When I started blogging on AR I assumed all of the members knew what they were doing and already had a web page. I just knew realtors were technologically sophisticated, and I was the last person in the country to do something about joining the 21st century. This old dog didn't want to learn new tricks -- it was just too demanding on my time.
But nay! I have found that a lot of you need help -- with a capital "H." Real estate marketing has become too sophisticated not to have a web site.
Having said that, let me tell you how I've eased into all of this. I think a huge problem is trying to do too much too fast, getting overwhelmed and then not doing anything at all.
I have been providing marketing services to commercial real estate firms for nearly 30 years -- and I never had a web site. If someone asked if I had a web site, I told them "no," that I sent out actual samples of my work to people inquiring about my services. I had all the work I could handle, and this worked fine.
Then I decided to get into realtor closing gifts (http://www.wevemovedgifts.com). I was going to make my fortune in e-commerce. Let's fact it folks, you can't do e-commerce without a web site. I signed up with Register.com to host my gift site and chose an option which allowed me to use their templates to design my site. I'm not intending to plug them necessarily; there are probably millions of companies to choose from. The point is, they had a number of different "packages" from letting them design the site to do-it-yourself templates. I went with the templates and a low monthly hosting price.
Call me slow, but it did take a bit of time to understand how to move around within the templates. There are a lot of design options and choices you have to make. But you will creep up the learning curve and discover ways to accomplish your goals.
One thing about the system I use. I can toggle between the template (where I don't see any html code) and a source page which does show the html code. I find this abiity very good as I am convinced you have to learn how html works for those times when a template just won't allow you to do what you want. And once you start looking at the code, you are on your journey to learning html. And guess what? YOU CAN!! It is really quite understandable.
Here's a site I found that is great for starting to learn html -- www.pageresource.com. There are clear instructions and examples to follow, and you don't have to bite it all off at once.
Is my web page just where I want it? No, there is more work to be done. But I do it in stages which makes the process manageable for me -- and it gets the job done. You don't have to start with a 20-page site. Do a home page first, and add other pages later. As you learn more about tags and search engine optimization, you can make changes. You can add internal page links and external links over time. If you try to do it all at once, you won't do it at all.
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