Trulia, Zillow & ActiveRain Profiting From Real Estate Agents. Why Not?
WHAT NETWORK ARE YOU PLACING IN YOUR BASKET?
Mr. Mike Bowler, Sr offers a few top choices and why they are not all free! Lets face it- We all have bills to pay and expenses to meet. These networks, Active|Rain ~ Trulia ~ Zillow and a Zillion others have Rent to Pay, Salaries to Meet, Overhead to Make and Profit in order to Grow.
Here is what comes to mind....
Low bidders may "get the job" ~ but will they ever grow their business and reputation? The answer is NO. We get what we pay for- in one form or another.
Trulia, Zillow, and ActiveRain are getting into the money game when it comes to real estate agents.Hey, that’s America, everyone deserves a profit. I do not despise the idea of having add-on’s or premium services, however, I do resent the idea of a competitor appearing on my listing pages. Let’s look at Tulia to start with.
Trulia has a listing by company XYZwith an agent listed as your Trusted Professional on the same page. The agent who listed the property does have a button to contact, however if I were a consumer looking at this, I would assume the REALTOR on the right is the listing agent. This kind of makes you wonder what IDX is good for. This seems to be a Premium IDX. They promote it as owning the territory, buy buying a Zip Code.
Zillow’s Premier Agent program offers the same setup with no takers yet on this zipcode in Lansing, however, I wonder how the agent of this $500,000 plus listing will feel when his/her competitor shows up on the right column
I went to post on ActiveRain the other night, which I have been doing for four years and discovered that if I wanted to have the public see the Blog post, I would have to upgrade to their premium version. This went from FREE to $39.00/month recently. Thank goodness for WordPress.org and owning my own site and posts.
So, here’s three big players getting smarter about the bottom line, or are they? I wonder how long agents will opt in to syndicating their listings to these sites or continue posting Blogs?
I think it’s boiling down to not putting all your eggs in one basket. Smart agents will get their own domain name, own their own WordPress Blog with IDX search capabilities, and use social media to drive traffic, in addition to other good tools. Then again, I may be wrong, but I know, I am not going to pay the three companies above any money for them to advertise my competitors. But, what the heck, maybe whoever bought the Zip Code will sell my listing. What do you think?
Mike Bowler Sr. ePRO
Coldwell Banker Hubbell Briarwood
Lansing, MI 48917
Direct Line: 517-492-3400
Mike@MikeBowler.com
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