Posted in From common thievery to highway robbery, agents everywhere are being ripped off when it comes to their websites.
Ripoff
I’ve been in the REALTOR™ website business for the better part of a decade now and it still astounds every time I sign up a customer who’s been ripped off by his/her past web designer.
“Sam, is this going to be a sales pitch?”
No: you know me better than that. I’m writing this because last week a customer re-defined “ripoff” for me: He paid $40,000 to setup a REALTOR™ website… that still had additional monthly hosting charges, additional charges for editing meta tags, additional charges for content changes, and additional charges for extra pages… And a pitiful Google ranking after a 18 months!
Here are some things that make sense:
- Mass likely comes from particle motion through the Higgs field.
- Las Vegas isn’t part of a good retirement plan.
- Justin Bieber is a moron.
But paying $40,000 to setup a website that doesn’t do its job?
“Stay objective Sam…”
I’m calming down…
“Maybe there are situations where $40,000 spent on a website is a good deal?”
Maybe there are. Let’s look at some case studies.
Case studies
Here are three cases from REALTORS™ I know who make sizable investments in their websites:
| Case 1 | Case 2 | Case 3 | |
| Company | RealPageMaker | Competitor | Competitor |
| Setup | $0.00 | $40,000 | $80,000 |
| Hosting | $50.00/month | $50/month | $50/month |
| Additional Fees | ~$500.00/mo SEO | ~$500/month SEO | ~$500/month SEO |
| Age of Website | ~2 yrs | ~1.5 yrs | ~3 yrs |
| Targeted Local Key-phrase Searches | 49,500 | 55,000 | 60,500 |
| Search Engine Ranking | Excellent – #6 | Bad – Not in top 100 | Excellent – #7 |
SEO = Search Engine Optimization (usually offered by a search engine optimization company like LeadAgent)
Analysis
To state the obvious:
- Case 1 is getting the best deal at about $6600/year (hosting + SEO) with a #6 ranking for the key-phrase of his choice.
- Case 2 is getting seriously ripped off – my advice is to pack it up and start again
- Case 3 is interesting…
Case 3 represents a REALTOR™ who put a lot of money into his website and has accomplished his search engine ranking and traffic goals. It’s pretty hard to say this was a waste of money considering there are plenty of other ways to blow $80k without establishing a continuous lead flow.
“So is Case 3 a good deal?”
Maybe, but consider this: an upfront investment of $80k is a lot of risk when success isn’t guaranteed. In this case, and in retrospect it was a good investment, but while investing it must have been a nail-biter. If you’ve got good heart medication and a large inheritance, Case 3 is worth looking at.
How can I avoid getting ripped off?
Tough question. Here are some pointers:
- Do research – talk to customers of the website providers you’re considering and ask them the tough questions
- Make sure you understand EVERYTHING – computers are child’s play compared to selling houses, so don’t think it’s beyond you. A good web-developer will put concepts into terms you can understand, but it’ll be your responsibility to ensure you’ve understood everything.
- Ask questions – the more the better.
Similar Posts
Burnaby is right. Go online and learn about SEO. It really isn’t all that difficult, give yourself about 3-6 months if you regularly go online and read an article or two a week. Check out Google’s advertising programs like Ad Words also. And blog. Blog regularly – of course, learn about what makes a good blog. I don’t know if my blogs are that great yet but I’m working on it. I just know that it is the in a tie with my listings page for the most read page…and my visitors are increasing every month. And I still haven’t tapped half of what my RPM web site will do.