Drumroll please……

Team Eric!

Eric Blackwell and his merry band of SEO’s/bloggers truly proved the spirit of SEO - it’s all about the relationships.  Jennifer Karlan, Greg Swann, Ken Smith, Wayne Long, Judy Orr, Cal Carter, Mike Damman, Charles & Jacqueline Richey, and Matt Scoggins all need to take a collective bow.  Through the use of teamwork and some very strategic use of assets they individually & collectively own, they were able to control #1 from the second month of the contest to the finish line.

There was a LOT of stiff competition here.  Ardell DellaLoggia ran it tight all the way to the finish line.  Greg Boser was in it, and then disappeared off the map w/ a few weeks to go — everyone was anxiously waiting for the SEO Dark Lord to pop his head back in at 11:59 on April 30th.  The guys at newhomessection.com finished #5, w/ Mike Damman’s site PropertyHogs.com, Ryan Ward, Justin from hismove (ranking well, though he dropped out early,) and then Jay Thompson rounding out the top 10.  Wouldn’t you know it?  My post ended up at the top of page 2 - the story of my life.

I’d like to thank everyone for participating, and especially thank Morgan Carey of Real Estate Webmasters for sponsoring the event.  Team Eric has decided to auction off the prize & donate the money to the Eco Preservation Society of Costa Rica (a favorite of Mike Damman’s.)

A few things about the determination of the winner.

1. We used multiple datacenter sources via the SEO Datacenter Tool.  We then verified this using SEO Tools datacenter check.  Team Eric was number 1 in every DC.
2. Do you see different results, or did you see different results?  Look in the top right of your Google page and see if you are logged in.  Google plays around w/ personalized search, and will serve up different results when you’re signed into Google based on your browsing history.
3. I have screenshots of the search results from each DC.  If you would like to see them, please email me, or leave a comment.

My friend Lydia Taylor at the Elegant August Real Estate blog just put together a really fun blogging contest. If you get a chance, check it out, and participate. I’m trying to decide what to submit. Should be a lot of fun!

For those of you not from Austin, austinhomesearch.com is the local board’s IDX site. They heavily promote it - PPC, bus ads, billboards, SEO, etc… Check out the traffic comparison between them and my little ol’ site:

The traffic bursts on my site were from a few posts I had that went viral. My average traffic is WAY higher, but our median traffic is about the same.

3 Year Traffic Graph per Alexa.com

In the real estate world innovative real estate agents and penny pinching sellers are always looking for ways to make a buck or save a buck. One of those ways is the fairly new buzz word “Flat Fee MLS”. MLS Flat Fee simply means paying a small lump sum of money to a licensed real estate agent whom you enlist to sell your home. The real estate agent takes the money and lists the home in the MLS. The agent’s services routinely end right there although some will include a few small or non-essential add-ons to help sweeten the deal.

Selling your home is a big deal. Any homeowner owes it to themselves to seriously consider the pros and cons of Flat Fee MLS and decide whether or not it is right for them. Below we list both sides of the coin from a buyer’s perspective and then from a real estate agent’s perspective with regard to a MLS Flat Fee program.

MLS Flat Fee “Pros and Cons” for a Buyer

Pros
1. Can save thousands of dollars
2. Statistics show that MLS exposure alone is what sells a home
3. Can be in charge of everything
4. Can sell my home myself, I don’t need much help
5. Can price my house high and see if it goes

Cons
1. This will consume my time
2. This may cost me a lot of money in advertising
3. Prospective buyers may not want to meet me initially
4. Don’t have good people or negotiation skills
5. Still need to offer 3% to the buying agent
6. If my house stays on the market too long, buyers will think something is wrong with it
7. If I get in over my head I will probably need to hire a real estate attorney

MLS Flat Fee “Pros and Cons” for a Real Estate Agent

Pros
1. Stand to get a lot of listings this way
2. May pick up a few extra buyers from sign calls
3. Can save time and money on advertising
4. Seller may opt for full service program instead after initial meeting
5. Seller may opt for full service program if their home doesn’t sell
6. This will give me lots of practice with listing presentations

Cons
1. Not going to make much money on the sale of the home
2. Sellers may still call me with many questions and advice
3. Sellers may price the house too high and get nowhere
4. If something goes wrong my name is on the listing

Initially as I sketched this out, I find more “Cons” for the seller and more “Pros” for the real estate agent. And, quite frankly, some of the “Pros” for the seller can be interpreted really as “Cons” or simply a big waste of time, depending on the level or experience or intelligence of the seller. Surely, most of the success in selling a home depends on the old tried and true basic three points: location, condition, and price. But once you get past that and are marching toward the closing table, many obstacles come into play that could wreck the deal. The current real estate market also factors in a level of complexity as well. For example, will a MLS Flat Fee program fair better for a seller in a seller’s market or a buyer’s market? That is a tough question to answer because in a seller’s market homes usually sell at or above their value and that dollar number changes quickly. A seller could be cheating himself unknowingly out of thousands of dollars. Or, in a buyer’s market there is usually a glut of inventory on the MLS. Will their home rise above or stand out in the endless sea of homes on the market?

As you can see there are a few important considerations in selling a home with an MLS Flat Fee program. Home selling is an important step in anyone’s life. Since each home seller’s situation is unique to their situation, I suggest they run their own pros and cons, ask questions about both the Flat Fee and Full Service plan, and then make the best decision based on their personal needs.

I’m throwing my hat into the ring for this one! I came up with the idea, but Morgan Carey from REW has the clout to make it happen. Take a look at the rules for the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World contest. I’m planning on using a combination of social media campaigns, traditional article campaigns, and some good, old fashioned blogging to make this happen! I will update this blog w/ commentary on techniques other agents/brokers are using to go after this keyword, and I what I think of their techniques. For now:

1) Eric Blackwell - this is viral at its best. He’ll have to continually promote this, but if/when he catches a foothold with it (and he has the microphone to do so) he stands a huge chance of winning. After all, a team of agents working is much better than just one. They have a great chance of winning the Greatest Real Estate Agent in the World competition!

So my original blog “Top 10 Worst Realtor Headshots” drew quite a bit of attention. Most readers thought it was funny, but it drew some criticism, as well. The negative attention was so heated that the word “lawsuit” was thrown around quite a bit (more on that another day.)

In order to avoid suit, I had to pull the original post, but one broker contacted me & asked that I put his headshot back up.

Frank is proud of his headshot. He loves it. In fact, he sent over 2 more.

and….

No one can argue that these are some of the cheesiest Realtor business cards out there. Why in the world would he put these out?

It turns out that Frank has the same ideas about Realtor headshots as I do - they’re unprofessional & cheesy. As you can see with his over the top cards, Frank decided to make his point about the industry in a slightly different way – by pointing out the absurdity through caricature.

I recently published a piece on my website titled “Top 10 Worst Realtor Headshots.” As a Realtor, I constantly think about real estate marketing, and the headshot issue is something that I have a pretty hot debate with my business partner about - he thinks that headshots are great, and I think they’re cheeeeesy. Kinan (my business partner) did talk me into putting my mug on the front page of my site for a bit, but it was only there for a couple of months before I received negative feedback from friends, and I decided to take it down. Here’s the old site:

Super cheese - right?

So…I was thinking about it a little before the new year, and I started running searches for Realtor headshots using the Google image search tool. There are tons of them everywhere! I began bookmarking some of the headshots/marketing pieces that I found particularly absurd, and before I knew it, I had ~20 in my bookmarks folder.

I started writing a blog post rating & commenting on what I thought were the most absurd of the bunch. I’m a younger guy (28) and I write pretty freely - I read quite a bit of contemporary literature, and am a bit of a standup comedy aficionado. Before I knew it, I had a full-blown commentary that read like something out of a lad mag.

I posted the blog, and got a ton of response. For the most part, I received emails commending me on highlighting the absurd marketing in our profession. Some people felt that it was extremely harsh, and asked why I would personally attack people that I don’t know. These people missed the point entirely.

I don’t know the people on the post, and I’ve never spoken with any of them. I wasn’t commenting on them or their personal lives - I’m sure they’re all great people. The title of the post was “Top 10 Worst Realtor Headshots.” The post was about their marketing choices. Some people chose to steal the “Got Milk” campaign, one chose to market his dog, one wore a pretty provocative outfit, and more. My post was merely my opinion that the marketing pieces I highlighted are pretty absurd.

Some people were also upset about the general public’s response (blog comments.) I ask, “Doesn’t that indicate that we need to think about how we market ourselves?”

Realtors used to be key holders - you weren’t getting any information unless you came through us. Before, an absurd marketing campaign might have resulted in name recognition, and more phone calls.

Now, market information is in the public domain – market inventory is publicly displayed on IDX feeds, and sold data is public information in many states. This means that we, as Realtors, are moving away from the “key holder” position, and we must move towards the role of professional advisor. Predominantly, Realtors are extremely professional, and do excellent jobs helping people buy & sell homes. Now, more than ever, we need to brand & market ourselves as exactly that.

***Edit - you can fill out the survey directly to First Am by clicking the “MLXChange Survey” link above***

The Austin Board of Realtors recently changed our MLS service provider from TEMPO to MLXChange. TEMPO was definitely flawed, but it was functional (and we all learned to work with it.) Switching systems would have been the perfect opportunity to address the problems, and improve upon TEMPO. Obvious problems like lack of Mac compatibility, lack of Firefox compatibility, load times, etc…

When we switched to MLXChange, none of these problems were addressed. However, this isn’t my soapbox to gripe about the old problems that weren’t addressed. I would, however, like to address the shortcomings of MLXChange - the functionality that TEMPO had, that was lost in the new system.

I’m going to start a list, and please feel free to comment on a solution, or any other problems that you see. Again, please address functionality that we had with TEMPO, that we now do not have with MLXChange. I will continue to edit this post to include relevant solutions/problems.

1. Clients can not bookmark their Client Gateway link. (No solution - confirmed with MLXChange help desk.)
2. Can not create searches using latitude & longitude parameters (drawing a map box) and save them for later use, or for a client’s Gateway.
3. We are unable to send a client a link to their Client Gateway without sending “Agent Recommendations.” This is confusing to the client, if we merely want to send them a link to the Gateway.
4. Inability to open the map search in a new window.
5. Tempo had the ability to open multiple listings in the same window, and you could just scroll. Now, if you want to view multiple listings, you have to keep hitting the “next” button, which is much slower.
6. The load time of MLXChange is much slower than Tempo.
7. MLXChange freezes often.
8. You can’t open a listing in a new window. With Tempo, you could open a listing in a new window & drag it to a second screen, so you could run comps, enter listings, etc without printing the sheet off. With MLXChange, we’re killing more trees!
9. MLXChange has broken many of the features provided by 3rd party service providers (such as virtual tours.)
10. You can’t refine a search using the map feature. Example: With Tempo, you could run a search, pop the map, and use the polygon, circle, or square tool to refine the search further by area.

We all saw it coming…Trulia is a business, and they were going to have to capitalize on their investment better at some point.  Who better to market to than real estate agents?  So now, we have the “opportunity” to purchase featured listings on Trulia.  Here are my (main) problems with this.

1) IDX is FAR superior to anything Trulia can provide.  IDX reaches out to every visitor of every web savvy Realtor in a given market.  In Austin, TX alone, there are over 2000 agent websites that display every listed property on their websites.

2) Trulia doesn’t provide localized statistics.  They will provide you traffic stats, but they’re providing national stats.  Their only claim is “2 million monthly visits.”  In order for me to make an educated decision, I want to see how many searches are performed for the Austin MSA on their website.  I love to gamble, and I’ll bet big money that my sites completely blow their Austin search volume away.

3) Simply entering a listing into Trulia (or their competitors) is redundant. I have many clients ask me to enter their listings into the slew of inferior real estate websites, and I try to educate them - but 9 times out of 10, I have to waste my (assistant’s) time and enter the listings.  Again, we can’t see the true traffic statistics, however, I track all incoming call sources, and Trulia accounts for less than 1% of all traffic.  Entering clients’ listings into third party marketing sites is about as effective as placing an ad in the newspaper - it’s not.

4) It’s Cheap…Right Now.  Have you checked out the price for the Realtor.com featured listings?  They stuck the knife a couple of years ago - and twisted it this year. Trulia Featured Listing ROI is bad at $50/month (their current cost) and it will be horrible at $100, $200, or more.

There’s really nothing that can sway my opinion about Trulia, other than localized traffic statistics.  The only solution we have is to treat Trulia like any other inferior form of marketing - and not use them.  Since we can still enter basic listings, I will do so if a client requests it.  However, if a client requests a featured listing, I will suggest a # of more effective ways to spend $50.