activerain: 200,000 Points and Lovin it! - 01/25/11 11:40 AM
With this post I will have hit the 200,000 points here on the Rain and I am more lovin it than ever. I have learned so much by just daily reading the posts. It is now part of my morning ritual but I have learned you really need to check back throughout the day as there are just so many good posts you are sure to miss one. I remember early on thinking re-bloggers were just too lazy to write their own but now I really appreciate someone bringing back a good post I have missed. Thanks to everyone who has … (11 comments)

activerain: I see something...Under the sink - 10/12/10 12:42 AM
When I was doing my morning ritual of reading the ActiveRain posts I came across a post by Karen Crowson entitled Under the Sink- Blog About Anything Challenge . It sounded like fun so I decided to see what lurked beneath my sink as it is an area rarely looked at.
If you show homes in a rural setting one thing that is often forgotten during a showing is the quality of the well water. I bought my house long before becoming a Realtor® and one thing that never hit me was to check the water for both taste and chemicals. In … (3 comments)

activerain: Safe Bow Season Opener - 09/30/10 11:54 PM
 
Wishing all of my ActiveRain family a safe opening day for bow season here in Michigan. For those who hunt be extra careful climbing in and out of old tree stands and for those who don't be extra careful on the roadways. With all the hunters hitting the woods the deer will be out in full force crossing roads and not always letting us know they are about to cross.

 
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activerain: ActiveRain info overload? - 09/30/10 11:27 PM
We have all seen the commercials where people suffer from Search Engine Overload (I think Bing has them). Where we are subjected to too much information for our brains to handle. I just read a great post by Michael Thornton where 20days this past month there were over 2,000 posts in a single day. That means if it takes you longer than 90 seconds to read a post you simply can't read them all. The amount of info passed on this month alone would surely overload my brain's storage area. What is even better is it is all fresh content. Amazing. Keep … (1 comments)

activerain: Why Are We Standing in the Rain? - 07/27/10 01:36 PM
My morning ritual begins about 4am with a good dose of Active Rain posts with toast and coffee. This morning's post by Justin Bowers caught me totally off guard. His post "I cannot understand why real estate professionals waste their bloggin on AR. Please help and explain." Justin questioned why we spent so much time in the rain. He went on to let us know about the benefits of posting a blog on our own site but could not understand why we would keep blogging here.
I guess the biggest reason I post here and read here is the other 185K people that … (5 comments)

activerain: Have we been "Served"? - 05/03/10 11:30 PM
Have we been "Served"? Almost scared to speak it but I have been error free since yesterday. Must be we are at least close to getting our new servers online. Worries me how little patience some have shown in the last few weeks. I have seen normally good hearted people saying things in frustration that makes me wonder how they would be to work with. Nothing in life goes smoothly all the time and more often than not Murphy's Law prevails. For those who don't know the law states that "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong". What started as … (5 comments)

activerain: Are We ActiveRainer's Insane? - 05/02/10 12:45 AM
Albert Einstein once said the definition of insanity was to do the same thing over and over expecting different results. Does that mean we the people of ActiveRain are indeed insane? Everyday we get up early and log on to ActiveRain and while down in our heart we know things are not quite right yet we still try and post a comment and daily we are surprised and furious all over again the servers are not up and running smoothly. This is a perfect opportunity to diversify your blogging and SEO skills in other places while you wait. With a little … (3 comments)

activerain: Search Stories video for Lake and Lodge Realty LLC - 04/18/10 11:51 PM
Search Stories video for Lake and Lodge Realty LLC  Much thanks go out to Bryan Watkins for this mornings post about Google's Search Stories. After seeing his I had to give it a try and I was pretty happy with the results. At first I ran into issues as my Flash Player needed updating but within a few minutes and a couple clicks I was up and running. Anything to get more web presence has to be a good thing and I really like the way Active Rainer's share technology and tips with each other. Thanks again Bryan.

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activerain: Wanted...Relaxation Tutor - 04/11/10 07:06 PM
Relaxation Tutor  
Let me start by saying I am not a slow learner. I am a rather quick study of most things and feel quite at home learning almost any skill. I may have found a subject matter that I need help with. Relaxation. My wife constantly tells me I really need to learn to relax. I thought looking at properties on my day off was relaxing but if you are a real estate agent it appears you are a workaholic needing a hobby. I have tried a few and while golf seems to rate right up there I still … (1 comments)

activerain: Curious about IDX conversions - 04/07/10 09:05 AM
Just curious if any of my fellow techy ActiveRainers have experimented with setting up their own IDX pages instead of paying the IDX host sites? I have a great guy that does my IDX but would like more control over what is displayed and how searches are ran. I have been thinking on Open Realty as they seem to be one the best I have found but not sure about setting up MySQL databases> I do all my own website design and maintenance but this may be a touch over my head. I am the Broker so my Board will give … (2 comments)

activerain: Evolution of a Blogger - 04/06/10 09:43 AM
Evolution of a Blogger  
As I have mentioned in the past when I first joined ActiveRain it was strictly in hopes of improving my search engine placement. Like most overachievers I raced in the point system trying to break all known records and soon realized that wasn't going to happen. I would go in everyday and read enough posts to comment on for the max points but a weird thing happened. One day I had reached my 10 posts but kept reading. Then something else...I learned something new by reading one. Why hadn't I noticed this phenomenon before? I wondered … (5 comments)

activerain: Slow down and enjoy the ride! - 04/03/10 12:09 AM
Slow down and enjoy the ride!  
This morning while reading the posts I noticed a lot of anger over the proxy errors here on Active Rain. It caused me to write a quick post about patience (or lack of it) and after I had posted I started to think about the other areas in our lives where we were lacking that virtue. Things like riding behind someone enjoying the scenery while we are pressed to get to our next appointment or sitting in a drive through cussing out someone three cars up for not knowing what they wanted before pulling … (8 comments)

activerain: Patience is a virtue...not required on Active Rain - 04/02/10 11:25 PM
Patience is a virtue...not required on Active Rain  
When I first joined Active Rain it was more for trying to increase my web traffic that anything else. After a while I evolved a little and now my morning ritual includes the "reading of the posts". Lately with all the server errors I have noticed a lot....a ton of posts all similar in topic. Anger over the server errors we all encounter. It always reminds me of when my mother would say "Patience is a virtue" and how that would make me more angry. We as a people have really turned … (66 comments)

activerain: What the blog were you thinking? - 03/15/10 01:52 AM
What the blog were you thinking?  
I am still fairly new to the blogging scene. I have been here long enough to realize the value of reading and learning from blogs not just the point fix. I have seen blogs that teach, whine, complain, praise and even just a mass of keywords huddled together for some type of search engine optimization. I guess we should start by asking ourselves, who or what are you blogging for? When I was doing seo for my website I found myself more concern about the robots that visited my site than the clients. After … (8 comments)

activerain: For the Love of Blog - 03/14/10 06:51 PM
For the Love of Blog  
My morning ritual is now started by checking out the new blogs here on ActiveRain. I came across one this morning that was an interesting read. It was quite lengthy and was comprised of nothing but keywords. Not a sentence in the entire blog, just keywords. I think we all blog for multiple reasons and SEO for our websites is one of them, but believe me when I say if you are not reading the blogs you have no idea what you are missing out on. When I first started ActiveRain I was in a … (4 comments)

activerain: Guilty as charged! - 03/04/10 09:04 AM
Guilty as charged!  
As I sit here pondering how long the economy will raise havoc on my business I have more time to read posts on ActiveRain and I have been noticing a disturbing trend. There are a lot of great posts out there with tips for being a better agent or to help ones business and I am guilty as charged for some of the no-no's. Nothing to panic about but little things like getting busy and not following up on my emails quick enough or keeping my contact list fresh. These slow times should be just what my … (1 comments)

activerain: Should blogs be required reading? - 03/03/10 06:23 PM
Should blogs be required reading for newbie's?  
I have became quite addicted to reading ActiveRain blogs. Just when I think I know my real estate pretty well someone blogs about something I had no idea about. lol. I really think if I had started reading blogs back when I started it would have bettered my experience learning the ropes. When I was first brought on board I was immediately thrown into the mix and while my fellow agents were supportive they were also my competition so giving me tips was not on the priority list for most.
I truly … (3 comments)

 
Randy Ostrander, Real Estate Broker, Serving Big Rapids and West Central MI (Lake and Lodge Realty LLC )

Randy Ostrander

Real Estate Broker, Serving Big Rapids and West...

Big Rapids, MI

More about me…

Lake and Lodge Realty LLC

Address: 107 N. Michigan Suite B, Big Rapids, MI, 49307

Office: (231) 796-5253

Mobile: (231) 250-9802

Author Bio: Randy Ostrander, Broker/Owner of Lake and Lodge Realty in Big Rapids, MI covers all of West Central Michigan. He does work weekends so he can be there wheneve you are ready to handle all of your real estate needs.



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