How To Add 5,000 Points To Your Account In 15 Days- If I Did It, So Can You!

Whether you're a new or experienced Rainer, adding big points quickly is possible. Even if you're very active, you may have missed some "low hanging fruit" I discovered.

I joined on 1/31/07 and as of today, 2/14/07 I've got over 5,000 points....in only 15 days.

1.  Profile Points - Make sure you get all the Profile points possible. I still see veteran Rainers with incomplete profiles.  Pick the City you actually work in...Don't' worry about the competition.  Don't be intimidate by the heavy hitters and duck out to a less competitive city...it's your city too.  Stake your claim and start swinging.  (I picked Denver, because that's my City, but that also means I'm up against the Active Rain Leader, Krystal Kraft with almost 150K points!  No worries...I can take her!)  Upload a photo, fill out all the contact fields, complete all the descriptions, testimonials, etc.

2.  Linking Points - Don't mess around here...go for the big guns.  Put the biggest logo on your websites home page.  Don't bury a small logo on an interior page and have to change it later.  You have to ask for another review and that will slow you down. If you don't have a personal web site...get one, you need it for search engine ranking anyway (I'll write a post on that some day) and link back to Active Rain from you home.  

3. Invitation Points - Get your invitation link and craft up an email informing folks about Active Rain, and send it to as many agents, mortgage folk, appraiser, etc. that you know.  Post the link on your "other" blog or website letting others know it's a great site for networking and consumers too.

4. Commenting Points - You get 25 points for commenting on other peoples blog posts and you can do that 10 times max per day.  I didn't figure that out until a few days ago, so I really could have done better there.  The big hitters get the most points from blogging and the second most points from commenting.

I know there's a lot of folks that just jump into a post and say, "Great post, thanks"...to get the comment points.  I think that's where getting points has to take a backseat to "building a community".  Comment because you have something to add, not for points.  That's my take...I'm sure I'll get blasted for that one.  Oh well, blast away. 

Of course, if you're just commenting to give a Rainer an "attaboy" ...like "Way to Go Rob...good job". That kind of comment is totally acceptable.  Everyone likes encouragement.  That's building a community too. ;) 

Blogging Points - Here's the big daddy of them all.  Each blog post is worth a minimum of 200 points and then you get points for comments, and if your post becomes a "Featured Post" you can get well over 500 points for a single post.  Getting many of my posted featured really helped.

Nobody really knows what criteria warrants a post being featured, but I think writing for others is the key - see a need and fill it.  And you'll get rewarded to write a post that matters to others.  So pick your topics judiciously.  But don't worry about that too much in the beginning.  Search your skills - a web tip, a marketing tip, or time management tip that worked for you and write a blog post about it.  You may want to use the sites search to see if it's already been covered and then just get in there and post away. 

Before you start posting though, go the Groups area and join all the Groups you think you'll have something of value to contribute.  You do this because when it comes to time to post, you'll be given a list of Groups you want to sent that post to...more Groups, more readers....more readers, more comments...you get the idea.  But don't post to Groups that the topic of the post doesn't' really apply.  That's a no-no.

Now here's the hard part...post and comment everyday.  Sit in front of the TV at night, open up Notepad, start typing a blog post.  Paste it into your blog, spell check it, pick the Groups, and hit send.  Then go to the Dashboard, look at the Featured posts....make a few comments and call it a night.  I really didn't get into this routine until a few days ago...so I could have done more... a lot more.

Good Luck,

Rob K. Blake
The Mortgage Insider

PS:  Once you get this down, visit my tutorial on Localism, called How I Got 12,000 Points In Less Than a Month!

UPDATE 7-5-07: Remember, points are now only allowed for "original content" of 50 characters or more (not counting spaces) to get the allotted points.  Same goes for comments.  So no plagiarizing!