I have been speaking with a new client of ours, Linda Linfoot, about her blog and how she can gain more exposure for her website as soon as possible. Her website is new, her domain is brand new, she is a new Realtor and she wants her site to get indexed in the search engines right away.

One way to hurry this process along is to open a Feedburner.com account. Feedburner is free (there is a paid version) and has many tools that will help promote your website, blog and RSS feed.

There is so much you can do with a Feedburner account but for this post, I’m just going to talk about their Email Subscription service.

Do you want to have an Email Newsletter that is quick to setup and automatic so that when you update your blog, your subscribers will receive an email with your latest posts?

With Feedburner and your Ubertor website it is easy. We have done all of the integration for you, you just need to open your Feedburner account and follow the quick steps to setting it up. (want us to do it? click on enhancements in your control panel and we would be pleased to setup your account for you)

Here is the Email Subscription feature of Feedburner and what it did to Linda Linfoot’s website.

1.

After opening your Feedburner account you can activate the Email Subscriptions tab. Right away the Feedburner system will give you options for how your subscribers can signup to receive your email newsletter. It can be added to any page within your website or as a widget (similar to Featured Listing, Recent Blog widgets) Here are 2 screen shots of the options:
Built into any page:

As a Widget:

2.

Also from this tab you can customize the welcome email that your subscribers receive. Here is a screenshot:

3.

Feedburner also allows you to customize how the emails will look upon arrival into your clients inbox. You can change the text color, add your logo, change the font plus much more. Plus they show you an example of what it will look like:

4.

When a user subscribes to your email newsletter, Feedburner uses a double opt-in list to eliminate spam. I added my email address to Linda’s website, the system asks me to type in the letter I see within an image and then states that it has emailed me to confirm I am who I say I am. Here is what the email looks like (and keep in mind, Feedburner allows you to customize this first email as well):

5.

When the user clicks the link in their email they are redirected to a Feedburner confirmation page that tells them what they can expect:

Take a look at Linda’s blog page to see the feedburner tools build right in.

Many Realtor website suppliers suggest they have “lead generators” built into their software. These lead generators are pushed upon agents that are usually not totally educated as to how the internet works and what a “lead” truly is.

To me, a lead is a prospect that volunteers their contact information because they are truly interested in speaking further about your thoughts/ideas/experience/comments on the market, their home, etc. In other words, you have impressed them somehow and they are looking to take the relationship to the next level.

To me, a lead is NOT someone who has traded their contact details for information that you are withholding from them. Property Searches, Free Reports or any other canned content are a few examples of information that you would withhold from your websites visitors and require their contact information before they can see it. Basically, information that is either useless or free other places on the internet. I suggest to you, that these are NOT leads.

The key words are volunteering versus trading.

Think about it? How many “leads” did you gain from your website that requires users to “log in” or “sign up” for information within your website? How many of those leads turned in to $$$ and how long did you have to follow up with that lead?

When was the last time you gave up your contact information on any website?

I have said it before and I will say it again…
… real estate agents who require the data to be their “value” in a relationship will not be in the real estate business for the long term. It is the agents that interpret the data that are providing the “value” in a relationship.

Are you a real estate agent that is pushing access to the data as your value to potential clients?
or
Are you a blogging, newsletter writing, opinionated real estate agent that is pushing your knowledge and experience to potential clients?

Hopefully you are the latter.

Did you want more information about what I’m talking about? Are you curious as to why putting your information out on the internet for all to see if of value to you and your business? Give us a call/email for more information.

We have some Ubertor Training Sessions coming up that are open to all real estate agents. Plus we have added a few new sessions that all will benefit from. And for our out of town agents that like to attend, we have scheduled 2 of our training sessions on the same day as the upcoming RET Meetup.

Seattle, WA - Nov. 29th 2006 - Ubertor Training Session (details)
Greenwood Public Library, 8016 Greenwood Ave N., Seattle, Washington, 98103

Vancouver, BC - Dec. 4th 2006 - Ubertor Training Session (details)
Milan’s Bistro, 1223 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6B6A8

*new* Vancouver, BC - Dec. 4th 2006 - Ubertor Study Hall, Intro to CSS (details)
Milan’s Bistro, 1223 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6B6A8

Also on December 4th is the Vancouver Real Estate Tech Meetup (details and RSVP info here) Don’t forget Ubertor will be auctioning off a Nintendo Wii for the Food Bank.

For more information about Ubertor Training dates and locations please consult ubertor.com/events
If you would like to have a session in your city or office please contact us for more details

Ubertor is growing rapidly across the United States; especially in Seattle and is looking for Seattle based Client Service Gurus to join our team.

Anyhoo… before posting; we thought it would be wise to learn more about the Seattle job market so that we could attract Seattle’s best talent to join our team.

I decided to log on to CraigsList.com to check things out and discovered two items we thought you may find interesting:

1. $25.00 is the fee to post a Help Wanted advertisement on CraigsList Seattle. At the time of writing all Canadian cities are still free.

2. You can now Blog about Real Estate as a job! We all know blogging works! I see the traffic paterns, leads generated and referall links from over 5245 Real Estate Websites.

In fact, I think it works so well right now, simply because; so many agents aren’t doing it. Real Estate bloggers are the Purple Cows of the industry. Learn more about applying Seth Godin’s Purple Cow principles to Real Esate at our upcoming Vancouver RET (Real Estate Tech) Meetup.

We at Ubertor are extremely passionate about Real Estate and Technology. We believe the Real Estate industry is going through rapid change because of Technology. You can choose to learn about and benefit from this catalyst (join a RET Meetup in your Metro) or keep listening to the web provider whose software doesn’t even include blogging functionality.

Learn, Mix and Mingle…. and Donate!

Our December Meetup will include a Purple Cow Presentation, Charity Silent Auction for a Wii, a website review and a social mixer. We will also be accepting food and cash donations for The Vancouver Food Bank.

11.22.06 - 12.04.06 @ 8:15 PM
Nintendo Wii Charity Silent Auction.
====================

The folks from Ubertor brought out there camping gear Saturday November 18th to secure a spot for the Sunday 10am launch of the Nintendo Wii.

The Nintendo Wii is now sold out all over North America!

Get your hands on one for this Christmas and contribute to The Vancouver Food Bank at the same time. All proceeds from the Wii auction will be donated to The Vancouver Food Bank.

E-mail bids can be made to mike+wii at ubertor dot com.

6:00 PM
Social Mixer.
====================

Meet and engage with other Real Estate Tech Enthusiast at Milan’s.

Nosh? Milan’s offers; One Pound of Wings + a Pint for $6.00!!

Parched? Cash bar will be available. Please walk or cab, bus, teleport or get a ride if you intend to drink!

6:45 PM
Presentation: How to be a Purple Cow in Real Estate!
====================

Do you have a remarkable Real Estate business?
Seth Godin’s, Purple Cow is about transforming your business by being remarkable. Join Michael Stephenson and fellow RET’s (Real Estate Techies) in a 30 minute conversation on how to add some Purple Cow to your Real Estate business.

Presented by Michael Stephenson cofounder of Combustion Labs Media Inc.

7:30 PM
Website Review!
====================

Want to learn what you can do to improve your website? We will put one Real Estate website up on the big screen for 15 minutes of group feedback.

Website review will be chosen randomly. Submit your website for review between 6:00-6:30pm at the Name Badge table.

Moderated by Stephen Jagger cofounder of Combustion Labs Media Inc. and Mitchel Jarvi cofounder of Reachd - Real Estate SEO.

7:45 PM
Social Mixer.
====================

Meet and engage with other Real Estate Tech Enthusiast at Milan’s of Yaletown. Cash bar will be available. Please walk or cab, bus, teleport or get a ride if you intend to drink!

ps. This Vancouver RET (Real Estate Tech) meetup is the 3rd event of Ubertor’s Super Free Monday! Three, free Real Estate Technology events in and around Vancouver.

RSVP now @ http://realestateagent.meetup.com/109/ !

- Curbed.com out of New York shows us a home that is listed for $4,800/sf and what they did to sell it
- Marlow Harris discusses companies buying other companies names in Google Pay Per Click
- Sellsius - the 2007 NAR Code of Ethics Prohibits Deceptive Meta Tags

Craig Newmark and his team have added 135 more cities to Craigslist.org making the total cities in the Craigslist empire 450.

Well, it is that time again… the 19th Carnival of Real Estate is here and we are pleased to be the host. Actually, I had no idea how many submissions came in for this. This weeks carnival had a ton of submissions making it quite hard to pick 10. (I know there are 11) I also included the day each blog started as I find it interesting to see that some of the most popular real estate blogs are actually quite new. It was a pleasure hosting the real estate carnival.

Pat Kitano
www.transparentre.com
Real Estate Web 2.0 First Mover Advantage? So far, none
Blog Started - August 3rd 2006
Zillow has been dissected so much recently that blog posts are popping up,
notably from the BawldGuy and Carter’s Adventures (two fine blogs!), that
just say No! Zillow is not worth discussing any more. I agree … we know
that Zillow and their brethren AVMs - Cyberhomes, Reply!, eppraisal - are
insufficient property valuation vehicles… we don’t need to see any more…(continue)

Dan Melson
www.searchlightcrusade.net
Buyers Who Don’t Want A Buyer’s Agent
Blog Started - June 8th 2005
You see it all the time at open houses and elsewhere. People who
desperately need buyer’s agents, but think of Buyer’s Agents in the
same way they think of automobile sales folk, and that’s the
complete opposite of the way it is. (continue)

Douglas Heddings
www.truegotham.com
The Luxury Market: Is It Really All that Stable?
Blog Started - April 1st 2006
I’m currently working with two high-end buyers, one couple in
the $10-14 million range and another in the $20 million range.
There is plenty of inventory to peruse at the $10-14 million
range and less to see in the…. (continue)

Joel Burslem
www.futureofrealestatemarketing.com
See How Your Site Stacks Up with Quantcast
Blog Started - April 28th 2006
So just who is visiting online real estate sites?
Finding good publicly available (free) metrics to measure the
popularity of a web site is a challenging proposition. Technorati
rankings rate the number of inbound links, but measure only
the activity in publicly accessible… (continue)

Jonathan Dalton
jdalton.realtownblogs.com
NAR and me …
Blog Started - January 2006
Returning from my two-day sojourn down the rabbit hole and into bubble-land …
In some respects my initial characterization of many real estate
bubble proponents as being more interested in bluster than
facts proved true … (continue)

Liam Lavery
www.zillowblog.com
Craigslist Court Decision
Blog Started - February 7th 2006
Tuesday, a federal district court in Chicago dismissed a suit
charging that craigslist’s housing listings violated the Fair
Housing Act. This is a very significant decision for online real
estate services and users. (continue)

Kyle Else
toursheet.blogspot.com
Something’s Fishy
Blog Started - July 27th 2006
What is the best way to protect yourself from fishy real estate deals.
How do you know that you’re not being taken advantage of when
you get involved with a real estate transaction? The best answer
might be to maintain a “buyer beware” mentality. (continue)

Greg Tracy
blueroof.wordpress.com
What if Zillow Got Serious?
Blog Started - July 20th 2006
It’s easy to criticize Zillow because their valuations are completely
automated and who would believe a completely automated process?
But what if Zillow decided to get serious about the accuracy of
their Zestimates? (continue)

Jim Cronin
realestatetomato.typepad.com
Who Are You Blogging For?
Blog Started - June 16th 2006
A common question I hear is, who should I be blogging for?
Or rather, who makes up the audience I am reaching out to
with my blog?
Let’s consider the potential audience that… (continue)

Greg Swann
www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog
Realty Reality: How Jake, Jurij and Tatiana Pawlenko wove their way into our hearts . . .
Blog Started - June 29th 2006
This is a shaggy dog story…
It begins with Jake, the world’s most playful Yellow Labrador
Retriever, and Jake is a thread running all through this tapestry.
And that’s the way to think of it… (continue)

Kevin Boer
www.3oceansrealestate.com/blog
Why the Internet will never disintermediate Realtors — Part 2: It builds, not erodes, the relationship
Blog Started - August 28th 2006
In my previous post on Internet disintermediation, I argued
that real estate is primarily a relationship business, and that
the only real estate professionals who should fear the Internet
are those who really, really suck at the whole… (continue)

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Hosting the Carnival of Real Estate is like having a party. Lots of friends come over to visit your blog for a special day, a few beverages are consumed and all in all it is a good time. Sometimes when you leave a party you get a loot bag, and I figured that this should be no exception. Today, and today only, (November 20th 2006) if you are interested in seeing what an Ubertor website can do for you we will setup a site for you and give you 6 months free.

There is a catch.

We will waive the $347.00 setup fee.
You will pay the first month payment of $57.00
If you take some time to play with the features that our system provides we will apply a 6 month credit to your account.
All you need to do is:
- add a listing to your website with at least 4 images
- point a domain name to your new Ubertor website
- add a new page to your website called “Biography” and include your bio on that page

If you do these 3 things within the first 30 days of having your website, email me directly and I will apply a 6 month credit to your account.

We are confident in our product and know that once you try it, you will love what it can do for you. Keep in mind, we do not sign contracts, there are no cancellation fees and with this offer no setup fee. You can have an outstanding website for 7 months for only $57.00.

Want to take advantage? Signup here
Questions/Comments? Please feel free to contact me directly

*this offer is for new websites only
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We added the masthead tool to the Ubertor software a few weeks ago and it has been a big hit with our agents and especially the designers out there. Our software allows you to change the masthead, the banner photo as well as the template color quickly and easily ensuring that you have the unique look and feel that you are trying to achieve in addition to our functionality of our software. Here are a few examples of websites that have customized their sites. I used examples from the same template so that you can see the differences easily.

James Robinson

Joe Squire

Deb Robson and Diane Cardoso

Kris Berg

Jackie Reid

To learn more about these tools please feel free to contact us.

Lots of different events are available for real estate agents to attend, learn, share and discuss their thoughts, ideas and business on Dec. 4th. Here is the list of events that you might want to attend that are all on the same day:

Ubertor Training - 10:00am - 12:00pm (details and RSVP information)
Ubertor Tech Study Hall - 4:00pm - 6:00pm (more details coming soon)
Vancouver Real Estate Tech December Meetup - 6:00pm - 9:00pm (details and RSVP information)

All 3 events are being held at Milan’s in Yaletown:
Milan’s Bistro
1223 Hamilton Street
Vancouver , BC V6B6A8
604-915-7225

UPDATE: We have agents coming down from Whistler, over from Victoria and up from Seattle and Bellingham.