I shoot the most expensive upmarket listings at the moment and working with an agency that markets really only to millionaires. So 2 weeks ago I started spending more time at the one office only to realise that the way they present to customers are so old(MS Powerpoint) and quite honestly amateur.

I asked if I could work on some stuff for them and they loved it. What then developed from autorun cd/web presentations lead to online newsletters that I am busy with. All of a sudden my turnover with them increased by 50% cause I am getting a really good fee for started doing the “xtra stuff”. what makes it also so easy is that the main content ie. photography comes from myself so it is really easy slotting in the details

Regards
Chris Cloete, Cape town

I’m most familiar with the Seattle area. As recent as a few months ago listings from the NWMLS, used in Seattle, were not propagating to Zillow. But as of right now all NWMLS listings and photos are propagating to Zillow. This all depends on arrangements with MLSs. I’m reasonably sure that in less populated areas Internet marketing is much less.

A second data point I have is my wife’s office in Issaquah, WA has 80+ agents in it and she is the only agent in her office that gets pays any attention to Internet marketing.

Hi Larry, please indulge me while I play devil’s advocate…

The problem I’m running into is that web marketing and listing syndication is already pretty firmly established in RE, at least with the high end agents I’ve spoken with. So they already subscribe to services like Homes.com and the like. Also, MLS listings are auto-magically syndicated to sites like Trulia and Zillow too.

Why invest the money and time to build a service offering that someone else is doing cheaper and better already? I think that offering listing syndication is basically repackaging someone else’s free service and generally not going to earn you a lot of business unless you’re competing at the low end of the market. You mentioned postlets.com and vflyer.com, let me also add that hotpads.com offers this service free as well. If you’re marketing to major agencies, they have marketing assistants that do this stuff every day. I suspect that if we look at it by the numbers, the target population for this offering will be smaller than we expect in many large markets.

Any thoughts?

Luis

I appreciate this post.

You’re right-on with this advice. As you mention in your article we’ve recently added syndication at TourBuzz through our new Neybor.com product, which is a full-fledged marketing automation suite for real estate listings. We’re still in beta at this time but quickly approaching release status.

We will be offering affiliate programs with Neybor that allow photographers to earn commissions or simply directly mark-up our pricing.

Alan