Spoken Gently's Blog: For Realtors

Sometimes I feel like I'm wandering in the desert as I frequent many online circles, but cannot say any one place can be called home. I'm envious of the folks that have 'camped out' at one online location and have established roots. However, there are advantages to getting around. I'm subscribed to many affiliate marketing blogs as a result of Squidoo and a fellow was trying to sell the book, The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris. I've since bought the audio version and very pleased with the purchase.

Essentially, what I walk away with from the book are principles in time management (among many, many other things). The book's purpose is to work less and earn more, however, I see the book as means of simply being more productive. The single greatest…

In my morning rounds of visiting blogs and procrastinating things I'm supposed to be doing in the guise of further educating myself, I stumbled across this Facebook video. I'm not the conspiracy theory type, but I wonder just how much privacy we'll have left, especially with the advent of cloud computing. Enjoy this video...

Related:

• Facebook Owns You Forever, Even If You Cancel
• Facebook's Response

I was reading Sellsius the other day. A great blog, btw. Actually, so good it's a time suck! Anyway, I came across a blog entry I thought repeating. The story as quoted by Sellsius goes,

Someone had their car broken into while they were attending a football game. Items stolen from the car included a garage door remote control and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on the dashboard.

When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about everything worth anything had been stolen.

The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house (go home feature) . They then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew the owners were at the football game, they…

I'm excited for Colleen (and us) as she passed the Washington State Broker's Exam last week. This opens up all sorts of doors for us, one of which going out on our own. Kinda scary, but we've always been self-employed so we've traveled this road before. After being married to Colleen for 23 years, I still continue to be impressed by her (and love her all the more). Given the responsibilities of 5 children (er, the 6th being me, but we won't go there!), all at home, she finds the time to have a successful real estate career and make time for the many, many hours required to study for the brokers exam. Congratulations Colleen!

We're just starting on the social marketing thing. Yeah, kinda late to the party, however, you can read/follow more about… Read Full Post

Has anyone seen this? ActiveRain now allows a member to post to an outside blog with a unique url. I helped Colleen set up her own blog using her name. Coleen Lane (yup, her blog is the best ever, so says the unbiased husband!). When we went looking for a domain for her, naturally we started with her name. I was incredulous to find that colleenlane.com was not taken, especially since a search in Google renders 2,240,000 results. Fortunately, her name (and our site) is on the top of that list!

ActiveRain Outside Blog Pro: Allows an url to mature and it's free (except for the cost of the domain name)!

ActiveRain Outside Blog Con: There are duplicate content issues that will need to be resolved. So far, anything we have posted on our ActiveRain blog is…

We started in Squidoo a few years ago mainly to add to our inbound linking portfolio. We are pushing 225 lenses now, not only in real estate related lenses, but lenses on many other topics. Our children have gotten involved and created some of their own! We have always donated all our Squidoo earnings to one charity or another. Given our dire economic times in most American communities, I thought I would post our recent earnings. Perhaps some could use the extra income to get through the winter months, or to contribute to their favorite charity:

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The above earnings are from Squidoo's matching of Google's adsense.…

Hmm, that is what Colleen was told yesterday! I even gave this man this blog entry, and this Squidoo lens to read. Apparently, he read neither. Presumably, this potential client thought Colleen a pushover, lacking negotiating strength, and/or incompetent in some way in regards to client representation. Our client didn't know this about Colleen...

• When negotiating, Colleen has the most excellent 'poker face!' The client she represents may be in dire straights, desperate to sell or buy, but the other real estate agent would never know. Colleen represents her clients in a way only her clients and Colleen can appreciate, as 'the other side' never finds out what's in Colleen's hand until the negotiations are complete. In the past, and unfortunately for…

Today, the AP reports second quarter home prices drop the largest since the inception of Standard & Poor's Case/Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index. The drop is 15.4 percent lower than last year. I'm reminded of this blog entry!

The Tri Cities Washington market, however, is maintaining property values. Actually, Washington state as a whole, isn't too bad either! Never a better time to buy property in the Tri Cities than now!

Related:

• Standard & Poor/Case Shiller Home Price Indices

• CNN Money - Home Prices Plummet To New Record Low