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The Advice for Agents website has been reborn with a new purpose. The website is now built around an email newsletter of the same name. You can subscribe for free. Twice a month you'll receive expert advice on real estate Internet marketing. Topics include blogging, search engine marketing, website lead generation and more.



The current issue (for August) just went online, so you can preview the type of information you'll receive every other week. As with any legitimate newsletter, we have a strict anti-spam policy. When you sign up for the newsletter, your email address will only be used for that purpose. Likewise, we never release your personal information to any third parties.

If you'd like to get more business from the Internet, but you're not sure how, this free newsletter is for you! See for yourself

Real Estate SEO Services - 2 Monthly Plans

Though we've been providing real estate SEO services for several years now (and with great results), we recently introduced some monthly service plans to simplify the process for you.

If you're serious about your long-term search engine visibility and website traffic, this service is for you. Our monthly SEO plans include everything needed for long-term SEO success ... website content, link building, consultations and more.

Basically, these SEO services plans represent what I've been doing for my own websites, for over six years now. The monthly plans are just a new way "package" the work in a way that makes them affordable yet effective. Best of all, we do most of the "heavy lifting" for you.

Learn more here: Monthly SEO Service Plans

Top 5 Real Estate Marketing Articles

The Marketing Articles section of the main website now offers somewhere in the neighborhood of 75 real estate marketing articles for your reading pleasure.

I thought it would be useful for readers if I listed some of the more popular articles in the library, ranked by how often they are read. I've also included the oldest and newest article in the library, just for good measure.

The oldest article:

Real Estate Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
I published this one "way back" in 2006. It talks about the need to be an innovator when it comes to your real estate marketing program -- and how you should have the courage to try new things instead of following the pack.

The newest article:

How to Create a Marketing Plan
I published this piece yesterday. It's written with new agents in mind, but even the veteran agents will find it useful. This article explains some of the key components of a real estate marketing plan and how they work together.

The 5 most popular articles (by readership):

Tips for Real Estate Lead Generation
This is by far the most widely read article on the website, which probably has a lot to do with the popularity of this topic among agents. This article offers advice on generating real estate leads through your website or blog. It also offers a 65-page booklet on lead generation success.

100 Tips for Internet Marketing
This is actually a work in progress. The article linked here is a compilation of lots of "mini articles" on real estate Internet marketing. By the time I finish it, the article will provide 100 tips on this subject that also serve as links to related information. In others words, it will be like 101 articles rather than only one.

Real Estate Letter Writing - 7 Tips for Agents
Apparently, a lot of agents are still writing letters to their target audience, as a way to generate new business. I know, because this article gets read several times a day. It offers letter-writing tips on researching your audience, writing your content and more.

How to Modernize Your Farming Postcards
If you use real estate postcards as part of your overall marketing strategy, then this article (and the e-book it recommends) is worth your time to read. I spent a few years working in the direct mail marketing business, mainly for real estate clients. The article and book featured here summarize what I learned during that time.

How to Write a Real Estate Ad
I get questions all the time about writing magazine advertisements. This article addresses some of the most commonly asked questions on the subject or real estate ads. It is meant to help you boost your advertising response rates by using proven and effective techniques.

One of my personal favorites:

Real Estate Business Cards - Lessons Learned
This blog article from April 2008 is one of my favorites, mainly because it goes into such detail on the process of ordering business cards. In truth, it's a fairly simple process these days, what with online ordering and all. But this article explains how to increase your card quality while decreasing the cost. It comes from the time I spent working for a commercial printing company in Austin.

I hope you find these articles useful.

5 Ways to Use Your Real Estate Blog

Blogs are an excellent tool for publishing information online. Blog software programs are versatile, flexible, easy to install and easy to use. As a result, professionals in many industries have started blogging in creative and effective ways to support their business.

Real estate agents have also found many creative uses for the blog. So I would like to fuel this by offering a few ideas of my own. Here are just a few of the ways you could use a real estate blog to support your business:

1. Blog = Timely Market Updates

By their very nature, blogs are perfectly suited to publish new information on a regular basis. You simply type your information like you would type an email, add whatever images or links you want, and click the "Publish" button. The blog does everything else, and within seconds your information is live on the web.

This is why a lot of smart real estate agents use blogging programs in the first place. They know that home buyers and sellers want fresh information about the local housing market. So these web-savvy agents will use their real estate blogs to share information about new homes for sale in the area, new neighborhoods being developed, etc.

2. Blog = Client Information Portal

You could create separate sections of your real estate blog for each of your clients, and password-protect them for privacy. This would allow you to keep a running tally of email communications, notes and updates about the status of their purchase or sale.

If the client wanted to get an update on their transaction, or review previous correspondence, he or she could simply click a link everyday and see your notes and instructions. Or you could be proactive and send the client a link by email each day. In this scenario, the blog becomes an easy-to-manage online reference tool.

3. Blog = Relocation Advice and Support

You could create a real estate blog specifically for people relocating to your area from out of town or state, and keep them informed on local real estate news / conditions. In fact, because a real estate blog is so quick and easy to set up, you could create a separate blog entirely for this purpose.

This would be especially useful if you live in an area with a high rate of buyer influx. For example, here in the Austin area, there are quite a few people moving in from California. If I were an Austin agent I would have a blog that catered to California relos!

4. Blog = Intranet or Collaboration Tool

You could use a real estate blog internally as a collaboration or note-sharing tool between yourself and other agents (or mortgage professionals, etc.). Like any other type of website publishing system, a blog can be put behind a firewall for privacy, thus allowing it to function as an intranet within your company. In this scenario, the blog becomes an easy-to-manage collaboration and project management tool.

5. Blog = Real Estate News Source

You could launch a blog on an entirely separate web domain (from your agent website) and manage it like a real estate news website. You could give it a name like the "Raleigh Realty Weekly," or whatever is relevant to your city and specialty. You could invite guest writers to publish information onto the news blog -- home inspectors, mortgage brokers, staging experts, etc.

This approach would actually benefit you in several ways. For one thing, you would give people another way to find you online, by having two websites instead of one. A real estate news blog could also serve as a networking tool between yourself and others in related industries. Lastly, the news blog would be a big credential for you! Few agents in your area would be able to say, "Jane is also the publisher of the Dallas Real Estate Review..."

I hope this article has opened your eyes to the possibilities inherent within blogs. Not all of these ideas will be right for you, but one of them may be. More importantly, these five points will fuel your imagination about the endless possibilities of blogging. Good luck.

For more great tips on this subject, check out the Real Estate Blog Alphabet -- an online tutorial that you can also download for free in e-book format!

Free Real Estate Articles - Free Tech Support - Free Web Maintenance

The support the growth of our new Free Articles Center, we are now offering free tech support / web maintenance by email. If you wish to republish any of our real estate education materials onto your own website, but you need help ... you have a new option. Free tech support!

Obviously, support is limited to the publishing / syndication of our free articles. And in some cases, support may not be available due to the web hosting scenario. For example, if you use one of those website companies that wrongfully limits your access, there's nothing we can do to help.

But in most web hosting scenarios, we would be able to access your website in order to publish the free article(s) of your choosing.

Learn more below...

Free Real Estate Articles | Tech Support | Publisher Guidelines | FAQ

Z57 Writer Plagiarizes My Website - Outsourcing to India?

Did the Z57 real estate website company outsource a writing project to India? And did that "writer" plagiarize large amounts of content from my own website? You be the judge. Here are the facts.

As most of you know, I write a lot of "how to" articles and tutorials related to real estate marketing, and I publish them through various channels online. From time to time, I'll do a Google search for a unique sentence contained within one of my articles. This is a good way to see where the articles are being republished (which is the point behind the strategy).

Today I was disgusted to find word-for-word "extractions" of my own articles in an article written by somebody else. As it turns out, the entire article is a mish-mash of my own work. Some parts are lightly reworded, but much of it remains word-for-word as I wrote it.

At the bottom of the article, there is a link to the Z57 website, so somebody obviously wrote it on their behalf.

Here is the plagiarist's article I'm referring to:
http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Marketing-for-Real-Estate&id=994240

Here are a few examples of the word-for-word plagiarism:

• You can minimize the number of people who "drop off" at each step of the way... (stolen word-for-word from this article at ArmingYourFarming.com)
• When you add quality articles, resources or tools to your website, you're improving your Real Estate Internet Marketing program... (stolen word-for-word from this article on my website)
• When it comes to marketing, weaknesses must be identified, addressed and eliminated as soon as possible... (stolen word-for-word from this article on my website)
  
• There are many more occurrences of word-for-word plagiarism, and the rest of the article is just a lightly reworded collection of my other work.
  

Who Is the Mystery "Writer"

This is the best part. I did a Google search for "Megha Monda," which is the author's name associated with the plagiarized article, and I traced it back to a so-called writer in India. Here's a message for Z57 -- When you outsource your "marketing" to a bargain provider in India, you get what you pay for!

Response from Z57 Staff?

I sent an email to Z57 with much of the information presented above. I'm trying to confirm if the writer was working on their behalf ... which I already know is the case. I will let them tell their side of the story, and I will post their response here. If they care to respond, that is.

Related blog posts:
India SEO Company - World Capital of Content Thieves
How to stop copyright infringement