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FYI! Wordpress a Free and Powerful Real Estate Marketing tool

FYI! Wordpress a Free and Powerful Real Estate Marketing tool

I always was looking for a great free blog Front End Interface template/software to install it on my web hosting service and I was very disappointed because everything that I found was just templates that companies sell or very cheap blog templates.

I was reading some blogs from Jay McGillicuddy~Real Estate Broker about an awesome and great company that is wordpress , I already knew about this, but I never was interested on this tool, because was thinking that it was whatever kind of free blog service, I believe that you have heard of wordpress already, tried it or maybe you are an active wordpress member, when Jay wrote wordpress can be running from your website and you do not have to depend from other third party services, then I started to dig out more about wordpress, believe me more and more.

So the first thing that I did was to join to wordpress website and explore and read more about Wordpress and I found that you have two options:
1) You can subscribe to wordpress with their free service, but something awesome that I was always looking some months ago was:
2) You can download and install the blog service in your own web hosting service or website, I was always looking for that, but never found a great resource to install blogs on my own web hosting service or website.

Thanks to Jay who made me see the potential that his free tool have, I already installed it on my web hosting server for Spanish purposes now, Jay has his own blog website too and you can check it here.

The best of wordpress is:
1) It is free.
2) It is yours, when I say "YOURS" you are the only boss, you handle it / admin it and You can do whatever you want there on your own web hosting service (website).
3) It has great advantages, there are plenty of free wordpress Templates that you can easy incorporate in your wordpress blog, so you don't have to be an expert to handle all of this.
4) Fully Customizable.
4) It has many free plug ins or add ons, that works for Search Engine Optimizing (SEO), Anti Spam and many much more click here for all features.

I invite you that you check it out and read more about it, you will see the full potential of this awesome free tool, also read Jay's Comments about his finding of this great tool and it is an awesome tool for your real estate marketing purposes. Get it here, Installation documentation and support.

Don't get me wrong, I love Active Rain and I am happy being here with all of you, but sometimes we feel that we need our own blog website.

Check Jay's tutorials about wordpress, where he explains about how to create tables and some great features about Windows Live Writer a tool to make your life easier when you are dealing with some blogs companies.
http://activerain.com/blogsview/284861/Windows-Live-Writer-Copying
http://activerain.com/blogsview/280585/Creating-Tables-in-WordPress

Free WordPress Tempates
Free Wordpress Plug INS

Want more free resources? Go to http://www.google.com/ then on search type Free Wordpress templates and Free wordpress plug ins and you will find plenty of websites with great free resources.

My real estate Spanish blog website, I do not have anything there, I am just starting it. No information, No menus, nothing, just a plain template in Spanish for Colorado Real Estate.

Jay's Blog, this is a much better blog website, because he has worked on it J sorry that mine is not like jay's.

Best of the Best is FREE !!!!!!! Happy Blogging !!!!

Posted by Aurora Colorado Real Estate Ray Saenz, Colorado Realtor on 11/29/2007 11:20 PM

Comments (66)

aurora colorado realtor

66 Comments on FYI! Wordpress a Free and Powerful Real Estate Marketing tool

NOV

2007

I've done the same thing with e-blogger before, as I understand it both wordpress and e-blogger require that the blog be on the home page. I haven't used wordpress, does it work differently?

NOV

2007

Great find! We love Wordpress too! Once you have your blog if you need Real Estate Plugins and Widgets for Wordpress, you can get them here

Kate,

I did not know about e-blogger, I thought that just a very few websites did that, I have been told by Jay that he is getting great hits with his blog system. thanks for stopping by and sharing this.

Ray Saenz

Great information to know, thank you for sharing. Something else for me to learn, woohoo! Gotta love AR!

Ray - I am using wordpress.com for one of my blogs but not yet using the WP version that I host myself. I have heard it is a great platform, and many of the real estate blogs out there use it. Am thinking of migrating my blog over but need to look into how that can be done. Finding a good hosting solution is pretty easy, I think. I like the plug-ins that WP offers.

Jeff

Ken,

thanks for sharing more plugins and widgets :) you can do many things with wordpress , I do not know about e-blogger. also http://realivent.com/ Seems a great tool.

Ray Saenz

Marey,

it is always a pleasure to share information when I do not have something to share with consumers LOL, hpe that you will love it.

thanks for stopping by.

Ray Saenz

Jeff,

I see, how many blogs you have? it is pretty easy to do it, just you need to read well and voila, if you need help, let me know. I found a super great web hosting service that I need to switch, what web host provider you are using at this point ?

I will write something tomorrow about it.

Ray Saenz

Hi Ray,

Thanks for sharing about this great free blogging resource. (I appreciate your comment on my blog telling me about it!

Rob

Hi Ray: Here is a question from a tech novice. What is the difference between a Wordpress blog, and having a blog on The Real Estate Tomato. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each ? Thanks for your patience with my question.

Hi Ray,

Uh huh...I like the way this sounds. Remember what I told you earlier...you find the goodies and let the rest of us know about them. This does sound great. What website provider do you use? Just curious.

Blessings!!

Thanks for sharing. I am not really familiar with Wordpress. I have heard about it in passing. Now I am bookmarking your post and considering exploreing it soon. Thanks for the heads up.

Hi Ray - I've been working with a couple of different WordPress templates and found them very easy to customize. Thanks for all of the links to Jay's tips, I'll check them out this weekend. And here's one for you ... a couple of weeks ago I met the founding developer of WordPress.

I have been too busy lately. I need to put together a blog site. Thank you for the heads up.

Ray, thanks for putting all of Jay's tutorials together. I have one being done right now and this will be very helpful.

Ray,

This is something I might have some use for..I like different templates to use on and off. Good job!

Hi Ray,

I started self-hosting a site using wordpress (after having a wordpress site ON wordpress a couple of months before). In fact, I think you've seen it, it's my haunted blog (HauntedRealEstateBlog.com).

To me, wordpress is awkward and non-intuitive. Adding photos is not the easiest thing in the world! But I know it is "open source", meaning that you can do almost anything to it.... So I will ck the link on widgets and such. I've been too busy to learn all the cool things it can do.

I have several blogs and the wordpress one is the hardest to work. I hope you have an easier time with yours (I am sure you will - you are great with this stuff!)

Hope you are doing well!!!!

Hi Ray - I have bookmarked this. I will try it out. I have been very busy but I do want this tool. Thanks for finding it.

Ray--This is awesome information for anyone looking to start a blog outside AR. I don't use wordpress but have heard that many others do...I look forward to seeing what you come up with for the world outside AR!

Ray - I will have to look farther into this...have a blog on blogger which is very easy to do...A little concerned with Mary comments...Last thing I need to get involved with is something that is difficult to use...I have enough trouble with the things I currently have.

Guys and Gals,

Listen to me, there is a super great software free from Microsoft that Jay's wrote in his posts and that's is to do the hardword that mary pope could not do it, just for heads up about this issue, it is not a hassle if you explore a little bit, but I am giving you all details, so you can not have any trouble doing that.

Read this link, specially you Dear Mary Pope, you will see how easy will you do it and see jay's video to have an idea how awesome is Windows Live Writer

Also, this is a great blog for for windows live writer click it here

Give it a try and you will love it. It will be awesome that AR had something like that.

BTW, as soon as I have time I will answer all comments / concerns / questions, etc , I will be very busy this day, but at night I believe that I will have plenty of time.

thank you so much ! and keep the good work.

Ray Saenz

Ray - You are too funny. Glad to hear you are very busy today...and I know you always explain everything completely so I understand : )

Ray, great information! Keep up the good work! Don't worry about yours not being as far along as Jays! Rome wasn't built in a day my friend! I've been working on my blogsite for quite some time and it's not even up, so you're ahead of me!

Ray, OK now this makes two people that I trust that have recomended this site, so I guess I need to check it out and see if it is something I can use and have time for.

Ray, Thank you for alway bringing great tools to our attention. I was in the process of deciding what I wanted to do about my outside blog, this has been very helpful.

Hi Ray, thanks for mentioning me in your post. WordPress is excellent but one needs to be a little tech savy to work around some little hiccups here and there.

If one goes with WordPress.org I highly recommend using Blue Host as your internet web hosting company as they are extremely proficient in WordPress.org. I wrote about a problem I had with an upgrade and Blue Host went above and beyond the call of duty, Read WordPress.org to Hell and Back but don't let it scare you.

AR is awesome for google juice and we have recently found our outside blog New Hampshire Real Estate Blog has gained momentum and is climbing the search engines quicker than we thought possible. Content is King and by posting daily we are seeing more and more traffic and we can also track where readers are coming from. A lot are using search terms we never thought of and they are reading our blog.

Just by using some keywords and good content people will find you. They may not comment but they are reading. We had a business owner in town today tell us he has been on our WordPress blog more than once. He also has mentioned us to his friends.

I highly recommend a "self hosted blog" to help with your SEO. The market is slower than normal for us anyways and we are using this time to push our local community blog out to the public.

Mary I have a tutorial about how to align photos in WordPress.

If you need help and if I can I will try and help. I am no expert but I am learning a lot. I just love it.

Ray Thanks for the heads up to read your blog today! I have been looking at Word Press and it does seem to be something to look into. I also have been looking at Jay's tutorials which are very helpful. Fortunately, I have been quite busy and I just haven't had the time I would like to explore this as much as I would like. It looks like a snow storm may be coming to New Hampshire Sunday or Monday -- so I may have some time after shoveling snow to take a more detailed look at this.

Thanks or the information. I'll have to review this site and check it out.

thanks for the info

Anne

Hi Ray~ Teri Eckholm mentioned in her block that you have great information in your blogs and she's right. I'm bookmarking this for future reference, great stuff!

DEC

2007

Lawrence,

Anytime, I hope that you find this great tool useful to do something personal about Real Estate Services. :) This tool is an extra for many of us. Keep the good blog / work and have a wonderful day.

PS: If you need or have any question, shoot a comment or message, I will be more than glad to help you.

Ray Saenz

Karen,

thanks for your questions,

First of all, please allow me to tell you something very interesting about this blog, I have been learning with all of you many things from time to time, many of you have taught me many good things, so I appreciate it, thanks again.

Second, regarding your questions,
On my point of view and what I think Real Estate Tomato and Active Rain,

Real Estate Tomato are news for Real Estate people involved , specially as it says on the title "juicy news for online realtors" it is more focused for us, news, you can share things, etc, it is a great blog, I do not see anything wrong on it, it is another awesome blog where specially realtors come in and come on sharing and giving good information. Personally I do not write on Real Estate Tomato, because my time is too short and I have not had the pleasure to enjoy more real estate blog websites.

Active Rain is more general for Real Estate Professionals specially nationwide (US) good real estate people, as: title companies, stagers, realtors, appraisers, real estate lawyers, mortgage brokers and more.... as you learned with many good fellow tips and if you read The Active Rain News, you will see how many real estate professionals get involved here, sharing tips, advises, many good information.

Active Rain as Jay wrote, It really has good juice and as some fellow realtors have explained here and bottom line, it is my first blog website of preference at this time. Overall, I have not had any big problem with someone here and many members are very professional and helpful.

Wordpress, depends the way how you can see it, if you use for general purposes that will be ok or whether you can blog whatever thing not related to real estate oriented, or you can write blogs for for real estate purposes only, if you check www.wordpress.com you will notice that many people blog there with many different interests.

I wrote this blog because I decided to talk about something that becomes part of ourselves regarding our services "Real Estate", Wordpress can be for mortgage brokers, title companies, realtors, etc your own free blog website.

Many realtors these days have their own personal real estate website, We can pay these days for our a good web hosting service for just only $4.95 or $6.95 monthly and they offer many features for a very affordable price. There are many domain name providers where you can create your own domain name for very affordable price too.

I was never interested on an external blog, except for Active Rain, because we depend from many things, Like the web host service, their own regulations / rules, moderators, etc, you can name them.

If you read a little bit more about what Jay and I wrote here, you can see what we can install our own blog in our own website. what are the benefits? Please Read again above to understand the whole thing better.

So, it is more YOU, it is like your own office and you can share there awesome good information for your real estate consumers buyers or sellers. I do not know, I hope that I explained it well for you.

you can check www.cassasfaciles.com/blogs I have not changed anything, but if you see, everything is in spanish and I can write blogs for spanish consumers there in my own website, I am not using www.wordpress.com website.

have more questions?, please ask them ! :)

PS: maybe if you do not know anything about computers, it will be a hassle to install by yourself your own blog, but here we can help you. Jay and Me are always glad to help on this kind of stuff.

Ray Saenz

Elizabeth,

I remember what you told me earlier, I do not forget it, I find the good stuff and you will learn more about it :) I have many good stuff to share, but I need sometmes twice of the time to write blogs than other rainers. thanks for stopping by and checking again my blog. Keep it good.

Ray Saenz

Dionne

thanks for stopping by and checking my blogs, I try to share great information for many of you and sometimes for my consumers or clients.

Ray Saenz

John,

that's good, thanks for sharing that and for stopping by, nice to see you again, did you already install them in your website? Hope that everything is fine for you.

Keep that good blog / work.

Ray Saenz

Randy,

we need that our days were of 48 hours. and sleep less LOL, thanks for stopping by and keep the good work / blog, I always appreciate your fast comments. You are always in a hurry !!! :)

Ray Saenz

Missy, You are welcome as always, keep it good and keep sharing those great blogs. give it a try and let us know what you think, I bet that you will love, the only problem is the time! Ray Saenz

Neal,

It is awesome to change sometimes of templates without all the hassle, still, I do not want to keep changing the templates on and off often, but maybe sometimes it will be good. Wel busy guy, thanks for stopping by,

Ray Saenz

Mary,

I was checking your http://www.hauntedhouserealeste.com again and it is an awesome site made in wordpress :) people should know about it :) , the hassle about graphics is an easy thing to fix with Miceosoft Live writer, :) please give it a try and you will love it, you can do everything from the software and then just put upload it in a flash, also if you have Microsoft word 2007, you can do the same thing, everything is made through word 2007 and then click a button and publish it, voila :)
hope that this helps :) BTW, hope that you are doing awesome, if your site is too good, why you have page rank 2 ? I have a huge curiosity, I still can not understand google.

Ray Saenz

Stella,

this tool has been for many months, I already have seen it before, but I never got interested on this, because I was not thinking that it was useful, when when Jay wrote something about it, I started to digging more and more and I found it very useful and great looking blogs and with powerful options, Believe me, it is an awesome thing, we just need to play a little with it. keep the good blog / work. and thanks for stopping by and check this out.

Ray Saenz

Teri,

I will keep updates as soon as I play with it, thanks for let me know about your thoughts, your comments are very important to me, always, it does not matter whether they are postiive or negative or constructive. they are always welcomed.

thanks again for your support

Sandra,

if you have someone in your side about this whole thing, I do not think that you will have troubles, you have me, so do not worry about that, give me a call or shoot your questions and they will be gladly answered as soon as I can. :)

Don't worry and be happy, ok ?

as my russian friend says "mate"

Ray Saenz

Sandra,

LOL, I was missing this one from you, well I try to explain with details, so you can understand me better.

keep it good

Ray Saenz

Chris,

that's true, "Rome wasn't built in a day", 100% Agree, but sometimes we get desperate if we do not see results instantly LOL, a good virtue is "patience" Patience is the key ! LOL thanks for stopping by, I apprecate it :P

Ray Saenz

Jay,

About Tech Savy, I believe that I was missing that part and maybe because I have been years enough, testing and learning computers then for me it is easier than some other people, that's true and good point , I really appreciate that you made a good point on that.

Actually I did not have any trouble with the installtion, the problem was when I tried to convert it to spanish, I did the great job with the parameters, but the template was 100% english, I did it in spanish, so I was missing some *.php translations that did not match and I was not figuring out where they were, but I learned that. Just we need a little bit of time to keep playing with it.

There is another website that I have been digging about and I do not know if it is good or not, reliable or not, but I will find out , what is going on. I will give it a check when I have chance to compare the other one. http://www.anhosting.com/november/indexV3.php

I encourage people to try to learn when they have time about wordpress.

About the Juice, I agree, but we can trust in your information, so that's the reason that I decided to learn more about wordpress to use it as real estate personal tool.

We need to do whatever we have to do :) so people can reach us.

I believe that with that tutorial, mary will learn how to do it better on her blog :) thanks for sharing great good information.

I am with you, I am not an expert, but I learned a lot in just a few hours of do some tests and some tries.
Ray Saenz

George,

THIS blog have been very extensive that I thought that I already answer to your comment, UFFFF :) , BUT i always have time for you !!!!

one that you set it up, just you need to blog , time ? we always need it :P LOL

Ray Saenz

Jennifer,

as Elizabeth wrote above, I find the great stuff and you try it, I am glad that I could open more your options to check about this great real estate tool.

RAy Saenz

Joan,

I believe that when we approach to xmas, we will have more time to keep playing and testing stuff, I am glad that you find this tool interesting, many people is getting interested on this one too, the reason it is because it has such a great potential. I read what Mary Pope wrote and you will do it fine if you read a little bit about this, hope that you can share more great blogs with this tool.

Ray Saenz

Dallas,

You are welcome, keep the good blog / work and let me know how are you doing later.

Ray Saenz

Anne,

You are welcome, thanks for stopping by and keep the good blog / work.

Ray Saenz

Lisa,

feel free to check my blogs, I will do a resume for members only from my past posts :P keep it good and thanks for stopping by.

Ray Saenz

Thanks for the info here Ray, I will book mark this and get back to it. I was looking for just such a creature and appreciate your recommendation.

Hi Ray,

I have been out of circulation for a few days. I just put up 6 websites that required some real concentration. I want to take a bite out of this apple. This is a great post Ray. I book-marked this so I can take some time to digest and look over the features. I think as you do, we can really take advantage of the blog from our personal websites. I would like to look at adding this to the six sites I just put up. Thanks for sharing Ray.

DEC

2007

I have looked at the other free blog systems my webhost provides... I like WordPress the best.

Thank you for this extensive information. I am going to take it one step at a time. I saw another local agent popped up on a search with this word press. She probably does not even know it as someone else does all there internet stuff. However her team is quite successful and uses tehnology to the max. Now I am really interested!

I'm going to have to go ahead- jump in and give this thing a shot... thanks!

Thanks for checking our site Ray. We have created more than 500 blogsites for agents and individual properties using Wordpress. Be sure to install Google Analytics and Google Sitemaps to your Wordpress installs to track your daily traffic...

I also have a Wordpress blog and enjoy using it. My Wordpress blog is written specifically for my clients. Basic and not-so-basic topics can be found there.

DEC

2007

Ray's on a roll -

Great post. Wordpress is a fantastic tool and the price is right.

FEB

2008

Ray, great post. Thanks for finding another valuable resource for an AR newbie like myself.

FEB

2008

Ray, I don't know how I missed this back when you posted it. I guess I wasn't as activly looking at a word press blog. I have just added one to the back end of my website and I am now in the process of learning how to use it so getting these tutorials is very timely. I guess the good news is that I have found your post when I need it. I have it bookmarked. Thanks for sharing!!!

FEB

2008

Thanks for sharing Ray.

Have a great day!

JUL

2008

Thank you for posting this. I'm in the process of getting a blog.

SEP

2008

great blog and important to share. I have only been on AR for a short time and previosly only used and outside (wordpress) blog. never understood, why you would not have a personal blog as well with full control.

MAR

Ray, love your nerdy web tactics! I'm a self-taught webmaster that's found myself in charge of releasing a neutral web site for Open Houses. SEO is king and it looks like having a blog on that is what will help us.

We're launching in Omaha but then going where the demand is. Our homepage optimistically shows the U.S. map with pushpins ready to go where we have a new IDX feed. Would SEO improve if I included a blog on that home page? Well, that AND I love blogging!

Would you take a few minutes to see what we have?

BOTH Bird's Eye from Microsoft® AND Google® Street View
Virtual Tours on all properties with no REALTOR® input required.
Goto the Map/Street View for a property and type in "Lutheran Church" in the lower left corner. Places nearby!

We think we have the best web site for finding a home anywhere! I have given my every waking moment to this non-stop for the last year, taken the good ideas, improved upon them, and now it's time to produce!

Thanks for your consideration and input.

Stephen

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