Kay - sorry to see you were hacked and attacked. Our CEO has written extensively about business blog security - you might find some of his comments interesting.

While the security issues must be dealt with, I often wonder why so many real estate professionals take the time to [individually] develop the skills and expertise necessary to avoid having their marketing content decimated by a hacker. This is a very technical and complex segment of online business marketing, yet real estate pros are spending significant time discussing, analyzing, and learning how to defend their content.

I have to ask - has the interest in business blogging gone a bit too far when real estate agents are pondering which security scanning services to adopt and what password encyption patches will be sufficient to protect servers?

I remember some sage advice from Geoffrey Moore - core versus context - it's they key to profitability and growth. It seems that security patches are contextual to the real estate business and therefore, should be outsourced.

Call me puzzled - what real estate professional has the time to do this stuff instead of selling real estate?

Pam - that's precisely my point. You have many reasonable alternatives, but you assume you must become an expert at defending your blog from hackers and spend tons of time doing so.

When you need a backhoe to dig a foundation for your new home, do you assume you must design and assemble the backhoe? When you need to take a trip across the country, do you become a pilot? When your office needs new furniture, do you purchase the woodworking equipment and constuct it yourself? These are silly notions because you know there are far better (and cheaper) ways to accomplish the tasks.

So when you decide to market your business and expertise on the web, why is it that realtors [predominantly] assume they must become experts in every aspect of the web, especially the delicate issue of securing your mission-critical content? Is your time and expertise in real estate less valueable than your time and expertise in maintaining spam and hacker defenses? I assume it isn't, but your behaviors suggest otherwise.

When you adopt the delusion that you can outsmart the hacker industry or perform technical feats better than others that do it as a core aspect of their lives, you are fundamentally declaring that you're going into a new business and competing with organizations that are experts at taking advantage of people who possess far less knowledge and skill about security. Competing against these nefarious "professionals" on their turf is very risky because you are likely to get hacked and any time spent defending against it is lost opportunity to leverage what you do well.

Not to be insensitive, but I see a lot of realtors complaining about their industry, yet many realtors (perhaps most on AR) are busy trying to do tasks that they were never trained to do and in a technical environment that includes many ways to get it wrong, and only a few ways to get it right. And the majority of these technology tasks pay far less than you're worth as real estate professionals.

BTW, I'm not a realtor, but I'm very puzzled to see so many business professionals acting in this way. I'd love to hear from realtors that can explain why they typically choose to earn less in their chosen profession while struggling with technology issues such as security, defense systems, SEO, etc.

Kay:

Thanks for the help in understanding this behavior. More follow up comments and observations...

"... with the market the way it is, most are struggling to get by and don't have the money to pay others to perform SEO services, supply blogging platforms, etc."

True, I'm sure some of the behavior can be attributed to recent market conditions, but long before the market tanked, this sentiment prevailed. In 2004 I recall pitching my own advertorial services to a prominent realtor in Denver - he said with all the Internet stuff that's "free", why would/should he ever consider paying for it? Almost in the same breath, he chastised me for even thinking about selling my home without a realtor. And there's my point - realtors seem to swagger with a certain degree hypocrisy; i.e., it's absolutely foolish to even ponder selling your home yourself, yet they readily jump in with both feet to solve technology problems that typically only get worse and in many cases place their blogging, websites and all the little details of running servers ahead of important [real estate] business matters. I don't get it.

"Now would be the time for them to take advantage of this ..."

According to some of the smartest business advisors, "now" is never a good time to engage in business tasks that are contextual. All businesses [all the time] should carefully decide where the line between core and context is drawn in their businesses. This is not theory - it's the science of profitability.

"... since they do have more time on their hands, but I assume it's because they're fearful of spending the money in this market, or don't have it."

I understand how apprehensive many must be, but I've learned that the moment a business starts to perform tasks that should be outsourced, they have fundamentally devalued their own skills and profit-making machinery. This, I think, is how you hasten the demise of the business, and the time-line is especially hastened in bad times.

PS - I hired a realtor to sell my property and she did a fine job. ;-)

Aniruddha...

Yes - I've seen your posts from time to time, and I really appreciated this quote:

"Sites based on open source softwares are vulnerable to hacking."

Not many people truly understand the nature of open-source projects and why security is typically an "afterthought". Architecting anything where security comes second, is simply a ticking time-bomb. Imagine designing and building a high-rise apartment complex, and once it's up, you decide to add security. ;-) It's a huge problem integrating it into the design of the building and you'll never really get it right. This happens often with open source platforms, especially ones whose embryos began with open publishing to the public Internet.

"If client has enough time & energy to learn and apply SEO, and feels that his/her time is worth less than US$ x that i charge , then probably they should go ahead with it."

I disagree - in the context of any businesses decision to perform contextual tasks, it's irrelevant what *you* charge. What *is* relevant to the economic model is that doing it themselves is likely to earn (or defray costs in) an amount *far less than* that which they could earn doing what they already know how to do well. To be precise about the true cost of anything - even things that are seemingly "free" - must factor in the learning time and the costs associated with doing many things wrong during that learning cycle. Add to that cost, the opportunity cost of not working one more real estate lead, or not attending one more chamber of commerce mixer, and you start to get .close to the true cost of twiddling with your blog skin, or tweaking your security methods. No business is immune to this reality.

My hunch is that your fees are based on many of the costly mistakes that allowed you to become good at what you do. Your fees likely represent a recovery in that investment as much as it is an hourly consulting fee to remain profitable. Real estate agents must also live under these fundamental economic rules, and the cost of having a server hacked and your blog down for a few weeks is money and time that must be added to the true cost of using "free" software.

In my opinion, any business using "free" (or almost free) as a reason for choosing any contextual business activity, simply hasn't calculated the true cost of that choice.

Of course, I am biased - I sell services that help businesses avoid becomming "bloggers" while participating strongly in the conversational web. ;-)