Special offer

Ask An Ambassador: Blogging DOES Pay (Secret Info Inside)

By
Real Estate Agent with Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com SAL.2002007747

Let's say you're a skeptic.  You've heard about blogging as a means of building your business but it just doesn't make a lot of sense to you how posts about home buying and selling tips, local events and subdivisions and searches for houses with four car garages an in-ground pool and a barn can turn into paychecks at the closing table, but it can.

Now blogging isn't some silver bullet cure to doubling your business in 4 weeks or less.  It's not like most of the "cures" you hear at some convention for $499 (but $399 if you act TODAY).

Here's the secret about blogging:

 

IT TAKES WORK & TIME.

From a cost perspective it's pretty cheap.

ActiveRain practically gives you the keys to the kingdom for virtually free.  The annual charge gets less and less until it's FREE at 500,000 points.  If you're dedicated to blogging you can hit that in about two years.

Now to really maximize your returns we've found that we needed to add two more tools to our blogging toolkit:

1.  IDX Search

2.  Wordpress site

We use IDX Broker (Platinum) version for about $80/month.

Because we're fortunate enough to have learned how to maintain and tinker with our own Wordpress site (MANY THANKS TO OTHER RAINERS FOR SHARING AND TEACHING), our Wordpress expenses are minimal.  A few dollars here and there for hosting, a couple of premium plug ins that make my life easier and all told our site is a BARGAIN.  All told we're not spending much more than a grand a year for our blogging & Wordpress/IDX site.

Our business is basically 100% organic.  We don't run pay per click campaigns, we don't buy zip codes from anyone, we don't buy grocery cart ads or school scoreboard ads or anything of the sort. 

We blog.

We build pages on our WP site, search after search. 

We develop our niche.

Our blog drives traffic to our WP site and from there we get calls.

And many of those calls are from buyers that are VERY close to making a decision and want agent help.

Now I have no pretense of every being the number one agent in my market.  Fact is I'm pretty happy to close 20-30 transactions a year and blogging is a VERY cost effective way to hit our targets.

Counting pendings we have 22 transactions to close in 2016 and another four new construction for 2017.  Although it's not ALL we do, our niche focus on patio homes and new construction patio homes means we pushed up our price point per transaction.  Our 2016 production is currently 50% ahead of 2015's total.

All four 2017 transactions are COMPLETELY due to our AR/WP/IDX work.

Of the 22 transactions for 2016, at least 12 are due to blogging or fruit of the vine from blogging/WP/IDX.

While in the past we've had agent to agent referrals this year just hasn't worked out that way. 

But here's the other aspect of our business this year:  we've been doing more referrals to other agents in our office.  We get a buyer or seller call that doesn't fit our core business or catches us at a time when we're swamped, we refer them out.  If it works out for the other agent, great.  And if it doesn't, no loss on our part because it wasn't in our best interest to take them on.

The fact is that blogging to the extent we have means we get more opportunities because in addition to the long tail searches we get found more and more often for terms like "real estate agents in Mason".

Bottom line, blogging CAN add to your bottom line, it's just a matter of focus and targeting for YOUR market.

Good luck!!

Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!

Bill of Liz and Bill aka BLiz

 

Posted by

Serving Warren County Ohio & Adjacent Areas

The Liz Spear Team of Transaction Alliance
Elizabeth Spear, ABR, Ohio License SAL.2002007747

William (Bill) Spear, Ohio License SAL.2004011109  Kentucky 77938
Ask for us by name if you visit the office!

EHO
Bill Direct:  513-520-5305
Liz Direct: 513-265-3004     
Fax: 866-302-8418

MailTo:  Liz@LizSpear.com

Search Homes:  Https://WarrenCountyOhioRealEstate.com

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Comments (49)

Gwynn Burns
Re/Max Haven Realty - Solon, OH
Going Above and Beyond to Find Your Next Home

Thank you Liz and Bill Spear 

Oct 19, 2016 05:38 AM
Kathleen Luiten
Resort and Second-Home Specialist - Princeville, HI
Kauai Luxury Ocean Home Sales

Thanks for posting this and sharing your blogging success story with us!

Oct 19, 2016 10:43 AM
Liz and Bill Spear
Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH
Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Gwynn, You're welcome!

Kathleen, We want to reinforce that blogging will work for Rainers that put it to work for them :)

Oct 19, 2016 10:55 AM
Harry F. D'Elia III
WEDO Real Estate and Beyond, LLC - Phoenix, AZ
Investor , Mentor, GRI, Radio, CIPS, REOs, ABR

Congratulations on your featured article. We are looking forward to the next one.

Oct 19, 2016 12:34 PM
Praful Thakkar
LAER Realty Partners - Andover, MA
Andover, MA: Andover Luxury Homes For Sale

Liz and Bill Spear - wow! It's so simple to work on our own website.

Now I think I will dare to work on it. 

Oct 19, 2016 03:34 PM
Nancy Manby
Keller Williams Realty, Westport CT - Stamford, CT
Your Downsizing Specialist

Thank you for that honest insight!

Oct 19, 2016 09:12 PM
Debra B Albert, PA - Keyes Realty
Keyes Realty Treasure Coast, 34986 - Port St Lucie, FL
Ron and Debbie 772.708.3292

thanks for the insight! Debbie

Oct 19, 2016 10:19 PM
Cheryl Dukes . . . . . Intown Atlanta
Guaranteed Offer for your Home - eXp realty - Atlanta, GA

Thanks for the encouragement. Good to know blogging pays for you. Just curious which wordpress theme do you use?

Oct 19, 2016 11:14 PM
Liz and Bill Spear
Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH
Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Harry, Thanks!

Nancy, You're welcome!  Happy to provide the facts as we see them.

Debra, You're welcome!

Cheryl, Genesis framework, Turnkey theme.  The theme is 2-3 years old, so there might be "fresher" out there that would work equally well or better.  Just not a project I'm up for right now :)

Oct 20, 2016 01:45 AM
Diana Dahlberg
1 Month Realty - Pleasant Prairie, WI
Real Estate in Kenosha, WI since 1994 262-308-3563

I really enjoyed reading your informative blog Liz and Bill Spear ... I agree, each of us needs to find our comfort zone, our niche, and then work in and on it.  I partiularily liked the point of referring out the business when your schedule is getting overloaded.  Make good sense to me.  That will be a New Goal for me the rest of this year.  

Oct 20, 2016 08:20 AM
Liz and Bill Spear
Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH
Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Diana, Expanding our niche has grown our business enough that I can feel comfortable passing off more leads to other agents.  That change has allowed me to be more productive with my time and also gives me more clients that understand our expertise.  It's a win-win.

Oct 20, 2016 09:02 AM
Jerry Newman
Brown Realty, 210-789-4216, - San Antonio, TX
Texas REALTOR, San Antonio Military Relocation

Bliz, I have learned over the years that, Yes. Blogging does work. As you mentioned above, it takes work and time, since it doesn't always bring instant results. I will be sharing this one with a Newbie too.

Oct 20, 2016 09:17 AM
Lauren Williams, CPO
Casual Uncluttering LLC - Woodinville, WA
Professional Organizer: Puget Sound homes

Not to be a curmudgeon, but you are SO lucky you like WordPress. I have no training on it whatsoever, but manage a WordPress site as a volunteer for a networking society. I hates WordPress. Hates it with a passion. Just find it so awkward, maybe because I don't have the expertise.  But, without naming my server provider, when I recently learned that all my loverly images on my corporate website aren't properly coded within my provider's native website building program so they aren't registering with search engines, suddenly WordPress or Wild Apricot or Weebly or name-ANY-other-provider..... all looked sooo good......... Argh.

Oct 20, 2016 02:50 PM
Randy Elliott
RE/MAX Gold - Lodi, CA
REALTOR : Lodi / Stockton, CA

Great tips, Liz & Bill.  I'm curious about your blog content that you're getting traffic and eventually clients from.

I only noticed on your Wordpress site that you just have a monthly post of market snapshots. Great info, but is that the only blogging you're doing to get the results you wrote about in this post?

Oct 20, 2016 06:50 PM
Liz and Bill Spear
Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH
Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Jerry, It was indeed a bit of a slow process, and part of that is on us for not blogging more about what the consumeer seeks.

Lauren, I couldn't have initially done Wordpress when we first started blogging.  It took some time to get comfortable with the basics and fortunately had a lot of help from friends here in the Rain to help me gain understanding.

Randy, I really don't use my WP site as a blogging platform, more focused on pure real estate and search pages.  I use our main ActiveRain blog (lizspearteamnews.com) and our ActiveRain niche blog (warrencountypatiohomes.com) for blogging and to drive traffic to our WP site.

Oct 20, 2016 11:20 PM
Lou Ludwig
Ludwig & Associates - Boca Raton, FL
Designations Earned CRB, CRS, CIPS, GRI, SRES, TRC

Liz and Bill

Your post on blogging is right on point. When we work on our blogging as part of our marketing program . . . . It works.

Good luck and success.

Lou Ludwig

 

Oct 25, 2016 11:13 AM
Lou Ludwig
Ludwig & Associates - Boca Raton, FL
Designations Earned CRB, CRS, CIPS, GRI, SRES, TRC

Liz and Bill

Congratulations on a well deserved feature for your post.

Good luck and success.

Lou Ludwig

Oct 25, 2016 11:14 AM
Liz and Bill Spear
Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH
Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Lou, Blogging is one of those tools that if used right and often enough, can pay off for us for years to come.  We're enjoying the results of our labor.

Oct 25, 2016 11:31 AM
Sandy Padula & Norm Padula, JD, GRI
HomeSmart Realty West & Florida Realty Investments - , CA
Presence, Persistence & Perseverance

Liz and Bill Spear Excellent post from you and one that I need to study further and confirm my actions shadow yours. Thanks!

Oct 25, 2016 09:55 PM
Liz and Bill Spear
Transaction Alliance 513.520.5305 www.LizTour.com - Mason, OH
Transaction Alliance Cincinnati & Dayton suburbs

Sandy & Norm, Hopefully what works in Ohio also works in Cali!

Oct 26, 2016 02:13 AM