Over the past 3 years, we have built a business based on the concept of providing our clients with a solid platform in which they themselves could grow their online business from either the knowledge they learned from us through our consulting program or through other means like the various real estate fourms or real estate social networks currently online.

The ongoing challenge throughout this process has been finding a platform which was scalable (read search engine friendly CMS system) or a manual process which was cost effective enough to compete against every web designer and developer on the planet. This was a problem because to create a strong solid platform for agents to use to grow their business is not cheap. Our packages cost on average $5000 for a 20 page website.

The crux of the issue is that when the potential client is being told that it will cost that much to build from us and the guy down the street will do it for $1,000 what do you think the non educated agent will do…….build the cheap site or maybe buy a templated site thinking that they will upgrade in the future. They don’t realize the mistake they are making until it is too late. At the time of the decision however it makes sense when you think about it from the realtors point of view. 

However, If you are successful because of your track record or sales skills and sign on a client, conventional wisdom dictates that even an educated client wants instant results from the money they are investing. The reality is that isn’t going to happen from an organic point of view. 

So where is this leading. Well, I don’t know Morgan but know that people either like him of hate him.  What I can’t necessarily blame him for is trying to give clients instant results for the money they are paying him.  If I was a client, I would want results and from what I know, he charges far more then we do. As a result,  he needed to be agressive in his optimization strategy. I am not making a case for him, but am trying to understand what happened and how if may or may not affect our business moving forward.

We stopped doing any link pages over a year ago for two reasons.

• It did not make economic sense from a business perspective
• It created an undo risk for clients who spent the money.

By making this decision, it definately affected our ability to bring on new clients as we could not be as agressive in our belief to generate results for the clients, but it also soilidified our standing with our existing clients because it gave them the confidence that we would always operate in a manner which was in their best interests.

So how is this recent decision by Google going to affect our business. Well, as I have always said, until the consumer better understands the product they are purchasing and the search engines perfect their process, there will always be companies pushing the edge of the envelope. In the meantime, our job as a company is to continue to figure out a way to provide the best possible service at a competitive price.

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As a result, I thought I would outline some of the general economics and steps associated with maximizing your exposure on the internet. Once a business understands the fundamentals, it is much easier to know what are the best decisions given a companies current financial situation.

When a company is looking to establish a presence on the internet. The first and most important question they need to answer is “What is the purpose of the website”?

• Is it meant to be an online brochure?
• Is it meant to be an income generator?
• Is it meant to be a communication tool?
• Is it meant to be a tool to help facilitate your employees interaction with existing clients?

Most companies will say “I want our website to provide all these functions”. The reality is that answering yes to each one of these questions adds additional expense to your website. That is why a company needs to really answer these questions before they begin researching companies with whom they may want to work.

Is it meant to be an online brochure?

The cheapest solution is to have an online brochure which you put in your offline ads or business cards. If this is your primary need, there are a number of solutions which range from $500-$1,000 to set-up and about $50 per month to host. What is important to note here is that although these companies will claim to be able to generate you additional business, the reality is that without additional SEM, chances are that they will not.

Is it meant to be an income generator?

If you are looking to use the internet as an online brochure and an income generator, then you should budget between $3,000-$5,000 to build a custom website. The cost difference between an online brochure and an income generation website is that the basic structure of the website is fundamentally different and requires significant manual effort on a per website basis to prepare a website and give it the optimal chance to succeed in the search engines. In addition to the above amounts, if your website requires significant database programming or interactive tool integration, you can easily increase the oveall cost by $5,000-$10,000.

Is it meant to be a communication tool?

The communication aspect of a website adds another level of integration when building a website. The popularity of blogs has allowed many small companies to communicate to there clients via the web. The other main communication tool companies use to communicate with clients is newsletters but this tool is very different than your website. They may be integrated in the mind of the average user, they are in reality very different products. A company wanting to utilize drip email marketing campaigns or a traditional email newsletter should consider this as a separate marketing expense when budgeting for their online marketing costs.

Is it meant to be a tool to help facilitate your employees interaction with existing clients

If you are looking at the web primarily to facilitate improving current client relationships, most companies will recommend that you utilize a separate URL to integrate any software to choose to use. The primary reason is that most types of software like customer relationship software is developed fundamentally differently from a marketing website and including these activities on the same url can potentially hurt your online marketing efforts. Costs associated with this type of software can run anywhere from $500 to $50,000 or more.

Once a company answers these fundamental questions, they can then properly budget to meet their online marketing goals.

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To make this decision, you need to answer one primary question. That question is how much business do you expect to generate from your website? If you are not scared by technology, understand the basics of the internet and want to maximize your exposure on the internet, then a custom website is the direction you want to go.

If however, you are not comfortable with a computer….don’t think that by building a custom website, you will automatically make millions via your website. Building a custom website is just giving you the best chance to succeed on the internet.

For Example, if you were a Nascar driver, and wanted to win a race, you first have to buy a car. If you buy a car off the car lot, you would have to make a lot of upgrades to the car just to compete. You could also build a car designed just for racing. Choosing the second option gives you a better chance at success, but it does not guarentee you will win the race.

The same exists when deciding to build a custom website. A custom website designed and built by Site Tutor is designed to give you the best chance to succeed online. We design our websites based on what search engines want to find on a website. They want a unique design which is hand coded and SEO’d based on what the search engines recommend.

It is not rocket science, nor is there some secret bullet to success. All the information exists in the open market. The difference is that we have been building search engine friendly websites for over 3 years and are always changing our process. So if this all makes sense to you, then building a custom website is for you.

IF your not up to the task however, buying a templated website is the next best option. In addition, sometimes knowing your limitations will help you succeed in the long run. Before we take on a client, we try to educate our clients on what it will take to succeed online. Even when some clients say they understand that they can’t just buy success online and they need to actively be involved in the online marketing program, they don’t realize the commitment and as such are either disappointed or only partially successful.

For those who decide that a custom website is not for them, there are a number of good user friendly templated real estate website companies. The two companies I would recommend are Homes.com and ALaMode.com. Each one offers a solid overall product and depending on your needs, each one can offer different tools to enhance your business.

There are probably over 50-100 companies offering solutions to website owners, however if you are not going to be buying a custom website which is designed for the search engines, then going with one of the top players above is your best solution.

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• You can buy a never used domain from a domain reseller.
• You can buy via an auction.
• You can buy a recently expired domain, known as a deleted domain.

Each one of these ways offers potential benefits and risks.

The one with the least amount of risk is a never used domain. The problem with a new domain is finding a domain which is easy to remember, matches your offline marketing goals and has a .com extention. The greatest benefit of buying a domain which has never been used is that it does not have a sorid history in the eyes of the search engine. Some top domain registration companies are GoDaddy.com and NetworkSolutions.com
The next way of buying a domain is at a domain auction. These domains tend to be expensive as they are usually domains which are in desire. Some of the top domain auction websites are BuyDomains.com, sedo.com and tdnam.com

The third way is to buy a domain that is recently expired. These are hard to find as the popular ones get picked up very quickly. You can however track domains which are about to expire using a service like deleteddomains.com. This used to be a free service but now requires a membership fee to use all the features of the website. If you don’t need a domain today, this can be a way to get a good .com domain which someone used for years but for some reason is no longer using the domain. The negative aspects are that someone may have let it expire because the domain had been used for non conforming uses in the eyes of the search engines and that history will make it harder to rank in the search engines if that is one of your primary goals.

The second aspect in buying a domain from a real estate agent perspective is whether to buy your name as a domain name or a domain name which has your geographical location and a keyword in the domain. My recommendation to clients has always been the same.

If you plan to have other agents work under you in the future, don’t use your name because most agents won’t want to have an email that says bill@johndoe.com. They would rather have an email that says bill@sandiegohomes.com.

You can always register both your name and a keyword specific domain and have them both point to the same website. If you do this, just make sure you create a permanent 301 redirect on one domain so that the search engines don’t penalize you for having duplicate content on two websites.

As you can see, there are a number of ways to buy a domain, but what domain you buy is important. Think of it like raw land. You will be the only one to own this piece of real estate on the internet and if you manage it correctly, it will only increase over time and at some point may become a valuable asset which has resale value. Good Luck and if you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us.

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The main reason for this is lack of basic knowledge about how the internet works. All they know is that the real estate business is changing and the internet is going to play a crucial part in the future of real estate. So where should an agent start.

First, Ask yourself the following question:

• Do I want my website to generate business via the internet?
  • The answer should be yes, however, once you answer that question, the more important question is can I afford to invest $5,000-10,000 now and wait up to 12 months before I see a return on that investment?
  • Am I fluent enough on the computer to put in the necessary work online to market your website?
  • Can I allocate enough time to market my website online?

If the answer to these questions is NO, then you only need what I call a “brochure ware website” which I will speak about in a future blog post.

If the answer is yes, get ready for a wild ride. Internet Marketing is new and ever changing. The internet as a consumer vehicle is less than 10 years old. Even the smartest people whom work on the internet every day are still trying to figure out how the internet will be used in the future. What works today may not work tomorrow.

Because of the lack of knowledge among most business people, There are hundreds if not thousands companies marketing their products and services on the internet. Most are making promises they can’t keep. Some are just trying to manipulate your lack of knowledge. In general, just getting started can be overwhelming.

So before you commit to anything, understand that you are going to make mistakes, the partners you choose might make mistakes, there are going to be new products which might work better than old products and the world of online marketing will continue to change.

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