There were a number of different flavors of Vista available to choose from. Despite reading and hearing so many bad things about the operating System (OS), I decided on Vista Home Premium. This was the version that was included with the laptop. I figured Vista has aged a little and a majority of the issues would be fixed by now.

The laptop arrived within four days of placing the order and Vista lived up to all the negative hype. I spent two hours trying to install two applications just to have them tell me that I did not have Administrative rights on the computer. Firefox in particular would simply not install.

So I decided to verify that my user account was part of the Local Administrative Group. In Windows XP I could manage User and Groups Rights in Computer Management. I went through the process in Vista Home Premium to be told by the OS that this option was not available in the Home version of Vista.

That was my breaking point. I had given Vista a chance and between all the security prompts, update balloons, and lack of privileges I decided it was time for a new OS. The laptop was 64 bit, which meant I would need to purchase a 64 bit license for XP. Or I could upgrade to Vista Ultimate. Neither of these options really appealed to me because I didn’t want to spend more money on something that should have been included with the laptop purchase.

That is when I remembered reading an article about the new Release Candidate of Windows 7 (W7). Release candidate is the final stage of software testing for an application. It is what the final application look and feel will like, unless there are major bugs discovered.

The download was very easy. After entering my Windows Live information, I was provided with a license key and download location. A couple of quick notes:

• The download is over 3GB so the download will take a while
• DVD +R is the preferred media. The install would give copying errors when using DVD-R media

I choose to do clean install and erase the hard drive instead of upgrading. One nice thing about Dell is they give you the restore partition. This was a great back out plan for me if Windows 7 was no good.

After about 45 minutes of installing I was up and running. Surprisingly all of my drivers were installed automatically and everything worked. The number of pop-ups and prompts decreased dramatically and the OS is very responsive.

The last hurdle was finding compatible anti-virus. I found a good article on the Windows 7 Team Blog about the different beta options available for W7. I choose Kaspersky because that is what I run on all my computers. The install is quick and easy and the user interface is very straight forward.

After a slow start with Vista Home Premium, I now have a very fast and responsive laptop without a lot of the extra fluff. There are a lot of cool features as well, like the improved Side Doc or mouse over minimized applications for a better quick view. If you are tired of struggling with Vista or just looking for something new, I strongly suggest Windows 7. It’s easy to download and install, it’s fast, and until March 1, 2010 it’s free!

Shane Pollock is part of the Greater Raleigh Realty Team, and is a resident of Cary, North Carolina. Greater Raleigh Realty specializes in Cary NC Real Estate and Greater Raleigh Real Estate Relocation Services.

The etiquette I’ve sort of self-discovered among the online community is that you never share a link to a site that forces you to register.  You may get a few testy remarks for doing something like that.  A better way to get links shared among internet users is to not force them to register, thus not violating the etiquette.

Could open registrations encourage organic linking?  I believe the practice of only sharing links which do not require a registration is very common by today’s standards.  Having open registrations could create more of an open environment on a real estate site, thus promoting users to actively link to your site when sharing information to others interested in the same area.

You’ll normally find this happening on message boards and social networking sites, where users (not agents) discuss different parts of town in your market (every major market has a message board like this, I promise) and even share listings with each other.  If you lurk around for a bit, you might self discover that sharing a link of a site that forces registration is taboo.

So what do you think?  Could open registrations encourage organic linking?  Could those organic links help expand your SEO portfolio, therefore increasing your rankings in major search engines?

I really like that the folks at Top Producer understand that their product needs revisions in this department.  The faster you are able to use a database, the better.  No one wants to sit and stare at a screen all day long and get nothing done.

We received this yesterday from our contact at Top Producer:

Faster Follow-up, More Consistent Marketing
Our new, enhanced Contact Record makes it easier to add a new appointment, look up specific contacts, and schedule follow-up for a later date.

Better Information At Your Fingertips
Your client notes are powerful tools for building relationships, allowing you to track client details, preferences and histories, and refer to them quickly when their phone call comes in. We’ve made it even easier to refer to past conversations.

Time Saving Tools
Your time is valuable. That’s why we’ve focused on enhancements that will save you time, such as new navigation, new search options, and auto-capitalization.

To get a full list of all the updates (it’s pretty extensive), head over to the Top Producer Campus.

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This is how I feel with the debate between forcing registrations on a real estate website vs. not forcing registrations. It’s a constant debate with myself and other real estate agents who generate a substantial portion of their leads online.

Forcing Registrations

Over the long term, you’re likely to see a trend in the number of leads you receive, and the quality of those leads.

• High number of leads.
• Lower quality leads.

For the purposes of this article, a high quality lead is one that is qualified and read to purchase now. A low quality lead is one that is not ready to buy for at least a year, and is not qualified to buy nor is ready to begin the pre-qualification process.

There are a few popular ways to force registration that I’ve seen agents try out. I don’t have proof that any is better than the other, so the results may vary from market to market.

1. Require registration to view search results.
2. Allow user to view search results, but require registration to view property details.
3. Allow user to view search results as well as a fixed number of property detail pages, then force registration after the user has exceeded their limit.

For the record, my site is currently using option number 2 with mixed results. I get quite a few visitors to my site a day, and I have a bit over a 9% visitor to registration conversion ratio. That’s not a bad number, given my target is set at 10%.

The issue I have with forcing registration is that I personally hate doing it. I hate having to register to view information that I can readily find elsewhere for free. In my mind, when a site offers information for free to me, they are building rapport and goodwill. The chances of me returning to that site are quite high; given I found the information I came looking for.

When you force registration, you are requiring that they fork over contact information so that you or someone on your team should be following up. From a real estate agent perspective, that’s not bad at all.

You can never have enough leads. - Gary Keller

Let’s put on our client hat for a moment. What if I’m not ready to buy a home for a couple of years? Do I really want a real estate agent contacting me for that long? I’d leave the site for sure; for the same reasons that I don’t frequent a car lot until I’m absolutely read to buy a car.

If you’re ready to buy right now, then an agent calling could be convenient, but not what you were expecting. We’re talking about a simple registration form that was filled out, not a request to view a home or a request for a pre-approval. In those cases, the user is undoubtedly expecting a return response almost immediately; definitely within the day.

No Registrations Required

Just like forcing registrations, keeping your site open will see a likely trend as well.

• Low number of leads.
• Higher quality leads.

This seems pretty logical; doesn’t it? If users are not forced to register when they are viewing properties, which is what 95% of them come there to do, then you’re likely to not get nearly as many leads than if you forced them to. The quality of the lead will also be higher, since a user that goes out of their way to contact you is probably going to be a high quality lead.

The problem with no registrations is that you’ve lost the opportunity to convert the lead 6 months ago. Chances are you didn’t even know that particular user was even there!

Think about this for a moment. John Doe is looking to buy a home in 6 months, and stumbled on your site. He views properties and is pretty ecstatic about finding homes in his desired area. 4 months go by, and by gosh, he’s ready to talk to an agent. At that moment, he realizes that Sue, his second-cousin, is a real estate agent.

You’ve just lost the lead. You didn’t even have a chance to talk to John. It’s for this reason alone I’ve opted to forgo the no registration strategy and force registrations when a user wants to view the details of a home. I want to have the opportunity to convert.

Many national real estate sites do not force registrations, and I think this is a trend we’ll start seeing more often. I feel consumers will eventually strive for an open, sharing community where they don’t have to check their baggage at the door. When you have some spare time, stop by Redfin, Zillow, and Trulia and be aware of the experience you have when browsing listings on those sites. Would you feel the same as if they forced you register?

It Relies Your Systems

At the end of the day, the only logical conclusion I can come to is one that is heavily reliant on the systems you’ve implemented in your business.

If you have a follow up system armed and ready to tackle any lead that walks through the door, regardless of the quality, then forcing registrations may be the way to go. If you still struggle to follow up with your leads, and notice that you lose track of those that aren’t ready within a few months, then no registrations may be your ticket.

What do you think? Do you force registrations or not? Why did you choose this strategy?

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Sprint just announced that the Pre is going exclusive to them alone, and to hit the shelves nationwide on June 6th for $199 (with contract and rebates).

Honestly, the phone looks great. It’s subtle black exterior with simplistic single button resembles the iPhone, but this bad boy features a slide-out keyboard. I’ve heard complaints of many Blackberry users that this is one of the main reasons prohibiting their transition to the iPhone.

There are some pretty impressive features of the Pre; most notabily the ability to run multiple applications at once using their “cards” functionality.

Palm webOS lets you keep multiple activities open and move easily between them like flipping through a deck of cards. You can move back and forth between text messaging and e-mail, or search the web while you listen to music. You can rearrange items simply by dragging them, and when you are done with something, just throw it away by flicking it off the top of the screen.

It’s also the first time I’ve seen the smooth scrolling feature known to iPhones when browsing the web replicated in another phone, and actually done quite well. I hate browsing the web on others that have attempted this (cough-Storm-cough).

Pretty nifty, isn’t it? I’d imagine that many iPhone users are envious of some of the features, but keep in mind that Apple’s next revision of the iPhone will be bringing many features that make it comparable to the Pre.

I’m a firm believer that competition is always a great thing for the consumer. I’m excited to see Palm bring more to the table, and this can only mean better things for this niche market.

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YouMail is a shot of steroids for your voicemail. It makes listening, retrieving and accessing your voicemail very easy. Plus it adds a lot of new functionality you are sure to enjoy.

The application is very simple to setup. Navigate to YouMail’s (www.youmail.com) site and enter your cell phone number and voicemail pin in to get started. You will receive a confirmation text message. After you verify with a reply you are on your way. The web setup is very easy to use.  There are even video tutorials available if you need additional help.

Some of the benefits include:

• Visual Voicemail
• Customized voicemail messages for each caller
• Voice-to-text Transcriptions
• Ability to download voicemails to .mp3
• Unwanted Call Blocking
• It’s free!

The ability to create customized greetings is one of my favorite features. You can record or upload greetings for each contact. It is a great way to add a personal touch for the people you stay in touch with regularly.

If the caller does not have a personalized greeting you recorded, YouMail will actually retrieve the first and last name the cell phone number belongs to. The greeting will then use the first name information to greet the caller.

I usually get one voicemail a week where someone starts by saying “How did you know how to pronounce my name?”  There is also the option to use one of the many greetings available on the site.

There are of course some things that could use improvement. You have to manually add in each contact you want to setup a personal message for. Hopefully future releases will have the ability to pull your contacts in from Outlook or even a CSV file. Also, you receive ads in the text messages for new voicemail. I guess this is what they have to do to keep the service free.

If you are not happy with your cell phone’s current voicemail option, I would highly suggest YouMail. It is quick and easy to setup and it is free.  Plus it is good way to give callers a more personalized experience when leaving you a message on your cell phone.

Shane Pollock is part of the Greater Raleigh Realty Team, and is a resident of Cary, North Carolina. Greater Raleigh Realty specializes in Cary NC Real Estate and Greater Raleigh Real Estate Relocation Services.

Recently, a settlement between the Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors enabled Redfin to get access to more information to display on their site.

More significantly, Redfin is adding up to 200 additional data fields thanks to last year’s settlement between the Department of Justice and the National Association of Realtors, which requires multiple listing services to make data available online and share it more broadly. Anything a real estate broker can tell a client can now be put online.

This is great news for all real estate agents.  Why?  Having access to more data will give you more tools to present to your clients online, while also giving consumers more information to better educate them while looking for a new home.  This settlement helps build your case when confronting your MLS about the data they won’t give to you (eg. sold data).

I don’t expect this to trickle down to all markets at all, but at least it provides justification for agents whose local MLS are overly restrictive on the amount of data that they’re allowed to display on their site.

Is your local Multiple Listing Service restrictive on the data they allow you to display?

Thanks goes out to TechCrunch for pointing this out today.

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So I went ahead and called Apple to verify, and sure enough - we set up an appointment to have my phone replaced at the store the next day.

I go to the store, and learn that they are no longer replacing the phones. He wants to order me a new glass and “repair” my phone - repair a product that was bought defective. I don’t think so.

I call back Apple, and they’re shocked. They’ve never heard of repairing a phone, and the second Apple rep told me that they should just replace it. He proceeds to call the store and get an explanation for this.

Come to find out, there are a few select stores that are “testing” the repair ability on the phone, and they are now trying to repair iPhones that are defective before replacing them. What the ****?! And he also informed that this was the first time that he, his co-workers, and his supervisor heard of it.

So now my options are to get my phone repaired, so now I’m running around with a product I knowing pay a premium for for quality - but now have to know it’s been repaired. I can send in my phone and get it replaced, but I’m out of a business phone for 3 days which is unacceptable.

Or I can be charged a $21 fee, plus a charge on my Credit card for new phone and they’d send me a replacement - and I would get reimbursed until they get mine back. Fine - but why should I have to pay?

Had I knowingly went into the store expecting my displayed to get repaired, fine. But after doing research first, after hearing of past customers getting their phones replaced, and after hearing from TWO representatives that I’d get mine replaced, why can’t I get the same level of service everyone else has had?

I live in Houston - and the store that is “testing” this new repair thing is in Willowbrook mall.

I buy Apple products because I expect a higher level of quality and customer service. I guess every once and a while, even those you never expect to will let you down.

I’ll continue to post and spread the word.

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No reports if you’ll be able to restore your contacts, but let’s hope you’ve been performing daily backups (I do 2 a day) of your contacts, transactions, notes, marketing, published marketing, listings, and emails.

Update: April fools!

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A quick way to determine if you’re computer is affected by the virus at this time according to US Today (make sure you’re connected to the internet) is to:

1. Try clicking to Microsoft.com.
2. Next try Symantec.com.
3. Now try McAfee.com.
4. Can you get to them all?  You’re likely to be just fine.

That’s because Conficker blocks you from reaching any web address that includes Microsoft, Symantec, McAfee, AVG, Kaspersky, Trend Micro, F-Secure, Panda, Sophos, SecureWorks or Sunbelt in the URL.

Please make sure you are connected to the internet before trying this test.

Some extra steps for precaution:

1. Always make sure you have anti-virus installed on your computer.  I recommend a company called NOD32.
2. Always make sure you are installing your updates from Microsoft.  If you look on the bottom right hand side of your task bar (near the time), look for a yellow shield icon.  See one?  That means you are not installing your updates from the makers of Windows.  It’s strongly advised that you always keep your computer updated.  Always!
3. You may also want to setup automatic updates with Windows.

If you have more questions about this virus, please visit this FAQ at F-Secure.

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If you have a blog, be sure to give some of them a try. Among the list, I personally use:

• All in One SEO Pack - This is the “jack of all trades” SEO plugin for Wordpress that was recommended to me numerous times.  It let’s you edit Title tag structures, meta information, and a long list of other useful options.
• Google XML Sitemaps - Submitting your sitemap to search engines helps them get to your content faster.  This plugin will help you create that sitemap faster.

Get the full list over at Mashable.

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Maybe your fingers were a little greasy from that taco you just ate for lunch, and your fingers slipped and somehow sent your email in GMail. I’ve done this, and you usually hear a “Nooooo!” down the hall when it happens.

In the labs area of GMail (under settings), there is a new feature you can enable called “Undo Send”. In a nutshell, you can recall an email from being sent as long as you left-click on the undo link after accidentally sending an email. I hear you’ll get about 5 seconds to recall your email before the opportunity is gone.

This is the description provided in the labs area:

Oops, hit “Send” too soon? Stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button. - By Yuzo F

Give it a shot and drop a comment on what you think.

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Among the long list of new features, the most popular in my opinion are:

MMS - You can finally send picture messages via text messaging.

Copy and Paste - I personally never thought this hindered me from using my iPhone , but when the update gets released I’ll probably wonder how I lived without it.

Push Notifications - Now you can get notifications from your applications even when that application isn’t open.  Apple promised this a while back and it never came through, so hopefully this time we’ll see it become a reality.

Google Maps API - Now developers can integrate Google Maps into their applications.  By far the most promising thing from this new feature is the possiblity of a developer creating an application that support turn by turn directions just like all other GPS systems out there.

Universal Search - The Palm Pre was noted to have this built in from day one, and I think Apple took notice.  They’re now featuring a new feature called, “Spotlight” that will allow you to search your entire phone for whatever you’d like.

There were quite a few more features listed, but the above are the most noteworthy in my opinion.  You can read the full list over at Engadget.

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As real estate agents move toward a paperless filing system, a reliable backup solution is mandatory.  This is where Carbonite comes in.  Carbonite is an online backup solution that will keep your data safe and secure.

Setup

The software is compatible with both Windows and Mac Operating Systems.

Download the setup file from their website and follow the on screen prompts.  By default the program will back up the data located in your My Documents folder.  You can choose other folders to backup as well.  Support is available Online as well as by telephone to answer any questions you might have.

Backup Process

The software works silently in the background of your computer.  When the computer is idle, Carbonite will backup pre-selected files and folders to their online server.  As soon as you start to use your computer again, the program will stop backing up.  This process will not slow down your computer or internet connection when you need it.

All backups are fully encrypted so you do not have to worry about confidential information being compromised.

One very nice feature is that there is no limit to the amount of data you want to backup.  There is also a Web page that you use to verify what files are backed up and also restore files if needed.

Price

You can try Carbonite free for 30 days. The annual fee is $49.95 if you decide to purchase. This price decreases if you sign up for more than one year.

If you are looking for reliable backup solution that will help prevent files being lost from accidental deletion, computer theft, or hard drive failures I strongly suggest Carbonite. It is a must have application in this new paperless world. Give it a try today.

This is a guest post by Shane Pollock.  Shane is part of the Greater Raleigh Realty Team, and is a resident of Cary, North Carolina. Greater Raleigh Realty specializes in Raleigh NC Real Estate and Relocation Services.

One of the most popular topics among homeowners are property taxes, and how to reduce them. This PDF direct from American Homeowners Association is a great tool to send to your homeowners any time of the year!

It’s a lengthy read, but it definitely will help you solidify your position in their minds as the real estate agent with all the answers.

Download It Now

Note: To view this document, you’ll need Adobe Reader (www.adobe.com) installed on your computer.

Thanks goes out to Lifehacker for pointing this out today.

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With all buyers and sellers, there are certain forms you’ll use every time. Did you know you can save time you spend finding all those frequently accessed forms by using templates?

This 5 minute video will help you learn how to create a template inside of Zipform Online, and then to use that template in a new transaction so it’ll open complete with all the contracts you need.

What online software do you use to help with you real estate contracts?

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Head over to Engadget to read more about this sweet deal.

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Either way, going paperless in your real estate business is very simple to do.

What You’ll Need

There are three areas you’ll need to get in order before taking the plunge. You’ll need money, the right tools, and a system for organizing your data on your computer or server.

Money

I hate making investments in my business that, when held accountable, equate to wasted dollars. This is why I always choose products that have gotten great reviews from people who’ve purchased it in the past.

Because of this, you may be paying slightly more to go paperless than you expect. In my opinion, it’s well worth the investment, and the rights tools make getting the job done much easier.

You are going to need at least $600 to purchase the tools below.

Tools

There are two main tools you’ll need to go paperless; a shredder and a scanner. Shredders drive me nuts; they’re loud, break down often, and never seem to last as long as I’d hope them to. I’ve used flatbed scanners in the past and hate how slow they operate in a normal business environment, so we’ll forgo a flatbed scanner in this article.

To store all your documents, you have a choice of using your computer’s hard drive or a flash drive.  I’d personally grab a 4gb or 8gb flash drive from Newegg.com if you went the mobile storage route.

The Scanner - Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 - $389
After a $50 mail in rebate, this bad-boy comes out to be $389.

If you’re looking at buying the scanner at the time of this post, Newegg.com is also offering free shipping.

The Fujitsu ScanSnap S510 scanner lets you scan and store clear, crisp digital copies of all your color and black and white documents, quickly and easily. Scan both sides of any document from business card to legal-sized in a single pass, and you’ll get 150 dpi color images at 18 ppm! Best of all, the S510 fits into even the most crowded office, with a footprint about the size of a sheet of paper!

It’s a little more expensive than I’d like to spend on a scanner, but out of 115 reviews, this Fujitsu ScanSnap has gotten a 5 star rating from 80% Newegg.com shoppers who bought it.  Not bad!

The document feeder is a definitely necessity for multi-page documents, and the one-touch PDF function will definetly come in handy for real estate agents.  Anything that helps make technology more simple for an agent gets an A+ in my book.

The Shredder - Fellowes MS-450Cs - $186.99
With silent motor technology, and the ability to micro-shred your paperwork at 7 sheets per pass, this monster will eat up your unwanted paperwork in a hurry.

It’ll also take care of any credit cards you may need to shred for personal use.

The innovative Fellowes MS-450Cs is ideal for use in the home or office. MicroShred feature shreds up to 7 sheets per pass into 5/64 x 5/16” micro-cut particles as fast as 60 sheets per minute. NEW Ultra-Quiet Operation with virtually silent motor for use in shared spaces or cubicles. Patented SafeSense Technology stops shredder immediately when hands are too close to the paper opening.

With a $33 instant rebate, this Fellowes shredder will cost you $186.99 with free shipping at the time of this post.

Total - $575.99

Add in a $25 flash drive (with shipping) and you’re looking at paying around $600 total.

Filing System

Keeping your files all nice and tidy can be a tedious task.  You definitely don’t want to pile everything into one folder on your computer or flash drive.  In my experience,  the more detailed you are with organizing your files, the better.

To keep my files organized on my computer, I like to organize them by client.  Here’s a typical organizational structure I use:

• My Business Files
  • Clients
    • Doe, John
    • Johnson, Mike
      • Buyer - January 2, 2008
        • Contracts
        • Closing Documents
      • Seller - March 24, 2008
        • Listing Documents
    • Stark, Tony
    • and so on…

As you can see, I organize all my files according to my clients last name.  In my client name’s folder, I include another folder for 1) the type of client they were at the time and 2) what the date they became my client.

This helps me organize times when someone is a repeat client of yours; otherwise you’re going to go crazy chasing down documents from the same client that was working with you at two different time frames.

It’s probably not a fool-proof method, but it certainly makes my life much easier.

Have you gone paperless?  What products/tools did you choose to get the job done?  Are you happy about the transition?

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Not anymore!  The crew over at Mashable just stumbled on the feature that will allow you to upload multiple documents by simply CTRL-selecting each document.  You even get a progress indicator that shows you each file’s upload status.

See a demonstration screenshot after the break.

I haven’t gotten it to work on Firefox, but it is working on the latest Safari browser so I’d give it a day or so to make it’s way across all browsers.  You’ll also want to clear your browser cache, and try logging out and back in if you can’t get it to work correctly.

Note: I did not have to enable this feature in settings > labs.

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I took the time recently to create a spreadsheet for calculating the expecting gross commission income by providing the number of unique visitors to your site per day. It’s very simple to use; all the boxes/cells that are not grey are ones that you can change to match your business models.

Download the spreadsheet after the break.

I’ll work on updating it based on your feedback.  I threw it together so I plan to make it look “pretty” in the next couple of revisions.

Download it here

What do you think? Does it help you calculate your future income fairly accurately?

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This is why I love email.  Emails allow the person who received it to answer it at their convenience; not yours.  You also have a running history of all the emails you sent in the past.  Ever try to recall the exact words you used in a phone conversation you had last week?  I surely wouldn’t be able to remember.

All Emails Are Not Created Equal

Every now and then I’ll get an email that makes me cringe.  For this reason, here are my top five rules for email etiquette.

1. NO CAPS!

   In the email world, using caps is like you are standing nose to nose with someone you wish to speak with, and screaming to them at the top of your lungs.  Imagine that for a second; I’ll wait.  Don’t ever use all caps.  Ever.

2. Use bold sparingly.

   Bolding is caps ugly cousin.  I don’t tend to see this very often, but for the mere fact that I have seen it will force it to be mentioned as numero dos.  That doesn’t mean that bold doesn’t have it’s place, however. 

   You’ll only want to use bold when you want the attention of your email to be focused at a specific point.  When in question, just leave bolding out of the equation.

3. Watch your tone.

   There are certain words that are hard to express in an email, simply because of the demeanor in which it’s normally delivered.  Think of how you would say the word “obviously” in both a nice tone, and then a sarcastic one. 

   When the world reads your emails, realize that tone is highly subjective to the person reading it.  Some may think it’s nice (usually you’re the only one), and then everyone might think you’re being a smart-alic.  Be careful with your tone.

4. Avoid long emails.

   Short, sweet, and to the the point.  There are plenty of people in this world that love to read books, but I assure you that there are plenty that don’t.  Don’t assume they want to take all day to read your email. 

   Answer their question, and if you are trying to convert a lead; stay into curiosity.  Ask another question back to entice a fruitful conversation that builds a long lasting relationship.

5. Drop those snazzy email templates.

   When you recieve an email with images from someone you don’t know, most likely your email software (I use Gmail) will block those images from being loaded.  You explicity have to tell it to load the pictures.  

   If you’re working with someone that doesn’t know you (a new lead), then your email may end up without your template images; so why bother?

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You may be sitting in the middle of a closing, or showing a gorgeous 3-2-2 your clients are falling head over heels for.  Sure; you could have your clients squint at a 3 inch cell phone screen, or perhaps take a 30 minute trip back to your office and make them late for dinner.  Is there anything out there to help with this inconvenience?

I’d like to introduce you to an affordable mini-laptop: the Netbook.  Netbooks were a big hit this year at the Consumer Electonics Show, and they may very well be the next tech purchase for your real estate business.

What Is A Netbook?

A Netbook is basically a miniature laptop. They’ve become popular because they’re remarkably affordable. A decent Netbook won’t run you over $400 online, but name brands can run a bit more expensive (Sony, for example).

The screen sizes are smaller, and max out at 10″ diagonally.  I’ve personally used a 10″ netbook and have been pleasantly surprised at the amount of screen real estate you get for the price.

Weight is also a common issue with laptops.  The nice 17″ laptop you love to sit on your desk probably weights a good 7 - 8lbs.  Sure you can lug that big boy around, but realize that a Netbook only weighs a measly 2-3 lbs! These babies are small on purpose, and bode well when tucked away into a suitcase or handbag.

As it stands, most Netbooks come with Windows XP Home edition, but I’ve been hearing reports that the next version of Windows (after Vista), named Windows 7, plays very nicely with Netbooks so you will have the option to upgrade the operating system in the future.

The investment is small, and the mobility you achieve is pretty large.  I’ve created a list of the best Netbooks from my favorite online retailer, Newegg.com, below.  My recommendation at this time is the white or black ASUS Eee PC EPC1000HA (10″ screen, 1GB of RAM, and 160GB hard drive).

Newegg Netbooks Sorted by Rating

Do you own a Netbook? What do you like/dislike about them?

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I also changed the fonts from Trebuchet to Arial.

So what do you think?  Is the new font size suit well?  Should I revert back to the smaller text?

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Try this one on for size. Along with those earnings, Apple had a 9% growth in sold Mac computers totaling 2,524,000. I still seeing most agents use PCs in their day to day business. However, I’ve had more than one agent come to me lately asking about my opinion of Macs.

If I had an option of a new computer for my business right now, I’d probably go with an iMac, or possibly a 15″ Macbook Pro and a Apple Cinema Display. The design quality, ease of use, and great applications available for the Macs are really exciting to use, not to mention that I think they are absolutely gorgeous on a desk.

Have I turned into an Apple fanatic? Not really. I still use a PC at the office every day. I am, however, excited to hear that they are doing well, and have been pleasantly surprised when using their products in the past.

Do you use a Mac for your real estate business? Would you use one?

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Blogging is a great way to display you level of expertise with your neighborhood, city, or niche. Below, I thought it would be nice to share 10 real estate topics you could blog about today to get you in the mood to write.

1. Market Statistics For Your City
2. Market Statistics For A Neighborhood
3. Real Estate News About A Particular Market
4. The Home Buying Process
5. The Home Selling Process
6. Pricing A Home In The  __________ Subdivision
7. 5 Things to Look For During A Home Inspection
8. Getting Approved Versus Getting Pre-Qualified
9. The _____ Steps to Closing
10. 5 Things You Can Do to Stage Your Home

This isn’t an exhaustive list, of course, but I think it’s a great start!  With the market statistics alone you could easily write a blog post every few days about a different subdivision in your market.

What kind of things do you blog about?

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With the internet brings the opportunity to meet people all over the world, and this is where online social networking comes into play. Social networking can help agents get their foot in a door that otherwise might seem closed.

Send Out Some Emails

The Christmas season is a great opportunity to network with other real estate agents online. If you’re a proactive real estate agent, you’re probably already sending out emails with season’s greetings to all of your clients in your database. Take a few extra moments and formulate an email for some of your fellow real estate agents that you’ve met in the past. If you haven’t kept track of past agents you’ve met (shame on you!), then start with other agents in your office. Sure you guys are competing against each other for business, but what if another agent in your office gets a lead in an area where they don’t service but you do?

If you’ve kept business cards from agents you’ve met at state and national conventions, be sure to put those agents into your database. Keeping in touch with agents that you’ve met across the country with a monthly email is a great way to promote real estate referrals (who couldn’t use some of those?).

Online Social Networking

I’m certainly a fan of networking online with other agents at sites that have a well established community of agents, and this season is also a great opportunity to visit some of those social sites (like ActiveRain and BiggerPockets.com) to spread some holiday cheer.

In the process, be sure to mention where your real estate business is located, and mention how well you service other agent’s real estate referrals.

What is your business doing this holiday season?

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The email service you end up choosing to manage your email is one decision that seems small up front, but think about the long term consequences. If you choose an email service you end up hating, you’ll then have to endure the tedious process of transferring all your email (literally forwarding them all) to your new service.

Why not just start with the best? GMail, in my opinion, is the best email service out there hands down; and I’m not the only one of thinks that. Don Reisinger over at CNet recently wrote an article on why he thinks GMail is the best email service out there.

Here’s his five main points:

• Spam
  Initially, you probably won’t get spam, but over time the amount of spam you can accumulate can get tremendous. Thankfully, GMail does a great job of filtering most of that spam.
• Google Apps
  When someone sends you an attachment in Word, Powerpoint, or even a PDF - you no longer have to even download it! You can view it right in your browser using Google Apps.
• Filters
  Filters in GMail are like rules for Outlook, only 100x better. Filters are super easy to create, and can help you organize your email in a snap.
• Advertisements
  I’m with Don on this one too. If you’ve used any other email service out there (Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, etc.), then you’ve seen the huge ads that can appear and totally ruin the experience. In GMail, the ads are minimal and are never images. Text ads are organized in areas that aren’t obtrusive to you, which is wonderful.
• Conversations
  When I first started using GMail, the conversations were pretty neat. Now, I feel I can’t live without them. Any email that has the same subject can form a conversation, which then enables you to see the history of an email at a glance. I know I’m not the only one that hates scrolling through tons of email history using the old method.

So there you have it! Why haven’t you given GMail a shot?

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Social networking for real estate agents is a growing trend online.  There have been a multitude of communities that have tried, and failed, to establish a presence online among real estate agents.  From the looks of it, BiggerPockets.com is a social network that is thriving and growing every day.

The following interview could help expose you to a great site for real estate agents to network amongst each other, while also offering a portal for real estate investing.

Who are you and what is your affiliation with BiggerPockets.com?

I’m Joshua Dorkin, the founder (creator) and CEO of BiggerPockets.com.

If you summarize BiggerPockets in a few sentences, what would you say?

BiggerPockets is a real estate social network and investing resource portal.  The site takes a four prong approach to real estate, with a focus on networking, dealmaking, education and marketing.

Essentially, it is a community where real estate professionals, investors, and consumers can come together to learn, do business, meet others and promote themselves.

How did you come up with your company name?

I’ve got many friends in the entertainment business.  One of them was working on an independent movie and had a line where he was telling someone that he needed bigger pockets for all the money he was making.

As soon as I heard the line, I knew that I had to register a domain called BiggerPockets.com!

How long has BiggerPockets been around?

BiggerPockets was created in Fall of 2004 as a site that I was going to use as a resource directory for real estate investing information.  I figured I could add a forum to the site and maybe people would start to get involved.  I guess the adage, “if you build it, they will come” (Field of Dreams) reigned true.

People started to trickle in and participate on the forum, and little by little, the site grew.  We never advertised, and once I realized that the site was something that others would really find helpful, I began to implement a plan for the future.  Part of that plan included  establishing a full-fledged social network for real estate people.

This past January, 2008, we were able to finally launch our social network, and have been improving it ever since!

How many members do you have?

BiggerPockets just recently crossed the 25,000 member milestone (currently 25,402)

Are you seeing good member growth?

We’re definitely seeing our growth rates improve every month.  We’re currently adding somewhere between 50 and 75 new members per day.

What’s the most popular part of BiggerPockets? Why do you think it’s the most popular?

To be honest, I’d have to say that there are quite a few parts of BiggerPockets that are equally popular, but I’ll highlight just a few.

• Our resource directory brings thousands of new visitors to the site every day.  Whether people are trying to find information about foreclosures, REOs, real estate clubs, landlording, etc., they can find it in our directory.

People love this directory because we’ve made it easy to find quality information, tools, and resources in one place.  Additionally, we are hard-core about including only information that we find to be top-notch.

• Our forums are second to none in the online real estate space.   We police the forums very well to dissuade spammers, and the community has been policing itself for some time now.  The forums have become the go-to place for people to discuss real estate and investing, get advice on potential deals, ask about a real estate company, learn techniques, get ideas, market deals, find financing, connect with other professionals, and much more.

The reason our forums are so popular, I feel, is that our members and moderators look out for one another.  There aren’t many places I feel that people can go where they can learn something new every day, and they can definitely do it on our forums.

• Our blog (http://www.biggerpockets.com/renewsblog/) is one of the top real estate information destinations out there. We’ve got a phenomenal team of writers with expertise in every area of real estate, who are putting out top-notch content every day.

Whether we’re writing about breaking news, or putting together a tutorial on some aspect of real estate, the blog is thoughtful and thorough.

What is BiggerPockets looking to accomplish in the long run?

BiggerPockets has a long-term vision for serving the real estate community.  We’re planning on continuing to build tools and applications that make the daily lives of people in the real estate world easier.

Anything you’d like to say to the readers at TechForAgents.com?

I’d love to tell the readers at TechForAgents.com that while technology is becoming a more and more important part of our lives, we must remain grounded.  I’m seeing too many cases where agents get completely caught up in technology and forget about the basics.

People have been successful in real estate for a long time without the help of the internet and technology, and I want to make sure people don’t forget that real estate is a service industry;  forget that at your peril.

With that in mind, I hope that your readers bring BiggerPockets into their social media presence, as there’s no place better to connect with both other professionals and consumers at the same time.

I hope that we’ll be seeing your readers join up and get involved.

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There is a lot of software that real estate agents may come across, or find the need to use when working with their clients.  Creating great fliers, working with word processors, and sometimes even complicated spreadsheets can be a daunting task for agents.  This is where Lynda.com fits into your real estate business.

Lynda.com is an online video training site that offers a vast amount of training on a wide variety of software at an affordable cost.  For $25 a month with no contract committments, you can learn just about any software, programming language, and more at the convenience of your office or home.

I’ve personally used Lynda.com to learn programming languages for my own websites, but I’ve selected a list of training on products from Lynda that any agent could benefit from below:

• Adobe Acrobat
• Excel
• Powerpoint
• Illustrator
• Internet Explorer
• Office 2003 and 2007
• OpenOffice
• Picasa
• Google Docs
• the list goes on…

One of the best things about Lynda is that you can see a sample selection of videos for any subject prior to paying for their videos.  

Nonetheless, I think you’ll benefit from purchasing at least one month’s worth of subscriptions and taking some time to really learn how to use that software you are exposed to every day in your business.

Have you ever used Lynda.com?

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I’ve been pleasantly surprised as the amount of updates the Google Chrome team has been releasing.  In fact, you may be excited to hear that their are now comfortable enough with Google Chrome to drop the beta tag and announce it officially.   More details after the break!

According to Google, these are some of the things you’ll notice when using Chrome:

• Better stability and performance of plug-ins (particularly video). When Chrome was first released, it couldn’t play simple video files even at YouTube.  It looks like this was corrected.  *phew!*

• Even more speed. I’ll agree with this for sure; Chrome.Is.Fast.  In fact, I would even say it’s the fastest browser out there at this time.

• Bookmark manager and privacy controls. Bookmarking is something I that I see real estate agents using profusely.  It’s exciting to hear that they’ve improved the tools in this department as well.

The biggest problem with Chrome is that I’d be willing to bet that major MLS’s across the country will never support it.  Therefore, if an agent wants to use Chrome exclusively they’re forced to abandon this decision the moment they need to log into their MLS.

Does your MLS support Chrome?

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I’ll write a post about the new version this week for sure.

Update: Upgrade is complete!  Wow; interface is totally changed.  Time to sift through the change log.

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Today I thought it’d be a good idea to do a short video showcasing what Picasa can do to help you.  In my experience, I’ve used Picasa to brighten, crop, and compress images so that they were web friendly.

There’s nothing like getting an email from a relative with one picture attached that’s over 3MB!  The simple export feature in Picasa is well worth the download, as I’ve seen many MLS boards restrict the size of the images uploaded into their listing databases.

Watch the video after the break.

Do you use Picasa to edit your photos?  If not, what software do you find helps you the most?

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One of their next projects was a Todo List for Gmail, and it looks like they’ve begun rolling it out.

It’s simple - type in the name of the item that you’d like to do and it get’s published.  Left-click on the select box next to that task and the object get’s completed.

If you have a GMail account, you’ll need to click on the labs icon on the top right of your GMail window to enable this for your account.  Take a look, and read up on this new tool over at the official GMail Blog.

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If you’ve ever been a past subscriber to TheRedX and canceled, you might be excited to know that they are offering a sale to intice some subscribers to come back.  If you sign up before December 1st, 2008, they’ll give you your first two months at half the price.

They offer three packages; the FSBO, exprired, and “both” packages.  If you want to generate FSBO call lists, you’re looking at $29.99 a month.  Expired call lists are $39.99 a month, and finally, to get them all it’s $79.99 a month.

This Thanksgiving day sale looks to extend to all packages, so you can take advantage even if you’re only looking to get expired call lists.

I’ve demoed TheRedX in the past and was excited that their software allowed you to save properties to come back to and even offered a way to see your scripts when you open up a property detail page with the owner’s information.

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You might be excited to hear that Google, over the next couple of days, is releasing themes for your GMail.  When you’re enabled, you will see a new “theme” option in the settings area of your GMail account.  There’s actually quite a bit of themes avaialable; one example theme is in the photo in this post.

Want to see more?  Head over to the GMail Blog to see the list of all the new themes that will be ready for you to use soon.

Source

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In many markets around the United States, real estate sales have been declining due to many various factors; the media outlook on the economy, rise in foreclosures, and a more strict mortgage approval process.

Many real estate agents are faced a dilemma.  How can I decrease my monthly expenses to brace myself for a future decrease in sales?  One way to do that is by saving on your printing costs by printing as a PDF.

I’ve written about CutePDF before, but in this video, I’ll show you how to find, install, and use CutePDF to begin saving money right away.  The video is after the break.

If you don’t use CutePDF, what print-to-pdf software do you use? Let’s make sure it’s free!

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Most agents that encounter this problem have to take the time and search for a good meeting place between both of your locations.  Should you meet at a Starbucks or a restaurant?  Where exactly is “meet somewhere in between”?

I stumbled on this great free website online that solves this problem.  Not only is it super easy to use, but it also will help you choose a suitable meeting location between you and your client.  MeetInBetween.us is a contest entry for Rails Rumble (a programmer/developer contest), and I fell in love with the moment I ran across it.

Try it for your market and see if it helps you save some time.  If you enjoy the site, please take the time to register and vote for them over at the Rails Rumble 2008 site.  While you’re there, check out the other top applications; they’re all great ideas and fun to play around with.

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In this round of updates, TP8i is being expanded to include five major features:  Inbound Spam Filter, Multiple Email Signatures, HTML Email Stationary, New Postcard Templates, and (finally!) support for Firefox 3.

The updates are detailed after the break.

 

Inbound Spam Filter
Top Producer 8i offers “@topproducer.com” email users greater Spam protection. With the new Spam filter, fewer unwanted messages will reach your inbox, and you’ll be able to mark messages as Spam. Once the Spam feature is turned on, any emails placed into the Spam folder or forwarded from your POP3 to your @topproducer.com account will be automatically deleted after 15 days.

Multiple Email Signatures
Email signatures are powerful advertising and offer more flexibility for targeted mailouts: they effectively tell those you communicate with who you are and what you do. Now, with Multiple Email Signatures, you can create and select from a variety of email signatures in the closing of ALL emails you send, and you can select signatures that best suit your audience.

HTML Email Stationery
Ensure all email communications are consistent with your branding and overall look and feel with the new Email Stationery. Select from a number of different layouts and colors, as well as embedded links to generate new web traffic and point your clients and prospects back to your website. In addition, one of the new Stationery designs includes a “Newsletter” template making it even easier to keep in regular contact with all your contacts and to keep them informed of the latest news and information.

New Postcard Templates
New “Dream Home” and “Interest in Your Area” postcard designs are easy to update and easy to print at home, in the office, or with your marketing company.

Support for Firefox 3
Use Firefox to browse the Internet? Top Producer 8i now fully supports Firefox (version 3) in addition to Internet Explorer 8.

In my opinion, these are some great updates.  I’m really exicted that their are supporting Firefox 3 (how about Chrome anyone?).  The inbound spam filter seems a little wasteful; I don’t know many agents that really use TP8i’s email feature.  I usually find them still using Gmail or Outlook, which is perfectly fine in my opinion.

Having multiple signatures for our email marketing is fantastic!  I know that for agents still working as a team of one, it would be nice to specically tailor your marketing to show various “specialist” titles depending on the type of marketing your sending.  You could use titles such as “Short Sale Specialist” or “New Home Specialists” even.

Not a week goes by that email stationary isn’t brought up with TP8i.  Having this feature expanded upon is a fantastic idea, and agent who really want to save money by sending all their newsletters via email should be cheering in unision.

I’m still an advocate of deferring all your postcards to a company specialized in them (such as QuantumMail).   None the less, it looks like TP8i is looking to persuade you to use their postcards by adding additional templates to entice you.  I don’t really have much experience with sending postcards through TP8i, so I’m pretty neutral on this one.

Support for Firefox 3?  Yes, please!  I’m glad they are embracing the fact that their users use more than just one browser (remember the 7i Internet Explorer days?).  Firefox 3 is amazing and it being supported by TP8i really puts the icing on the cake.

What CMS do you use?  If you use TP8i, what do you think about the new updates?

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It good to hear that Apartments.com is taking steps to improve their site by optimizing Apartments.com to be mobile-friendly.

“In the mobile search environment, access to information is key,” said Chris Brown, vice president of product management, Apartments.com. “After taking into consideration multiple operating systems, mobile devices and carriers, Apartments.com has created a user-friendly experience for renters on the mobile web, delivering apartment listings, photos and detailed information through a rich data format conveniently accessible from any web-enabled mobile phone and carrier.”

The online market for renters is growing without a doubt, and this particular quote shows just how much.

Today almost 40 million people browse the Mobile Web, which is projected to grow 19 percent annually and reach more than 90 million by 2012.

19 percent growth?!  Come to think of it, with the releases of next generation phones such as the TMobile G1, Blackberry Storm, and iPhone, these numbers don’t seem unrealistic.

1.5 Million people have already pre-ordered the G1 without even touching it.  I’d agree - the web is totally going mobile.

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Verizon’s new Blackberry Storm by Vodaphone features many of the touch screen features that Apples iPhone, Sprint’s Instinct, and TMobile’s G1 look to have, but some could say that the storm has a leg up on the competition even though they’re last to enter to race.

The Storm will feature a new type of tactile feedback with the on-screen keyboard. Unlike the iPhone, the Blackberry Storm will allow you to physically depress the screen in a clicking manner. It’s really hard to explain, but the team over at Engadget has a hands-on article that describes this feature in detail.

Also featured on the Blackberry Storm is 480×360 screen, built-in GPS, an accelerometer (for screen orientation - landscape or portrait mode), a 3.2 megapixel camera, video recording, and a headset jack. There are other common features I could list but these are the ones that are usually the most important.

You may find that the Storm also has a good level of pre-existing corporate users. With a background in being a phone operating system that caters to this audience, you may see better support for email with exchange integration. Many people are ecstatic to see that the Storm also has the ability to cut and paste text.

The phone is set to hit the shelves sometime in November, but the price of the phone has not been released yet.

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If you’re looking to put yourself in front of these web surfers, you will eventually begin to consider search engine marketing within your lead generation strategy.

In this series of posts, I will share my knowledge of search engine marketing with you over the course of a few weeks; each post will get more and more detailed and precise.

Search Engines To Consider

In January of 2008, comScore tracked that Google has received 58.5% of all search engine traffic.  That number increased to 59.2% in the following month.  This tells me that a majority of my search engine marketing efforts should go to Google.

Coming up second is Yahoo at 22.2% market share.  What a big decrease!  Google has literally become a house-hold name; “Google it..” you’ll here ever so often.  I’ve personally found many agents still using a majority of their lead generation dollars (dedicated to online marketing) to search engines besides Google.

I’m not saying investing in Yahoo or MSN is a bad idea.  Rather, it’s just not the most efficient use of your marketing dollars.  Investing in Google’s marketing options is by far more cost effective.

Types of Search Engine Marketing

Generally there are two types of marketing you’ll consider.  In no significant order, you have pay-per-click (PPC) and organic search engine marketing.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Search Engine Marketing

Pay-per-click is pretty much exactly what the name implies.  When investing in this type of program you will pay a pre-determined fee each time someone clicks on your advertisement.

Google PPC allows you to create an advertisement that is seen on the right side of search results.  Many other search engines follow the same system.

How do search engines know when to show your advertisement?  This is where keywords come into play.  When creating your “campaign” for PPC, you’ll choose which keywords you’d like to target and you’ll also choose a bid price.  This bid price is the amount of money you’re willing to pay when someone clicks on your advertisement.

The more competition your keywords has, the higher bid price it may have.  You’re always welcome to bid lower that the amount the top person is willing to pay, however your advertisement is likely to not be seen as it appears at the very end of a long line of people advertising for your same keyword.

If you want to appear first, you’ll have to pay for it.   When I was bidding for real estate keywords in my market, I’d ended up paying around $0.50 per click.  This can really add up after a while - especially if you’re in a big real estate markets.  This is where Organic search engine marketing begins to get attractive.

Organic Search Engine Marketing

When you search for anything on a search engine, you’ll be presented with the usual “top 10″ sites that seem to pertain to what you’re looking for.  These sites do not pay to advertise here; they are organically discovered and ranked by the search engines throughout the day.  Yes; this means rankings can fluctuate on a daily basis.

Free you say?  What an incredible idea!  I’ll rank top 10 for any term I’d like and essentially advertise for free!  Not so fast.

Organic search engine rankings are far more difficult to rank for.  This is especially true when it comes to marketing a real estate site.  Real estate sites are abundant on the internet; you’ll have plenty of competition in this area.

In search engine marketing and your business, I begin to take baby-steps into this area by discussing some of the key ingredients to creating a great site for search engines.  Optimizing your website for organic search engine rankings is often referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  We’ll get into SEO in a later post in this series.

Wrapping It Up

In this weeks post you’ve learned the type of search engine marketing you can pursue and eventually incorporate into your lead generation strategies.  Next week I’ll talk in more detail about optimizing your site for search engines, and great ways to begin building your search engine rankings.

Have you begun to investigate search engine marketing?  What kind of questions did you have?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by adding a comment below.  Remember - in the coming weeks we’ll get more detailed.  This post was aimed to get the ball rolling.

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Using the site is really simple.  Simply plug in the address you’d like to search near; then you’re presented with a map of all sex offenders in your neighborhood on a nifty map.  This map is hosted by Google maps, but I’m a little dissappointed that you can’t “click and drag” to move the map around like you normally do.

None the less, the information it presents to you and your clients is invaluable.  What really surprised me is that you can click on a marker for a sex offender and a new window will open.  In this new page you’re shown the details of the sex offender (even a picture!), plus information detailing the crime they committed.

You can rest assured that your clients NEED to see this information.  Sure; it may deter a sale but your clients will be appreciative for looking out for their best interests.

I’m honestly surprised at how many registered sex offenders are in my subdivision; knowing their whereabouts surely helps me keep my family safe.

Visit FamilyWatchdog.us

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Google Android

Note: Live update currently over at Engadget from this annoucement event. I also just found TMobile’s live stream.

Have you ever heard of android?  No; I’m not talking about Hal from Space Odyssey.  Android is actually a platform for mobile devices (phones).  It’s “what you see” when you turn on your phone; the nuts and bolts (operating system).

Want to hear the best news?  Android is a Google product.  If you’ve been a reader of my blog, you might have picked up that I’m a Google advocate.  I use their GMail, Analytics software, Chrome and even their reader on a daily basis.

You would bet that I’d be ecstatic to hear that Google was making an operating system for a mobile phone, and even better, letting it be open source of any carrier to adopt for a new handset.  

Google Android's "Mascot"

Engadget is currently there at the event and I’ll be following it throughout the day.  Feel free to check here or directly at Engadget to get the latest information about this release from Google and TMobile.

Update: The guys at Engadget just got their hands on an actual production model from TMobile.

Update: 10:45AM (central) - A couple of videos have been released worth viewing. See below!

Engadget’s Second Video

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Learn About Animoto

Animoto - a golden nugget for real estate agents.  I’ve been playing with Animoto for a while now, and I’m convinced that this is a great tool for real estate agents.  

Not only can you use it to showcase your homes using snazzy video, but you can also use it to spruce up your home movies too.

Animoto is simple.  The hardest task associated with it is finding the photos you’d like include inside the movie you’re creating.   In short, you’ll upload photos, choose from a selection (rather small but great quality in my opinion) of music to play in the background, and finish your video (and send it off to get rendered).

For free, you can make an unlimited amount of short videos and for $99 for three months (or $249 for a year), you can create unlimited premium DVD quality videos.  My office subscribed to the three month subscription and created the following video for our grand opening.  It’s currently being displayed on a 42″ plasma in the lobby with excellent visual quality.

Other videos have been created to showcase real estate.  There is even a video for Prudential Gary Greene (real estate broker) made by Animoto.

Animoto is defintely worth a look, and the links you’ll find on this post are affiliate links that give you $5 discount on an all-access-pass while also giving me a 3 month pass to my subscription.  I’ve but both links below so you can follow either one.

Animoto (Affiliate Link)

Animoto (Non-Affiliate Link)

Give it a try, and let me know what you think!  Remember, you can create unlimited short videos so please feel free to experiment.

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Learn About Google Chrome

Update: Download Google Chrome now!  Get the latest release notes here; Chrome is updated automatically when new updates are released.

On Labor Day, Google released some tidbits of information about a browser they had been working on internally.  It’s name is Google Chrome, and it’s built from the geniuses we all have come to love at Google.  It’s release was given out via a comic (not kidding; but take a look!), whose screenshot you see at the left.  Click on the screenshot to look at the comic in it’s entirety.

Google will be offering up a beta of it’s new browser today, and that has yet to be released.  This post will be updated when I get more information.

What does this mean to real estate agents? You may have already experienced this dilemma with having multiple browsers (IE, Firefox, and Safari are probably the most popular).  Many web pages have to be optimized to view well in any particular browser; what looks great in Internet Explorer may not look so great in Firefox and vice versa.

With a new browser in the playing field, we may now be inclined to optimize for yet another browser.  No one has really tested Google Chrome just yet, but I will definitely be testing all my sites in the new browser the moment the beta is released.

Many have concerns with the amount of tracking Google has with their search engine alone, and now they’ll (possibly) be able to track your every move on the internet even when you’re off of Google.com.  It’s the information age, and with this new browser I’m sure Google is poised to get a flood of information regarding your searching habits.

Would there be negative implications on this?  Possibly.  The possibility is there that your searching habits will be tracked and sent back to Google.  Fortunately, their browser claims to have a privacy mode that will not track any of your online surfing either to Google or locally to your computer.

What About The Good?

Google Chrome Comic

I love Google.  Anyone that knows me will tell you that I’m a Google fanatic.  Everything they touch has that simplistic feel, and just “works”.  I’m happy that their introducing Google Chrome into the world, and excited that it’s all open source information.

Hopefully Google Chrome will help drive innovation in internet browsers.  When browsers were first created they were mostly built to interpret text, while now-a-days you’ll notice that there are some awesome and interactive websites out there.  I’ve personally always enjoyed the homepage for 2Advanced Studios.

Perhaps the searching habits they will undoubtedly gather will help them serve you better advertisements, or possibly help them get you to where you need to go faster.  By keeping track of your searching habits, perhaps they’ll also be keen on which sites are malicious, thus allowing them to protect more users against viruses and spyware.

It’ll be interesting to see how this all turns out, but I will definitely update this post as soon as I learn more.  I’m thinking the following link will get you to where you need to go once the beta goes live, but right now it’s just a redirect.

http://www.google.com/chrome

Stay tuned!

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Google Reader For iPhone

If you like to use Google Reader to get the latest real estate news, plus own an iPhone from Apple, you may be excited to hear that Google has released a new version of their Google Reader made just for you.

Having a reader like Google Reader is a great way to get the latest information from your favorite sites all in one place.  If you’re like me, you’ll open plenty of sites each morning and many times througout the day to read up on the latest and greatest.

Google Reader will pull the latest information from each of these sites (as long as they have RSS), and display them for you in an easy to manage format.  It’s great to hear that you’ll be able to do the same, along with the intuitiveness of Google, right on your iPhone.

This new version is designed to offer many of the same features as the desktop, while making it quick and easy to act on items. If you’ve used list view, then it should be familiar to you. Scan the titles for an item that interests you, tap and it expands in place. Starring, sharing, and keeping unread are done in place, so you never have to leave the list view or refresh the page. We think it’s a very fast way to power through your reading list.

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Head over and check it out!

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As of today, the Microsoft Office suite of tools costs $499.95 direct from Microsoft.com. Do you use Office enough to justify that kind of expense?

Agents and Expenses

As a real estate agent, saving money on start up expenses is usually a priority.  After the initial education expenses, association membership dues, and brokerage initial fees, most agent’s pockets are usually filled with lint rather than dollar bills.

It’s in this light that OpenOffice looks very desirable.  Could you accomplish the same thing that you could with Microsoft Office?

Standards

Many could argue that Microsoft Office has become an industry standard.  It’s true; most small businesses with the need for a word processor and presentation software will resort to purchasing Microsoft Office licenses and have them installed on all their workstations.

However, in the real estate office most agents are using software like Zipform Online for the contracts; resorting to spreadsheets for things like net sheets, and possibly Outlook for their email (though I’m a personal fan of GMail).

Even databases are starting to be held in online software such as Top Producer 8i or Act! for Real Estate.  Where does the need for a full Microsoft Office suite come into play?

In an article by Lou Dolinar, he talks about what’s holding OpenOffice back and what Microsoft is doing to combat the open standard initiative (just a fancy way of expressing the need for things to be more competitive and easier on the pocket books for everyone). I find it interesting to see that Microsoft’s answer to a unified open standard is to create their own…open standard.

The open source community is looking to create one standard that anyone is free to incorporate into their productivity tools.  In this same article, Lou talks about the OpenDocument:

The anti-Microsoft crowd has an alternate data format, OpenDocument, that anyone can freely incorporate into any program, just as everyone uses the same old free, non-proprietary HTML to build Web sites. Not only that, but they’ve managed to persuade a fair number of governments to legislate standards requiring word processors, spreadsheets and such to include open document standards as well as proprietary ones. - Source

The Decision

I’d go as far as to say that most real estate agents can accomplish most of their main tasks (word processing and spreadsheets) that they do with Microsoft Office in their real estate business with free software like OpenOffice.

I believe you should be using software like Top Producer 8i for your database, and why not use GMail as your email software?  You should also be using software like Zipform Online to manage your contracts.

If you could save yourself $499.95 dollars in start up costs to get you up and running; would you?  $499.95 is enough to fund your monthly flyers or possibly a just listed campaign in a hot neighborhood for a new listing you just took.

Hold your money accountable!  OpenOffice is free, so I definitely think it deserves a look.

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• Our first winner, Bob Zabor, successfully answered the very first contest question to get his Dropbox beta invitation.
• A couple of days later, Jay answered our second question about the NAR Code of Ethics and is enjoying his Dropbox account at this very moment.
• Graham scored his beta invite by answering a question about the date that the NAR was officially the, well, NAR!
• Our next winner, D Hamiltion, successfully answered the question about the second president of NAR.  Alexander Sacket Taylor was the National Association of Realtors second president.
• Andersson successfully answered the year when Realtor.com was launched, which was in 1997.
• Xjs answered the question about the president of the National Association of Realtors, even though he’s already a dropbox user.  How nice of him/her!

The next question will be posted on the 25th!  Be sure to get your chance to win by answering the next question.  In the mean time, what do you think about OpenOffice?

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Rather than having to fork over nearly $350 for the best of the best (Ultimate) version of Office 2007, why not try to get it for free?

Engadget.com is currently holding a raffle of sorts with the recent announcement of Bill Gates leaving Microsoft, and they’re offering to give away a free non-upgrade edition of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007.  That means it’s the full version; not an upgrade-only.

The winner will be chosen at random among the mass of commenters on this post.  Head over to their blog and comment on what your favorite Microsoft (or Apple) product is for your chance to win; the contest ends on Sunday so don’t be too late.

I personally love the XBox 360 and good ol’ Microsoft XP Professional.  What about you?

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Update: There are only 5 out of 10 invitations left!

Have you heard of Dropbox? This nifty tool has developed quite a buzz lately, and after personally trying it, I can see why. Not only is it intuitive and simple to use, it could possibly become my preferred online storage for the future. See my review of Dropbox here.

Since I am a beta tester, I have been gifted with 10 beta invitations that I’d like to hand out to my readers.  Rather than me just toss them in the air like a bouquet at a wedding after party, I’m going to try and get a little creative here.

Since most of my readers should be in the real estate field (or related to it), I thought it’d be nifty to ask a question.  The first person to answer the question right in a comment under this post will get a beta invitation!  Seems pretty simple; right?

I’ll post a question, then wait for the right answer in a comment.  Commenters please be sure to enter your correct email address when posting as this is the way I will send your invite.

After I’ve gotten the right answer, I will post up the answer to the question, along with the winners name.  Shortly thereafter, the 2nd question will be posted the following business day.

(Queue the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire Music”) - I know; I’m dramatic.

Question 1

What date (month, day and year please!) was the National Associaton of Real Estate Exchanges officially incorporated on?  Bonus points if you can tell me the initial membership count.

Answer: The National Assocaition of Real Estate Exchanges was officially incorporated on July 2, 1908, with an initial association membership of 1,646.

Congratulations goes out to Bob Zabor for being spot on his first try!

Question 2

In what year was the first Code of Ethics adopted by NAR?

Answer: The very first National Association of Realtor Code of Ethics was adopted in 1913.

Great job, Jay!  Jay was the winner of the second Dropbox beta invitation.

Question 3

In what year was the National Association of Real Estate Boards officially renamed to the National Association of Realtors?

Answer: The National Association of Real Estate Boards was official renamed to the National Association of Realtors in 1974.

Graham should be enjoying his Dropbox beta today.  Congratulations, Graham!

Question 4

What is the name of the National Association of Realtor’s second president?

Answer: The name of the second president of the National Association of Realtors was named Alexander Sacket Taylor.

Congratulations go out to D Anderson for answering this question correctly.

Question 5

In what year was the National Association of Realtor official internet site launched?

Answer: The National Association of Realtor official internet site, Realtor.com, was launched in 1997.

Great job, Andersson!  You should be getting your beta invitation today.

Question 6

What is the name (first and last) of the current president of the National Association of Realtors?

Answer: The current president of the National Association of Realtors is Dick Gaylord.

Question 7

The question will be posted tomorrow.  Please check back!

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In the real estate world, we have a ton of documentation that’s flying around the office. Buyers have residential purchase contracts and third party financing agreements. Sellers have listing agreements along with Seller Disclosures; not including revisions made to each ones.

Keeping track of all of this documentation can be quite tedious, and as I see it, real estate agents stand to gain from any provider of online tools that aims to simplify a crucial segment of our business.

Installation

Installing Dropbox was a breeze. I was actually accepted into the beta, so in order to activate my copy I had to provide the code that was given to me in my acceptance email (no you can’t have it - but I have a surprise for you!).

I was then instructed to download an executable file, which installed on my computer like normal. On the bottom right of my screen, you’ll see a nifty little task bar icon that serves a purpose:

• Right clicking on it allows you the option to open your Dropbox, which is just like a “My Documents” folder. It looks like any other folder you have on your computer.
• Right clicking on it will also reveal your disk space usage. Currently, I’m given a free 2GB of space.
• Finally, right clicking also allows you to submit feedback to their team.
• Double-left clicking allows you to open the online folder.

Most agents have become familiar with the good ol’ drag and drop feature, which allows you to copy over files to new folders without have to right-click copy, right-click paste. Moving files to your Dropbox can be done exactly the same way.

Simply find the file on your computer, drag it to your Dropbox window (after opening it), and voila! It’s copied over to your online storage after it syncs up.

Sync’ing

Synchronization speed is really dependent on your internet connection to be honest. If you’re by chance still working with a dial up, then it’ll take quite a bit longer than someone with a high-speed broadband connection. I’ll put my money on most agents having some form of broadband connection so this shouldn’t really be an issue.

Dropbox also has a web interface where you can view all your files stored online. There are also additional features, such as folder sharing and public linking that could prove useful in the day to day business of real estate.

To share a new folder, you simply name your folder and enter the email address of the individual that you’d like to share it with. That’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s nice to see that they really do makes things simple and intuitive.

Security

This is a really important subject. If agents are going to use a service like this to store all their files online, then it better be REALLY secure. Here’s what the team at Dropbox has to say about security:

We take utmost care to ensure Dropbox is secure. All transport of file data and file metadata occurs over SSL. Files are encrypted with AES-256 before being stored on our backend.

Conclusion

Overall I have a really good feeling about Dropbox. Real estate agents have been craving for reliable online storage for a while that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. They also want a provider that doesn’t make you jump through hurdles and is simple and intuitive to use.

Dropbox (so far) nails this right on the head. If you’d like to see Dropbox in action, watch this video on their homepage.

About that surprise: I have TEN free invitations to use participate in the Dropbox beta. In a post a little later today, I will be revealing the contest to get your own invite to the Dropbox beta.

Update: Read up on the Dropbox Beta Invitation Contest.  Participate and get your very own invitation.

Don’t worry; physical feats of strength will not be required.

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Zipform Desktop Vista users may notice after installing the program that you’re taken to a foreign screen; asking for things like codes or passwords.  This is an admin configuration area that’s not actually meant to be seen by consumers, but the fix is pretty easy.

You may also be getting an error along the lines of:

An error occurred while parsing EntityName…

This error is more common with Zipform Online users after opening a transaction.  To fix both of these issues, the following solution may prove to be quite useful.  Thanks goes out to Robin Polito at the Zipform support staff for sending this over.

1. Click on the link below and select run:
   http://support.zipform.com/supportfiles/temp.exe
2. This will start the download of the file; once it is downloaded you will be prompted to run again.
3. Follow the prompts and when completed click on “Finish” (Please note: Do not close the black window that appears, this is what is clearing your temp files and will close automatically.)
4. VISTA users you will need to delete the Virtual Store: (If you are using XP please skip this step)
   1. 1. Click on the Start button
      2. Go to Computer
      3. Double click on the Local Hard drive (Local Disk C: on most machines)
      4. Double click on Program Files
      5. Double click on REFN
      6. Double Click on Form Viewer
      7. In the menu bar at the top of the window and click on button called “Compatibly Files”.
      8. Delete all files that are in this folde
5. Once completed you will be able to open your transactions, as you normally would do.

If you’ve been plagued with errors, did this solution help you?  I hope this helps keep you guys more productive!

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I was one of many who downloaded the browser and I’m certainly impressed.  Faster load times and session restoration (if you’re browser somehow closes then the pages you were on will usually come back) are a couple of the big changes that went into place.

In regards to making entry into the Guiness Book of World Records, Ryan had this to say:

I also asked Dotzler some questions about the process through which Mozilla’s download day statistics will enter the Guinness World Records. The server logs and download information will be given to an independent review board consisting of Corey Shields and Paul Vixie, which will then conduct a thorough audit, weed out duplicate and incomplete downloads, and determine an exact number. The download day event, which was orchestrated by Mozilla’s global marketing team, has been one of Mozilla’s most successful awareness campaigns to date.

Looks like time will tell; though server reports should be pretty concrete evidence that the record has been broken.  Great job to the Firefox 3 team!

If you’ve downloaded Firefox 3, what do you think?

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If you are currently using Internet Explorer or any other currently available browser, you Firefox 3 definitely deserves a try! 

I especially love the productivity features:

In the end, it’s all about you being able to do what you need to do on the Web. And with features like built-in spell checking, session restore and full zoom, nobody makes it easier, helps you work better or saves you more time than Firefox.

It’s a free download so head on over and help break the world record for the most downloads in a day.

Download Firefox 3

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What about Microsoft Outlook?  Anyone with access to your laptop or computer can simply open Outlook and see your database in it’s full form.  Online Tech Tips recently published a nice how-to on securing your Outlook database that deserves a look.

If you are using Microsoft Outlook as your real estate database, keeping your information secure should be a priority near the top of your list!

Thanks goes out to Lifehacker for pointing out this tutorial.

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You don’t need to have a tablet PC per say, but a tablet component to your computer is a necessity.  Here is a selection of writing components you can attach to any laptop to enable the ability to digitally sign your contracts.

I love it when developers keep their products fresh and up to date, and PDF Annotator 2 comes with a bunch of nifty new features.

• Page Manager
• Toolbox
• Stamps
• Bookmark Manager
• Auto-Smooth (smooths out hand drawn lines to be perfect)
• Enhanced Full Screen Mode
• Enhanced Text Search
• Continuous View
• Pan Mode
• Page Navigation
• Enhanced Menu/Toolbars
• Enhanced Text Box Styles
• Enhanced Rendering Engine

Existing users can purchase a single license update for $34.95, but new users will have to pay the standard $69.95.

Update: PDF Annotator does not currently support Apple products.

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CutePDF is free software you can download and install on your computer to enable the option to print virtually any document to a PDF. I say “print” because the process is just like printing to a traditional printer.

So how does one print to a PDF? What does that mean? Let’s say you are creating a flyer for a listing, and you’d like to send over a rough draft to your client. Do you send over the gigantic source file? I’d hope not!

When you’re ready to print to PDF, simply select “print”, then select your CutePDF printer (after installing of course). After selecting CutePDF as your printer and continuing the print process, you then have the option to select where you’d like to store/save your document, along with giving it a unique name.

Always remember where you put your files! You’ll surely need them later.

Mostly any document can be converted into a PDF. A PDF is a type of file; a file format. Most agents prefer to use a PDF version of most files for a few reasons; most notably:

• The files are usually significantly smaller. Scanning a page by page contract and sending them as raw JPEGs is a horrible waste of space and time.
• It’s a universal format. Anyone can download a reader to view PDF formats for free. A link to download or update your reader is at the end of this post.
• You can keep copies of virtually every piece of paperwork from a transaction on your computer or a flash drive. Since you’re printing or scanning your contracts to a PDF format, not only are you saving space, but you now have the ability to everything inside of directories on any storage device you’d like.

If you currently do not have any way to print to PDF, give it a try and come back and share your experiences by leaving a comment. Using another piece of software? Let me know what you’re using!

Downloads

• Download CutePDF Printer
• Get Adobe Reader

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This is news straight from WWDC 2008, where Steve Jobs and his staff were giving a keynote about the latest and greatest regarding the iPhone.  This was a long-predicated rumor, and now it’s been made official from the man himself.

iPhone 3G is slated for a release on July 11th, so if you’re thinking about getting one be sure to be prepared!  What’s new?

• Integrated GPS
• Push Email (always-on; like using exchange)
• 3G of course!  36% faster than N95 and Treo 750
• Longer Battery Life
• Sleek and Simplified Design (It’s gorgeous!)

Source

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Sometime in June, Mozilla aims to release their long awaited Firefox 3 which sports a vast number of new features and enhancements. From my experience with beta, Firefox 3 is way faster than IE, so I definitely suggest you give it a try.  I should also mention that Firefox is a free download, so don’t worry about having to pull out any credit card.

I will be making a new post when Firefox 3 goes live to help spread the word about the internet browser I use on a daily basis and prefer as my solution for browsing the web.

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Current members can get a discount rate of $19.99 a month, or $199.99 annually to upgrade their subscription. The new plan includes new tools for segmenting paid versus organic website hits, and additional online tools for using Google Adwords with HitTail.

• See exactly how people are finding your site in real time
• Have keyword recommendations emailed to you or delivered in a secure RSS feed
• Use HitTail on your secure, https pages
• Generate Google and Yahoo! Sitemaps for your website
• With “Growth View” watch as your long tail grows wider (more hits) and longer (more new keywords)
• Insert HitTail keyword suggestions directly into a new Google AdWords campaigns
• Separate and analyze site traffic coming from organic versus paid search
• Boost click-through rate with those same long tail suggestions coming straight from your audience
• Lower the cost of your search advertising campaign by targeting effective long tail keywords instead of more competitive ones

I currently use HitTail to monitor traffic on my site, and it’s always nice to see a real-time version of incoming visitors (and the links they used to get to me), versus the delayed method that Google Analytics uses.

When it comes to analyzing incoming visitor traffic, do you think you need a premium service like this as an agent?

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Following up with your registrations is one of the most crucial segments of converting online leads. Systematic follow up is what you really need, but will any follow up suffice? Any type of follow up is good, but lets talk about what it takes to move you from good to great.

Lets Assume All Emails

With an online user registering to save their search or keep track of their favorite properties using an IDX like Wolfnet, nine times out of ten you’ll only be lucky enough to get an email address. If this is the only form of communication you’ll have with your lead, then we need to make it work great.

Personalization

My favorite kind of email to send my clients is an email that looks like it came from me directly. At first I was afraid of this; why would I trick my client into thinking I was personally sending them an email when I actually wasn’t?

I was flustered; especially after not being able to personally send an email to everyone right away because I was in a meeting, showing homes, or at a closing. I then realized that I wasn’t tricking them. Rather, I’m being proactive about conveying my value proposition to them.

I truly feel I can help my clients. Any delay in sending a “Welcome” email only shows that they’re not at the top of my priority list. It was then I decided that an automated email would help me convey this message to them in a much more practical manner.

Frequency Of Your Emails

The system I use below is split into two phases:

• Initial High-Touch Phase
• Second Weekly Phase

Initial High-Touch Phase (One Email Every 3 Days for 2 Weeks)

A user has just registered on your site, and now it’s time for you to show them that you’re here to help. The moment they register, configure your CMS (Top Producer, Act, etc.) to immediately send an email thanking them for registering. Here’s a sample email:

Hi [INSERT CLIENT FIRST NAME],
I just wanted to personally thank you for joining us at [INSERT WEB SITE]. I know that you’re probably just beginning your home search, but if I can ever answer any questions for you please do not hesitate to call me directly.

I hope that the tools we have for you online are helpful, and that you think of us when you’re ready to buy or sell a home!

This email is a nice way of saying, “Thanks for sticking around and I’m here to help, not pressure you.” Initially, you don’t want to scare your visitors away or force them to immediately put you on their spammer list.

Focus on building a relationship with them first. After earning their trust, with each consecutive email slowly begin expressing the value proposition that you would bring to the table as their agent.

Three days later, send another personalized email but this time asking them a question that is non-confrontational:

Hi [INSERT CLIENT FIRST NAME],
Quick question: What kind of time frame are you looking at in regards to buying your next home? I was just curious on how you would like us to stay in touch with you. By the way, if you ever see a home at our website that you’d like to see, please don’t hesitate to call us to schedule a showing.

This is usually the email that I’ll get a good response to. Why? I believe it shows that I care about them and really gets across that I don’t want to pressure them. I stay into curiosity and encourage them to provide me with a time-table for a purchase.

For the next set of 3 emails in the first two week period, continue with this same kind of theme. Keep the emails personalized and always remember to stay into curiousity.

Another great way to encourage dialogue between you and those you’d like to help, are to offer something of value. Here are some great incentives to offer your clients.

• State of the Mortgage Market Report
• Housing Market Reports
• Free CMA for any Home
• Free No-Obligation Consultation for Buying A Home
• Monthly Newsletter
• Any Article You’ve Written For Your Clients (buying guides, etc.)

Second Weekly Phase (1 email a week for 6 Weeks)

I’ve hopefully gotten some kind of response from my clients in the first two weeks, but if not, I’ll continue to follow up on a weekly basis for another 6 weeks. In this stage, you can send reports just like before, but your chances of converting that lead really start to diminish.

If at the end of the 6 weeks you have not gotten a single response, I then move the client to receiving an email once a month containing my newsletter.

Ideally throughout this entire process, you’re really just trying to get a good phone number to reach them. Contacting your client by phone, in my opinion, will always give you the best shot at converting them into a transaction. Your tone, pace, excitement, and passion all come out much better on the phone; at least in my case.

I know this probably wasn’t the king of guides to following up with your online leads, but I hope this gave you some ideas on things to implement in your business. I’ve learned these tips through trial and error in the past years, so hopefully you can use some bits here and there and really make it your own!

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Trulia ranking well doesn’t surprise me. Their site is well optimized to rank well in search engines, and their site is truly innovative in the tools it provides to real estate consumers.

However, what does surprise me is that real estate agents in Houston are actually helping Trulia rank better than them. Why? It could be a for a couple of reasons:

• They don’t really care about rankings, and are perfectly fine with intentionally doing this.
• They are uninformed.

I seem to feel that it’s more a matter of the agents being uninformed than them not really caring.

It Gets Worse

What I find in common with many of these agent sites is that they are all from one provider. Number1Expert is a firm that builds real estate sites for agents, and for a fee, the agents can use them to procure business in the form of real estate leads.

At the bottom of each of these sites/templates is a Trulia Widget, which also contains a backlink with the appropriate anchor text of “Houston Real Estate”. Guess where they point to? The link the Trulia is now ranking top 10 for! Did Number1Expert and Trulia form some kind of deal to get this done?

I found 8 real estate agents with a vast multitude of links per agent doing this, and they all had a Number1Expert template. The agents sites are linked below.

If an agent on this list would like their link removed, it will be done so immediately. Simply contact me to let me know.

• http://www.teamjudy.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.kaytownend.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.barbarastraty.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.donburns.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.shereechang.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.curtiswarren.com/myhomes.asp
• http://www.countonchris.com/MyHomeDtl.asp?HomeID=504611&P=20
• http://www.dianesanders.com/MyHomeDtl.asp?HomeID=708956&P=20

This is a part of the reason why Trulia is ranking in the top 10 for the term “Houston Real Estate”; I promise you that. Do the agents doing this know what they are actually doing? Do they care about their own search engine rankings?

When it comes to the SERPS, it is my opinion that Trulia is a competitor. Agents in the top 10 rankings for pertinent search results get real estate leads from that ranking position.

So in theory, I suppose you could say that Trulia is also a competitor to that agent’s business, since they’re ranking position (if higher) could possibly take leads away from that agent and disperse it elsewhere. That’s a whole other debate of it’s own, but why help your competition?

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Though today, I was hinted by Graham Cohen, technology coordinator at Keller Williams International, to a fantastic piece of software called Xobni (Inbox spelled backwards). In a nutshell, Xobni is an addon to Microsoft Outlook that will help you organize your email and quickly see, at a glance, the following:

• Past Conversations with a Contact
• Quickly review any attachments the contact has sent to you in the past
• (really neat) Email analytics - see graphs and rankings showing how you use your email

So far it sounds pretty interesting, but I found a video on YouTube showing it off in real-time. Keep reading to watch.

How neat is that!? Definitely give this a try if you use Microsoft Outlook. It’s a free download and definitely worth a few moments to see if it helps your productivity.

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As an agent running a small business, it’s best practice to track my mileage; especially for tax deductions come tax season. I did a quick search on Google for an online mileage tracker, but I didn’t seem to find one that was suitable or easy to use. I don’t really want an extra piece of software on my computer, so I’ll rule that option out.

I want something web 2.0. I’m thinking an Ajax filled, intuitively simple, and filled with as little hurdles as possible. I’ll keep searching for a nice one to review soon, but in the meantime:

What do you use to track your mileage?

More Helpful Tools

There are a couple of nifty tools to use along side your mileage tracker when we finally figure out which one is the best one for real estate agents.

At GasPriceWatch.com, you can get the latest gas prices from gas stations in your area. This information is driven by consumer input, so you might not always have the most accurate information. Something is better than nothing in my opinion.

If you’re looking for an nifty way to track your gas mileage, the folks over at jkontherun hinted me over to Fuelfrog.

These is the kinds of applications I like! Easy to register and login, easy to manage, and aimed to be as simple as possible. At Fuelfrog, you can enter you fill-up dates and odometer readings to track and trend your gas mileage.

This should come in handy should gas prices continue to rise. How much is that shiny new SUV actually costing you, and what kind of mileage is it getting? Keep up with Fuelfrog and you’ll know!

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It’s not a widespread phenomenon just yet, but actually converting your real estate business into a paperless environment is easily achievable. With software like PDF Annotator, the feat of intuitively writing on a PDF using your Tablet PC is not longer a chore.

The only draw back is that you’ll need someway to write on the document. I wouldn’t imagine you’d have your clients sign a contract with your mouse (shame on you if you’ve tried that!). Therefore, you’ll need to have one of the following in your arsenal:

• A Graphic Tablet - Simply a mouse-pad with the abilities to write on like a piece of paper. You simply plug it into your computer USB port, and you’ll have writing capabilities.
• A Tablet PC - Obviously the more expensive of the two, but prices are starting to decline as the technology becomes more and more accepted.

PDF Annotator

I’ll admit it; it’s fun to use PDF Annotator. It’s just like writing on a piece of paper, except that this piece of paper is on your computer. It doesn’t try to get involved with many other tasks like some other paperless software does. PDF Annotator is simply a product to let you easily, and intuitively write on your PDFs.

I really like how you can write on any document you can convert to a PDF. I used PDF Annotator for listing presentations, buyer showing tours, and of course, for signatures on contracts.

On June 30, 2000, Bill Clinton signed the e-signatures bill into a law, so you can rest assured that having your clients sign their contracts digitally is perfectly fine.

A Free Trial

I’m happy that Grahl Software decided to offer their software in a free trial version for you to play with before you actually buy it. The going price is pennies shy of $50, but it’s a one-time fee that you won’t regret.

• Get Your Free Trial Now

For those of you that try out PDF Annotator, what did you think of it? Please post your thoughts and feedback as a comment below.

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Do you like helping your competition when it comes to search engine optimization? I personally don’t like to.

However, it seems that many uninformed agents looking to increase the nifty features of their website are inherently harming their chances of doing well in search engine rankings.

How is this so? Eric Bramlett, Austin Real Estate Broker has brought it to my attention that the widgets that Trulia offers also include a keyword targeted link back to their site, which intentionally helps improve their search engine rankings.

Why do many agents still use the widgets? I believe that it’s simply them being uninformed about the real intentions of the widget feature. That is why I’ve decided to increase awareness by posting about this here at TechForAgents.com.

Trulia is truly kicking butt in the SERPs (for big time terms, and for long tails) because they’ve cooked up some solid linkbait in the form of widgets.

If you are currently using their widgets on your site, I would either:

• Discontinue the use of the widgets all-together.
• Take Eric’s advice, and modify the script to use the widgets without hurting your search engine rankings. You can see an example of this modification by following the source link below.

Source

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If you had been a 7i user, you would have been privy to an extensive searching option which allowed you to build a custom search to quite a high degree of complexity.

Wanted to find all open house contacts that did not have an email on file? No problem! Or perhaps you’re looking for anyone without a phone number to apply an “email only” action plan.

Both of these types of searches are no longer available in Top Producer 8i. Joey Lam from Top Producer provided some insight:

The quick and advanced searches in Top Producer 7i are combined into one search in Top Producer 8i. Some of the search fields available in Top Producer 7i are not currently available in Top Producer 8i.

He’s going to be submitting a recommendation to development to bring back the advanced searches, which I appreciate, but why do away with it in the first place?

Top Producer 7i and 8i both use the same database to pull data from. When you actually make a change in 7i, this change will reflect in 8i (once you get upgraded). The same holds true for the other way around.

It would seem that the implementation of this feature wouldn’t be too tough to do, so I hope they do bring it back.

If you are a 7i/8i user, do you use the advanced searches to weed through your ever-growing number of contacts in your database?

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What is there to choose from? There’s plenty; though that doesn’t mean that each one was created equal. Some anti-virus software has a tendency to filter way too much; even to the point of interrupting tasks that you, the owner, need to do yourself that you know are safe for your computer.

What you’ll need is software that gives you the freedom to use your computer without persistent interruptions, all while maintaining a strong protection against the “common cold”.

Two Solid Options

Most of the agents I know use Microsoft Windows, so the recommendations I’ll point out below will be based on this assumption.

Microsoft One Care

The writers over at JKOnTheRun tipped me off yesterday that you could purchase Microsoft One Care for free after rebates. Here’s a little bit of what they had to say:

I did beta test and then pay for OneCare when it first came to market and it did a pretty solid job for my PCs. I did have an occasionally over-zealous firewall as a result, but was always able to work around any issues that popped up.

They also wanted to point out that even if you did purchase One Care for free, that after a year you’d have to purchase a new subscription.

Interested in not paying? See your next option if so.

AVG Free

I’ve been using AVG Free for my anti-virus solution for quite a while now, and the best part about it is that it’s free! It offers the anti-virus solution you’ll need to keep busy, without any major hassles.

It’s also updated quite frequently, so you won’t have to worry about an outdated product. I’ll recommend that you give it a try if you decide not to purchase Microsoft One Care.

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With this release, Windows hopes to fix a boat load of bugs and to tweak their software for better performance all-around.

Windows Vista SP1 is an update to Windows Vista that, along with improvements delivered via these other channels, addresses feedback from our customers and partners. By providing these fixes integrated into a single service pack which will be thoroughly tested by Microsoft and by industry partners and customers during the beta cycle, Microsoft provides a single high quality update that minimizes deployment and testing complexity for customers.

Updating your computer is as simply as starting the update program found by left-clicking on the Windows Logo on the bottom left hand side of your desktop,  then searching for “Windows Update”.

A program named “Windows Update” should be found.  Simply left click on it to begin the updating process.  As always, make sure you save all documents and can devote at least an hour to updating your computer.

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Created by a company named, Suite75, floorplanner is built in full flash technology and feature the ability to drag and drop furniture, walls and fixtures just like you’d expect. It’s a WYSIWYG of floor plan design!

Floorplanner is the easiest, quickest, and best looking way to create and share interactive floorplans. Using point-and-click, drag-and-drop tools, you can make your floor plan in minutes, and rearrange it as often as you want. Then you can save, send, and print your designs to share them, or place them on your own website.

You can try it out using a pre-built floorplan without having to register, but they do feature two pricing plans; personal and professional. The free personal plan will allow you to:

• 1 Floor plan
• Save up to 5 design variations
• Decorate your plans with over 500 items
• Share your plans by email, link or widget

Learn more about floorplanner and get the latest pricing information. I’ve played with their free software and it’s really easy and simple to use! Anything more complicated than what they’ve provided would, in my opinion, be overkill.

When you design your own floorplan, post a link in the comments section of this post so everyone can have a look!

Update: In about 10 minutes, I built out my office. Yes, I know it’s rather plain!

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The upgrade should be complete this morning with everything working like a charm this afternoon. It should work great; let’s hope I don’t break anything!

For those of you out there that have your own blogs, when do you usually begin to update; the moment a new version of your software comes out? Do you upgrade your blogs yourself or hire someone to do it for you?

Update: As of 10:23AM (Central), the upgrading is complete.  Please contact me if you notice something is broken! 

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Not only does this save you time (and therefore money), but you’re also able to keep all of your systems integrated into Top Producer 8i and not among multiple vendors websites and databases.

• Live Post Product Information
• Live Post Pricing and Postage

Powered by PostNexus, Top Producer LivePost lets you professionally print letters, postcards and flyers, and send them by US Postal service, directly within Top Producer 8i Keller Williams® Realty Edition. With LivePost, you can customize Top Producer 8i mail templates with your own personal message, and distribute them to any of your Top Producer 8i contacts. And, no matter how many pieces you send, you’ll always receive the same per-piece rate.

This sounds like a cool deal for new agents wanting to get more into marketing, but I’d imagine you’d eventually save money with bulk mailing your own marketing pieces. I’ll be giving Live Post a shot soon and blogging my experiences.

Update: As of the date of this post, the setup fee for Live Post is $99. Printing and postage fees (see link above) are additional.

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If one of your sources to tap is in the realm of online lead generation, mastering the lead conversion process is one of the best “art forms” you can choose to focus in on.

I say “art form” because I truly feel that converting online leads takes talent. This talent could be found in you, or if your business is at a higher level, someone that you hire.

You should not only possess natural rapport building skills, but should also have the motivation to master your scripts when in dialogue with all of your online leads. You should also be someone that can take a phone conversation with someone and naturally convey the sincere desire to help without sounding cheesy. It’s not easy, but then again it’s not impossible to learn what it takes to convert more online leads.

Three Factors

Quick: A lead has contacted you online requesting more help about the real estate process. What do you do? Your ability to convert an online lead will be in direct proportion to your level of mastery with the following three areas.

• Timing
• Scripts
• Follow Up

Timing

Seth Goden would tell you that the world of an internet lead is actually quite small, and when looking for help with real estate the first person to return his call is the best agent for them. Are you the first person to respond?

As a student of the online lead generation game, your systems should be focused on contacting all internet leads as quickly as possible. This is much more important to internet leads than casual referrals from your network.

If you take to long to answer the inquiry of an online lead, you are directly sabotaging your efforts to convert that lead. Make sure you make an effort to call all internet leads back within 1 hour; 30 minutes preferred. Take more than an hour and you could very well have lost a vital transaction to your business.

Scripts

You get the client on the phone, and now you’re at a loss of words. The agent who takes the time to master their scripts when speaking to a new potential client will be the agent who converts that lead. You could be the first to call, but without knowing what to say your efforts are in vain.

A great way to become comfortable and confident in your scripts is to sit down and practice them with a peer. Anyone motivated to role play their dialogue with another agent is a great person to associate yourself anyway; they’re into self-mastery just like you are. Visit with your broker or an experienced agent in your office and ask if they would share their best scripts with you.

If you are a Keller Williams Realty agent, visit KWUniversity.com to purchase a book filled with valuable scripts for multitudes of situations from top Keller Williams agents around the world.

Follow Up

The average online consumer of real estate will take 6-12 months to turn into a transaction. Does this seem like a long time to you? In retrospect, let me ask you the following question. Will you be needing a transaction 6-12 months from now? Your answer is pretty obvious; of course you will!

Your systems should be designed to place all leads that are not ready to buy now into a follow up program respective to their time frame. Your ability to follow up will greatly increase your conversion ratios with online leads, or hinder it to the point of no return. Invest time in creating effective follow up programs to systematically communicate with all leads that come your way.

This is by no means a complete reference guide to online lead generation, but hopefully you’ve learned the areas you need to master. Take the ball and run with it!

To those agents out there where more than 50% of their business comes from the internet: How important are timing, scripts, and follow up to your ability to convert an online lead that comes your way?

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Where do you begin? The agent that is reluctant to adopt technology, but realizes the essential need to do so, needs to begin somewhere. Below you’ll find my five most important pieces of technology in my real estate business, along with my explanation of why they’re important to me.

A Computer Or Laptop

As logical as it may seem, you’d be surprised how many agents I meet that do not have a personal computer. I understand that a new agent’s first priority is to generate consistent income, and an investment in a personal computer can be tough to do.

Realize, however, that you are beginning a business just like any other business in this world. McDonald’s wouldn’t dream of opening a franchise without the ability to have an grill to cook their product; neither should you.

If you have your own office space at your brokerage, invest in a desktop computer. In many cases, it can be a little cheaper to begin with and can provide a solid foundation to begin building your business.

If you do not have your own personal office, you could work from home but I’ve always been a against doing this. Some agents are able to do it successfully, while many others cannot. You could choose to save an invest in a laptop computer that can be mobile with you; your companion at the office, during closings, and during listing and buyer consultations.

A Database

Your database is your business. Gary Keller pounded this into our heads at Keller Williams University, and I’m glad he did. Your database is the life-blood, backbone, even the spirit that your business needs to survive.

Take all the biggest teams across America: Can it be realistic that they do not operate their own databases with the amount of business they have coming in each and every day?

Investing in the right database is another task upon itself. I recommend Top Producer not only because of the features it comes packed with for a real estate business, but because of the simple fact that I can log into my database from any computer anywhere in the world as long as I have access to the internet.

A Cell Phone

A simple cell phone is something nearly every adult in America has or has had at some point in time. A cell phone for your real estate business will be essential to responding to new leads where time is of the essence.

If you already have a cell phone, consider using it for your business but please do not ever answer the phone with a plain, “Hello.” This is now your business phone; act like your clients are calling a multi-million dollar company!

If you are with a large real estate brokerage, many times cell phone carriers will offer promotional discounts that can be applicable to the purchase of your phone and even your rate plan. Contact the administrator for your office if you think you might have a promotion you could take advantage of.

Email

In recent years, free email services have had the chance to mature in features that they offer that I feel confident promoting the use of online email as your sole business email rather than a program that downloads emails locally to your computer, such as Outlook.

One email provider shines above the rest: Gmail from Google. Gmail offers a more space than you could possibly imagine filling up, and is flexible to allow you to use their service as the backbone of your email technology for your real estate business.

A Website

It’s a fact: more consumers are starting their search for a home online rather than contacting an agent directly. Your website should be built to give consumers what they they are looking for first, then what you want to tell them second.

The main use of a real estate website is to search for homes for sale in your local area, so be sure to make it blatantly obvious that your site satisfies this need.

Adopting technology is actually an easier task than you think, but the overwhelming response I get from the use of technology in a real estate business is that it can be complicated. Well, isn’t anything that you aren’t familiar with considered complicated?

Choose to make the right move first and incorporate the five technologies listed above into your business and have the piece of mind that you’re not falling behind the expectations of consumers in this day and age.

For those of you that have these technologies in your business now: could you even fathom the effect on your business if any one of them was taken away from you?

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I’m seen way too many times that agents have taken pictures, and those pictures have been subject to poor quality because of a shaky camera. I’ll admit it; I do it myself from time to time. You have three options:

• Re-take the picture. A hassle, but if your camera has a preview feature on a built-in screen then you should able to notice any poor picture quality.
• Post it anyway. Please don’t do this! All homes you list for sale deserve pictures that are top-notch quality.
• Eliminate the problem to begin with. Use Cobbler’s method in the video below!

This has been a question that has been on agents minds for quite some time now, and I feel that once the media catches on that they’ll hype this agenda because some might consider it “news-worthy”.

With sites like Zillow and Trulia becoming more and more sophisticated, will agents be needed at all in the coming years? Sure agents have good advice and tips, but can’t that be offered through some kind of online consulting?

The real estate agents may not be going extinct, but one thing is for sure, their role will change, probably become more specialized. Better quit whining and start adapting now, or you may face extinction in the coming years! - BossWebmaster

I feel the major issue with taking professional representation out of the equation is that the parties enter a “gray” area.

This gray area is filled with mostly emotion, and very little logic. I think this is because sellers obviously have a deep connection with their home, and have the tendency to have their decisions motivated by their emotions at the time.

Buyers are constantly at the will of the ebb and flow that media injects to the masses through fear. Fear of a housing bubble, fear of a economy crash, or even fear that they are missing out on a good deal when times are great. Let alone being one of the biggest investments most families make, in my experience a buyer is quick to resort to emotions to make decisions as well.

In comes the agent. Having a real estate agent represent you brings both parties to reason with logic during negotiations, while also providing a “go-to man” in the event legal issues arise after the purchase. Coupled with the localization of real estate markets (which won’t be changing any time soon), I feel the only reason anyone would think of losing the agents is because of “here-say” or hype.

Talk to anyone that has a great agent and see if they’d ever make a move without them.

What are your thoughts and opinions on this?

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The amount of memory you have in your computer can really make a difference in how your computer functions day to day. If you are building a new computer or looking to figure out what’s wrong with an old one, you might want to take the amount of memory you have into consideration.

Learning About Memory

Windows XP doesn’t tend to be a big memory hog like Windows Vista has become; but then again high memory requirements isn’t such a bad problem anymore as memory has become very affordable.

Where will you see the most benefit? When you have multiple windows open on your screen, maybe one your property search and the other your contact database, computers have a tendency to slow down. With the coming of tabbed browsing in the latest internet browsers like Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox, this effect becomes even more apparent.

The old memory standard is called DDR (double-data rate). If your computer is more than a year, you probably have this type of memory installed on your computer. Buying another batch of memory isn’t costly, and can immediately make a difference in how quickly your computer functions.

If your computer is newer, you may have the newer version of memory called DDR2. This memory is faster and roughly the same price depending on where you purchase it. Computers with the DDR memory standard are not compatible with computers with the DDR2 standard, so be sure you buy the right kind.

Contact your manufacturer or computer maker to determine what type of memory you have.

Windows XP (Home and Professional)

Windows XP really runs a lot better on 1GB+ of system memory. Most computers that I work on for agents at our office only come installed with 512mb (megabytes) of memory, which is half my recommended amount. You’ll notice those computers slugging along, decreasing the productivity of anyone using it.

My suggestion for those of with 512mb of memory installed in your computer running Windows XP is to buy another 512mb of memory.

• 512mb DDR Memory
• 512mb DDR2 Memory
• 1gb DDR Memory
• 1gb DDR2 Memory

See The Full List

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is a great looking operating system, but many will tell you that it’s requirements are quite a bit steeper than Windows XP. For this reason and through personal experience, I will recommend that you have at least 2gb of memory on a computer with Windows Vista.

• 1gb DDR Memory
• 1gb DDR2 Memory
• 2gb (Two 1gb Sticks) DDR2 Memory

See The Full List

How Much Memory Do I Have?

To find out how much memory you have, along with a plethora of additional information about your computer, I recommend downloading and installing some free software from Belarc.

Belarc Advisor is free personal PC audit software that will create a profile of your computer and present it back to you in an easy to read web page. After downloading the software, it will check for updates (which is fine), and then create a profile for you.

On my computer the software took about 2 minutes to generate the report, so be patient while the report is created. You will then be presented with a web page that shows you all the details of your computer.

The memory section will tell you the type of memory you have, along with how many slots you have available on your computer. In the above screenshot, you will see that I have three slots to place memory in my computer. In two of the slots, I have two 512mb memory “sticks”, which comes out to 1024mb or 1gb of memory.

If your computer does not have any additional slots, you cannot install another stick of memory without replacing the original first. Luckily, memory modules come in a variety of configurations so you can buy one module of 1gb (even 2gb!) if you wish.

Getting It Installed

I’ll assume that working on the internal guts of a computer is not your fortay, so I’ll recommend that you have a professional install your computer memory for you.

It’s actually quite easy, and I’ll recommend the following guide, How To Install Memory, to get you started if you’d like to do this on your own.

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In a nutshell, you are able to upload a listing and post it all over the internet, including:

• Backpage.com
• Craigslist
• Google Base
• Hotpads
• And quite a few more…

Every postlet comes with a dedicated, search-optimized landing page and a unique URL. Postlets come in ten stylish themes complete with integrated maps and other nifty tools. They also have built-in lead capture forms so you can use them in all of your marketing campaigns.

On the flipside, giving away your listing information could be a little hazardous. In some cases, there’s been times where agents uploading listings to a site, increase it’s popularity, only for them to sell the leads back to them for a premium. Use at your own risk!

Anyone already using Postlets in their business? What do you guys think?

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Nearly 85% (TAR) of consumers browsing your real estate website use it for one thing only: to search and view properties for sale in your market. Take a look at your website now. At first glance, now that we know this vital statistic, is your site conducive to giving them what they want?

It’s all about adopting the right mind-set. When you’re working on new marketing materials, take a step back and assume the role of a skeptical customer. Ask yourself: Why should she care about your product? How will it make her life better or easier? What are the damn benefits? - Dan O’Sullivan

I feel that this can directly relate to the content advertising you are placing on your website. In Don’t Make Me Think by Steven Krug, you’ll learn that most users don’t actually even read everything on a website; they scan.

All this has to be taken into consideration when you begin the construction of your very first real estate website, or used in planning an overhaul of your existing one. Here are five useful tips to implement on your site that can help you keep your visitors longer, and increase your online conversion ratios.

The Property Search

This hands down is the most important feature of your website. Not only do you have to make the visitors immediately aware of where your property is located on your site, but you must also ensure that your property search is simple, intuitive, and overall easy to use.

Having an impressive property search is a very worthwhile investment, and increases the user experience your site delivers to consumers looking to buy or sell homes.

Advertise No Registrations

If you currently are not forcing your users to login to view properties, let them know! I haven’t personally researched the number of visitors that prefer no registrations versus forced registrations, but the winner is pretty obvious. When the hurdles to get to your properties for sale are minimized, you’ll find your visitors staying at your site longer and the frequency of contacts from them increased.

If you don’t require registrations, in a subtle but visible way inform your visitors that they will have an easier time viewing properties; all with no registrations required and pressure-free. Who wouldn’t enjoy that?

Relate To The Client

The content contained on your site is an expression of your services. Is your content filled with information about how you can help them, what you can do, what you have done in the past, and how you’re just an overall great person? While I’m sure you are, how are you making an attempt to relate to your target audience?

A good practice is to interpret how the offer you and conveying to the client will directly help them in some way. One good example is explaining how your home market report will help your client make a more informed and intelligent decision regarding the refinance of their home or as a tool for fighting property evaluation nightmares.

Keep Your Homepage Clean

First impression is of vital importance to your website conversion ratios. A visitor will mostly likely make a mental decision to stay on your site, or jump to another within the first 10 seconds; this is commonly referred to as bounce rate.

Make a wise decision to avoid banners, adsense advertisements, contrasting colors and large fonts on your home page. It’s also wise to make it readily apparent that you have a property search on your site, and provide a link to direct your visitors on how to get there.

The About You Page

Giving a history of your career in real estate, also with some background information to better help your visitors to relate to you as a person, is useful in a page usually named, “About Me” or “About Us”. Keep this page separated away from your content, enabling your visitors to initially find what they’re looking for while still offering information about you should they take interest.

Your website can be a very valuable asset to your business, and can be considered one of the best sources for online leads. As time progresses and more consumers are taking advantage of the wonderful tools presented to them online, real estate agents not adapting to this change will be left in the dust.

Have you started to implement a source of online lead generation?

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In many cases, I’ve had very important notes from conversations with technical support for various products I use that I had to keep safe and easily able to access just in case. I’ve kept notes from calling my cell phone provider to calling my contact manager provider, because if I ever have to call back I’m going to want to let them know I remember everything.

I’ll share with you my system for keeping notes that has helped me for years. I basically use GMail for my “special” note taking. Why? GMail’s searching features works out wonderfully for being able to access your notes on the fly.

How It Works

What you are going to want to do is basically send yourself an email in GMail. It’s that easy! You can even get a little more advanced and label the email when you get a particular label so that you can reference all your important notes later.

After you receive your email with the important note, it’s safe to go ahead and archive. With the plethora of disk space that GMail provides, deleting is a rare occurrence.

Using This in Real Estate

In real estate, you can use this simple system for a wide variety of purposes. You can use this note taking system as a call log to keep track of all of your voice messages that you receive on a daily basis. You could also use this system to remember a particular code to a lockbox that you have installed on a home.

Get creative, and remember: GMail’s search feature is a god-send at times so if you want to have a particular bit of information accessible on the fly, send yourself an email in GMail and rest assured you have it when you need it.

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Using GMail, you can effectively archive all your emails in case your main office computer goes downhill. You can also use it as an emergency “on the road” email program in case you can’t access your main computer to send emails.

If you are not archiving your emails, what happens when you have a system meltdown?

How It Works

In this particular case, let’s say “Suzie” has an office email account. Suzie is a Keller Williams Realty agent, so she is given an @KW.com email address, and the use of the KW webmail system. Suzie can also have all her emails from the @KW.com account name forwarded to any email address she’d like, which is what we are going to need to use GMail as your archive tool.

Set Up Your Gmail Account

First, we are going to need to have a gmail account to use for our archiving system. Google has thoughtfully made GMail a free program, and now anyone can sign up! Simply head over and sign up for gmail.

Begin Forwarding Your Emails

Now that your GMail account is setup, you are going to need to login to your agent administration tool to setup your email forwarding. Suzie, being a Keller Williams agent, will log into the Keller Williams Intranet, head to the “My Information” tab, click on the “My Email” link, then the “My Forwarding” link that opens in the submenu.

You are going to want to forward your emails to the GMail account we just setup. Many times this request takes some time to process, so be sure to let the expected wait time expire before continuing to the next step.

Test Your Forwarding

Head over to Gmail, login to your account, and send a test message to your original email account to make your emails are forwarding correctly. If they are, then you’ll receive an email in your GMail account moments later. If you do, you’re doing a great job so far!

If not, you may need to contact your email provider customer support to see why your emails are not forwarding correctly.

Setup POP Access in Gmail

At this point, we are now able to receive emails at the original address. All those emails are now being forwarded to GMail account, which will then be downloaded into your software program. When they download, GMail will automatically archive that email (not delete it), hence why I call this process “Using GMail As An Archive”.

In order to download your emails from GMail and into your local software program like Outlook and Thunderbird, you will need to enable POP access on your gmail account.

What is POP?

POP is a way to download emails from another account. According to Webopedia.com:

Short for Post Office Protocol, a protocol used to retrieve e-mail from a mail server.

To enable POP in Gmail, click on the settings link at the upper-right hand corner after logging into GMail. In the tabs near the top of this new window, you’ll want to click on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP link. This will bring you to the settings area for the POP access we need.

Bring your attention now down to the POP Download section, and select Enable POP for all mail (even mail that’s already been downloaded). If you want to select to only allow the download of items received from this point forward, select the next option, Enable POP for mail that arrives from now on.

Next, make sure that the next option, “When messages are accessed with POP” that the archive GMail’s copy is selected.

At the bottom of this options screen, select to save to finalize your settings.

Setting Up Your Email Client

Now we are at the final step: Setting up your email client to download your emails from GMail. GMail realizes that many people use this wonderful system, so they’ve went ahead and created a guide for setting up your email client to download emails from GMail.

Once you’ve decided on your email client, head to the GMail Help Center for instructions on how to setup your email client for this next step.

You Are Done!

Did this seem like a tedious process? If so, I assure you you’ll thank me later. Now that you have a system in place that will archive all your old emails, you can rest assured knowing that if you ever lose access to your email client like Outlook or Thunderbird and can’t recover the information on your computer, you can still log in to GMail and access all your old emails and even send new ones.

It’s a processed I’ve used for years and haven’t look back! Now this is only one great archiving system that I’m aware of. What system do you use to archive all of your old emails?

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The Acer AL1916WABD is a 19″ widescreen monitor with resolutions capable of up to 1440×900, has a 5ms refresh rate, and includes DVI ports for high quality video. This technical jargon in lamens terms simply says that the monitor has a lot of on screen desktop space, can keep up with playing a computer game here and there because of the high performance refresh rate, and the cord that goes from the computer to the monitor is one of the the best you can use at the moment.

Price - $179.99 with Free 3 Day Shipping

Prices have been falling like crazy lately, and you’ll be surprised that this monitor will only set you back a penny short of $180.00 over at my preferred electronics store - Newegg.com.

You can view more reviews, detailed specifications, more pictures and purchase this monitor by following the link below. I purchase all my computer parts from Newegg for years and have never been let down with customer service nor prices.

• Newegg Acer AL1916WABD

This is the current pricing for today, so please note that prices do have a tendency to fluctuate throughout the year.

Make Sure Your Computer Supports It

This particular Acer is a widescreen version. It’s a bit different that your traditional square monitor; it’s wider to allow you to see more on the screen. The only caveat is to make sure your computer can support the high resolutions this monitor provides, or else you’re stuck wasting your money.

To do this in Windows XP, minimize all active windows on your desktop and right click. A menu will open. Click on properties. After clicking on the settings tab, point your attention to the slider bar you’ll find under “screen resolution”. You can fiddle with this if you’d like to see what your computer graphics card is capable of. Does your computer go all the way up to 1440×900? If it does, you’re in business!

If not, then monitor may not work as intended without purchasing a graphics card (under $100) that is capable of transmitting video at the resolution that you need. Contact your local techie and have them give you a quote for preparing your computer to have a monitor that has a resolution of 1440×900, and accepts DVI input.

Enjoy!

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Learning About Market Builder

Choosing how your lead generation will be handled is undoubtedly a very important part of your real estate business. It’s important to keep your overhead low, conversion ratios high, and the level of complexity manageable.

We know that Market Builder aims to satisfy at least two of these requirements (conversion ratios and level of complexity), but is it still affordable?

I went to Top Producer to see if I can uncover some pricing, and it looks as though you must purchase the complete Market Builder bundle in order to take advantage of what this new product has to offer.

Three times a year, 400 homes in your defined targeted area will receive effective direct mail postcards, personalized with your contact information. Leveraging the power of interactive web tools, interested prospects’ contact and home information is captured on www.BetterHomePrice.com and immediately recorded within your Top Producer 7i account.

With a 14% discount, the pricing includes a $149.00 setup fee, and a monthly rate of $189.00 a month. Now this includes Top Producer 7i (the main nuts and bolts of their contact management system), Market Snapshot, Top Connector (to connect your account to your local MLS), and finally of course: Market Builder.

In order to bring this down to perspective, Top Producer 7i alone costs $34.95 a month. Add market snapshot for $79.00, and you are looking at $113.95 a month. Top Connector is a one-time setup fee that will set you back $149.00 (obviously the setup fee mentioned in the Market Builder Bundle).

This leaves us with a final amount of $75.05 a month or six pennies over $900 a year. The market builder feature will mail 400 postcards to the subdivision or target area of your choice three times a year, so that’s 1200 postcards.

Assuming that the average rate of a postcard to be printed and mailed at your preferred direct mailer for as little as $0.34* per postcard, you are looking at a $408 expense by doing it all yourself.

The Final Question

Is $492 worth outsourcing 400 postcards to be mailed out three times a year? I’ll leave the final decision up to you. In the meantime, I’m going to get some questions answered about Market Builder by Top Producer to write about in a follow up post later in the week.

I’d like to know:

• What size are the postcards?
• Are they in color, half color, or black and white?
• If I wanted to add another target area, what expense would I incur?

*-Taken from my Quantummail.com pricing for postcards.

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HitTail reveals in real-time the least utilized, most promising keywords hidden in the Long Tail of your natural search results. We present these terms to you as suggestions that when acted on can boost the natural search results of your site. It’s that simple. - Hittail.com

Hittail is a simple tool that will show you the link that generated a visitor to your site. If you rank well in search engines, then the links will show you the particular search the visitor did to find your site in the search engine rankings. This comes in quite handy to see what your top keywords are, and even to get some hints as to what long tails you can include in future articles.

A long tail is a keyword that you may not intentionally target to optimize your site for, though you will still occasionally bring a visitor or two for those niche or very specific keywords.

In most cases, your long tails may not really mean much; especially if your running a website solely to bring in visitors to click on your advertisements.

For real estate agents, however, long tails are golden. Let’s say for example that you have a high dollar subdivision near the center of town, and you mention it in one of your articles on your site. That “mention” may land you a long tail hit from a search engine, and that one visitor may be looking for that high dollar home and call you to get further assistance!

Tracking your website performance for long tails is a great way to see if you’re being effective in generating those niche keywords, plus it’s nice to see a real time view your hard working paying off.

• Visit Hittail

To install, you’ll first need to register both yourself and the website you want to track. You’ll then be given a script (simple piece of code) that you’ll need to place right before the “close body” tag near the end of your site source code. You’ll most likely want to hire your webmaster to do this for you, or contact me and I’ll set you up with someone that can help you.

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Good “search engine optimizers” will check your source code of your blog to ensure that a special tag is removed from all links. The “nofollow” attribute of a link will tell a search engine to NOT follow that link, therefore not helping the person who created the link to build those precious backlinks to improve their rankings in the search engine of their preference.

You need to make sure that these link attributes aren’t automatically applied to the links created on your site to encourage others to comment on your blog.

In a nutshell, to increase the popularity of your site you are going to want to encourage others to link to your site. In addition to this, you may be commenting on other blogs as well, which will then create a link to your site (most blogs ask for your website name when posting a comment).

If a blog you comment on has a “nofollow” attribute on the link, then you won’t get a dime of credit for your effort on commenting. How do you change that? Remove it! It encourages people that pay attention to that sort of thing to take the time to comment on your blog. Sure they may just be trying to build links to their site, but at least you’re getting comments and it looks like your blog has frequent readers.

So How Do You Remove It?

If you have a Wordpress blog, then it’s actually quite simple. TechForAgents.com is built using Wordpress. The plugin I use is created by Semiologic and can be found here. At the bottom of the page, click on the link that says V2.0 Download.

Once you download the ZIP file, you are going to want to extract the contents to your computer (remember where you put it!). You will then upload this directory to your website file structure under:

blogsitename.com/wp-content/plugins

After this is done, login to your Wordpress administrative backend and click on the “plugins” link at the top. You’ll then activate the plugin by clicking the activate link; the title should be “DoFollow” created by Dennis de Benardy.

A special thanks goes out to Eric Bramlett who specializes in Austin Real Estate for pointing this out to me.

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HP LaserJet 1020

Choosing your first office printer can be exciting. You begin to start thinking about the possible savings you can achieve through printing your own mail-outs, letterhead, and research for your clients. Choosing the right printer, however, is a whole other story.

Color Versus Black and White

For the purpose of this review, I am assuming that you are a real estate agent looking to add a bit of productivity and efficiency to your work place. Most real estate brokerages have high dollar color printers available for community use, so personally I’d rely on those expensive machines for your color printing needs.

I’m looking for the agent that wants to have a quick print here and there. Next to your office computer should be your co-pilot; leaving a small footprint while being quick yet quiet.

1020 Scores Big

I’ve bounced from printer to printer and haven’t found one I’m pleased with until now. HP’s Laserjet 1020 (Model Q5911A) is small, affordable, quick at printing, and even quiet to boot. It doesn’t even have an annoying sound while the printer is cooling down. It sits quietly beside you ready for your next task; ready, able, and willing to spit out with ease numerous black and white prints on the fly.

The 1020’s printing speed nears 15 pages per minute, and has a maximum single fed capacity of 150 sheets. You can load letter, legal, executive, postcards, and even envelopes into this great little printer.

Printing envelopes is a world of trouble for many small printers such as the 1020. With other models you will experience loading issues and printing misalignments; with the 1020 you’re good to go. Each and every day I print over well over 20 letters with envelopes, and my 1020 has never had any issue loading the envelopes in the main multiple feed tray. You even have the option to use the single feed tray for the odd-ball prints you’ll have every now and then.

It’s Affordable

As of this post, the HP Laserjet 1020 is on sale at Newegg.com for a mere $99. From personal experience, I can tell you that this lovely printer is worth every single penny. Don’t take my word for it; 79% of the reviewers at Newegg.com give the 1020 a 5/5 score, while 13% give it a four out of five. That’s 92% above 4/5!

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His review goes into depth on his experiences with the performance of Office in his day to day business, and what you can expect by migrating over to the new version of office.

Ryan Ward’s Review

I bought the Small Business Edition. Some good new tools for Word - graphs are a little easier and there are more choices for the look and feel of the graphs. Outlook opens EXTREMELY slow even after defragging twice. The database for the business contact manger seems to be the problem. I have not used it yet, mostly because I think I might need to actually read the manual! It is very customizable and looks to be a solid tool with more ease of use because all programs can now communicate with each other much better.

Microsoft Word and Excel

There are a few problems as I have found with Word…They have changed some of the rules for the way HTML is handled so if you have custom stationary with buttons linking to your website they may not work right in the new Outlook. That was a royal pain to get to work in the new and old versions for email.

You cannot create space between two buttons using “hspace”. I actually gave up and simply use 2 signatures - 1 for new messages and one for replies. It was very frustrating.

I haven’t had a reason to use excel except for Word graphs but Word appears to have quite a few new graphic templates and is easier to make documents look pretty. I would still use Publisher for anything more than a document with one photo.

Microsoft Publisher

Publisher appears to work the same with a slightly different look and feel and they claim that you can email the newsletters easier because it is integrated with Outlook. They do not translate at a high enough quality to use for a professional - at least I can’t figure out how to make it work yet.

Microsoft Business Contact Manager

The contact manager appears to be useful, but, you have to get it set up and I just haven’t been able to go through the learning process yet.

Conclusion

Office has worked a certain way for a long time and some of the changes have moved tools to completely new places and until you relearn where everything is, you are likely to be very frustrated.

All-in-all it is probably a better program than I am a user. That, I would say, is not a compliment to the program. I might say wait unless you have quite a bit of time to learn it.

You can read more about Ryan over at his Alpharetta Real Estate Blog.

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I will be meeting up with my father and cooking indoors today; Houston is experiencing some not-so-great weather. What are your plans?

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When considering to purchase a Dell, be sure to do your research prior to ensure you are making a wise choice. When performing my own research, I stumbled across this post by the Consumerist.

A former Dell kiosk manager writes us to share helpful tips about doing business with Dell. He has no particular problems with Dell, he just wanted to share some helpful tips for consumers looking to get the best deal. - The Consumerist

Inside, the sales manager goes into detail on great tips on buying your next Dell computer. If you are looking to purchase a computer in the near future, this is a definite read. Dell doesn’t want this information to be public, so grab it while you can!

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How I Use This Tool

The search query I use the most is “site:www.sitename.com”. What this will allow you to see is when pages of your site get indexed by Google. You are then given the opportunity to re-visit the page, remind yourself what keywords you were targeting for, and check their ranking in Google. You can automate this process by using this handy keyword analysis tool at McDar.net.

You can also use the Google Alerts tool to notify you of when new topics are indexed regarding specific keywords that you are looking to gain rankings in. The most common use would be “area real estate”, where you would replace “area” with your market location. This will allow you to see when new blogs, news articles and even competitors get their sites indexed by Google for the various keywords that you’ve chosen to go after.

If you are currently using Google Alerts, what nifty ways are you using them to better your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts?

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I went ahead an installed the browser and wasn’t necessarily impressed. The browser crashed within 5 minutes of usage by visiting a movie trailer website. Upon attempting to launch an in-screen video, the browser froze and shut down. Later that day, an article posted by Scott Fulton over at BetaNews commented:

It took security engineers perhaps less than two hours yesterday to introduce Apple’s surprise entry in the field of Windows browsers to the big, cruel world of exploits and vulnerabilities, following its introduction yesterday morning at WWDC. As a result, much of the clout Safari had received as the secure browsing alternative to Internet Explorer and Firefox — as long as it was on a Macintosh — was burned off like fire to a flash fuse. - Scott Fulton

Basically what I took from his article was the Apple design the Safari web browser to be super-secure on the Mac, but not necessarily on Windows. So if you are the kind of agent like myself, that likes to fool with new technology, be sure to hold back on installing Safari.

The released is noted to be a beta release, though the last thing you would want to do is compromise your main workstation.

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To Answer Or Not To Answer

Your cell phone should only contain calls that are from unknown numbers through lead generation efforts. This is so that you can answer these calls quickly and convert them to an appointment no matter where you are. The hidden prerequisite to your business greeting, however, should actually be a thought to yourself. A question that will ensure that your mindset is correct before attempting an “at-bat”.

My broker once told me that there is no reason to step up to the plate if you do not intend on knocking it out of the park. Unless you are a multi-tasking genius, do you realistic expect to convert that sign call made to your cell phone while driving “speed limit” to your next appointment? I’d think not; perhaps this call should be better left unanswered. Perhaps you shouldn’t answer at all!

Did I just commit a crime? No. Rather, I’m putting myself in a position to be able to return my calls in a timely manner at a time that is more convenient to satisfying my clients needs. If I’m driving a car and get a website call regarding a property found in my MLS search, I’m obviously not going to be able to answer their questions. When I’m not able to give the client what they need, my conversion ratios will drop significantly.

Prioritize and Funnel Your Calls

Your cell phone should only be listed on advertisements, listings signs, websites, and any other form of advertisement you can cook up. After you have gone into a business relationship with a client, make sure to set the expectation that you would like for them to contact you at the office. On your office phone, leave a voice mail (updated daily if possible) with the times you expect to be returning calls.

Setting expectations with your clients will allow you to avoid conflict, as conflict only arise when expectations differ.

I would also advise for you to ensure that all calls are returned within the business day. If the call comes in after business hours, simply return the call the next business morning. I wouldn’t worry too much about after hour calls; any problems will be waiting for you when you get back.

What are you thoughts about answering your cell phone, and what kind of repercussions has that given in your day-to-day business?

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• The iPhone’s battery is one example of a feature that could flop.
• The iPhone’s stripped-down data features could also provide incentive to wait for a better offer. (continues) But for whatever reason, Apple decided not to allow the iPhone to work on AT&T’s fastest, “third-generation” (or 3G) wireless network, opting instead for its slower “EDGE” network.
• One reason may be the iPhone’s built-in wi-fi capability, meaning it can connect to local hot spots and avoid AT&T’s data network altogether.
• Rabid e-mailers or texters may also be skeptical about the iPhone’s keyboard-free design.
• We already know that it will cost $500 to $600, depending on storage capacity. But AT&T’s contract requirements could easily quadruple that price.

While I agree that the battery issue, toned down network, and price tag would make me think twice about an Apple iPhone purchase, the wi-fi capability and non-QWERTY (keyboard configuration) wouldn’t really matter to me much.

I would hate to be limited to a slow network, however. I just shelled out $500 for a phone and the internet is creeping along at near dial-up speeds? The last thing I need are grey hairs acquired from impatiently waiting for Google maps to load.

What are your thoughts on Dan’s take on the iPhone?

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This phone features fantastic features such as touch screen technology, can also be used a widescreen iPod, and comes with a internet browser named, “Safari” aimed to provide the owner with a simplistic web browsing experience.

I predict that the iPhone will not be adopted by the real estate agent market right away. You will have a few enthusiasts of technology pick it up on the release date, but I don’t plan to see agents carrying this bad boy around during showing tours.

What do you think?

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This product will allow you to get great looking market updates for both buyers and sellers, which include sold history graphically mapped on a dynamic map. The map looks to be built using Microsoft Live technology, and buyers are updated by zip codes where sellers are updated based on a pre-determined radius.

The Market Snapshot provides valuable and timely data which addresses at-a-glance additional questions that consumers may have. This ability to trigger additional questions and concerns helps to shape a valuable dialogue with the sponsored agent and the inquiring consumer. This positions the agent as the interpreter rather than the simple provider of data which helps facilitate the first telephone contact. - Top Producer Market Snapshot

What I Don’t Like

My only gripe with this software is the lack of a clear conveyance of pricing. The market snapshot when purchased stand-alone comes at a price of $79.00. The fact that is commonly left out of the sales pitch is that this supports only 150 active reports at any given time.

If you were planning on using Market Snapshot to farm geographic areas, and use it to break the ice when gaining market share of a neighborhood, you might run into a snag. If you go over 150 active reports, the price doubles. I’ve discovered the Top Producer actually has pricing plans into the quadruple digits.

If you are thinking of purchasing this product, be sure to investigate the pros and cons of adding it to your business. Like all added expenses, everything must be held accountable for an increase in production. If Market Snapshot from Top Producer doesn’t justify this increase in production, then it may not be a worthwhile expense to your business at this time.

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Agents will have the flexibility to control when users must register to see more listings. This directly will affect your lead conversion ratios with visitors to your site. Many IDX systems currently do not have a way for real estate agents to convert incoming site leads to clients, so this Wolfnet IDX solutions should help boost agent income company wide if taken advantage of by the individual agent. Keller Williams agents will have the option to customize when users must register, such as (thanks to Ashley Payne at Wolfnet Technologies):

• Login Required To View Address - If enabled, addresses will only be shown when the user is logged in.
• Front Page Login Required - Requires login before the user enters their search criteria.
• Search Results Login Required - If enabled, prompts login after the user clicks Search.
• Login Required to View Details - If enabled, the detail page will only be shown when the user is logged in.
• Allow Number of Detail Views - Number of detail pages allowed before forcing login.
• Special Data Login Required - Prompts user to login when accessing special data like virtual tours or open houses.

Agents roll out will vary depending on market location and local MLS support, but Keller Williams Realty plans on finalizing the roll out by Fall of 2007.

Many of you may know that I am a real estate agent with Keller Williams Realty, so I will be experiencing this transition first hand. At the current moment, my site has not implemented the solutions but I will be sure to update with my experience when the upgrade has been completed.

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HP’s competing printer costs $16,000. While Edgeline could be the closest competitor to Memjet in terms of speed, it appears to be far more expensive. The only HP Edgeline printer announced for sale on the open market, the multifunction CM8050, costs $16,000 according to HP, and $21,000 according to a retail outlet which advertises the printer as ‘available in the near future’.

I just bought a desktop monochrome (black and white) printer for my office for quick printing, but the capabilities of this new technology are making me itch to buy another one. There are even videos of the printers in action; go check it out.

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