Note: You can read the first post by clicking here.
As many of you may know. I recently wrote a post about whether to sell my house FSBO or use an agent. I must confess, although my wife and I have tossed around the idea, we are not selling our home. More importantly, we are not going to sell it FSBO. So why did I write such a controversial post? Why did I risk getting the very people who subscribe to my blog mad at me? There are actually a few reasons…
But before I jump too far into this post, I have to give credit to Rita Taylor for being the first one to blow my cover.
My guess is that Brad is going to turn this whole darn thing on its ear and ask why we are doing our own SEO and website building if we see how it does not make sense for a seller to do FSBO.
To Prove A Point
All too often I see Realtors doing the very thing they preach so strongly against. They take the FSBO mindset and try to do it themselves. I have never quite understood this. Why would someone pay to advertise in the newspaper or other media and then create the ad themselves in an effort to save money? The truth is that a professionally designed ad will yield far more responses then something thrown together in Publisher. Why? A good designer will consider things like color theory, negative space, setting focus and call to action placement. It's the exact same reason so many people warned me against things like contacts, pre-approval, feedback, coordinating the transaction, etc.
I Can Do It, But You Can Do It Better
I could probably sell my house myself. Granted I may not get the full price. And, because I don't sell houses every day, I will probably end up putting three times the amount of work into it because of the learning curve. It's the exact same way with SEO. Yes, you can learn SEO and you can probably have some success with it. Just like Real Estate, SEO is not Rocket Science. But, how much more income can you create by focusing on your core strengths? To use a quote from a friend and colleague, Michael Russer (a.k.a. Mr Internet®),
Anytime you do something outside of your core competency, you are paying top dollar for amateur results.
Some Houses Are Easier To Sell Than Others
Depending on market conditions, competition, and more, it could be pretty easy to sell a home. It's the exact same way with SEO. Sure, it's easy to get top placement for keywords with little competition. You may be able to rank well for keywords that contain 200K, 500k or even 1M results. But what about the keywords that compete against 10 Million or 30 Million? What about a multi-keyword strategy? Last month alone, Kevin's South Beach Real Estate Blog received traffic from over 450 unique keywords. And his blog has only been up a few months.
You Know How to Sell Houses. I know Marketing Strategy.
I look at everything from a marketing perspective. When I first joined Active Rain, I spent a few minutes trying to find the hot topics. It was SEO. So I jumped in and started talking about that topic. The reality is that Search Engine Optimization is only a small portion of Dakno Marketing. This is because well designed and coded websites do not need as much optimizing. But I knew that SEO would get eyeballs. It was a strategic marketing strategy. This last post was no different.
One Word: Exposure
For the last two months, I have tucked my post away in only a few Active Rain groups. I never really ventured outside of those groups. I realized that by doing so, I was limiting the exposure of my blog. I wanted a way to make a splash in a few other groups. So why didn't I just write one of my standard posts and submit it to another group? Since there are almost 40,000 people on ActiveRain, I knew that unless my post stood out in a new group, it would quickly get lost in the crowd. I needed a hot button. And to a Real Estate Agent, it doesn't get much hotter than telling an agent you don't need their services. So did it work? I think so. I had over 60 comments in less than 24 hours and the post pushed me to the most subscribed AR bloggers for the week.
How Much Does It Really Cost?
One of the biggest motivations for FSBOs is to save money. I think the same is true with web design and marketing. I often hear posts about Point2's free sites and all the software and template companies that allow you to build a site for almost nothing. I have nothing against Point2 or these other companies. That's not it at all. It's more the fact that the same Realtors that discourage me from trying to be a "do it yourself" seller are trying to be "do it yourself" web developers and marketers. Is the motivation to save money? I have to ask the same question I was asked in the last post. What is the real cost? Let me give you an example. We recently launched a website for a Realtor in Sunnyvale. The first month, the site generated almost 50K for them in commissions. It's no wonder he just called me to create 2 more sites.
Kevin Tomlinson doesn't know a thing about Squidoo, Technorati, Flickr, etc.. And the truth is that he doesn't want to. He would rather have my company deal with that stuff. Why? He is too busy selling miami beach real estate. And lots of it! He did about 24 Million in January and February alone!
So at the end of the day, could I sell my house myself? Probably so. Could you do it better? No doubt about it..yes. The same applies for Web Design and SEO. Can you create a website and optimize it? Sure you can. Can I do it better? You better believe it. :-)
Brad Carroll Click here to subscribe to my blog
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