I guess I'm just a poor old sole because they say my outside Google blog is only worth $1,129.08. At least it's worth something.

Maureen, the point in actually paying bloggers (not that this may actually happen) is there is some GREAT content here. And the free street works both ways. Active Rain is getting FREE content and the bloggers are getting free Hosting, systems and storage. Plus the leverage of nearly 100,000 members and higher rankings by the search engines. So maybe FREE/FREE is the best win/win model for both sides.

Neal you have a Blogger.com blog?  I will have to come visit....  If you ever want to guest blog on my ColumbusBestBlog.com I am open to Florida (AZ, Carolinas... really any retirement area) guest posts about why people from the Central Ohio should consider your market for retirement, including a link of course to your blog and website as appropriate.  ColumbusBestBlog.com is worth over $13,000 according to this measure, so it has some Technorati links.. I thought it had more, I wonder if I lost some somehow,  ColumbusBestBlog.com doesn't not get as much traffic as my Discover Columbus blog ... really  if you ever want to guest blog let me know.  Thanks for the comment.

Maureen, (I'll have to check this out more when I'm not thumb tweeting) I understand Gary's point of free/free, however AR has created this totally unique platform and built from bottom up.... they should be rewarded... they earned it. We pay to associate with our companies although we give them a lot of publicity; if you want to sell something on ebay, you have to pay a fee. There is a time and a place. I know my ActiveRain blog is worth something. It might not be worth $$ to a blog buyer, but its worth a lot to me and my business in PA. PS You are one of the people I really hope to meet at Inman!

Kim I am NOT going to Inman....I would love to meet you too.

Gary  There is some great content here and some not so great content here.  Social media is getting free content, come play on our site... it will be fun. And ActiveRain can be very fun.   Free / Free has been Win / Win so far on AR.  There are those who say Don't share YOUR content on AR (or RT, etc... the FREE real estate sites) write YOUR own blog on YOUR own domain.... don't support AR.

Kim can we set up a tip jar for AR?  Jonathan etc. do not want to charge for memberships and I can see how and why that is important to them....

Members: 98,085  

All free all the time... since June 2006...

Folks -

Any business is created to eventually sell!  That's entrepreneurship!

We, as practitioners, use AR for web exposure, an easy forum to which we can direct our clients, credibility, sharing, and higher SEO.

That alone is worth SOMETHING, isn't it?  I know it has helped our Team's exposure, standing, credibiity, and the like.

The content building the AR franchise?  Sure!  Wish I was the one who originally thought of it!

DEAN & DEAN'S TEAM CHICAGO

Dean I am sure you don't mean that to sound as if we don't have a clue about business. Or maybe you do.

I wonder why or how it happened that my blog is worth the same dollar figure as Neals? I know he is a better and more frequent writer than me.. perhaps the bloggie price thingy is broken? It says mine is worth $1,129.08 right down to the same penny as Neal's .. is that odd or what?

Gail it is links... your Technorati score... Neal's Technorati score.  Do you have the same Technorati scores?

OK... just to clarify this.. my AR blog is worthless, just like Maureen's .. its my outside blog at Google that has value, and its free too.. so henceforth I suppose we need to blog here and copy it to our Google freeblogspot? that seems to be where the value is? per http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/submit/ 

The "value" for ActiveRain, isn't in the dollar figure, it is in the "information" figure.  If you manage to make several contacts for life, it has paid itself off.  If you manage to get leads from this site, even better.  The theory behind blogging, in my opinion, is name recognition.  For the price of 0, zero, zilch, nada to pay for name recognition, I think I'm already ahead of the game :)

Happy Blogging,

Stan Barsch

Technorati doesn't measure how much you are paying for a blog.  Free is not the reason AR does NOT show up with a score on the doo hicky.  My RealTown blog is free too... and the doo hicky would not show a value for it either...but that has to do with the domain not with cost.

A high priced  branded real estate blog without a good Technoarati score is not going to have a value on this particular measure.

"so it has some Technorati links.. I thought it had more, I wonder if I lost some somehow,"

Hey Maureen. Technorati only counts links over the last 180 days. So older links "roll off". In theory, that keeps the link count "fresh" and gives newer blogs a chance to rank well in Technorati as it's not a cumulative thing.

According to this wudget, my blog is worth $167,668.38. Would I sell it for that? Nope. As a lead and commission generator, it's worth far more than that to me, and likely worth much less to anyone else.

This widget counts links to your blog and places a value on that. While links to you ARE valuable when it comes to SE placement and SE "authority", valuing a blog solely based on it's incoming link count is quite possibly short-changing it -- though it can just as easly over-inflate a value too.  Gail, this is why your blog shows the same value as Neals to the penny. Apparently you have the same number of people linking to you.

Sorry to hear you won't be at Inman, Maureen! It's going to be a great conference.

Oh thanks Jay... for the scoop on how Technoati works... and why my links are down... I guess I knew that at some point but I forget all about Technorati usually.   I have not been very faithful to ColumbusBestBlog.com lately.  In fact I lost my password (again)  and was too embarassed to ask anyone for help.. it is not the first  time so I just kept trying to break in... for a couple of weeks. I think I am going to invest some time and money in getting ColumbusBestBlog.com in shape.

Maureen,

It's a Google blog and I post most of my blogs from here over there. I also am a guest author on another persons blog and they get lots of traffic from ...would you believe it? My Century Village blogs. He tells me that those blogs are hekoing his site tremendously and they get picked up on my Google alerts quicker than all the others including AR...I get many calls and have listed and sold a few lately. The only problem is they are very small deals. But they are all cash and close within 30 days. We just closed a 53K on Friday and the guy never met me,...just sent me the keys. We have another closing in 3 weeks for 50K. I have to sell 500 of them a year to make a living but I guess it covers the nut while my other inventory sells.

Let me-know and if I have some time I'd post there if you want. Most of my clients are from Canada but lately I'm getting calls from people in NJ.  It seems the retirement blogs get most of the traffic probably due to the pricing of the inventory. Where can you live for 50K-150K these days?

Here's another way to measure your blog.  My Discover Columbus blog does better here than my ColumbusBestBlog.com because this ads traffic in... and Discover Columbus gets traffic                               

Blog Juice Calculator ....

It looked as if it was just going to compare Discover Columbus  to all of RealTown but it measured my blog...

Really Neal anytime you want to post a guest blog about a community or your whole market that retiring Central Ohioans should be aware of... just email it to me.  I don't like real commercial, "I am the best thing since sliced bread" type Realtory posts... I like content that is going to be read by people.   

Just Ask Barry- What is Technorati?

(old... outdated? ) Claiming your ActiveRain blog with Technorati 

If you have questions about Technorati Search Technorati on ActiveRain

Maureen:

I am not sure that all of this really matters. My focus is on doing a great job as a real estate agent. How important is it to tell a prospective client that I am the top blogger and that my site is rated and worth XXX. In my neck of the woods two of the top producing agents do not blog, could care less about blogging, and yet one of the top bloggers on AR that lives where these top producers sell, isn't even close to there production

Yet, if we were to judge success you would think this AR member is a mover and shaker. Not.

Sorry Lorraine or Loretta... I am not saying that it is important..some people are interested in the measures others are not.  I don't have any of these posted on my blogs.  

Plenty of great agents don't blog.

Move along if this is so offensive to you but is it OK if those of us who have any intnterest in Technorati or a website discuss it here?

Thanks for stopping by...

Maureen, a good discussion you have generated. It says my RealTown Blog is worth $1,693.62 and my Active Rain blog, as yours, $0. Sorry to hear you won't be SF! Hope you are having a great summer

My other blogs might actually have negative value, meaning I have to pay to retain them.  I will check out the tool shortly.  As for paying for AR membership, I would have no issue with this personally. 

I think I have the same feeling as many with yes, we know buyers and sellers don't really care what we rank or how much our blog is worth. However, it is fun to play with sometimes. I would have to agree though that AR was worth $0. How can you put a value on something that is priceless!

How much is ActiveRain worth? Nothing according to Dane Carlson's Business Opportunities Weblog

Nothing???  Clearly they need to come up with a new formula.  They should be embarrassed to be so wrong.

Jason... "As for paying for AR membership, I would have no issue with this personally.

too bad those AR guys are such spoil sports huh?  Jonathan says "We never budged from our pledge of free membership -- which now extends to over 65,000 real estate professionals."

Have fun in CA Joeanne!

Stephen... I agree it is priceless. No one is tipping their hat about paying for sponsorships... but that is OK. 

I'd say huh? but I am not going to encourage 'Not Yet Licensed'  to comment further.

Maureen, cool tool. Interesting too. My outside blog is worth, $23,710.68. Up only 9 months.

Well, gee wonder why my AR blog is worth nothing when that is where I spend most of my time?

I don't understand it, oh well.

Yes, I would pay to be a member here.

None of the ActiveRain blogs can have a value if http://ActiveRain.com does not have a value... on the widget... It only works on other blogs...

Hi Maureen,

Please delete my previous comment if you feel my evaluation was too harsh.

On a side note, I guess the people at Zillow are probably happy to learn that someone finally made their numbers look good by comparison.  :)

Maureen, OK, OK, I did not tip my hat about sponsorships, but I have a reason. I really do not know enough about it. I suppose I need to do my homework on it so I can see the cost verses the estimated benefits. With three websites and about 90 or so URL's we are paying for as a team, is this "really" going to be a benefit? While I do not want to miss out on any chances, I would like to see some success with it first.

and I should not pick on you Stephen... there was a lot of conversations about sponsorship right at first and then that died completely. Or maybe it is here (on ActiveRain ) and I am not seeing it. 

And maybe people are not going to say anything because they don't want others in their market to try to grab neighborhoods because their competitor is interested.

Or maybe we are saying we love ActiveRain. We want them to make money and we would have paid for membership and we would have paid for the outside blogs...but we do not want to pay for neighborhoods... we'll see...

Why all the focus on a silly tool which sole purpose was to generate inbound links (linkbait)?

In my opinion all of this is meaningless. What is more valuable the site that gets 10,000 hits a day or the site that gets the 1 hit that closes a sale?

Conversion is the only stat that gets you paid.

Gee I'll check with you before posting my next post what I should be worrying about.  Or talking about with friends...

Can I email my posts to you for approval?

Even if my blogs aren't worth that much...I can tell you I've made more money from them then they are supposedly worth and I'd rather have real money to pay my bills so go figure.

I guess honest opinions are not welcome in your blog. My sincerest apologies to those I have offended with my previous comment.

Neal I don't think anyone should worry much about what the doo hicky says but it is a conversation starter with real estate bloggers. It's fun to play with.

AR blogs don't register on it.  It shows my RT blog as worth less than my WordPress blog but I get more traffic from the RT blog, than the WP blog.  You could hire some internet marketing specialist help you with HOW you should be doing things, what you should be worrying about, what you should be writing about but if your blogs are working for you... that's what counts.   

I enjoy blog conversations.  This little doo hicky starts conversations.  I even got Jay to stop by and comment. Success.

IMNJ Have you offended anyone?  I thought your comment made you look like a jerk trolling for attention, Maybe people will throng to your AR post because you are so much smarter than we are.  A 'Specialist"  wooooo  If that works for you on AR, more power to you. I was pulling your leg about giving a fig about your opinion...

My secondary blog was worth a big ZERO and my primary blog was worth less than $400.  What a downer.  :-)  Like you said, it is an interested do-dad, but it certainly doesn't paint the entire picture -- I've close two homes in June based on my blog  -- so I guess I will say that my blog is worth at least $13,000 in commission!

that's the way to look at it Kerry

Compared to Jay, my blogs suck... two coming in at $5,208, and the other at $4500. But then again, I am not as popular as you all...  :)

is this parking spot taken?

I think this is a tow away zone...

Jennifer if local people are reading them that's what's important, not all "good" blogs get a good Technorati score... 

Maureen this is an interesting discussion. If AR charged for membership I know I would do it. The value from the site is incredible for so many reasons. From SEO to just plain depth of knowledge.

too bad AR does not want to charge for membership....

Let me get this straight:

Active Rain is a worthless vehicle for Point Whores.

Hmm.  I like that definition.

I wonder what my friend, Senor Sock Puppet, has to say about this topic.

Douglas I think the little doo hicky doesn't distinguish anything about point whoring.   ActiveRain is NOT valued by Technorati.  ActiveRain is optimized for Google and if you PW you will show up on Google.  There are some splogs on AR that are written for Google juice, and those will show up on Google. Good reading?  Who am I to judge? 

More people use Google to find blogs than Technorati... so IMHO that is a good thing for AR. I just like the familiar little George Washington face and I know if I blog about it here, I will get a conversation started. I don't know any clever little doo hickies that measure Google juice,.  I think even the little one I have a link to above uses a Technorati score.

I never liked Technorati... it is filled with splogs... much easier to use Google to find good reading on a subject on blogs.

Gosh - sometimes the discussion is as good (or better) than the post itself.  I thought it was kind of a fun thing.  One of my blogs that's in it's infancy, is already worth $3,800 buck.  Fun tidbit.

More people use Google to find blogs than Technorati... so IMHO that is a good thing for AR.

Thanks Maureen,

Very interesting point.  I tried Technorati a few times and didn't like it.  It wasn't easy for me to find a real estate blog with their system so I think your analysis is correct.  They appear to be almost zero competition for Active Rain.