Some Observations From a Crappy Blogger Who Can Barely Spell SEO

by Jeff Brown

Real Estate Investments Broker

Author website

Though most of this post won’t necessarily be tech related, it’s probably wise for me to credibly establish by TechTard credentials. I’ll do it quickly by tellin’ a story on myself back when I was a beginning blogger. My marketing guys said, “Hey, this blogging thing looks to be real. You should do it, cuz you know stuff. Can you write?” And a blog was born. My first post was published, quickly followed by my first ever comment. It wasn’t really a comment though, as some of the text made my cursor turn into a hand. What the hell?! It was a trackback (ping?) from none other than Greg Swann at Bloodhound Blog. I literally was in a panic cuz I thought I’d been hacked. How did they get into my blog?! Betcha my marketing guys from back then are still laughin’ their asses off.

I know a bit more techie stuff these days, but not much more. So there you have it — I’m a legit, card-carryin’ TechTard.

OK — Let’s start with SEO, if only so we can leave it first. 🙂

I use key words in my posts mostly cuz I need to in order to make the damn thing readable, not for juice. Check out my page rank, then tell me, cuz I don’t have a clue what it is, nor do I give a damn. Most decent bloggers readin’ this draw traffic orders of magnitude more than I do. They also, most of ’em, get more comments on their average post than I do in 10.

Please tell me how much money real estate bloggers earn per comment, I’m curious. How much more do they earn with 10,000 readers a month compared to the guy who doesn’t average 1,000? 10 X more? Go ahead, make my day, say yes. 🙂 What a buncha hooey. Does SEO work to generate more ‘traffic’? No doubt. When driving, don’t we avoid traffic? 🙂 Those extra cars don’t get us to where we’re going any faster, do they? No — they’re just traffic muddling up our commute. They don’t care where we’re goin’ or how fast we get there. Next, we’ll hear from experts who deny they drive anything but ‘quality’ traffic your way.

Yeah, and Barry Bonds never juiced.

IMHO, real estate blogs are a success for one reason: The bloggers clearly know what they’re writing about. Regardless of how much of a crowd Barnes & Noble creates on a given Saturday in a given store, if most of what’s on their shelves is junk, they lose. Anyone wanna challenge that? 🙂 ‘Updates’? Those, for the most part, are used by agent sites sporting an IDX, duh. More traffic = more users searching for homes = more convertible leads. Again, not exactly E=mc², right? SEO is often, not always, a con used by tech types who know that most folks simply don’t understand what leads to, well, business.

A Blog’s Value

How much are our blogs worth? I dunno. But, there are all kinds of ‘experts’ who’ll tell us. Let’s use an investment technique — capitalization of the net operating income. What’s the ‘expense’ of blogging? Our time, a small monthly payment or two? A double digit ‘cap rate’ is much admired by the real estate investment community. Let’s use a 15% cap rate.

If a blogger averaged roughly $300,000 a year from their blogging efforts the last several years, does that make the blog worth $2,000,000? It sure as hell should. If you hax $2Million to invest in a great, safe, neighborhood, and would get $300,000 annually, wouldn’t you seriously consider buyin’ it? Oh hell yes.

Put that ad on Craig’s list if ya wanna hear some hilarious one-line putdowns. I only include blog valuation here, as the amounts paid for blogs have been pennies, relatively speaking. Millions my ass.

Agent websites with IDX searches…

Show of hands — How many reading this post have IDXs that produce a sale a month consistently, month in and month out. Don’t be shy.

Do they work? Here’s an example of the golden side of the coin.

The leader of my ‘team’ in a state in which I’ve done much business, just went out on his own this year. He’s kickin’ ass and takin’ names. He already has a dozen agents. He has an IDX on his website. He knows how to use it. His conversion rate in terms of dollars is astounding to me. Even with all the time-suck he’s had to deal with in this start-up, he’s managed to put $ix figures of income into escrow in the first month or so — himself — all via his IDX.

Here’s the majority side of the coin.

Grab a thousand agent websites at random, all over the country. Ask them how much biz their IDX has provided them in the last 24 months. It’s my guesstimate 95% of them will say less than six, which is less than one a quarter. And that’s assuming they’re tellin’ us the truth. Agents don’t lie about their production, do they?

(Cue the commenters generating wicked high volume from their IDX sites.)

Save your breath, as I know most of you are for real. But you’re 5% of the crowd — at best, IMHO. The rest are suckin’ the big green weenie.

I bring up IDXs for a completely selfish reason. (Hat tip: Greg on the selfish angle.) 🙂 For the first time since the last quarter of 2003, I’m now able to look for business in my own backyard. You can’t begin to appreciate what that means to me, as few if any of you have been doing literally 100% of your real estate brokerage business outside of your local market. People think I make a lotta money, and I do. But let’s be seriously, nakedly honest here — for every dollar I’ve made around the country the last seven years, I’ve lost 2-5 bucks not being able to work here in San Diego.

I’ve now added an IDX to my firm’s site, as prices have made it possible to at least list small income properties for sale/exchange. I still won’t sell SD props to investors, as I value my nightly eight hours and have a conscience. I will, however, put first time buyers into low priced stuff, including local 2-4 unit properties if they can’t afford/qualify to invest outa town. And no, it won’t be me drivin’ folks around town, but I’ve got that covered. 🙂

Soon, that site will not only have blog posts added to it, but will attract investors wanting to list their income properties with my firm. There might (must be?) a real estate website/blog/IDX that consistently produces listings, but I’ve not seen it. What I mean by that, is a site where the primary function is to generate listings — not buyers. According to the experts with whom I’ve broached this subject, that’s been a pretty hard nut for them to crack.

I’m gonna do my best.

OldSchool VS 2.76949 — or whatever we’re up to now…

Don’t know about you, but I’m sick to death of the forever ‘just around the corner’ online revolution in real estate brokerage. None who espouse that line sport blue eyes, cuz they’re so fulla crap they’ve turned brown — IMHO. 🙂

Stop typing your inane comment about dinosaurs, puttin’ words in my mouth I never said. I believe online sales/marketing works, and for some, wildly well. But I tire of the crickets’ chorus inevitably following my challenge to the tech crowd to show me a large firm of say, 40 agents or more, with more than one agent in the top 10 producers who generate 100% of the business through their online efforts — sans referrals. The OldSchoolers are still crushin’ ’em all over the country. (Lord, is it selfish of me to love writing that sentence, over and over?)

And yes, I believe there’ll come a day when we’ll look around and see most of our business coming from online efforts. That day hasn’t come, and it doesn’t appear to be on the horizon. Toward that end, I’m tickled pink at the prospect of doing local business again. Why? Primarily cuz my projections show a high probability of at least doubling annual income, and a reasonable likelihood of quintupling it. In other words, I’m gonna be my own guinea pig, as much of my local business (not nearly all) will come from OldSchool techniques. Hell, I even ordered letterhead and cards. 🙂

By the way, being a consistent sort, I called ‘The Guy’ to run my blog and company website. I could study what he does for a year and not know what he’s forgotten. He’s already given me a couple ideas I wouldn’t have dreamed of myself. Yeah, I know, big surprise. At year’s end, sooner if circumstances permit, I’ll be sharing my experience both in returning to San Diego and the success — or not — of my approach to business generation.

Would love to hear your thoughts, advice, correction, or admonishment on any of the above. Have a good one.