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Trulia Disappointed

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NOTE: Listing properties on Trulia.com remains FREE. Trulia.com introduced featured listings. This is about Trulia featured listings, the opportunity for more traffic for a fee.

Have you checked out the new featured listings on Trulia.com?

Who else participated with the Trulia Featured listings beta test? Did your listings get 4X more traffic from Trulia? Or the coveted 7X more traffic? Did it bring more traffic to your website? Did you get emails from consumers? Contact from serious home buyers?

I just got in, on the tail end of the beta. For some reason Kelly with Trulia emailed me in mid or late October to do a 3, 4, 5 week test... I wonder about others who were involved in the beta, what their experience was. I suppose I could have gone to Trulia to see who had featured listings but I never did.

From a recent email to beta participants from Trulia.com:

"Features:

Photo & contact info. featured on your Trulia listings, as well as a new email tool enabling consumers to email property inquiries directly to your mailbox

Totally new, enhanced property detail page embedded with useful neighborhood stats (see attached mock)

Listings featured in top three search results (based on search relevancy)

Weekly traffic reporting details the number of times a listing is viewed on site and visitors sent to your Web site from Trulia

Highlight up to 10 listings for a monthly subscription fee of $50

Why?

Agents who participated in a two-month Agent Featured Listing beta test received 4x more traffic to featured listings, on average, than to non-featured listings (in many cases, traffic increased 7x!)

Agent Featured Listings are one of many steps Trulia is taking to help agents connect with Trulia's serious home buyers - 81% of who are looking to purchase a home within 12 months."

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Thanks for allowing me to participate!

Trulia.com vs. Realtor.com

Are "Enhanced Listings" on Realtor.com worth the cost?

How is a Trulia.com featured (enhanced) listing better than a Realtor.com enhanced listing? Isn't it the same general idea? Give us your listings to create traffic for US. OK now want business from your listings being on our site? Pay us to enhance (feature ) the listings.

I got two reports from Trulia. The first one showed no activity, or no visits to my site anyway... the second showed seven people visited my site from Trulia.

I got a third Trulia Report. One (1...) person visted my site from Trulia.com this week. Previous week had seven. Maybe there is some good news in the report that I am not seeing... The report says: "This week, featured listings generated an average of 6.5 times more attention than non-featured listings."

The numbers of people who view it on Trulia.com I don't see how I can tell from the report that it is 4x or 7x what it would have been unfeatured. I'm disappointed, but thanks for letting me be part of the beta.

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Posted by Maureen McCabe Central OH Homes on 11/09/2007 04:36 AM

Comments (26)

Trulia in the Online Marketing Channel

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Post is included in group: Central Ohio Tech Users

26 Comments on Trulia Disappointed

NOV

2007

I wonder if REAL consumers actually visit Trulia or Zillow at all. The only clients I've ever had that knew about it were technophyles and even they said it was "neat." I guess until the get their information correct with their guesstimates, then they'll always fall short. I don't like REALTOR.com's prices but every year that I have had over 5 listings, and enhanced coverage, I've received one buyer that has closed, which more than paid for it. Oh and all my sellers were happy because they'd heard of Realtor.com. Trulia who? Great post for information.

Maureen, I got the email and a marketing package, looked it over both places, through it in the trash and deleted.

Maureen,

If you're not going to Vegas, why don't you email this to Saul and he can ask it at the forum next Wednesday.

Mmmmmmm. Let's see what I learned here.

Featured listings got more traffic than non-featured listings.
Maureen got a traffic report from Trulia.
The report doesn't reveal whether the traffic resulted from featured listing or non-featured listing.

Featured listings will cost $50 a month.

If we've learned anything from the past 3-4 years about subscriptions to Internet listings it is that, whether the listing is productive or NOT, the monthly subscription goes on and the hit on the credit card can't be stopped until the end of the subscription.

But, in fairness to Trulia and all the rest, how are they supposed to pay the bills without those monthly subscription fees rolling in?

Joshua.. there was something yesterday about Trulia has better traffic than Zillow.. unless you use Zillows internal numbers, which Zillow is more fond of.

I think both sites have consumer traffic. Saying they don't is akin to saying ActiveRain is just all us reading one another. Jonathan showed us the graph earlier this week? Last week? about ActiveRain traffic from searches.

I had an elderly client last year who knew the Zestimate of his house. It was not right, but he knew what Zillow said it was worth. He and I did email but he could not do some of the web 2.0 stuff our company had instituted but he knew his Zestimate, had no problem with Zillow's site.

Our Real Living COO is or was on the board of Trulia.com I am not trying to trash the company or Zillow, or similar businesses, just wondering what others experience in the beta was and if anyone else wondered about the similarity to Realtor.com enhanced listings, "give us your listings to create traffic for us, now if you want business from it, pay for enhanced listings."

Missy and Fred thanks for the comments.

I use their map on my blog but I haven't gotten any leads from them at all..sometimes I see the listings on google...but pretty far down the list.

Lenn, Featured listings are $50 for 10, 5 bucks a month. Not a big expense. I only have two listings so that is $25 a month... still not an outlandish amount to pay to get extra views of a listing. While I would love to see something showing they are clicking through to my site, I did not in the three reports I have seen.

My feedback is I can't tell from the report that they sent me that the traffic is 4x to 7x the amount of views on Trulia.com that the listings would have got w/ out being featured.

I am not sure what % of local listings are on Trulia.com, whether it is a place that a buyer can find a greatest % of properties.

Neal do you have another blog or do you mean on your ActiveRain blog? Did you do the beta, have featured listings?

Maureen, this is really interesting! I am in an odd spot because I was a listing agent until I moved to NC in 2005 and since then have only had 1 listing and all the rest buyers. (I have turned away overpriced listings). I was just about to write a post about all of the Internet marketing available for listings and try to solicit feedback from AR members so that I have one comprensive list of where I should put my listings once I do get some. Do you know if such a list already exists? I know BB just wrote a great post on his marketing and I have a whole file of ideas and articles from Inman etc. but I want to know what really works so that I can wow my sellers...I can't wait! Thanks!

I have had my listings and Trulia for quite a while and have not seen significant traffic.

Anne

Diane: Real Living had a list last summer in a marketing meeting we had called '360 degree marketing." There was a list of what are good places to post your listing, what are bad places to post your listings, in part or mostly based on the security, whether the data will be scraped or used inappropriately.

Elaine told me we were posting all the companies listing on another site according to Inman... I went and looked and said

"ewwwwwwwwwwwwww"

I went to a class about a week after 360 degree marketing presentation and hoped to learn more about good portals, bad portals (maybe that is not the word.) I was overwhelmed by that portion of the presentation, especially since there seem to be new ones everyday. I was disappointed by the class. No new info. I am not sure I would share the list from our company unless it is posted somewhere publicly by Real Living, though even if I had a handle on it..... I know as a company they post our listings to a lot of sites.

I emailed something to my manager about a week ago and said 'Is this scraping?" I don't think it is.. he sent me the definition of scraping... but I don't think it was appropriate use of a listing on our companies IDX. It is basically a vendor offerering a service to real estate agents or sellers via a blog, using our companies presentation of a property from another brokerage... I thiink as members of MLS / IDX brokers have to police that, but I don't know how we will. I don't think this was a scam, maybe a matter of copyright infringement.

We have all of our companiies listings on Trulia.com

Anne: Did you do the beta? Would you be interested in enhancing your listings for 4x to 7x the traffic at a cost of 50 bucks for up to 10 listings?

From all of the other comments, it seems that this is not going to be productive for you. I haven't personally paid for this type of advertising.

I don't have any sellers or buyers mentioning Trulia. I've only had one mention Zillow. (Zillow doesn't have zestimates for my area). All are familiar with R.com. What I've heard some buyers mention is that they started at R.com, then found a local broker with a good search section, then they stick with that broker's site for further searches.

I did notice this week - per StatCounter - that I had 5 visits to my web site from R.com. Without the enhanced status, my web address wouldn't show on R.com.

When I read the Trulia announcement, I thought it said the cost was $50/month. Must have interpreted that wrong.

I guess I look at this as is the consumer only looking at featured listings vs listings that suit their needs. I personally never even glance at the featured but I also wouldn't shop by just going open house sign to open house sign.

Until it's a proven money maker, I don't think it would be beneficial in my mind. Enhancing my listings on the other hand I can see because it makes that listing when someone targets an area look better. Just me...

Elaine: It is 50 dollars a month for up to 10 listings:

"Highlight up to 10 listings for a monthly subscription fee of $50" is from an email yesterday from Trulia. It is pretty much their same write up in a press release yesterday morning.

Trulia has more traffic than Zillow according to something I read yesterday.

Stella: I am not asking others to help me decide if featured listings work out for me. ?? I could in a different kind of market and carrying more listings determine that it is something that is beneficial to me. It may not have been a great test. It may be the greatest thing for the industry, or a particular person, but not me. I am asking other who were part of the beta for input on their experience. My experience may not be truly represeantative of the service for many reasion. Hope that's OK with you.

Josette: Sorry Featured listings is not a separate someplace on the Trulia site separate displaying featured listing. It is not a gallery of featured listings. Trulia is set up for consumers (buyers) to search for properties. When the consumer performs a search the new featured listings come up first, provide more information than the standard listing, so they'd recieve more traffic than the standard listing.

"Listings featured in top three search results (based on search relevancy)"

Trulia, is all about SEARCH it is not just a way of displaying listings.

Maureen,

I have an outside blog but only have the widget here on AR..I never paid anything to link them so I guess I am not sure of the version I have. I forgot to check. But I know it is picked up through vflyer and postlets on my listings...not sure what I get out of it.

Maureen, thanks. I will continue to do research. I have quite a file of articles and posts so perhaps I can start a list on a post and have others add to it.

I remember getting that email myself Maureen, but I couldn't see the $50 fee. I don't know how the featured part works, but I subscribe to a visual tour program that links to trulia, that's included in the monthly price of the tour package.

I just Googled my area. and there were 127 listings on trulia. I don't know what a featured listing looks like there, but all of the listings had the agency website listed, when I clicked the link, it opened to the agents listing of the property, with agent pic, and all the contact info. I don't subscribe to trulia, so why would I pay $50k, when I have all my information there for free.

I also looked at my visual tours, to see which search engines were getting the most hits. and yahoo,and google got the most, trulia was only getting 1-2, compared to 6-7 on the others

Larry: I am not trying to sell you a featured listing on Trulia.com Sorry if you can't see the difference in a FEATURED LISTING. Perhaps no one in your area is doing featured listings, it is still a beta, I have no idea what kind of coverage Trulia had. If there are featured listings that match a consumber search they would be in the top three positions for that search though. They say FEATURED LISTING at the very top so they are hard to miss. When you click for info on a Featured Listing you get a photo of the listing agent and a button to contact the listing agent, not the listing brokerage but the listing agent.

If you click on the same for a non featured listing you get basically an ad saying listing agent make this a featured listing with an icon showing a head (like the cloud people on AR who do not add a photo to a profile. )

Hmm I never thought to look at hits on visual tours ... If the top placement does increase views like Trulia says it does based on your 1-2 hits from Trulia and 6-7 from Yahoo and Google, I think in theory if you featured you'd be getting 6 to 13 hits (base on that average of 6.5 this week.)

Oh, I know that you're not trying to sell me anything Maureen, I didn't take it that way.

I see what you mean about the listing being featured. There are none in my area, so I looked under Columbus Ohio Real Estate, and went to the trulia site for that search. And there were three featured listings. If you look at the right hand column,you will see that it lists the listing agency, and when I click there then the page opens, and you can see a picture of the listing agent, and all of the contact information for that agent, even for the non featured listings. If you click on the picture of the listing, then you get very little information.

Unless I'm missing something, the only real difference that I see is the featured listings are at the top of the search.

It's amazing how we create our own monsters. We spend our time, effort, and money to generate a listing. Then we give the info for FREE to listing aggregators who turned around and sell us our leads. DUH! My policy is a two letter word, NO. I can use that money to provide my own internet exposure for my listings.

By the way thanks for reading and commenting on Is It A Blog Or Is It A Post? Or, Am I Just Anal Rententive

Maureen - I am not a big fan of either Trulia or Realtor.com. I try to focus all of my online efforts towards my websites and blog.

NOV

2007

Dan use the search on ActiveRain for some entries on blog ettiquette. Colleen K, has written a couple. Also read the Guidelines. The comments on my blog are not the place for you to promote your post. That made your comment into comment spam. Use the edit to remove the link OR deletw the comment, your choice.

If you don't I will. ActiveRain would be a spammier place if we all promoted our blogs in the comments of someone else's post. A link to something that carries on the conversation may or may not be welcome in the comments on a post. You have to be very careful with linking in comments.

Welcome to AR, I have to assume you are new.

Thansk all for your comments and for not comment spamming.

NOV

2007

Hi Maureen - I'm just looking into putting listings on Trulia; already did Zillow. I've enjoyed reading the comments and the post for input. Most people don't sound too thrilled with Trulia since you have to pay; but Zillow is free and more visible and better known. Right?

Ed you can put listings on Trulia.com without paying. Our Real Living HER listings have been on Trulia.com since the beginning of Trulia time in Columbus.

This was a beta for featured listings. Big difference.

Real Living does not put our listings on Zillow. I read last week that Zillow is NOT as visible as Trulia.

FEB

Our Real Living HER listings are on Zillow... someone reading this post made me notice that last comment. Real Living has a love, hate, love, hate, love, hate, love, hate, love.... relationship with Zillow....

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