The Road to 500,000. A Few Things I've Learned Wandering in the Rain

  Well, I'm not going to lie, this took a lot longer than it should have, but as I logged in this morning I noticed that thanks to some over night comments, I was pushed over the 500,000 point mark here on Active Rain. I have been a member of this site since late 2007 or early 2008, whichever the case may be and there was a wide expanse of time that I abandoned my efforts and moved on. This is the main reason that I am just now reaching this mark, but I am now there none the less.

  A lot of has changed in my time away. There are new owners, a lot of now bloggers typing away, and unfortunately for me many of my favorites from years ago seem to have moved on to other places. Some that I know of have retired from the business all together and I guess it makes sense that they wouldn't want to maintain a real estate blog anymore.

  There are still a few things that remain the same though and I have managed to learn a great deal from the time I have spent here.

There is a ton of free information at your disposal. Use it.

  When I first stumbled across Active Rain, I knew nothing about Internet marketing at all. The phrase long tail keyword may as well have been another language. Now I target them on a regular basis in order to place blog posts and web pages higher in search engine rankings and to target buyers who are further along in the process and closer to buying. If you are curious about a topic, there's likely a post on here already that explains what you need to know.

You should always blog responsibly.    

 This could easily fit under the heading that you may be surprised how many people you reach through your posts. When I first started here, i loved a good joke and or prank and I had a reputation at one point in my life for taking things a little further than I should. Most of the people I encountered here on a regular basis back then were a little on the edgy side themselves and that usually  only encourage  me. So one day I wrote a post bidding Active Rain farewell as they prepared to shut their doors. At the bottom of the post I skipped down several spaces and wrote in aren't you glad this is a joke. People went ballistic. i had no idea that many people were reading my posts and I did not have the foresight at the time recognize the impact I may have either. As a result the office phones for AR exploded with concerned members thinking I had just let the cat out of the bag. not my proudest moment as I was contacted by the owner at the time, stripped of most of my points, and told they were having a meeting to discuss removing me and banning me from the site as a result of the prank. I kept my head down afterward and just focused on work related blogs but the truth is even after a follow up from the owner on how well I had been doing and how much he appreciated my positive influence in the months that followed the incident, things felt a bit different. Most of  employees that I was in contact with on a regular basis at the time still haven't spoken to me since and most have moved on themselves from what I can see. So try to remain aware that people do read what you write and if you get carried away or do something stupid like I did, you can cause some major issue for yourself and others.

There are people here that really like to help you.

I have encountered many folks on AR that will practically go out of their way to lend a hand. If you don't know how to do something technical or industry related, all you really have to do is ask. No one is going to treat you poorly for not knowing the answer and there will be plenty of good people that will step up and give you their best advice on the subject. And believe me, a lot of it will be very good advice.

You get what you give.

Perhaps this is the best phrase to explain why people are helpful in this community, you will get out of it what you put into it. The harder you work at producing good high quality content, the harder your blog will work for you. the more you try to help people here through what you have learned in your experiences, the more people will want to help you learn through theirs. The members of this community take it seriously and they want the best for it. So they expect you to give it your best too.

  Yes it's been a long road indeed to get from there to here and the story stretches out over the course of a decade. Some of it is good and some bad just like any other story I guess. But hopefully if you can learn from a few of my mistakes, then you won't have to make them yourself right?

  That's one more milestone in the books for me. Congrats to all those who made it before and here's to the next one.