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The Evolution of the ActiveRain Blog

By
Education & Training with Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp Non-Licensed

It's only been 4 days since the announcement of the "Outside Blog Launch" and we already have close to 1500 AR Blogs setup using the subdomain option.  We are starting to see many personalized Blogs evolve using custom domain names too.  Here's some samples of the near 250 that I know are "Live" now.

It's only been a few days, but IMHO, it appears the launch was a success.  We had a couple minor issues and glitches, but those can always be expected, especially when considering the level of participation we were counting on from our community.  Thanks goes out to ALL of you!!  In the first 24 hours, the launch post had over 140 comments and nearly 4000 views.  Tonight it has nearly 6500 views with 350 comments.  There have also been numerous other posts written both on and off ActiveRain.  WOW!  There is definately an Outside BlogBuzz!!

On Friday, I had the priviledge of doing a phone interview with Matt Carter from Inman News, it was very exciting.  We are the pioneers of this industry and we are taking Social Networking to the next level. I hope it'll make the news on Monday.  The biggest bug issue seemed to be duplicate content which was nicely explained, and I hope it is now a better understood topic.  Thanks Bob, for that post.

Here are some of the Outside Blogs that have come out since the launch: They are personal domains by other AR members.  You can click on the thumbnail image if you'd like to go see their Blogs live.

 
                
              

              

             

              

There are too many great ActiveRain subdomain Blogs for me to list, I thought I'd start with these.

I know there are many others that are waiting for the nameservers to recognize their domain names, if I missed yours, I apologize, please feel free to add a link in the comments if you have created an AR Blog using your own domain name.  This is an exciting time for the ActiveRain Community, and to think we've only just begun. 

Thanks for all your support and patience in helping us get this rolled out, the best is truly yet to come.

Comments (123)

Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Bill - I will never forget my NORMAL friends like who who clain to be not "Tech Savy" but the truth is, YOU'RE BLOGGING!!  You are way ahead of most of your competition!  :-)))))

Jul 03, 2008 09:23 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Melissa - photo, header and image uploads have been fixed. Be sure you are using the right dimensions in the right locations:
Header is 742x105 and the photo is 189 pixels or higher.  :-)

Jul 03, 2008 09:27 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Janet - next week might work for me, let's see if you come back and dig out this comment! lol~  Just kidding, I'll call you.  :-)

Jul 03, 2008 09:28 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Team Newington - glad you enjoyed, looking forward to seeing yours too, especially the results you get from it.  Don't forget to do those types of posts too.  We love success stories.  :-)  I just saw a comment on one of my other posts (The AR Blog Launch Post) where a member just got their first call from their AR Outside Blog.    YEAH...  It's awesome!!

Jul 03, 2008 09:36 AM
Pat Hommel
Annapolis Plaza CB Residential and Commercial - Annapolis, MD
Annapolis, AA Co., Md. Real Estate Sales

Brad,  Thank you for all the tips you have provided above.  The blogs you featured are great examples to inspire the rest of us to get ours up and running.  I'm sure I'll have some questions for you.  Looking forward to hearing about the "new new thing" you are working on!

Jul 03, 2008 10:54 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Pat - feel free to contact me anytime.  We now have over 3000 member subdomains and close to 300 personalized domains created using AR's Outside Blogs.  It's only been a week. It will just keep getting better and better here, you can contact me anytime you need help!  :-)

Jul 04, 2008 04:36 AM
Jon Lu
Coldwell Banker Platinum Group - San Jose, CA

I really like subdomain feature.  Instead of just telling people to look for me on Activerain, I can give them my username and they can just append it to activerain.com.  I love it.

Jul 04, 2008 10:05 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Jon - excellent point about the subdomain name.  I think you will find more SEO value in having your own domain name and letting AR point your Blog to that domain. 

If you use Jon.Activerain.com, it's great as you've pointed out, but your Activerain.com/Jon Blog still gets all the SEO juice. 

If you use something like JonSellsRealEstate.com, then the AR Blog will be pushed to that domain, and it will get the SEO and Google juice. 

Just a suggestion, you might consider getting a domain name you really like (if it's available) and maximize the potential of these new outside Blogs.  :-)

Jul 05, 2008 03:14 AM
Georgie Hunter R(S) 58089
Hawai'i Life Real Estate Brokers - Haiku, HI
Maui Real Estate sales and lifestyle info

Anything new in the evolution?  Has it sprouted legs or wings yet?

Jul 12, 2008 04:33 PM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Georgina - YES! Legs and Wings!!  lol~  Next it will try to crawl. haha!  :-)

Jul 13, 2008 01:53 PM
Georgie Hunter R(S) 58089
Hawai'i Life Real Estate Brokers - Haiku, HI
Maui Real Estate sales and lifestyle info

Suggestion for localism: move the office phone number up underneath the office name... small font.  Add cell phone number where the office number is now.

Something similar for outside blog.

: )     pretty please and thank you.

Jul 13, 2008 02:32 PM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Georgina - love your idea, can you post that on Jon's Q&A post? That way we keep all the questions and ideas in one location. Thanks :-)

Jul 13, 2008 02:48 PM
Virginia Hepp - Mesquite NV REALTOR
Desert Gold Realty - Mesquite NV Homes For Sale - Mesquite, NV
Mesquite NV Homes and Neighborhoods - Search MLS

Finally did my outside blog - It was so easy - I am such a late bloomer.

Aug 08, 2008 10:58 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Virginia - CONGRATS!!!  Better to be a late Bloomer than to never Bloom at all!!  lol~   I'm off to check out your "NEW" outside Blog now. YEAH!!!  :-))

Aug 10, 2008 08:35 PM
Jason & Amber Gardner
Hasson Company, Realtors - Sherwood, OR
We're Committed to Your Success!

AR outside blog setup complete... 

QUESTION:  Is there a way to feed my AR blog to post my AR outside blog and wordpress blog too???

 

Amber

Sep 06, 2008 10:15 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Jason - you can feed your AR Blog to your outside blog or subdomain, but we haven't incorporated the ability to post to your wordpress Blogs yet.....YET!  :-))

Sep 08, 2008 04:18 PM
Jason & Amber Gardner
Hasson Company, Realtors - Sherwood, OR
We're Committed to Your Success!

Thanks Brad... My AR Outside Blog is set up now!  www.DiscoverSherwood.com 

 

Amber

Sep 09, 2008 05:04 AM
Rich Jacobson
Fathom Realty West Sound - Poulsbo, WA
Your Kitsap County WA Real Estate Broker

ATTENTION OUTSIDE BLOGGERS!

I am doing to presentation at RE-BlogWorld in Las Vegas next week. If you have a really cool and sleek Outside Blog that has a private domain, shoot me an email with a link to your OB. Let me know how it's doing for you, if it's gaining any traction with the search engines/ranking....thanks!

Rich Jacobson

rich@activerain.com

Sep 10, 2008 04:58 PM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Amber - (and Jason) I checked out your outside Blog and it looks fantastic. I like your posts too.  You've combined photos, links, and the formating and visual overall is sweet. Nice Job.  Glad you got it working so quickly and efficiently. :-)

Sep 11, 2008 02:57 AM
Brad Andersohn
Retired Executive Director of Education at eXp - Boulder Creek, CA
ActiveBrad - 707.646.1876

Rich - I don't think I'll be able to join you for your event. but I know you'll do great. Go REPRESENT my friend.  You know you can always use my AR outside Blog, or any of the others you choose.  I think you may be able to get a list from Bob of all the AR Outside Blogs, but that may only be the sub-domain Blogs.  My RENetBlog.com is getting some really good Google juice right now, and seems to be showing up more and more as time goes on.  See/Hear you on the show today at 11:00. 

Sep 11, 2008 03:03 AM