Years ago when I saw a blurb about a relatively new real estate forum called "ActiveRain" I wondered what Rain had to do with our industry. Today I decided to ask other Rainers if they knew the source of this name. My question in the Q&A section got some interesting responses and it turns out many of us were curious about it.
After several guesses my Q&A post got an answer from The Source himself, Bob Stewart. Here is the real story of AR's name, as told by Bob.
"The easy answer would be that we were started in Seattle......
The more accurate answer goes something like this. Jonathan Washburn, one of the original founders always used the moniker rainmaker in his early online user names. And at one point he purchased a ton of domain names relative to that moniker. A rainmaker of course is someone that creates business opportunities for those around them. In the very beginning ActiveRain was actually a lead management system for our real estate brokerage and then became a lead management platform for a number of brokerages in the PNW. In those days it was ActiveRain.net. When we launched this site, it made sense to use ActiveRain, with the idea that we could actively help people become Rainmakers in their own businesses. The idea of blogging to reach the search engines quickly evolved after the site launched. In the beginning our aim was to get agents and others in the industry sharing ideas with each other and create a community out of the idea of sharing what works. We though if people were active, they would be able to make it rain in their own business.
And it also happened to be a domain name we owned. And we are all from Seattle. So it all made sense.....at least in our heads :-)
OK Rainers, let's take that as inspiration to really become Rainmakers!
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