I agree with Charles.

Here's an eye opener for everyone... Morgan himself now links to homeg@in, or at least the directory on this site does. I am not sure what I want to do about it yet. But one thing is for sure, HomeG@in is a middle man that adds no value to the transaction, only takes money out of the pockets of real estate agents. They have lofty goals of taking over a super large percentage of all real estate business and let me tell you they have deep enough pockets to do whatever they want. They can out advertise you, they can out PPC you and they can and are beginning to out website us. They are buying up websites and placements on other websites (like this one) at an alarming pace.

I would really like to hear from you, Morgan, on this. Is HG paying you for the links on this site's directory? If so, how much? Is it really worth it in the long run? They could easily put a lot of agents out of business in the not so far future and then who would be posting on this site? Who would you build, optimize and manage sites for? Surely not HG, they have their own in house team. Please take a minute and explain to us what your intentions are Morgan. I, and I'm sure a few others, would really like to hear from you on this matter.

HG is the enemy, make no mistake folks.

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Matt Pellerin - Phoenix Homes Team Leader
Selling Paradise Valley real estate, Phoenix real estate and Scottsdale real estate.

BTW, incase you haven't seen it, here is one of the many pages that has HG links.

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/mls/state-AZ.php

What up with that???

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Matt Pellerin - Phoenix Homes Team Leader
Selling Paradise Valley real estate, Phoenix real estate and Scottsdale real estate.

I hate to be the one to say it but I think you are fooling yourself if you think this website is some altruistic exercise. I am quite certain that it exists primarily to add link space for clients and all who post here add some little contribution to the bottom line. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

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Tampa Real Estate

Matt,
First of all.. not being an agent (I am a web developer) I did not know that "homegain is the enemy" but here is the deal.

I participate in TONS of affiliate programs across the web from education to credit reports. Someone from homegain called me and asked me if I would consider testing their affiliate program as they saw I represented a # of real estate web sites. The lady showed me some #'s and they looked pretty good so I said sure why not, I will try out your affiliate program as I have done with hundreds of other web companies that have approached me, it was simple enough they sent me a database of areas they service as far as MLS goes and all I had to do was write a script to parse the info. You can see the resultant test directory at http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/mls/home.php I certainly have nothing to hide.

As far as taking $ out of your pockets I certainly would not have done this if I thought by doing so it would take $ away from you or any other member of this board, you are all valued contributors.

As far as is homegain paying me and if so how much? I don’t get paid unless I send them traffic and I think I get about $.12 per click, I am certainly not looking to get rich off this, but as I said it was easy to test, I had a complimentary site and I didn’t know they were “the enemy” however Gordhead is right, this is not some sort of altruistic exercise I started this place because I had some early success in ranking realtor websites and it was not terribly difficult, but I soon realized if I wanted to really service my clients I needed to know more about realtors and real estate itself so I built this place, which is basically an exchange, my SEO and web development knowledge as well as a wicked place to exchange links and make contacts for the opportunity to observe and learn from how you realtors interact with such information.

Now if the opportunity to make extra $ to help pay for the cost of this project presents itself comes to me in the form of adsense or relevant affiliate programs are you suggesting that I have to clear it with the members of this forum before I apply it? I think not! I mean of course I care about your feedback about this forum and how to make it a better place for realtors and if I thought I was adding something controversial to the forum I would have talked to the members first, however I didn’t add the homegain stuff to the forum in any way (Nor did I think it was controversial) the homegain directory has nothing to do with this forum at all, it is just on the same root domain. No user at the forum is forced to look at homegain banners or ads and no one perusing the forum itself can come upon the homegain but that is beside the point. I didn’t see any harm in the program to what I am trying to accomplish, homegain will never be able to compete with my clients websites and I did not think it was hurting my members either. I think your comment about homegain putting realtors out of business is a little silly, they occupy a space, just like realtor websites, and me joining their affiliate program really should not effect that space in any way. If one of your competitors happens to bid on adwords and thus their ad happens to be shown in the adsense on this site are you going to say I am sleeping with the enemy then? Or taking away from your business?

Take a look at my SEO site, I love my members at that site, it is my baby as you know, and I would never do anything to upset them but then check this out - I promote some products there by axandra http://www.seo-guy.com/axandra/ and out of 2000 SEO’s not one person has said, hey you are promoting arelis link building software you are going to put us link builders out of business it just is not logical. I mean shoot if I looked at it like you do I would be promoting my competition, In truth I am not: they occupy something that I do not so it makes sense for me to participate in their vertical in this affiliate manner. On the same token I don’t see http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/mls/state-AZ.php as competition for your site. Maybe I am wrong but I think you need a stronger argument.

If all of the members were to say we want to boycott homegain, then I would do it for the good of the forum, however I wish you had called me out in a PM first instead of the way you brought it up like this. You make it seem as if I am intentionally going after the members business and I most certainly am not. We are all supposed to be on the same team.

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Strep throat! - Yup tis the season - boooo if you are wondering why you haven't seen me as much it's because I had strep throat for a week, feeling better just playing catch up. Merry Ho Ho folks

BTW I split this thread and placed it in forum comments so that it does not take over the original link exchange thread.

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Strep throat! - Yup tis the season - boooo if you are wondering why you haven't seen me as much it's because I had strep throat for a week, feeling better just playing catch up. Merry Ho Ho folks

After much more due dillegence the Homegain program was removed (Paid crap anyways) Thanks for all who shared via PM email and phone conversations your feelings on this matter.

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Strep throat! - Yup tis the season - boooo if you are wondering why you haven't seen me as much it's because I had strep throat for a week, feeling better just playing catch up. Merry Ho Ho folks