And therefore its limited. Seems this marketing will always need to be supplemented by the agent with unique and different marketing techniques in the changing business.

“It’s a tough racket.” – Alec Baldwin

The problem is that the outside marketing model currently consists of too many hands out looking for money and not enough results to justify all the expense.

That really sums it up. Not one of those out there has a good plan in place to generate anyone income other then themselves (and they aren’t even very good at that). They don’t care if we sell any homes from their services, they know there is another sucker around the corner to shell out the money when you don’t renew. Makes it even easier with the number of new agents that sign up every day.

Right now there are dozens (literally) of sites competing for your dollar by selling sponsorships and upselling marketing features. The problem is that they are all competing for the same eyeballs, so you either have to pay for all of them or you’re merely buying a fraction of the potential audience.

Also no one has been able to determine the true value of that audience. Stakeholders, shills and familiars* claim these systems generate revenue, but they aren’t unbiased observers and they offer scant data to back up those claims. How many Zillow viewers purchased within a year of first visiting? That would be a meaningful statistic.

In the end, online listings may appeal to the dreaded “looky lous” and to a very small group of early adopters who are disproportionately likely to answer NAR surveys designed to tout for REALTOR.com. Even then, the fact that 80% of NAR respondents shopped online doesn’t mean they chose an agent while shopping online. They may have sought a referral (isn’t that how most of us shop for service providers), called their licensee-in-law, or called a discount broker to get a rebate. We really have no idea if the people browsing Zillow, Trulia, and the others are our target market.

The problem isn’t really the outside marketing model. Realtors willingly pay thousands on advertising, hosting, website design, blogs named after vegetables, and other promotional efforts. The problem is that the outside marketing model currently consists of too many hands out looking for money and not enough results to justify all the expense. Bottom line, this is an industry with a long history of willingly paying referral fees, so don’t tell me you’d turn away real business just because it came from Zillow.

*Familiars are people who have already invested money and tout the platform to protect their investment and ego or people who want to rub elbows with shills to try to enhance their own RE.net standing. The term is taken from the mortals who guard vampires in hopes of sharing their power.

I think that by offering free services, these websites develop the traffic. And once you have traffic, making money becomes a lot easier.

The people who should be charged are the agents and brokers whose listings are receiving additional exposure because of the traffic that these free services have created. It’s only fair.

I’m a huge fan of open source programs. I do wonder how and why they do it for free.

Assume your detractors are rational and you have a much better chance of figuring out how to overcome their objections or how to refine your value proposition.

Very well said.

Correct. Unfortunately “free” is the Web 1.0 Web 2.0 answer to the value proposition. Rather than working to prove their value, they focus on growing their audience by giving away the product. Whether the exit strategy is monetizing the site later or simply selling it to a sucker (NAR, Move.com, Google) is a matter of opinion. Your mileage may vary.

When you set the price as “free” you have already attached the value to your product in the eyes of your users even though the value may be worth much more.

Nah, AR’s new sponsorship represents a material change to their value proposition in the eyes of many of their users. That’s the problem. AR’s answer is “it’s still free”, but many of those users don’t care. No point arguing with me, I understand both sides of the argument. Too often stakeholders (vendors and familiars) are so attached to their own position that they dismiss their critics as irrational, paranoid, or unduly pessimistic. It’s a mistake to circle the wagons around corporate dogma or seek support from other vendors or familiars who boost their own egos by rubbing elbows with vendors. Assume your detractors are rational and you have a much better chance of figuring out how to overcome their objections or how to refine your value proposition. It’s not about you, it’s about them.

Right now we’re being overloaded by vendors and shills who’ve developed a pitch in their own boardroom with little input from the real world. When we object, they get insulted and start playing petty games of character assassination. We’ve seen several examples just this week in this forum. Personally, I wouldn’t allow vendors to discuss their own products because they have an obvious conflict of interest. I suspect some of them would disappear under those circumstances while others would still participate because they came here to be part of the community rather than to shill for their employers.

I tease Rich Jacobson, especially when he crosses the line, but he discusses many topics besides ActiveRain. When he does discuss ActiveRain, we need to remember he’s doing so as an employee with a vested interest in convincing people to support AR policy, regardless of his own feelings. Too many vendor shills try to masquerade as helpful members of the community while regurgitating their corporate talking points. I keep hoping RE.net webmasters will catch on and put an end to the practice, but for some, rubbing elbows with vendors is the fast track to RE.net celebrity.

“But one thing is for sure, if we aren’t willing to pay for the tools and services that we hold up as the future of the industry, then those tools and services will disappear.”

So true!