Ubertor Real Estate Blog

I was speaking with a client the other day about the “4 Hour Work Week” book. A very interesting read if your into learning how to leverage your time. We were discussing some of the books that have helped shape Ubertor or the way we think about the business. Here is a list of 7 books that have in some way helped shape Ubertor. (they are in no particular order)

1. Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable

2. The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

3. Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not

4. Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

5. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity

6. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It

7. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t

Neighbourhood or niche websites are a great way to target a specific farming area. The key is building a website that provides value to your visitors, shares your knowledge on a specific topic, showcases properties for sale and most importantly depicts you as an expect in the area.

Do you want to do more business in a certain type of property or a certain area?

Here are 4 examples of real estate agents marketing themselves to a certain area and in one case to a certain property type:

www.loftsvancouver.com
Reid Dewson and Ed Gramauskas have been working a niche website for years. Their website showcases all lofts available for sale within the Vancouver area. Plus they have building information, upcoming projects, plus much more. It is by far the most reliable website for lofts in Vancouver.

www.yaletownpark.ca
Ian Watt has 6 niche websites all targeted towards a specific area or property type. YaletownPark.ca is dedicated to the Yaletown Park condo development that has just gone up in Yaletown, downtown Vancouver. Here are his other sites - www.vancouver-penthouse.com, www.electricavenue.ca, www.whistler-homes.com, www.vancouver-townhouse.com and www.ianwatt.ca

www.kitsilanohouses.com
Marty Pospischil runs 3 websites. His martyhomes.com main website which is all about his real estate business but he runs kitsilanohouses.com and assignmentsvancouver.com (under construction). The Kitsilano website has rental information, properties for sale, restaurants, businesses, schools, plus much more.

www.pointgreynow.com
Ken Wyder is a great example of a website put together in only a few months and is seeing excellent results. Ken has adding lots of great information about Point Grey including the real estate listings that area available in that area.

What to see some results?

- If you Google “Lofts Vancouver” or “Vancouver Lofts” you will see that loftsvancouver.com comes up #1 under both terms.

- If you search “Yaletown Park” in Google, Yahoo and MSN you will see Ian’s website come up 2, 5, and 3 respectively.

- In Yahoo and MSN when you search “Kitsilano Houses for Sale” Marty’s website comes up number 1 in both search engines.

- Searching “point grey real estate” brings up Ken Wyder’s website on the first page of Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Would you like to get started?

We can get you up and running in 60 seconds for $67.00/month - no setup fee. ($57.00 for your website and $10.00 for your autofill category of listings) Give us a call at 604-264-1999 to learn more about creating a website for a neighbourhood or niche that you want to farm.

The first important point to understand is that having a website requires work! Many real estate agents think that you can just launch a website and it will work its “magic” and bring in the business. This is not how the internet works. Having a website is just like having a storefront. It takes work to make it work. (there are ways to get the work done without you doing it… see below)

Think of your favourite website… look at it today and then think, would this still be your favourite website in 6 months if it was exactly the same?

Lets say your favourite website is the clothing company Banana Republic. If you look at their website today (screen shot here) you will see their Christmas specials and some widgets that are pushing certain products and promotions. How would you feel if you went there in July and the site was still pushing their Christmas sale.

Or how about WhistlerBlackcomb.com? What if you went to their website and you saw the snow report from 2005… or if you came across their big new announcement is a new lift that was launched 8 months ago. Would you keep going to their website? or would you find your Whistler news somewhere else?

Make your website relevant! Make your website matter!

Here are 5 tasks you can do in 2007 to help your website gain the exposure and return visitors that it deserves:

1. Seriously.. Get Blogging
INMAN News named blogging as one of the top real estate stories of 2006. They reported that the “Real estate blogoshere comes to life. Real estate blogs really took off this year, with more solo agents getting into the mix and more blogging on collaborative sites.” Zillow’s CFO & VP of Marketing Spencer Rascoff says that one of the top online real estate stories for 2006 was that blogs went mainstream.

2. Expose your Listing in a new way
Get the massive exposure that your listings deserve. Flyers, Open Houses, local Newspapers are all good ways to attract attention to your listings but services like craigslist.org, zillow.com, oodle.com, edgeio.com, base.google.com, hotpads.com and trulia.com are all excellent ways to gain massive exposure to your listings. Adding your listing to these sites should be standard practice when advertising your new listing.

3. Expose yourself to new ideas
2006 will be remembered in online real estate as the year that more information than ever became accessible to consumers, for free. The creation of Zillow.com, Redfin.com, and Trulia.com are a few among a rapidly growing group of companies that are pushing the envelope. Are you up to speed with what is going on? Do you know what a blog is? how about RSS? craigslist? Make 2007 the year of learning new things. Plan to attend a conference that you have never attended before. There are lots out there. Here are a few places to start looking www.realestateconnect.com or www.realtor.org.

4. Track Everything
Take the time to track what you do so that you can replicate what works and stop doing what is not working. Here are a few ideas to help you get tracking your results:
a. Ensure that you are using Google Analytics to track the stats of your website
b. Use multiple email addresses to track what is working.
- On your open house flyers use steve@yourdomain.com
- On your busines cards use sjagger@yourdomain.com
- On your just listed flyers use justlisted@yourdomain.com
You get the idea. Doing this will allow you to track which inbound emails are coming from which marketing effort.
c. Multiple domain names is a great way to track (yourdomain.com, yourdomain.ca, yourdomain.info)
d. Your Open Houses can even be tracked… ask everyone how they heard of the open house. Even tell them that your testing to see which of your marketing is pulling its weight. Run a survey to track the results. Do this for all of your open houses. I bet the results will surprise you.

5. Learn the complete capabilities of your website.
Even if your website is not an Ubertor website (it should be) you should take the time to learn the complete capabilities of what your website can do for you and what technologies are available to help take you to the next level. Take some time to learn about Feedburner, RSS, Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, WordTracker, Blogs, PageRank, Link Baiting, etc.

With all of these new tasks you will need to Systematize your business. A good book to read about systematizing your business is Michael Gerbers E-Myth. His book talks about small business owners and the need to operate like a franchise. Definitely worth a read.

Need help with any or all of these tasks… Ubertor Support can help with some, Ubertor Training is another option, RET Meetups will bring you together with like minded agents, services like realtysupport.ca can do the work for you, or even a real estate coach might be the answer.

Keep in mind the California Association of REALTORS® survey found that “The typical buyer is now an Internet buyer“

Any questions… feel free to contact me directly.

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.

My business partner Michael Stephenson and I have been meaning to engage our colleagues and clients in an informal environment for quite some time.

We thought it would be cool to hold these monthly Meetups to facilitate discussion of everything Real Estate, but of all things “Real Estate Technology” in particular.

Our industry is changing fast and we figure its best to explore and predict these changes amongst other Real Estate Professionals in an informal environment.

So here is to the success of all of you and the Vancouver Real Estate Professional Meetup!

Cheers,

Stephen Jagger and Michael Stephenson

When:
Monday, October 30, 2006, 6:00 PM

Where:
Diner
1269 Hamilton Street, Vancouver (Yaletown; between Davie and Drake)
Vancouver , BC V6B 6A8
604-444-4855

Description:

Who should come? Are newcomers welcome?
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All Real Estate Professionals are welcome to come. Thinking of buying or selling a home? Well, you should come by as well and meet Vancouver’s leading Real Estate Professionals in a great relaxed environment.

Why should people come?
—————————————————-
To learn more and discuss all things Real Estate with Vancouver’s leading Real Estate Professionals.

What will it be like?
—————————————————-
Hmmmmm….. let me think about it….. It will be FUN and interesting! So get yourself down there.

Should you bring anything?
—————————————————-
Questions, answers and good spirits. Oh, speaking of spirits there will be a cash bar available. Please walk or cab, bus, teleport or get a ride if you intend to drink!

How will you find us when they get there?
—————————————————-
The good folks from Ubertor.com will be at the door to bestow upon thee a Glorious Personalized Name Tag for all to admire!

PLEASE RSVP HERE so that we know how many to expect. Thanks

I receive quite a few questions in my email inbox most of which I answer quickly back to the person that asked. Sometimes, I post that response here in my blog but not often enough. Adam Smith, a Realtor in White Rock commented in another post about my blog and what he likes about it. Here is what he had to say:

“I thought this was probably the most useful blog I have seen published in some time. Thank
you. I have already added the google analytics feature and signed up with activerain.com .
I look forward to more useful information like this to come. Adam.” - www.adamdsmith.ca

I emailed Adam back thanking him for his comments and asked if he had any specific questions. Well, as you can see, he did, and this post is about one of them. Adam emailed back asking “what is squidoo…?” and suggested an “Ask Ubertor” section might be a good way to communicate these types of questions.

So, here we go:

What is Squidoo.com?
Squidoo.com is an online software platform that allows you to create a simple blog type web page that focuses on a specific topic. It is a single page that you can dedicate to anything and setup is easy and free. The best part of having a Squidoo page (or lens as they call it) is that you can earn royalties from the traffic that the lens generates. If you choose to, you can forfeit your royalties to a charity of your choice. Squidoo claims that “Lenses have huge credibility with search engines, so your lens can help your other sites rise to the top of Google searches.” So far for us, it has brought some traffic, mostly from Yahoo, but we will see how it progresses. Its free to setup and very easy.

Squidoo.com is the creation of Seth Godin, a master marketer who has written many books, all of which are worth picking up as there is so much good information in them.

Related Sites:
Squidoo.com FAQ
About Squidoo.com from their site
Seth Godin’s Blog
Seth’s Books

I hope this helps…. if you have questions that you want answered, email me as I would be pleased to help.

UPDATE - - Seth Godin adds his thoughts in the comments