After running the test for the past 3 months though, it is time to pull the plug on the Facebook campaign. It has not generated a single lead that I can track. Granted, a few people may have hit my FHA Bridal landing page and then did a search on the bridal landing page, but I haven't dug deep enough to check and see. I'm just not confident that the program is working.

Which brings me to another idea that I am working on. Granted along the same lines, and one could argue, hardly real estate related. My brother and I are starting a digital photo booth business. Yes, that type of photo booth business. The kind where people sit down and have their picture taken and it spits out a photo. The busines itself is going to be small scale to start with. We both have day jobs (and nightime, and weekends, and oh my!) but with the way the booths are scheduled, we can be available for the events which are usually weekend nights. I figure it is a great way for me to get in front of newlyweds who will eventually become home buyers. Thoughts? Anyone else tried anything crazy?

The website is still a work in progress (have you ever met one that isn't btw?) but you can check out things at Louisville Photo booth rental

-Scott

PS -- Don't tell my girlfriend that I posted a picture of us making out in a photo booth on the internet. We are the picture on the "home" page. I only placed that there as a placeholder and I really need to change it :)

With so much going on downtown, I can easily see how I get excited about the idea. Being within walking distance of Waterfront Park, Actors Theatre, The Center for the Arts, The Louisville Slugger Stadium, The new yet to be named downtown arena. It is all very exciting. Cost of entry still seems to be a factor. Living downtown isn't cheap. Most of the condos start at over 200K and are smaller then the average sized apartments for the general area. Could 2010 be the year for Downtown Louisville?

I'm not sure, but I do think that we will see considerable growth in the Downtown market. Because of that, I'm setting up a niche site to service others who are interested in purchasing condos in Louisville. I'm setting up 3 main areas. Downtown, Highlands, and The Frankfort Ave Cooridor. Right now I'm still building out the skeleton of the site, setting up the layout and navigation and how I plan to present the data to consumers.

Agents, if you currenlty have a site that deals in condos or lofts, please comment below with a few tips or hints to help guide me towards a successful launch with information that consumers want to see.

You can follow my progress at Downtown Louisville Condos -- again, if you have a site that deals with condos and lofts, please drop a comment and send me some advice. I'd love to get the site put together before the end of the month!

This move is all part of a natural progression to increase customer service. The dedicated server should increase the overall customer satisfaction with decreased load times and give me a little bit more flexibility in what I want to run on my server. For instance, I've been thinking for a long time about taking my Google Analytics account offline and running Piwik ( http://piwik.org/ )in its place. However, one of the components that Piwik needs isn't enabled on my server. In the past, my current host has been great about installing or enabling some component that I need, but I was hesitant to ask for a module to be installed for a none core related project.

Are you currenty working with a company who manages your dedicated server? What specs and price are you getting? I'm happy with my current host, and their data center has all the neccesary bells and whistles, like battery backup, generators, redundant hard drive mirroring, being tied to 5 or 6 backbone providers, etc -- but it never hurts to check out the competition to see what is available. Got a favorite? I'd love to hear about it. Even if it just helps support my decision to stay where I am!

If you've been thinking about buying a lot at Nolin, don't hesitate. As Mark Twain said "Buy land, they're not making it anymore."

Start searching for Nolin Lake Lots

The other day my buddy Mike tweeted about going to visit the Dogfish Brewery for a break. Mike is a Realtor who works the Rehoboth Beach real estate market. He had no idea how jealous I was that he was walking through the doors of that establishment. The wild thing about that is that I had just got done watching the founder of Dogfish deliver a testimonial that was basically a sales pitch about the small brewing system that he started with. I've got the itch. Ever since I sold my shop, I've been thinking about opening something back up. Next time it will be different. It'll be smaller. It'll be ran with less employees. It'll be more stream lined. No delivery. Maybe even no carry out. All dine in traffic. A place where I can take my clients and if I wanted to spend the day working from there, I could. A little bit more a pub feel, with an emphasis on pizza.

What does that have to do with real estate? Very little. Except, that when I've been spending all day going back and forth working on online assets, talking to clients, lenders, etc and trying to put things together, it is nice to dream. My last restaurant was a bit of a nightmare. It owned me. It owned me SO much, that I miss it. It became part of who I was. So it is nice to sit back and have a little distraction... Most people call those hobbies. It is too easy to get wrapped up in your work and forget about the things that make you happy. Working on my online assets is fun for me. I like to tinker. But sometimes I need a full break. That is why I continue planning for my nano brewery and pizza pub. Because someday, it'll happen.

Don't be surprised if you get a phone call from me Mike. I think we'll have to do some taste testing.

I'm also fortunate enough to make personal connections with other Realtors across the country. At the urging of some of the posters on the REW forum I jumped back into my twiter account and made some great connections. I was keeping an eye on my "twitter stream" and one of the guys I am following says that he is "sad his sister is moving to Gulf shores" I sent him a quick note letting him know that if he needed a referral for an agent down there to let me know, along with my email address. Moments later I got an email back from him that his sister was interested in Gulf Shores Condos. Specifically Orange Beach Condos. But she would also consider Fort Morgan Condos, if the price was right. So I sent off a quick note to Cal Carter with the contact information I had. I haven't heard if anything has come of the lead, but I know it is in good hands.

You know what? I bet if Cal gets a lead for something in the Metro Louisville area, I get an email too.

PS - If you want to follow me on twitter visit http://www.twitter.com/scotthack

I've considered selling the domain for a quick profit. I've thought about putting up a seperate site and trying to build it up as an authority. I've even considered just referring out any leads that the site generates, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do just yet. Right now I'm forwarding the domain to a blank landing page on my website.

What would you do if you owned www.louisvilleshortsales.com?

Now is also an excellent time to begin your search for Nolin Lake real estate

Google has settled with the Author's Guild for 125 million dollars. Google during its "Book Search" project has currently scanned 7 MILLION, out of print, but copyrighted books. They estimate that an additional 20 million books meet the current criteria to be scanned.

Overall, this is a win-win for both parties. Although digital readers have been slowly trickling books into digital media, along with "books on tape." Google has single handedly dragged the Author's Guild into the digital medium. All the while creating a potential revenue stream for themselves down the road. This is a classic example of not asking for permission, but begging for forgiveness. In this case, Google got lucky.

For complete details about the project and the lawsuit, follow the link here.