Home : Blogs : Linda Davis : Linda's Southeastern CT Real Estate Blog

My Dirty Little Secret (part 2)

I told you my first Dirty Little Secret in a post a few weeks ago. Yes, I still farm and am proud of it. My friend, Joey Aszterbaum commented "So are you going to write another blog post, or are you just going to send me a postcard?" So with Joey's nudge, I thought I'd tell you my second, dirty little secret. I use Home Gain's Buyer Link. There I said it.

There is little debate that the ability to generate and capture leads can be what separates a successful agent from a mediocre one. BUT start a discussion about paying for leads and the debate can get downright ugly. You're likely to hear the words ripoff and parasite used to describe lead generation companies like HomeGain. I've done a product review of Home Gain at the RealtyAgents site where I write product reviews, and I've also posted my experience at the Home Gain Blog.

Home Gain Buyer's Link is a pay per click system. I pay around seventy-eighty cents everytime someone clicks on my link for the cities I chose. I have a cap on the amount I can be charged each month. I can change my budget at any time and there is no long-term commitment. For the past few years, Home Gain's Buyer Link has been responsible for an extra 25 sales a year for my team. That's a secret I plan to keep! Shhhhhh

Posted by Linda Davis on 03/08/2008 09:54 PM

Comments (79)

home gain

Originally posted at: Linda's Southeastern CT Real Estate Blog: My Dirty Little Secret (part 2)

Post is included in group: TeamTopics

79 Comments on My Dirty Little Secret (part 2)

MAR

2008

SSSHHHH I promise I will not tell

Wow, thanks for sharing your secret. We've read negative things about Home Gain so hadn't really looked into it. There's no shame in paying for leads though, especially if it works that well!

Thanks, Linda. I think this is the first positive review I've heard - do they pay you for write-ups like this??

wow...25 sales? wow!

Carole - I knew you could keep a secret. shhhhh

Kevin and Kim- I'm speaking specifically of their Buyer's Link program. I can't say enough good things about it and no, I'm not paid and don't work for the company.

Monika - yep, this is how I feed my buyer/referral agents.

Linda, I have used just listed before, it paid for itself but not really where my business comes from so I stopped using it. I say, if that works for you then you should use it. I know some people will get really excited about it, but if it adds 25 more deals to your bottom line, laugh all the way to the bank.

Linda if you say it works then I believe it. And don't worry just like with Carole your secret is safe with me, my lips are sealed, but unfortunately I can't stop my fingers from typing ........ LOL

Linda, You are all full of surprises!

Well, well -- the secret is safe with all of the 76,000 + members here on Active Rain. I have not heard very positive things in my area regarding Home Gain -- do you think it works better for agents in some regions versus others?

Joan - No, I think it depends more on the follow up than the location. Home Gain offers a few different programs. I only advocate Buyer Link since it has worked so well for me.

Don't tell anyone, but I might sign up. Thanks for the tip!

Hi Linda,

It was great meeting you at the convention last week..I got back and showed houses this morning at 8:00am to a great HomeGain Buyer?Seller ($700,000 purchase/ $468,000 sale) If it works for you, keep on doing it! Talk to you soon.

Ann Marie

Thanks for sharing! I've been paying about $0.75 - $1.00 per click on Google AdWords to drive potential buyers / sellers to my website, so I think I may give that a rest for a few months and give HomeGain a try.

Hi Linda, I'm all for hearing more of your little secrets. :) We used a lead generation service last year for awhile and your take on the conversion ratio is true. We did however get some leads which were closed and did not loose money. In addition, there was some excellent training. Why did we stop? Well, we started blogging and realised the the quality of leads that were coming to us directly had a much higher quality and conversion ratio and we did not have to pay additional money for them.

Love these secrets you share, Linda. I have not heard much good about HG so it was insightful to read your little ditty. Perhaps I will look into it.

Jeff

Hi Linda. You are the first one I have ever heard say anything nice about Home Gain. Maybe everyone else can keep it secret!

There's no shame in that! Especially if it really works for you!

Hey Linda,

Nothing succeeds like success. That is a secret we should be shouting from the mountaintops!!

MAR

2008

do you use the a customcapture page? or do you let your website capture the lead information. I am a very new current user of home gain buyer link

I think your cost-per-click just went up Linda.

25 deals a year? They promised 30! What a big rip off! LOL!

Keep sharing this stuff and we won't tell anybody about it. Promise.

You are definitely in the minority. I hear mostly bad stories about lead generation companies.

I will have to check that out sometime.

Hi Linda - very interesting post, and I appreciate the email you sent. Hmm, perhaps this will give me cause to rethink some of my positions on lead aggregators, or some of them anyway. 25 sales - certainly gives one cause to pause......

Ann

Linda 25 sales is not too shabby at all. You are right about things working in some markets and not in others.

Linda - Thanks for sharing this with us. I'm going to give them a second look.

That is the 1st true success story I have heard about lead aggregators...I wonder if the other's keep their stories a secret too?

It is interesting to me that most people only hear negative comments. I do believe most of the negative comments come from Home Gain products other than Buyer's Link which is a specific product to drive traffic to your web site. Once they are there, it is up to you to convert them into real leads. It probably is only 1 in 15-20 that are converted.

Kris - I use my IDX sign in page as my capture page.

You are right, Linda. This is the first positive information about lead generation that I have heard. Thank you.

They call me all the time...they were a bit aggressive because I wasn't ready to commit to them. That turned me off.

That's great response! A question thought, wouldn't you be able to get the same results through Google Ad words of Yahoo's program?

Diane - what I like about Home Gain over Google is that you don't have to select key words and manage campaigns. Home Gain does that for you. It does work well for me but if I was just starting in this game, I might try both and see which one works best in my area.

Linda...

You do have me wondering if salespeople who are not adept at converting leads into sales may be the whole problem when it comes to the negative feedback we often hear in relation to Home Gain.

Geesh...I think that's one of the longest sentences I have typed in awhile :)

P.S. Did Carnac die or is he/she on vacation? :)

TLW...ROAR!

Thanks for all the great information on homegain. I hope it works out for you for a long time.

Linda, What other dirty little secrets do you have in your closet? Here you go....I'll give you one of mine. I am one of the original members of HomeGain!!! Because of that I pay no fees but do pay a 30% referral fee on any closings. I only work the seller leads and close a few a year. I haven't worked it much lately because I have been too busy but when I did it worked well. An extra 20k a year just for submitting a listing proposal every now and then. There......I feel better now.

Bryant and TLW - Thanks for stopping by. I feel guilty seeing your names because I've been away from AR for a couple weeks. I need to catch up on my favorite blogs.

TLW - Carnac is alive and well. Hope to put together something this month. Pinky promise.

And for the other nice commenters: I'm never too busy to answer questions so feel free to email if you have specific questions about Home Gain.

Hi Linda, I have been using Buyer's Link for several years also and I also use their Agent Proposal product. Over 25% of my business for my Buyer's Agent is from this source. I have noticed in my Indianapolis Market that Homegain is further down the Google Search than it once was; but I am still getting healthy leads. You get a fair share of bogus emails and phone numbers, but its a numbers game and you do get real live leads of people who are willing to buy homes.

Linda, this is truly surprising as I have not heard a single success story about HomeGain until this post. Thanks for sharing this and getting others to open up as well!

That sounds pretty good. What did those 25 transactions cost you in terms of money paid to HomeGain?

Linda - {Bob here} We had Home Gain for a while and got nothing from it. It did drive people to our webiste but after that nothing. I eventually gave up on it. Our dirty little secret had been House Values which is also declining in the amount of real qualified leads. Most are a waste of time with not real people or people that just lie about all the contact info. We have had to negotiate our terms with them now a number of times and still get nothing substantial from them. A few years ago they actually paid for themselves as well as our website capturing leads. Ahh times were different then though. Thanks for sharing and best of luck with Home Gain.

That is great! I haven't heard too many other positive stories about lead generation. Thanks for sharing.

Brian - It cost me about $7200 to generate those 25 transactions. It was an excellent return on investment.

I used Homegain's buyer link when I had a Z57 website, and it was responsible for most of the hits to my site. However, they were not the good quality leads that I get from free ActiveRain.

I have been using Google AdWords too (just started last month, so no major feedback).

Thanks for the info on Homegain. I plan to look into it.

25 additional sides?! You bet it is worth it. I'm definitely going to check it out. Thank for the (secret) tip!

Linda, I have a few question:

1. Is there any way on the HomeGain site to determine how many REALTORs they have signed up in a particular area? I suppose it would really dilute the pool if in a town of, say, 25,000 there were 30 agents signed up.

2. Specifically, which program are you on? I went to their site and saw one for $29.95/month, with a 27% referral fee at closing. Still okay, if it means sales I would not have gotten otherwise.

3. Did you run into a lot of leads from people who were not really looking, other than looking at wasting your time.

Appreciate the great info and all the comments. I really think focusing on blogging and spreading your self by name of mouth is the first place to start then if you have marketing dollars just find a company that is willing to prove themself to you. Justlisted.com wanted me to sign a 12 month contract. I said good luck with that.

Steve,

1. I can't answer that one except to do a google search in your town and see if an agent shows up when you click on the Home Gain Link. I'm sure an account rep could answer the question though.

2. I specifically use BUYER LINK. No referral fees. Pay per click only.

3. Yes, plenty of them are not good leads. I'd say we convert about 1 out of 15/20. You need to follow up, follow up, follow up.

4. Read the links I provided for more info.

Hi Linda...I'll chime in again since I use Homegain too.

They limit the number of realtors on Buyer Link (the program that is pay for click) to three, maybe four per zip code. The program you priced is the Agent Proposal where you write proposals to buyers and sellers; this one has not been as lucrative for me. There are lots of $100,000 buyers and lots of "do it for free" sellers. It is cheaper though. Typically there are 15 or so agents competing on the Agent Proposal program. You only get one shot to communicate with the client. On the pay for click, you get lots of opportunities...to run the client to its natural conclusion. As for "real" ones; the ratio for me as been about 10% of the clicks are real emails.

As Linda said, you need to follow up fast and furious to be the one they pick.

I've had four real ones just this morning!

Cindy - Thanks for chiming in! The other thing Buyer Link does is spread out your leads over the month so you don't get them all in the first few days of the month.

Okay, I'll give it a shot. I've signed up for my home town (Lebanon, TN) and, if it seems to be working to any extent, I'll include other neighboring towns.

Thanks again for the heads-up!!

I am enjoying the posts here. We have over 3,000 customers on buyerlink - NONE are in any type of long term contract-we do not require one.

They are on the product because it works.

The reasons that no one has heard anything positive on this board about Homegain are probably:

1. many confuse us with other "lead generation" companies

2. ActiveRain is a bit of an echo chamber where its great sport to trash companies like HomeGain and tout the power of blogging to the exclusion of all other marketing techniques.

Thanks Linda for letting out your little secret!

Regards

Louis

General Manager, HomeGain

Do you know about how many leads it took to convert your first transaction?

I have heard so much bad news about HomeGain I never looked into them. I had not heard about Buyer Link and their pay per click program. I will need to check it out.

25 sales???? Now that is an incredible number. I've been bombarded with companies like these for many years and i nearly signed up with 1. That turned into a fiasco. I may have to hit their site and check into this. Thanks for the secret.

Robert and Scott

I love the "companies like these" comments. Plain and simple HomeGain is not like other companies-all Homegain products feature realtors. We are nothing more than a marketing device for realtors. We draw people to our site for one reason-to introduce our visitors to realtors.

Unlike other "lead generation" companies we don't have hundreds of telesales people as more than 75% of our customers sign up for our products on line. Unlike other "national listings" sites that take Realtor data and display it and try to sell it back to the realtors in the form of featured listings or banner ads, HomeGain displays no listings. Indeed, under buyerlink YOU display the listings, HomeGain just drives the traffic directly to you site.

If you are interested take a look here http://www.homegain.com./agent/realestateagent or drop me an email at louis@homegain.com- but whatever you do, don't tell any one!

Louis Cammarosano

General Manager, HomeGain

I won't tell anyone... and I might even look into it... but I won't buy my sellers there...

Lane

Soon you may reconsider Lane!-We are revamping our seller product to the point where you won't recognize it in a few months.....

Current S4S customers will benefit from the changes with no increase in prices for now...

Linda - it's not about what other people think - it's about what works for you. Obviously homegain is working for you, so - Go for it!

I won't say a word. If it works and you get extra sales, then it is definitely worth it. You have to do what works.

Hi Linda, Thanks for sharing. It's always interesting to know what works for other people. Cheers, Harley

MAR

2008

I have no doubt that these lead services can provide value. The problem is that it is all a numbers game, and it can be very expensive to get to the magic number of sales where the income outweighs the expenses.

In the meantime, it is pretty frustrating to keep shelling out $ to get leads like "tommy tutone - 867-5309". As a result, you will hear the complaints way more often than the success stories. The successful ones don't want to share.

I am currently a Source4Sellers client for Homegain, and I just cancelled my "subscription" about two weeks ago. It is due to be cancelled and available to other agent later this month. My issue is that I have been a member for many months, and have only received one over-priced listing from the product.

Maybe I'm not doing this right? Maybe there is more I can do to close some of these leads? Maybe Linda needs to do a class for us, or Louis?

When I spoke to a customer service rep at hoeGain, I was told that S4S was meant to be a long-term lead generation tool. Really? Cause most people who ask for a CMA are thinking if selling soon, or refinancing.

I would love to keep S4S if it produced more often for me.... Any ideas?

Your secret is safe with me. I didn't read a thing. Sshh!

OK Linda:

This is good info. Thanks for sharing.

I used to do OK with homegain myself. I don't buy into the whole lead gen slam thing. Some work.

BUT - I don't think we have the whole story yet.

You told us you converted 1 in 20, or so, which is about right from experience with web leads.

However, playing devil's advocate for a minute... Can you say what those 25 deals cost in terms of total dollars, time, and energy, to produce and follow up on 500 leads?

First, we know that every click does not produce a lead. Can you say how many clicks at $.78/ea to produce one lead?

Lonn- I don't analyze it quite so thoroughly as that. I spent about $600 a month so I guess you could say it took $300 to produce one sale. I referred every lead to my buyer's agents. I didn't make any phone calls so I spent little time or energy to produce the leads except to write the check out every month. They obviously spent time and energy to make the calls. They are excellent at following up.

Of the leads that come in, about 1 in 4 leave a good phone number. Of those with a good phone number about 1 in 20 are probably good leads. (I don't require a phone number on my sign ins so I don't get many bogus ones.) Some just sign on, stay awhile and raise their hand when they are ready. Many of them sign on months before they are ready to buy so we just incubate them.

The best customers are obviously past clients and referrals but for those running a team, this is a great way to keep the pipeline filled. I happen to also think this works well for a single agent looking to build business quickly who doesn't have a lot of past or referral business.

Someone else asked how quickly it worked. For me, once HomeGain provided the link to my site, the leads came in immediately.

Marlene - I've never used that product. I use BuyerLink only. Feel free to give me a call anytime.

Marlene,

Thank you for sharing you secret, I'll keep this to myself...thank you for sharing.

MAR

2008

I choose not to use HomeGain or other pay products for one reason. They are just attempting to sell back to us clients who are looking at our own listing information to begin with.

Think about it. You upload your listings to Realtor.com or HG or other sites (or your MLS board does). Then people go look at those listings, say they're interested in that listing or area and want to be contacted and you get the info, for a fee.

Might work for some folks. I'd rather spend my precious dollars elsewhere. Also, notice how aggressive the HG folks are in their comments here. They used to call me and say things like, "I've got qualified buyers in your area RIGHT NOW who are looking for a Real Estate agent to work with." Then they head off into their sales pitch. Very annoying because those qualified buyers are leads that may or may not be actual good leads.

Here's my secret. Get out of your office everyday and go network with the public. Get to know people. Develop relationships. You'll get all the leads you need/want in that way and they are FREE.

Marlene

Feel free to email me @ Louis@homegain.com

Bob

I agree nothing is better than your own leads. If you can get leads on your own, by all mean do it-afterall why pay for what you can get for free. The point is not everyone can do that. HomeGain helps supplement or replace lead generation activities for a lot of realtors so they can focus on serving thier clients.

Also please note-you can't load your listings on to homegain- we don't offer that feature on Homegain.com. So the argument that you can use to apply to just about everyother company that takes listings feeds from Trulia, to Zillow, to Front door etc does not apply to HomeGain.

MAR

2008

Linda, I'm so glad you posted this! I will be calling Louis tomorrow to see what he can help me with, and dont be surprised if you get a phone call too. Thanks!

MAR

2008

Linda...first of all, you will spend many years in purgatory for buying leads.

Second, thanks for the mention.

Third...what do I gotta do to get that postcard? Click on your homebuyer ads? ;)

A positive HomeGain mention from Sellsius (and he mentions Linda!)

ttp://blog.sellsiusrealestate.com/real-estate-marketing/home-gain-buyer-link-what-gives-with-buyer-leads/2008/03/17/

MAR

2008

Joey - Guess I'm going to need to add you to my mailing list huh?

Buying leads always generates a lot of discussion. Thanks everyone for keeping it friendly!

APR

2008

linda- what method do you use to capture potential clients information? Thanks Kris

APR

2008

I had heard about great results from HomeGain through a few top producers in my company. I'll definitely have to check it out. Ok, now that I've seen this, you can delete the post. LOL

Kris - I require a sign in on my Birdview IDX site if a client wants detailed information. That works best for me to get the client info.

APR

2008

I agree it is all about the follow up once you get the leads. I think we can get too stuck on getting a high quantity of leads, and not follow up with the leads we are getting. Sounds like your team is excellent if HomeGain can account for 25 additional sales a year. Great job!

Leave a response…

Name:

Email:
(optional)

Comment:

What does the graphic say?