Ever since the inception of the web, there have been many opportunities to participate in activities that are a waste of time. I first wrote about this long before there was such a thing as blogs – but the issues were the same. Back in September 1999 I wrote an article titled “Get off the computer and back to work!” in my newsletter that was subscribed to by thousands of Realtors at the time – the forerunner of this blog.

Spending your time maintaining a real estate blog at one of the many blog communities may just be a colossal waste of time. Yes, I know that statement is politically incorrect but I did not say blogging was necessarily a waste of time – just the reasons most agents give for frequently writing blog posts at blogging communities may no longer be valid.

If you check, you will find that I have been writing this blog since 2004 – so I am not anti-blogging!

If you are spending your time blogging at real estate blog communities because you enjoy the socialization – rock on! However, Realtors often give other reasons for their time there and those reasons need to be looked at a bit more closely.

One of the main reasons given for maintaining blogs at blogging communities is for the “link juice” – one can always find ways of getting links back to your main website within your posts.

Recently however Google has lumped blog posts at blogging communities in the same category as link exchange directories and article sites, and has awarded them all the “grey bar” on the Google Toolbar. This greyed out Page Rank indicator is used by Google to show that no Page Rank has been awarded to the page being viewed.

It seems that Google has abandoned their campaign to have us all use “no follow” to render links valueless and has instead decided to make the pages themselves valueless – making the links on the pages of little or no value whether they use “no follow” or not. Blogs maintained independent of blogging communities often fare better – the posts in blogs on your own website for example are more likely to have Page Rank .

If you are maintaining a blog at a real estate blogging community for link juice purposes – there would be better ways to spend your time.

Another reason often given for blogging is because blog posts often show up in Google quickly for what is called “long tail” search terms. – i.e. search terms that are rather obscure and seldom searched for. That may not really be a valid reason for spending time in blogging communities either as such terms are generally only searched for once in a blue moon and each term usually would bring just one or two visitors a month. Those one or two visitors could be directed to your site using pay-per-click for mere pennies instead.

If you spend a half an hour writing a blog post that will generate the same traffic to your site as a few pennies will – I would argue that your time is better spent elsewhere.

Another reason given for frequenting blogging communities is the opportunity to network with other agents and perhaps pick up a buyer or seller referral. I was an active participant in one of the first networks of Realtors on the internet a decade ago ( the E-Team Referral Network) and I did receive a referral or two in the process. In order for this to happen though I had to spend a hour a day at least working on the network and participating in the community.

When you take all this time into account – I probably would have been better off and made more money just spending that time marketing the old fashioned way – calling past clients for example. It seems that the other members came to the same conclusion as the network did eventually die.

Within the real estate bloging communities only a miniscule number of agents in a very few select cities will ever have clients moving to your area. You would be better of spending the time zeroing in on the cities that produce the most newcomers to your area and “farming” a large number of agents that work those cities.

With the spring market approaching it may be a good time to evaluate your use of time. The reasons why you spend time in real estate blogging communities should be one of the things considered during this process.

It seems that the barriers to entering the web hosting business have lowered to the point where almost anyone can now set up shop as a web hosting company and present the appearance of a large, stable, and experienced web host – even though they may have entered the business only a few months ago and be flying by the seat of their pants.

Competition has increased and as a result and the cost of acquiring web space has dropped dramatically in the past few months while the amount of space and bandwidth included has increased just as dramatically. This has made some long-time web hosts unprofitable and takeovers are common. A reduction in support services has also been noticed as cost-cutting programs reflect the new pricing structures.

In the past few weeks one hosting company I had recently signed up with basically closed up shop – websites stopped working and the company became unresponsive. Their support ticket system forms went nowhere, their online help was not online, and their telephone went to an answering machine (calls were not returned). Most hosting companies offer a discount if you pay for the year rather than pay month to month. I lost a years worth of hosting fees because I pre-paid for the year up front.

At the same time as this was happening, another hosting company also became unresponsive – their support ticket system stopped working and emails were not answered. Oh, no! Not again! I had paid them for a year in advance as well. After 10 days or so, a phone number appeared on their site which led to an answering machine and to my surprise I did receive a response to the message I left. It seems that spammers had forced them to shut down their email and support ticket system.

Also at the same time as I was having problems with these two hosts, problems developed with another host that I had also paid a year in advance. This particular host was chosen specifically because the the large amount of webspace and bandwidth offered with the account. Within a month I began to to run into problems with the host turning off my services even though I was using just 10% of the web space and bandwidth I was entitled to. It seems that the host oversold the server so every time the server was overworked they chose the busiest website to shut down to relieve the pressure. Since I had the highest traffic, my site used the most server processes and ram and I would be shut down on that basis.

A couple of points to consider from my experiences these past few weeks – first, paying for a year instead of monthly to save a few bucks may not be a bargain after all. Second – the amount of webspace and bandwidth offered is really meaningless unless you plan on filling up the space and plan on having little traffic coming to your site.

How do you tell a good host from bad? It is pretty hard nowadays as some hosts that used to be good and have been around for many years are now feeling the pressure of competition and their services have deteriorated or may be doing so soon. You can however increase the odds that the host you choose will be good by checking for a few things…

1) How long has the host been in business? Check the Wayback Machine at Archive.org

2)Is there a phone number on the site in addition to email and a Support Ticket System?

3)Do they have Community Forums? That is a big one for me as it is evidence that the host is open about their business and is willing to communicate with their customers. You can check the forums to research how long they have been in operation and how responsive they are to complaints. Most Hosts with forums use the forums to post server announcements as well so if you are having a problem you can quickly check whether it is a server problem or just you.

If a host checks out well on the above three points, they usually check out well on all of other items that may be important such as the quality of their servers, frequency of backups, etc.

You may notice that I did not mention price as an important thing to look for – it isn’t really. You can pay too much of course – but you can also pay too little. By trying to save too much you usually end up with more trouble than you can bear. Be willing to pay a competitive price.

Paying monthly gives you the peace of mind that you can make a change at any time if the service is not good – on paper it may cost a bit more but it increase your flexibility.

When Realtors do express concern over linking out from their site, here is my usual response…

Concerns about people clicking on links and leaving your site never to return are really groundless. It is a myth that has been circulated over the years by “gurus” who base their pontifications on their speculation and not their experience and by template site companies trying to sell their framed environment as a benefit.

Here is what really happens… people do not arrive at your website due to random surfing – they arrive because they search for specific word combinations in search engines and your site ranks for those words. Although people will use and find a Realtor’s site for well over a hundred word combinations they all have something in common – almost all are looking specifically for listing information.

When they arrive at your site they head directly for your Home Search Form and your MLS Listings page – with laser precision. I am sorry to say but the rest of your site (especially information about you) is ignored for the time being so there really is no danger of losing prospects to another site. How do I know this? From over a decade of studying log files and the patterns they reveal.

The other pages and links on your site are not useless though. Aside from being important in search engines they do prove beneficial to your clients – after they become your client that is (when there is little danger of your losing them).

After a prospect has visited your Home Search Form and submitted it they usually leave your site to continue their quest for homes. Your receive the form and respond and begin a relationship with the prospect. At that point the prospect (especially out of town prospects) returns to your website and starts to go thru the rest of your content and really do appreciate it at that point.

The links to informative resources outside of your site are important to your clients – and there is no danger in losing a client because of them. In fact, they help to cement the relationship because your website becomes an important resource for them. You will find that people will time after time tell you exactly that when they are sitting in your car while you are showing them homes

Links leaving your site are also important to search engines when they are trying to figure out how to rank your site. If you link out to other real estate sites – especially those that are recognized by search engines as authority sites – and local information sources, it is a good thing and does help your ranking. Who you link to is as important as who links to you.

If you link to off topic sites (gambling and Viagra sites and the like) you will never rank well. It is a rare site indeed that will rank well in a competitive market with no links to other relevant resources leaving their site.

So if your site is properly designed to attract clients looking for real estate in your market area – pay no attention to those fears that that links leaving your site are just avenues for your visitors to escape. Those links are really an important component of your site’s success.

The best part is that stopping all of that spam costs nothing – it is absolutely free!

How do I stop all the spam from reaching me? I use Gmail, Google’s free email service, which has excellent built-in spam filtering and I add my own filters to block even more.

All of my email accounts actually forward to my Gmail account which filters the email. So, I really only have one email account as all of the rest simply forward email to it. I use Gmail as webmail so it is accessible from any computer but I also have my email client (Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.) download copies of the email just as you would with a normal email account.

When doing this, all of the spam is left behind and only the good email ends up on my computer. As an extra bonus, the end result is my email is backed up in two places – on the web in the Gmail account and on my computer in my email program – and I see next to no spam.

Email sent through Gmail on the web is also downloaded on to your own computer when you check with your email program so you have duplicated copies of sent email as well.

With Gmail I get no spam, email accessible from any computer, backup copies of all my incoming and outgoing email, and it is all free.

You gotta like that!

A blog is really just a web page you can post content to even if you do not have any web development skills.

A Realtor can use a blog to post listings, real estate news, interest rates, and it can be branded and publicized to reflect a local real estate market to attract regular visitors. A blogger just needs to find something good to write about everyday, but can be short.

Blogs are easy to set up and there are tons of good free blogging software out there, like blogger.com which hosts this blog.

Now there is a brand new search-engine-friendly directory that lists real estate blogs and also blogs of industries affiliated with and servicing the real estate industry. The directory is brand new – in fact this blog is the first one to be listed. You can find it at http://www.real-estate-blogs.com.

If you design your website (especially if you use a Microsoft product to do so) and never check to see how it displays in some of the more popular non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox and Netscape you may be interested to know that your website may look horrible to 30% of your website visitors. In some cases it looks so bad that visitors will leave immediately.

It is probably not a good idea to be turning off a rapidly increasing number of website visitors!

If you only check your site in one other browser -I would suggest you do so in Firefox which is available for free at http://www.mozilla.org/. Firefox and Netscape display pretty much the same as far as I can tell and those two browser’s make up the lion’s share of MSIE’s competition.

The lengthy drive was quiet and peaceful – because “modern times” allowed my son to watch DVDs on my laptop the whole way (with head phones on as a bonus for dad!). Once we arrived at our destination, we found that there was still a couple of feet of wet snow in the bush so had to put on snowshoes and make the trek through the bush on a trail we shared with deer carrying our gear with backpacks and hands full. It took two trips to pack all our gear in – You would be amazed at how heavy a notebook computer becomes when carrying it through two feet of snow!

The cabin had settled over the years which caused the sewer pipes to no longer flow downhill which in turn led to frozen waste in the pipes – and broken pipes. Our job was to fix it. I had cleverly planned this exercise for Spring Break and foolishly thought it would still be cold enough that all the spilt sewage would still be frozen on the ground. Wrongo!

It was like a pig wallow under there and to top it off there was only 14 inches of room under that part of the cabin – what a smelly mess! I can honestly tell you that this was one if the most unpleasant jobs I had ever tackled. Add to that the fact that we had no water except for the melt water running off the roof – on its way under the cabin where we were working!

This was one of those weeks where absolutely everything that could go wrong – did. Now, being out in the wilds like that under those conditions – may lead some to believe that we were really roughing it – and we were. But just to show how times have changed – guess what my son and I agreed was the worst part?

The horrible thing was that we were stuck using a dial-up internet connection on a bad telephone line – it was unbearably slooooow!

We could have put up with any discomfort that nature and circumstance could throw at us – but the lack of a high speed internet connection was the one thing that we found the hardest to bear.

“Roughing it” in today’s world is a whole lot different than it was even 5 years ago!

It is not that there may be a risk of being caught – it is 100% certain that you will be caught. Not only will you eventually be caught and face the potential embarrassment of having your crime publicized throughout the internet where anyone searching for your name and/or business will find that you are an unethical crook – the tactic does not work.

Since Google is currently the most important search engine on the planet – you need to rank well there. Stealing content or tags from another successful site will actually do just the opposite. You see, before presenting search results one of the things Google looks for is near-duplicate content. If multiple search results contain identical titles and snippets, then only one of the documents is returned.

Guess what? That one document that is returned will not be yours. Google will return the most authorative document (earned over time with age, content, and links) and that will be the original document – not your site with its cut + paste content or tags.

So, don’t be tempted to take what you think is an easy route as it will only hurt you. To be successful one of the things you need to do is be original – being just like another successful site will leave you bruised and buried.

Category and sub-category suggestions are welcome – if I left out your category please let me know.

A reciprocal link is required and if you place that link on your site beforehand the software will list your site immediately. The sooner you submit the higher up on the page you will be – so why not do it now?

There is a link to the directory on pretty much every page of this Blog and it can be found in the “Resources” section at the bottom of the right hand column.

Those days are long gone I’m afraid to say – killed by spammers. Not a day goes by when I hear that someone has been sending me email that I have not received and likewise for emails that I send. These missing emails are seldom found in a spam filter – at least not one that you or I can access. Rather they disappear into the ether – most likely stopped by an ISP or hosting company’s software.

That certainly devalues email and since email is such a big part of the internet – the incentive to use the internet as well. I understand Bill Gates is working on a solution to replace email – it can’t come soon enough.

From my own observations it seems that web mail has a better chance of getting thru than mail from an email program residing on your own computer – not because it is on your computer but because the email is not going thru your ISP and/or web host. Maybe it is a good thing that Gmail, Hotmail, and others are now offering better services for free. I may have to abandon using Outlook and Thunderbird and try using web mail full time.