, Google had no choice but to return the REW listing in the SERP because THE ADDRESS ISN'T EVEN INCLUDED IN THE LOCALISM POST. This makes sense because the meta titles are, I believe pulled from the titles of the post, in this case the listing address. However, the property address, while it is the title of the REW listing, it is not even present in the Localism post.

Am I missing something? I have absolutely no claim to SEO expertise. I'm a grunge real estate broker. But, when a claim is made that one system is more productive over another, I want to know why. I'm constantly researching what will help my sites produce in Google. This was easy to demostrate. The reason the Localism doesn't produce in Google for the address of this property is because it isn't in the blog.

=============================================================

LOCALISM ARTICLE

Nanaimo Home for sale, Hospital Area Thunderbird Drive

<title>Real Estate Blog - Nanaimo Home for sale, Hospital Area Thunderbird Drive</title>

REW LISTING

Address: 1007 Thunderbird Drive City: Nanaimo State: British Columbia
<title>Listing Details - Perfect Family Home 1007 Thunderbird Dr Nanaimo, BC</title>

===========================================================

MAUREEN: My deepest apologies for posting about someone else on your blog. I don't want to hijack this magnificent post for my own communication. But, I don't know how else to communicate the facts of this comparison to the readers herein. REW and AR are both wonderful tools for real estate practitioners.

Based on my short experience, 2 days?, on REW, I want to spend my blogging time in a friendly place.

This was a very good commnet thread. Only took an hour to read!!

Lenn,

Here is a good test case for you. I have this listing posted in multiple places. If you run the search for the property address, you get this search result:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&q=2475+brookhaven+heights&spell=1

If you run the search by mls number, you get this search result:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mls%23+3459110&btnG=Search

Does that help any?

To me, it's better to have it listed on the first page of Google in REW and on AR. Double the chances of being found...

This will be my last comment in this thread, sorry I cannot contribute here any longer so please if you have anything specifically to address to me I cannot answer it here and you will have to email me or ask over at REW, the reason being I received a very nasty email from the author of this particular thread demanding that I stop commenting (As a member in good standing at AR) in a thread that is specifically about myself and my company.

This author for the most part was able to remain very civil and nice to the public but I have to say behind the scenes what a nasty person. I have never done anything to wrong Maureen McCabe nor have I violated any ettiquette or AR rules in responding to questions regarding my company that comment posters made on a blog she started about my company.

As the owner of Real Estate Webmasters, am I not the most qualified person to answer the REW specific questions that come about because of you starting this thread?

As an AR member am I not entitled to post relevant comments that are on topic and helpful?

Why would you not want me commenting here Maureen - I am the only one who knows the facts about REW.

Are you upset because your little article didn't turn out the way you wanted it to? You don't get to be the star of the conversation and control everything so you flip out and start emailing people privately that aren't saying what you want them to say, or agreeing with you?

The sad thing is, is that before receiving the email, I was really enjoying this thread and it was prompting me to contribute even more to AR - Myself (And many others) likely have a lot to offer this community, and people like you basically telling us to get lost do a disservice to Active Rain as a whole.

I was going to leave this alone, but I keep getting notification that more and more people are talking about Real Estate Webmasters in a thread that the author has demanded I no longer participate in. I wanted to make sure users did not think I lost interest, disappeared or something. I am here on active rain any time you wish to contact me, and I am also "Webmaster" at REW Forums stop by any time.

I am done with this thread

JUN

2007

Morgan Carey wrote: "I was going to leave this alone, but I keep getting notification that more and more people are talking about Real Estate Webmasters in a thread that the author has demanded I no longer participate in. I wanted to make sure users did not think I lost interest, disappeared or something. I am here on active rain any time you wish to contact me, and I am also "Webmaster" at REW Forums stop by any time.

I am done with this thread"

Hooray. Sad excuse. Go in to each and every comment you have made via edit (I think above imakes 9 comments here) and unclick the "Notify me of new comments:" simple as that. Now do that before you get notified of more comments. I will be responding to Lenn and Bryant.

You should have left it alone. You were asked to stop commenting. You were asked privately.

New captcha! Where's my fruit! Three tries. I don't like it AR.

Bryant: Thanks for stopping by. It is kind of lenghty to read all the comments, especially if you click all the links, sign up for REW, read all the REW forums so you too are an SEO expert, write a blog on REW, test your SERP..... Personally I'm just talking about people talking about ActiveRain and I am exhausted by the thread. The first thread on REW about ActiveRain was just sour grapes about ActiveRain.

Maureen,

There is no reason to be rude. You brought this on by writing the post. If you don't understand that the REW blogging platform is better to get your message out to consumers because it ranks higher then you just aren't very bright. I have tried thoughout these comments to be as nice as possible, but, your tone is just downright ugly. I'm very glad that you don't represent the AR community because it wouoldn't last very long if you did.

Ironically, your zest for AR and ingnorance of what you have had to say has led many people to sign up for REW and talk to me privately about your rudeness. Sort of funny, I think.

Lenn: Your timing sucks. I still love you. I appreciate your comment. I am sorry Morgan felt your comment was license for him to comment after I had asked him to stop commenting here, privately. I got a loooong (can you imagine that?) email from Morgan wondering if I was really asking HIM to stop commenting. I sent him an email confirming that I had asked him to stop posting comments to this entry.

I believe that is my right. I could just delete Morgan's comments. People have been asking me for days why I have not deleted his REW commercials and the rest of the comment spam here in this entry.

Morgan has carried on a monologue in the comment here since Friday. I don't see where anyone was talking to him, Morgan was not responding to the thread, he was just advertising REW. This is a conversation that does go in a hundred different directions but IMHO you could remove all that Morgan wrote and the thread would make sense. Others may have got something out of Morgan's comments. To me Morgan's comments were the commercials where we all scatttered to the bathroom or went to see if there was anything to snack on in the kitchen. One or two would not have been a problem. He has 7? 8? comments before I asked him to stop commenting.

This is about Morgan, not to him, this does not require a response from him. Morgan feels the need to defend REW. This was not an attack against REW but you'd hardly know it from the comments. I can't imagine Matt, Caleb or Jonathan defending ActiveRain on REW or elsewehere. Why would they need to? Morgan can post on his forum about how nasty I was asking him to leave, how arrogant I am, how condescending I am.... He can write a post on AR about how poorly he was treated here (conforming to AR community guidelines of course on the bottom of each and every page on ActiveRain) this entry is not his platform.

Lots of people I know from AR have come here and said nice things about REW, a number of people have signed up for REW. People on AR who had never heard of REW have signed up because of this entry.

The thread I picked up on via Google Alerts is gossip. The second thread on the REW forum about this entry is gossip. The thread about you Lenn is gossip. The members of REW can tell themselves they have hard core, hard hitting he-man conversations about SEO and nothing more but they are gossiping about ActiveRain and it caught my eye and tickled my funny bone.

When Google sends out alerts that say:

and

"Anyone know what the criteria is to be the featured agent on the AR homepage?

You just get picked...not a giant rhyme nor reason...sign up and read the thread. Some have tried for a long time...others featured even admit they are honored but have no clue!"

and " No question - by the way is this Mike or Jenn or is it both of you?"

it is funny. The Google alerts made me go see what it is all about. Traffic! You can see in the thread in their forums that they are excited about getting traffic from this entry.

On ONE of James T. Boyer's ActiveRain accounts there's an entry "Active Rain VS REW Blogs SEO." Many of the REW members who visited this entry were responding to his blog not mine. James T. Boyer has three lonely comments on his entry... Yet the REW people came here and respond to James T. Boyer's blogs entry.

Again thanks for your comment Lenn. I appreciate your input. I am sorry about the timing but you sure had no way of knowing I had already asked Morgan to stop.

Ryan: This is ActiveRain not the forums on REW. This is my blog. This is not a debate. You may think I am rude. You wrote on the REW thread about this entry more than once that you were done with this thread. Be a man of your word and leave this thread behind. Thanks!

Let's see, you talk about another community in a way that you clearly don't understand and you don't think the owner of the other place has the right to respond?

O.K. I get it. It's only alright if it fits what you want it to say. By all means post away if you like it! But, if it makes you look bad or people think you don't understand then you don't want to hear it.

This is a public environment and you started these comments. Your blissful ignorance rings very clear!

I'm also done with this now. Congratulations for taking what was an informative topic for readers and turning it into a personal gripe because the outcome you thought was going to be the case turned out to be incorrect. An intelligent person would have learned. Some did I suppose. You act like you hold stock in AR and you are personally offended by the thought of a better ranking platform.

You know what would be fun? Starting an REW blog post in your market and have it outrank anything you do just because you have been so rude! Blog value only matters if it actually gets read by consumers. You can get on the phone or email your friends if you want to chat. If you want to reach consumers, you need to rank. That was the point of this right?

As for REALTOR mag - they are antiquated at best when it comes to technology and there is politics involved. The fact that they would recommend a blogging platform that doesn't get a REALTOR's message out as well as nother platform should be an excellent indication of their competence!

Ryan: Next comment from you will be deleted. In fact maybe after I read your last comment it will be deleted. Why waste your time that way? This is not what is valued on ActiveRain. Slamming one another may be all the rage on REW. Go back to REW and post in the forums. Post an entry here about how I should not have blogged about REW. You can write all about how "You brought this on by writing the post."

I am invoking the Kathy Sierra dinner party rule on my blog "We LOVE to hear from you, and we think of this blog as a big dinner party. Y'all are our invited guests, but if you're being rude and obnoxious we'll let the bouncer toss you. So please, stick to debating and criticizing ideas rather than personal attacks."

Not that I am saying you are being rude or obnoxious.... I think you might be but I don't think I would say it here publicly but I just happen to have that paragraph handy.

Thanks for the final comment from you!

This place is like high school all over again

I agree. Do we know you? Are you the same anonymous commenter as a day or so ago? Not that it matters.

Thanks for the comment, thanks for your opinion. Any advice?

I usually would have made this a members only post or shut it down by this point.

Maureen McCabe You are like a high school kid.

What you don't understand is that you are talking about someones privately owned company, that person responded to you as your facts and statements were clearly wrong. Your are correct that you could just delete morgan carey 's posts to your blog about his company, but would that be the right thing to do?

The right thing to do if you did not like the way that this conversation was going would have been to A) Shut up and let the blog die a quiet death, or B) Delete the Blog and forget about it, or C) Be nice and post the facts then shut up and let the blog fade as people will loose interest in a blog that you are not sensationalizing.

This is not a competiton, and it never should be a competition as both AR and REW have much to offer the Real Estate professional who chooses to use them. Though AR has less to offer the Real Estate professional who is not on the first page for their state.

Now I expect that you will delete this post so go right ahead if you are into the censorship thing.

Just remember it is also possible for AR to remove the entire blog.

Best of luck to you and all who have put the time in to read this long and drawn out blog and the comments on it.

Oh, and stop sending private messages, and e-mails to people demanding that they stop commenting on the blog, and asking others to come comment on the blog and trying to tell them what to say. It is rude and should not be done.

Jim

James: That was your last comment here.

Hopefully people who want to debate ActiveRain vs. REW will take their conversation to your entry.

I have not checked out what you have linked in this comment so still may delete the last comment from you. I would have hoped after your outburst about ignorance the other day that you would have realized that you were no longer welcome to comment here.

Morgan can post about his company where ever he wants to just no more in the comments on this entry. I did not mention Morgan in the blog, just because it is about REW does not give him rights to carry on a monologue in the comments. I did not name Ryan or any of the others. I've let you all have your say. This was not a debate about ActiveRain vs. REW as much as all of you want it to be.

JUN

2007

Very interesting that there is competition also between which blogging site you are going to use.. WOW

Doug: They are businesses so they do compete for business.

Here's a conversation on AR about different blog platforms that got wild last fall. The Tomato Blogs vs. Real Estate Blogsites vs. RSS Pieces Blogs. The participants got contentious and Bill French felt the need to make it members only. Comparing Blog Platforms The part of the title about "schizophrenic" was added later the crazier it got.

Free platforms for real estate blogs compete too. I think Matt, Caleb and Jonathan are too busy for the sort of stuff that REW does. I think AR blogs had a different approach to get people blogging here. Did you watch the video on Inman Friday with Matt and Jon? It is posted on the official ActiveRain blog.

Thanks for the comment.

What about not worrying so much about an seo and worry about posting some decent blogs to help consumers and help agents. If we focused more on this would the other not take care of itself? Recognition and where we rank is fast taking over the reason we are here in the first place, to close transactions.

Doug

JUN

2007

I've got business from ActiveRain Doug. I hope you have too. If not if someplace else works better for an individual, have at it. Thanks for the comment.

SEP

2007

Maureen - I was going back and reading some of your previous posts. (You are active rain royalty and I knew I could learn from you.) I found this one quite interesting. Some of the stuff, admittedly was foreign to me, but as for juice I got it. AR does have great juice, not grape juice. I can type in key words for my primary areas here and find myself in the top 2 pages almost every time. Active Rain is a great community and it's great for business.

many of us are thrilled with AR Juice. There could be other sites that have more Juice but they aren't as popular as AR.

I'm not royalty. Most of my points on AR are from inviting good bloggers.

SEP

2007

It does not matter where the points came from. .I have always heard that where you are in life is the sum total of the books that you read and the people you associate with. You obviously have good associations.

I have wonderful associates on and off ActiveRain!

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