Kuni is at it again. The CSS design masters at KuniDesign.com have rolled out another great skin on an Ubertor website. Check out kitscondos.ca. It is an example of what a CSS designer can do to your Ubertor website to provide you with a unique, custom look to your Ubertor functionality.
Check out their site. If your looking for some fresh looks for your Ubertor site, check out Kuni or some of our Approved Vendors.
Dara from Realty Support wrote an interesting post about her thoughts on Ubertor and our SEO friendliness. Here is a snippet of what she said…
“I know it sounds like a bit of a sales pitch, but realistically, Ubertor simply does have the best platform on many levels, which is why I choose to work and recommend their product.”
Take a peek at her whole post as she goes into some details about what she likes about some unique features of our system. Thanks Dara!
Marketing guru, Seth Godin wrote a great post today in his blog about the real estate market and Realtors specifically. Here are a few snippets:
“Plan A: You should quit selling real estate.”
“Some of you will stick with the standard business card with the standard photo, the standard office and the standard ad strategy and the standard approach to making the phone ring. It’s going to be a long haul if that’s your route.”
“The ones that are left, that’s you, can consider Plan B:
If you’re not going to be able to make a living by taking orders, by selling houses the way everyone else does, by using the never-ending rise in real estate prices to make sales, then what are you going to do? Whining is not an option.
In fact, I think this is an extraordinary opportunity for you.”“The first is to become the expert in what you do….”
Check out the rest of Seth’s post about marketing real estate. It is an interesting take on the market and it has NOTHING to do with the listing. It is all about becoming an expert in your field.
or maybe it is better to say a VOW does not bring you good leads!
Every once in a while a client or potential client will ask me why we do not promote VOW technology. (VOW = Virtual Office Website). Many of our competitors push VOW technology as a way to garner leads from their website but I think that it is not an effective lead generator.
Lots of people have hotmail or yahoo email accounts that they use just to get into protected sites. Or there are free services like this one that provide “disposable email” - http://email.bugmenot.com/
A Realtors value is NOT the data, but the interpretation and analysis of the data.
Here is an example of what I’m talking about. Shaun Kimmins, a Vancouver Realtor, had his website with another website provider that promotes the VOW as a way to gain leads. Read Shaun’s email below about his experience with the VOW and the reasons why he moved his web presence over to Ubertor:
To Steve Jagger and Ubertor,
I just wanted to drop you a quick note to say thank you for your service during the recent creation and customization of my new website and to comment on the outstanding product you have created.
For the past 2 years my website resided at a host that features the VOW technology but two factors influenced my decision to move my site to Ubertor. Firstly, the day-to-day workload of maintaining the VOW site simply outweighed the benefits that I had hoped the service would produce and in real estate, time is a scarce and valuable resource. I was initially sold on the idea of VOW’s given their lead generation potential but the reality is that in 2 years I didn’t gain any clients as a direct result of the VOW capability. The other major factor in my decision to switch to Ubertor was that the VOW site was visually complicated, difficult to navigate and would not allow for the level of brand-customization that I wanted in my site.
The astounding level of allowable customization in your system provides for the type of complete brand individuality and implementation that we as realtors value so much. The simple, intuitive functionality of my site’s administrative interface is a pleasure to work with almost immediately after going live with the new site, I received an email from a client commenting on how easy my site was to navigate and how much they liked the visuals. It’s clear that you have done a lot of listening to what realtors want from a website and simply put, I now have the website I have wanted ever since starting in real estate. Thanks and keep up the good work!
Shaun Kimmins
Remax Real Estate Services
We at Ubertor are passionate about our clients success. This is why we do not lock our clients into a Term Agreement but rather choose to earn our clients business, month by month.
We are also seriously passionate about Search Engine Marketing.
My business partner and I travel about 42 days a year all around the world to meet with the industry’s top minds and refine our software. This costs our company hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our clients get exactly what they need from us; as we purpose the hordes of valuable information for them.
I think this is proven by the fact that no other sites rank as effectively out of the gate as an Ubertor Site.
Plus we are also passionate about educating the market:
- blog.ubertor.com is a top Real Estate SEO and SEM blog on the internet
- http://realestateagent.meetup.com/109/ is the largest Real Estate Meetup on the Planet
We do what we preach. We educate to earn clients. All I’m suggesting is that you can do the same. People will always find a way around a VOW. But if you educate them, show your expertise, they will want to contact you.
Some examples of what I referring to:
1. Write a blog about your experience as a landlord. Become the go to site for landlord issues, how to increase rent, how to deal with a bad renter, etc. Keep adding to your blog so that your visitors learn from you and come to trust your opinion.
2. Start a meetup for first time home buyers. Work to educate them on the process of buying a home. What to look for, etc. Bring in mortgage brokers, financial planners, etc to the meetup to speak on their area of expertise. Make yourself known as the helpful agent for newbies.
3. Focus on a specific nieche. Become known as the Realtor for penthouses, or the Realtor that knows everything about float homes.
Feel free to contact us about our system, customization abilities or any other questions that you have.
We are here to help you take full advantage of the internet in your real estate business.
The power of video is awesome. TechCrunch.com, the hugely popular tech blog wrote a post the other day asking for 60 second (video) elevator pitches without using product demos or screenshots. The post was taken off of TechCrunch quite quickly but I emailed in the quick video that I made anyways.
Duncan Riley, the author of the post and the one who suggested people send in videos decided to write a different post about startups using video to promote themselves, and I’m assuming because I got my video into him so quickly he included me. (actually, no idea how he picked, but I’m quite happy that mine was included)
TechCrunch.com has 6 to 8 million visitors per month to their website so this exposure is outstanding. Thanks to Duncan for including me.
Here is the video I submitted:
The beauty about it being video is that it is my message. Not a reworded version or a polished version, it is my words, my version which can’t be adjusted. The really great thing about the use of video to promote your product or service, especially in the Web 2.0 world, is that it is very viral. That post on TechCrunch.com has triggered other bloggers, especially the ones in the real estate community to post on their blogs about Ubertor being written about on TechCrunch, which in turn exposes us to their readers.
Here are a couple of examples:
- Uber-Real Estate Blogger Dustin Luther kindly mentioned and embedded the video in his blog
- TechVibes, Canada’s version of TechCrunch also mentioned and embedded the video in their blog
This video took me a couple of takes and then was loaded onto YouTube. Maybe all in all it took me 1 hour. The exposure is massive and the costs is minimal.
Is there something like this that you could do to promote your real estate business?
(Testing Google Ads Below)
Customize your Ubertor website with Kuni and his CSS skills
Vancouver Realtor Ian Watt talks about his experience with Ubertor
Julie Miller from West Vancouver talks about her Ubertor websites
Dara Sklar from RealtySupport.ca talks about her thoughts on Ubertor
You can signup for an Ubertor website anytime at http://order.ubertor.com. You will get your first 30 days free so that you can play with the features available. If you have any questions just click on the live help button and our client service team will be pleased to assist you.
The Ubertor Realtor website software is always a work in progress. We take great pride in making the system better every day. As many of you know the Ubertor system has some really great search engine optimization (SEO) features that are built right into every website. From the basic structure of the websites to the automated SEO features our software can help you be found under the terms that you are striving for.
Above and beyond the basics, the Ubertor software has what we call the “SEO Enhancement” which is a feature set that has a one time fee attached to it and unlocks some really powerful tools.
Features for Static pages
- Edit page titles
- Edit meta keywords
- Edit meta descriptions
- Edit sitemap descriptionBlog Post features
- create custom page titlesProperties pages
- custom page title dynamically generated using additional features green box, address, and neighbourhood field
- H tags created using the address, price and neighbourhood fieldsMarketing Tab
- Create unlimited # of landing pages (built specifically for agents using pay per click marketing)
- edit the robot.txt file
Now, our advanced users have no problem with these features and they take full advantage of them. On the other hand, there are some real estate agents that want to learn more about the search engines. While they have a general idea, there are still questions about some of these features.
Well, Ubertor’s Approved Vendor, Reachd.com has come up with a 3 hour training bootcamp like no other. The bootcamp will be held on January 24th, 2008 from 9am - 12pm on the 4th Floor of YWCA in downtown Vancouver.
It is limited to 20 agents and there are only 18 17 spots left. The cost is $100.00. The bootcamp will run through all of the SEO Enhancement features so that you can follow the “best practices” when managing your website.
Check out the complete details over at Reachd. You must register online and the spots will go fast.
Check out their details page as it gives you more information as well as some great benefits and bonuses involved for attendees. Any questions about their event please contact Reachd.com directly.
I was emailed this morning by a potential client who has been following our Realtor Website Software. He saw the post giving some examples of Non Realtor websites but wanted to see some examples of Realtor Websites running on our system. Here are a few examples from around North America:
United States:
San Diego Real Estate
Augusta Real Estate
San Francisco Real Estate
Charlottesville Virginia Real Estate
Seattle Real Estate
San Francisco Real Estate
New York Real Estate
Waxhaw, NC Real Estate
Virginia Beach Real Estate
Phoenix Real Estate
Scottsdale Real Estate
Fort Walton Beach Real Estate
Canada:
Vancouver Real Estate
Calgary Real Estate
Victoria Real Estate
Toronto Real Estate
Montreal Real Estate
Edmonton Real Estate
Halifax Real Estate
Hatchet Lake Real Estate
Interested in your own website? Click on Ubertor.com to signup for a website. It takes about 5 minutes to have a fully functional website.
John Lowe from GetCConsulting, an Ubertor Approved Vendor emailed me with a mirror of his companies website. John runs his main website here - http://www.getcconsulting.com but has replicated its look and feel on the Ubertor platform here - http://www.getc.myubertor.com
Check out both sites to see how he ported over the look and feel to the Ubertor system.
This is another example of how a CSS designer can manipulate the Ubertor system to have almost any look and feel. So, if your looking to move from a templated website to a custom design, the Ubertor software is the perfect answer.
