Buying a micro-site from your broker might seem like a good idea, but be careful - it’ll cost you MUCH more than you think.

A micro-site is a page on a larger office or franchise website that houses your photo and some basic details about your business. Micro-sites are available to you in several formats, but are always under the main URL of your office or franchise. For example, a micro-site might have the following address: www.office-website.com/your-name.html.

Some of the reasons your broker might sell you a micro-website include:

• when you promote “your” website, you’re actually promoting theirs
• they can up-sell advertising to you
• they make their money by leasing “website space” to you, and aren’t implicitly driven to make you more money

This strategy puts cash into your brokers pocket and provides you with virtually no benefit. In fact, the main damage is done by way of lost opportunity. Here are some of the reasons you shouldn’t use your broker website:

• you won’t have your own website to promote
• your micro-website will be FAR less productive
• your website will look like everyone else’s
• you’ll need to rely on your broker to drive traffic to your site
• you risk losing potential customers, as they will assume you don’t have a real website

Brokers that insist their agents purchase a website from them are short-sighted and don’t understand the long-term benefits of you operating your own independent website.

Just threw another $1000+ into the hit-and-miss world of print advertising? Here’s a print/web system that will turn your old news-print shotgun into a water-marked sniper rifle…

Whether you’re sending flyers or advertising in newspapers, a good website will allow you to easily track your return on investment from these mediums. Here’s how you do it:

Create a compelling campaign

Creating something compelling is the first step to any good campaign. Check this article for some ideas. For the purposes of this post we’ll assume you use the following two phrases on your print advertising:

• “Instant, graphical real estate statistics and trends about YOUR neighborhood”
• “Up-to-date Real Estate News you can’t live without”

Create pages on your website specific to each campaign

You’ll need to create a separate page for each campaign in order to be able to track traffic effectively. So - in our example we’ll use the following:

• “Instant, graphical real estate statistics and trends about YOUR neighborhood, go to: www.my-site.com/page-1.html“
• “Up-to-date Real Estate News your can’t live without, go to: www.my-site.com/page-2.html“

Integrate Google Analytics or another statistics tracker

Make sure your website is enabled to track statistics on a page-by-page basis. This will allow you to monitor how busy your campaign pages get.

Start the campaign, see what happens…

Now’s the exciting part - send out your flyers, activate the paper advertisement, and check your statistics tracker. After a week you’ll be able to see whether your campaign is working or not.

If it is, well done! You’ve found an effective way of making more money!

It it isn’t, well done! You’ve discovered an approach that isn’t working, and you’ll try something different the next time around.

Is your website only a small part of your business? Here are 4 quick steps our top producing customers have taken to turn their mom-and-pop websites into big-time moneymakers…

1. Automate Buyer Searching/Email Updates

With a full MLS-Search on your website, your buyers will be happier conducting their own searches, and you’ll save a ton of time. Automatic email updates eliminates the hassle of manually searching for your clients. Get ready to take on 10x the number of buyers with no increase in effort - that means 10x more buyer-side deals every year!

2. Promote Your Listings

Make sure your website automatically downloads and showcases your listings from your MLS, complete with all available photos, at least every hour. Further impressing your sellers is as easy as uploading additional photos, PDF files, and other information. It only takes 5-10 minutes per listing, but makes a major impression.

3. Keep in Constant Contact with Past, Present and Prospective Customers

With the right website, you’ll be able to keep in touch with your “sphere of influence” with virtually no effort. All you’ll need are the following:

• A website blog
• An email campaign system

Combine routine blog entries that offer useful information such as market updates and statistics with a regular and consistent email newsletter campaign, and you’ll vastly reduce the amount of time you spend communicating with customers, while increasing your conversions.

4. Automate Listing Presentations

A good website will allow you to offer your Listing Presentation online. Doing this will:

• Impress potential customers
• Reduce costs
• Promote your services more efficiently and consistently

Many of our top producing customers use these techniques to vastly increase their annual earnings, while saving a ton of time. If you’re new to the Internet real estate game, try implementing one of these steps every month - they’re easier than you think!

You get a new website, add your listings, open the doors and… no one comes in! What gives? Here are 3 reasons why websites can fail, and how you can fix them.

1. The website sucked.

Not all real estate websites are created equal. Here are some of the common reasons they can suck:

• The website hasn’t been updated in ages
• The website offers less than the public MLS website (Realtor.com/Realtor.ca)
• The website is badly designed (Flash menu, too many images, little content, etc.), eliminating your ability to rank well in search engines
• The website looks terrible (ill-formatted, bad colors, old, etc.)

Successful websites are well-designed, dynamic, often updated, and offer vast amounts of information to visitors that they can’t get anywhere else. Statistics, neighborhood trends, extra listing information, photos, market news are just some of the things you NEED to be offering through your website.

2. You chose the wrong channels to promote your website.

• Trendy doesn’t necessarily = money. Twittering away into oblivion isn’t going to immediately translate into leads - your time is best spent on things that are guaranteed to work.
• Print advertising is all but dead, and promoting your website in newspapers (unless they’re online) can easily be a complete waste of money.
• Bus benches are expensive and unless done consistently for years, are the worst bang for your buck.

Promoting your website takes time and diligence, but avoiding the wrong ways is easy and will save you time and money. Consider the following (make sure you’ve corrected step 1 before continuing):

• Blogging and email newsletters. Include a weekly blog entry (market stats, etc.) and email a newsletter to your sphere of influence every month giving blog headlines and directing them to your site.
• Flyering. Yes, believe it or not flyering (if done properly) still works like a charm! Just make sure to include something enticing on each flyer that answers your customers’ main question: WIIFM (what’s in it for me)?
• Search engine ranking. Your website CAN and SHOULD rank in search engines for phrases of your choice. Make sure your website provider understands how SEO works and ask them to give you some pointers.

3. The website looked like a scam.

If your website is riddled with words like, “No Obligation,” or, “FREE!!!,” then you’re scaring away good leads, and attracting unqualified people looking for something free.

A good website GIVES information without advertising that it’s, “Completely Free!!!,” all the time. As visitors use your site, you’ll earn their trust and they’ll be more compelled to give you their contact information.

This is a hard attitude to change, but once you try it you’ll never look back!

Having a website that makes you money requires that you approach it from the right angle. Make sure you avoid these 3 mistakes that so many Realtors® make.

What makes a Top Producer’s Virtual Office Website (VOW) special? Nothing! The secret lies in what they know and how they use it.

10 years ago things were very different; Realtors® controlled all listing data and gave out addresses only when interested customers phoned them. In some cases even pricing information was restricted. This probably meant handling hundreds of dead-end phone calls at all hours of the day and night, and having only one or two convert into deals.

Top Producers recognize that the VOW has changed all that. Today, a good VOW can instantly give the public access to everything from addresses to price and tax information to neighborhood amenities.

“That’s the problem - VOWs have replaced my job…”

Wrong. Top Producers know that a VOW is the single most powerful tool they use to automate their business processes.

1. Successsful Realtors® automate their businesses with VOWs

Imagine this:

Customer: “Can you search West Hillhurst for me?”
You: “Actually, you can do that through my website - and be notified when new properties hit the market.”

Customer: “Can you send me the details of that listing on 4th Ave NW?”
You: “Actually, you can access that through my website.”

Customer: “How is the condo market doing downtown right now?”
You: “Actually, you can find out market trending for every neighborhood on my website.”

How much more can you offer? How much time do you stand to save?

What about customer service:

Your current voice mail message: “I’m not available at the moment, but please leave a message and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
Your new voice mail message: “I’m not available at the moment, but if this is an inquiry about a listing, please see the details on my website at www.my-name.com.”

2. Well-designed VOWs allow you to offer more than anyone else

Not all VOWs are the same - many are outdated and offer little to potential customers. Make sure to ask your real estate website provider if your website provides:

• Real-time trending data
• Direct-on-map searching
• Simple VIP registration
• Neighborhood analysis

3. VOWs make you look established

Having a well-designed VOW will make any Realtor® look established - whether they’ve been doing business for 3 years or 30. In fact, VOWs are capable of generating business literally overnight for brand-new Realtors® who’ve just earned their licenses.

4. VOWs integrate into your business

From more effective flyering campaigns to customer updates to business automation, VOWs are pivotal to a successful Realtor’s® offering. Here’s a simple example of what I mean:

• Your website, flyers, business cards, feature sheets and all other promotional material has the same branding
• Your flyers advertise both that listing you just sold as well as a link to neighborhood statistics on your website for your prospecting area
• Your business cards and feature sheets advertise a least one advanced feature of your website: “Search ALL MLS® Listings,” “Trending for your neighborhood,” etc.
• You setup an email campaign on your website to send periodic feature advertisements to VIPs
• You direct all inquires from voice mail to your website
• You include your website as part of your listing presentation
• When you send updates to your sellers, you include a link to their listing on your website

Makes sense right?

These days a VOW is as important as a cell phone - being successful without it is almost impossible.