[theguy]

Well I'm fairly new to real estate. It seems that the best way to get leads now is from the internet.
I have about $2500 set aside for a website and I guess 2 months of article submission. (Being 23 and just finishing school this is alot of money for me)

Where I live and work, there really is not much competition online.(I think)
So what im wondering is, would this be money well spent?

I dont know much about websites and seo, but I feel if I was pointed in the right direction I could learn seo rather quickly.( I know theres alot of good info here )

(I work in oyster bay, glen cove, and bayville NY;not sure if anyone could tell me how hard of an area this would be to crack)


thanks in advance everyone
hope everyone enjoyed their fourth!

[webmaster]

It is certainly more than enough to get a great looking search engine friendly starter website through REW (They start at $740 USD) and the hosting is $480 per year.

Until such time as you have established some rankings, you could get away with an iframable IDX from the board, so no costs there.

Is it enough for a proper SEO budget as well? Not even close, however that is the great thing about the REW community (Whether you have an REW website or not) all of the information you require to engage in an DIY SEO campaign is available for free. At some point, you will run into a limitation in your abilities (And that depends on the customer) but for the most part, you can get a really good head start if you participate, listen to those who are willing to share, and don't try to cut corners.

[theguy]

do you think I should hold off on purchasing the 2 months of article submission and save some money?
I am going to devote 2 hours a day to reading up on seo
(Starting tomorrow)

I will most likely put in the order next week for my website

thanks again

[jamesww]

Yeah I would hold onto the money learn SEO and do your own articles to start out. You are going to have a number of expenses come up that may suprise you. Sink away 20% of each commision check and use this to get yourself up and running. Once you start to have a growing work load and consistent income you can back that number down to 9% and do just fine. Just try to make sure that you keep your expenses under 35% total and you make a nice living.

[GetSmart]

i think what you might want to do is set up a website through some type of blog. getting a blog you can have it setup like a website but you will have to update it regularly to get in the search engines. Once you do your web domain will have a high ranking and you can shift that ranking to a highly optimized website.

wish i would have taken that route first.

[theguy]

Originally Posted by GetSmart

i think what you might want to do is set up a website through some type of blog. getting a blog you can have it setup like a website but you will have to update it regularly to get in the search engines. Once you do your web domain will have a high ranking and you can shift that ranking to a highly optimized website.

wish i would have taken that route first.

I own a domain right now but theres nothing on it.
Are you saying that I should just make the domain I own right now into a blog? Which I guess ranks quicker?
Then once I am ranked decent switch the blog over to a regular site?

Thanks

[NY RE Broker]

Originally Posted by theguy

Well I'm fairly new to real estate.....

Where I live and work, there really is not much competition online.(I think)
So what im wondering is, would this be money well spent? ........

(I work in oyster bay, glen cove, and bayville NY;not sure if anyone could tell me how hard of an area this would be to crack)

You will be working in a VERY COMPETITIVE market. You have Prudential Douglas Elliman in your back yard. Do a search and and you will see that many of the agents have websites if not blogs too.

This isn't meant to discourage you, just to let you know that you need to get a better grasp on your market and research your competition a bit better.

I as well as a number of us here on the forums have used other web sites. You will not go wrong with a REW site. These guys are the best and give you the ability to get in and start with a budget site and make it grow as you grow.

I would not pay for article submissions at this point. You should be doing enough reading to be able to write your own stuff, just like a college book report. You will have plenty of time now as you are growing the business and researching and writing about the local market yourself will help you better understand it as well as give you a truly local feel.

Make sure you have a good cell phone with e-mail, voice mail and contacts geared to business and not your friends. Get a good lap top if you don;t already have one and let REW hook you up with a nice site. If you have money left over, throw some advertising on your vehicle directing people to your web site. Depending on which broker you are going with, you might have to pay for your own ads so you need to budget that too.

If you have not heard it already, you will want to work with Buyer's at first and then as the money builds up, you can get into sellers. All of those Buyer's become sellers at some point so keep in touch with all of them.

In three years we'll see you in the top 30 under 30

[theguy]

Originally Posted by NY RE Broker

You will be working in a VERY COMPETITIVE market. You have Prudential Douglas Elliman in your back yard. Do a search and and you will see that many of the agents have websites if not blogs too.

This isn't meant to discourage you, just to let you know that you need to get a better grasp on your market and research your competition a bit better.

I as well as a number of us here on the forums have used other web sites. You will not go wrong with a REW site. These guys are the best and give you the ability to get in and start with a budget site and make it grow as you grow.

I would not pay for article submissions at this point. You should be doing enough reading to be able to write your own stuff, just like a college book report. You will have plenty of time now as you are growing the business and researching and writing about the local market yourself will help you better understand it as well as give you a truly local feel.

Make sure you have a good cell phone with e-mail, voice mail and contacts geared to business and not your friends. Get a good lap top if you don;t already have one and let REW hook you up with a nice site. If you have money left over, throw some advertising on your vehicle directing people to your web site. Depending on which broker you are going with, you might have to pay for your own ads so you need to budget that too.

If you have not heard it already, you will want to work with Buyer's at first and then as the money builds up, you can get into sellers. All of those Buyer's become sellers at some point so keep in touch with all of them.

In three years we'll see you in the top 30 under 30

I had no idea i was working in such a competitive area. When I called up REW a couple months ago the person I talked to said I have a relativly easy area to break into.


My broker had paid for a website glencoveluxuryhomes dot com
(looks like crap)
and some how within a week they were on top of googles search. They are still pretty high up there. How do you all think they ranked up there so quickly?

also when I first received my license I picked up the iphone and a macbook. So at least I have something going for me lol.

I just want to say one more thing, I really appreciate everyones help so far. Great community here!

[FindCRE]

If you are referring to Glen Cove, then REW will get up to the top within a very short amount of time. I'm sure several of the senior REW members could probably rank a blog post in the top 10 for Glen Cove real estate pretty easily.

[webmaster]

Existence of websites is not a good metric for competition when you are talking about SERPS - whether you have 100k results or 10,000,000 results makes no difference if only 5 have any real page rank, and proper optimization in either scenario then you really only have 5 true competitors

Often times with incidental results, you can just past the first 9,999,000 with just a properly optimized title as they aren't vying for the term in the first place.

Are the areas you mentioned competitive from an SEO perspective? At first glance, they don't appear to be. IT doesn't mean there will not be a lot of "real life" competition for business, but once again SERPS are a different story and you need to look at more than just agent or agent website population.

Originally Posted by NY RE Broker

You will be working in a VERY COMPETITIVE market. You have Prudential Douglas Elliman in your back yard. Do a search and and you will see that many of the agents have websites if not blogs too.

This isn't meant to discourage you, just to let you know that you need to get a better grasp on your market and research your competition a bit better.