Website design and hosting

I don't know if I'm in the right forum but perhaps some kind soul can direct me. I'm only 2 years into my real estate career. I started late in life and now wish I'd started decades earlier as I love this business. I'm a long time resident of a lovely town in northern New Jersey and I've been attempting all this time to break into the market here. But it's well represented by several excellent agents with long successful careers. I send out postcards 6 times a year, I even tried an eNeighborhoods site but found that it takes enormous time and money to promote the site to any effect so I cancelled it. I purchased a .info site from GoDaddy that reads townnamehomes.info. What I would really like to do is build a website with that URL and have it managed and hosted such that it becomes the most important site for the town's residents. In addition I would purchase about 30 other sites with 30 other town names in the same county. Then I want to ensure that all and any key words relating to these towns, the county and the state get funelled to the same site, via search engines, where viewers can find links to all the other sites (police dept. bourough, ambulance corp., fire dept.education dept, etc) relating to all of these towns plus of course links to all the major search engines, social sites etc etc. etc. Where do  begin with his? Who should I talk to? or am I nuts? Any and all advice gratefully received. Andrian Curshen 

 

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Andy, I would recommend that you contact a friend of mine named Paula Henry. www.paulahenry.com I am new to the technology arena and have been given some gracious insight from Paula. You might just copy and paste your post and email it to her. Feel free to let her know that I said she might offer you some time and advice. Best, Chris Castetter

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I just transfered from a private Web developer and Host to godaddy.com.  I get faster service and more knowledge for my web needs.  Cost was significantly less expensive with godaddy.com as well.  I too am not well versed in this field but found them very useful.

Best, Brandon Hunt, Boise, ID

www.YourIdahoInvestment.com

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I work for a small real estate firm in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. We have our company website through a company called iHouse. They provide a template specifically designed for real estate companies and I upload all of our information to it. While it is a template and I have to stay within what's already there, it's pretty flexible with what you can provide. There are pages provided to list community info, so that format might work for you as well. If you'd like to see our site as an example, the address is www.realty100inc.com.

 

Good luck!

Wendie Aurin, Realty 100, Inc. Oak Ridge, TN 37830

WendieAurin@Realty100inc.com

 

 

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Andy,

I would recommended  talking to a web development company and propose to them your ideas. What your describing sounds like a social community website for which there are several pre-built options  to go with, however your going to need a web programmer to get it up and running.  When speaking with a developer what you  want to avoid  is someone who is willing to develop a product from scratch. Undoubtedly your website will be a unique and creative endeavour, however the technology behind the website will be not be.  

 

On the business side of things, I'd recommend to focus on one or two websites and then branch out to other domain names. Having a handful of successful sites is going to be better than having dozens of mediocre ones.

 

 

 

 

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I use GoDaddy.com for my domain names and GoDaddy.com's Traffic Blazer to send traffic to my domains names. Then, I forward my domain names to my websites. This way if I change websites, I still have the high traffic I built up to my domain names. That way, I can re-point my domain names to my new websites. http://SeaFlorida4me.com is pointed to my Florida REALTOR site.  http://RuthSMontgomery.com is pointed to my Top Producer website. I will be pointing http://SeaFloridaRealEstate.com to my Point2NLS website which I am turning Pro. Right now, it is parked which is not good. I should have pointed it at something rather than just parking. Some people direct it to their company website until they get their own website, but why not get a Point2NLS website for free for six months. I have several other domain names just parked. Not Good, but at least I have them! When I am through with my e-Pro, I will fix that, plus start to use my permanent e-mail. I have learned so much that I need to do.
This is the first time I am writing here. I hope I am doing this right. Where do I click to include my signature? I made two. I can't get spell check to work.  What am I doing wrong? Since, I can not find my signature to add, I am typing a new one. Sorry if two show up.
Ruth S. Montgomery, Florida Space Coast REALTOR
Need Space On Florida's Space Coast (Brevard County)?
Cape Canaveral Realty, Inc.  Cell Phone: 321-693-5073
SeaFlorida4me@yahoo.com  http://RuthSMontgomery.com

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I would like to add my $.02 worth...

I recently completed my website working with www.agentimage.com  They were easy to work with and as quick as I could get them the documents.  I still have some work to do on the inner pages, but it's very nice.

Please check it out when you can.

www.SiskiyouHomes.com

This was a semi-custom site from them...it wasn't cheap but I really wanted to make a statement and produce the best site I could within my budget.

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Thanks for the info on Ihouse

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Thanks for the suggestions.  I just setup a new website with Point2 and the good part is it gives you 6 months free to try it out and move on if you if need more stuff added to the website.  The good part is Point 2 is linked to this website and it gives you all the information that you need.  But I am learning what is out there if Point 2 is not what I amlooking for. 

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I am a new real estate agent and therefore I may not be qualified to send advice. 

Check into the ePro course at  http://www.eProNAR.com. I just started the course and find it most helpful.  By the end of the year I will be an expert.    

I also purchased advertising from Realtor.Com, so after I complete my ePro and my website is communicating with my PC, phones & emails (home, cell, car via Bluetooth), fax, etc., I will be all connected and ready for some serious business.  Caveat: I should have waited until after I finished by ePro before purchasing anything to do with advertising.  Realtor.Com is the only advertising I have purchased.  I need to analyze the audience I want to capture, especially in this market, before I invest any more money. 

Annette from Simi Valley, California.

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Andy,

    I have been in real estate for 8 years here in Palm Beach County. My first website was a private company out of NJ recommended by Coldwell Banker.  They (the web company, I can't remember their name) designed and hosted. It costed me about $2000. I was never happy with the site and let it go after a year.  My next attempt was Register.com. They used templates that were not real estate friendly but you don't discover that until AFTER you pay for the service. So that one was let go after a year.

    This year I have signed up with IHouse, recommended by our MLS and I am pretty satisfied with it.  You build the site but get anytime help from them.  And of course, it is a real estate site.

   My guess is that the key words are what drive people to your site,  and the lead tag line is the grabber.  At any rate, that is where I am placing my focus. I would love to hear from anyone with ideas for this. Thanks

   

 

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It seems like you have identified two things which you want/need to do:

1. build a website and

2. drive traffic to your website

 

building is definitely the easier of the two. As lots of other agents have already mentioned, there are lots of companies that offer prefab websites that are basically template driven. Some do in fact have community information built in (when the user types in their zip code). I'm not going to comment too much on this part of your task - there are too many variables that only you can answer. If it was me and money was no object then I'd go with a custom designed site since the template ones really look and feel just like that - boring and unimpressive. However, they are cheaper, you get up and running much faster, and they pretty much run themselves.

Driving traffic is something else altogether. No one person can buy all the search terms and have them point to their site. You can certainly spend money at Google, etc to have your website come up higher in the search results when people use your search terms, but this is only half (or less) of the battle. Google these days pays more attention to the existing popularity of the site. This means that you have to figure out ways to get your site linked to from lots of other places on the web. There are books, seminars, classes, magazine articles and professionals you can hire that do nothing but talk about how to increase your website's popularity both with the general public and with the search engines.

For example, I attended a one day seminar at the local Realtors association (NVAR) office. At the seminar, a successful local realtor told us many of the tricks that she uses to get her website at the top of the search engines for the particular sub division that she services. I've started to implement them at my site (www.stearnssellshomes.com) (wink wink) and already am seeing traffic grow. It's nothing that is going to happen overnight and it does take real work.

But basically, what you are talking about it your post is very doable. Lots and lots of people are trying to do it right now. Hopefully for you, they aren't trying very hard in your area!!

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Hi Andrian:

I have been in the business a long time. I am just about to finish up with e-PRO and came upon you and my first place to post. While I am not savy enough to specifically answer your question, I do have a comment. What ever you can mine from cyberspace is a good thing but better than that is talking on the phone and better than that is talking in person.  The best thing you can do is to sit open houses in your area (you need to be knowledgable in the area) and call people in the hood and discuss what is going on with local real estate.

Best,

Jonathan Seltzer

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Andrian:

I have used Go Daddy and have been pleased with the service.

It seems that what you are first trying to do is figure out how to compete with the well established agents in your area.

Maybe you should start by examining any unique life experiences you have and see if there may be some transferable skills that may be applicable to your real estate business.

As an example, you may have been a bookeeper or accountant in your previous life, you then might want to consider becoming a investment real estate expert in your area. Specializing in small investment properties.

This is just an example, you of course, will be the best to decide what, if any, transferable skills you bring to the real estate table.

Good Luck,

Gary from Sacramento

 

 

 

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I have been very pleased with Point2Agent.  I am new at all this and about to do my final test for the ePro designation.

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