In case you were wondering about the small widget located on the right hand side of my blog, let me explain it in this small post.
I like to think of it as 'creative use of technology' to make a real estate agents life that bit easier!
The widget itself is an RSS widget, from WidgetBox and is free. (you can also create one yourself for your ActiveRain blog for instance)
But the widget on my blog is a bit different. Its an RSS update on Property listings, ' in almost real time, live, as they are being sent in by SMS' to an Sms software/hardware system that is running and links to my site over at RealVisionHomes.com
Now the "listings" are not as detailed and there's definately no Virtual Tours or fancy v-flyers involved as you can see by clicking on any of the links on that widget, but you better believe it when I say, that in Dubai, this is THE way they sell real estate! :-)
What you are seeing is actual listings that are used to buy and sell,. Ok a little bit of an explanation is in order.. The reason real estate sells the way it does in Dubai, is because most of it is still under construction. (read Boom time arabia)
Anyhow back to the technology - I set this up, to help agents and individual investors to be able to list / buy / sell their property from the convienance of their cell phone.
So while most established real estate/ brokerage houses like Zillow , Trulia etc use SMS the other way around, i.e they allow you to text a word or address and then send relevant info to your cell phone...
I've set it up the other way around, sort of... i.e you actually text in your full listing and it posts it to the SMS Property Board on the site.
It is worth mentioning that over 90% of these listings enjoy 1st or 2nd page coverage on google :-)
How is this service free? Well I;m a technology fan, so yes it does go out of my pocket, but I've recently had some kind souls make a donation via paypal after reading and implementing some of the ideas from the technology articles on my other blog.
There are also a few cents trickling in from those who benefit from the contextually relevant adverts on the site ;)
Let me know your thoughts on this, oh and go ahead, if you wanna see your listing get some Google Love, send in a property listing via SMS ( its an international SMS though, so your operator charges apply. Realvisionhomes.com does not levy anything extra - to +971 50 6855 164)
I'll host the listings under an International Category. OR do it yourself by starting your first word with int (This will sort it in the "international" category automatically)
Regards!
Clyde
Comments(3)