Any web site lead generating success

Smuck · 11-07-2006, 02:10 PM

I know this has already been discussed to some extent,

but I was wondering if anyone has had any luck/experience with any of the following lead generating web sites?

realtor.com
homegain.com
houseseeker4u.com
house.com

kensmith · 11-07-2006, 03:11 PM

Here is a story from Judy about HG that I posted on my blog. It is along the same lines of what every agent I know has said about them. There is one agent in my office that does do a lot of deals from HG, but gives away 35% of his commission to them for the leads, after all of the other costs why would you bother?

I use R.com for the enhanced listings, but that is for advertising the listing not to get leads. It did generate one solid lead this year that closed, but that was just a nice bonus IMO.

As for the others I have never heard anything good about them.

Smuck · 11-07-2006, 03:24 PM

I understand the HG does not require a commission, only a per/monthly fee. At least in our area that is the case.

Eric Blackwell · 11-07-2006, 04:42 PM

Smuck;

Take my advice and avoid HG. Faustian bargain IMHO. (They are owned by a newspaper consortium and you can to the SAME thing with a PPC campaign)

As for R.com...I did an interesting experiemnt earlier this year.

I bought banner ads (4 out of the 10 in the rotation-that's all they'd let me buy) the copy on the banner ads was pretty good. It asked if you wanted to see more pictures and took people DIRECTLY to my site. We ran it for a quarter. The results: 78 clicks

In other words, those were @#$% expensive clicks.

I DO agree with Ken that in some markets it is advisable to do the enhanced listing thing AS A LISTING tool. Since the rollout of REMAX.com (no partisan intentions whatsoever) almost all of our agents are just telling people that we have great search engine exposure and that combined with the exposure on REMAX.com means that R.com is becoming irrelevant. We are down to 3 agents out of 110 that are enhancing their lstings.

I think R.com's best days are behind them.

Best;

Eric

jlryan · 11-07-2006, 07:14 PM

For what it's worth, the way house.com captures leads is extremely irritating to the end user. They lead you down a rabbit click trail, then request your information before they give you any info. That's downright irritating if you ask me.

coastal · 11-08-2006, 12:01 PM

I get a good deal of leads from realtor.com usually 1 or 2 a day. I think my last check to them was $1700

Ryan Ward · 11-08-2006, 02:53 PM

Coastal,

How many listings do you have that you get that much traffic from them?

Joshua Sloan · 11-08-2006, 05:06 PM

I also purchased a banner ad on on R.com at the beginning of this year for 6 months (Cost $5000). We had a really great ad running, one which had much success on many other websites I was advertising on, yet I think I got less than 150 clicks over that 6 month period, also very expensive cost per click. I personally wouldn't give R.com any money.

As far as the enhanced listing tool, in my opinion it's just as worthless, I can count on 1 finger how many leads we have received over the last year. The only reason I renewed this year was to use it as a listing tool, but I will not be renewing it again.

I agree with Eric, their days are over. As for the other sites you mentioned, I don't have any experience with them.

jlryan · 11-08-2006, 07:53 PM

My agents are generating 25% of their business from web leads straight off their websites without having to use any extra services. In spring, there can be several leads each day coming in from the organic search engine optimization we do. My sites don't even cost $5000 and my clients own them forever! It's like they build equity because the longer they're on the web, the more powerful they become in Google. Just thought ya'll would like to know.