Today, we’re tasked with maintaining our education, our technology, our marketing, accounting, paperwork, taxes, websites, design, our phones and who know what all else?  We’re overwhelmed with OPTIONS> This is the quicksand of our businesses.  Reading about everything yet doing nothing – or nothing much, that is.

If you feel overwhelmed by technology, I know that’s our thing and we can help you.  If you’re overwhelmed with your taxes, sorry.  Point is, if you are freaking out about all the things that you should be doing but aren’t, then don’t.  Find what works for you – if blogging every day is in your wheelhouse, then go for it.  If you won’t, then find something that does work for you – and if you do that – you’ll be better off at the end of the year – in many ways.

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We have recently signed agreements with more than 20 companies in order to offer our REALTORS® and customers discounted prices on McAfee products and a slew of others.  We are currently building the new pages but you can find some of them on our homepage.  http://www.theagenthouse.com 

We look forward to more offerings for you soon.

We have seen so many good REALTORS® leave the business – but could they have done something differently?  Probably – but even the best of the best can show you their bottoms lines have gone down from years past – SO – If you are in it – you are in it.  Have you done anything at all with your website?

Have you taken off all of the old tax information?
Have you updated it with the new programs like HAMP, HAFA, HARP and the rest of the acronyms that are being tossed around?
Have you updated your marketing plan for your prospects?
Have you given your site a facelift or added anything to it at all?
Have you changed the meta data to relflect your new markets?
Are you short sales centric? – Your site needs to change or additions should be made.

So this is what I’m saying – if you are in this business for good – do something to help yourself down the road.   You can do it……

Related articles

• Best Places to Invest in Real Estate – Now? (pcunning.wordpress.com)
• Over 75% of Housing Counsels Think HAMP Sucks (news.firedoglake.com)
• How will the legal system handle the coming onslaught of lawsuits? (agentgenius.com)
• Realtors, is Posterous more enticing with new notification features? (agentgenius.com)

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We are authorized resellers for GoDaddy through Wild West Domains.  This helps our customers because we are able to keep prices down while providing real 24/7/365 service. We’ve seen so many REALTORS® lose their domain names for myriad reasons.  This allows us to keep an “eye” on our customer’s domains if they so choose. 

www.agynt.com

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• How to Locate Success as a Domain Name Flipper (ronmedlin.com)

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People will be surfing for things to do this summer – What do you have up on your Real Estate website?  Do you have the local pool info?  The skateparks?  The parades?  The fireworks schedule?  The local Farmer’s Markets?  Recent home sales in your neighborhood?  What are you doing to attract your market?

Hard questions, easy answers……

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I’ve been teaching some free technology available to REALTORS® this last 2 months with mixed reviews.  Since the market is still very soft, I thought that offering these classes on the free technology would be well recd.  Don’t get me wrong, they are well recd, but implementation is where it usually falls apart. 

There is still a large contingent of agents that will not embrace technology.  If you are reading this, you are not one of those agents.  The mere fact that you are reading a blog makes you a go-getter in our industry. 

That being said, make sure you and your business are listed on Google Places and Yahoo Small Business.  I’m unsure of Bing as far as their rules for submitting your business, but it’s worth submitting there too.  What else?  IDX is free for almost all of Illinois and many other parts of the country from 2 vendors that we work with.  FREE!!!  Now you can have your own search for homes feature, branded with your info on every listing.  More?  How about Squidoo or Hub Pages?  You can set these up for nothing and it’s easy. 

C O N T E N T – how about content?  Always free to write about your market, the summer events, the myriad government programs and anything pertinent to your real estate market.  Always keep in mind that Content is KING on the WEB….

Part of what we do is teach, the other part is motivational – which can be accomplished by providing stats and a kick in the butt with love……Of course, you can just hire us to do these things for you at a cost that no other company will match….

But whatever you do – you should be helping yourself for next year by working on your website this year when you have time…..How’s 1 hour every 90 days?  If you did that, you’d be doing more than your competition and you would reap the benefits of your work – this I can promise……

Related articles

• 9 Great Ways to Gain a Competitive Edge Online and Attract New Clients (famousbloggers.net)
• The Benefits of Getting Listed on Google Places | Make Money Online. (marketersdaily.com)
• Bing Makes Facebook Data To Use, Personalized Bing Results By Facebook (seroundtable.com)
• Bing Adds The Friend Effect To Search (ghacks.net)
• PubCon South 2011: Local Search and Hyperlocal (wpromote.com)

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Do it right now – go to Google Places (or Google it) and sign up your business right away!  You will be vaulted to the top of the search engines for your markets.  Most of your competition is not doing this – so take advantage now.  Almost 90% of searches are “local” – don’t miss out!

Have a great weekend…….

Related articles

• Best Small Business Move – Google Place Page (instore4.com)
• Google Hotpot Rolled Into Google Places (seroundtable.com)
• Google Places: Analytics Missing in Action (Again) (smallbusinesssem.com)
• Google Takes Places Public with Needed Features and 100,000 Daily Calls (programmableweb.com)

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My goodness – that was crazy!  Deleting 3,900 SPAM messages is no fun (I forgot to activate my Spam filter) SO – this topic is about SPAM.

Even after all the lawsuits, the government intervention and who knows what else – we are still inundated with SPAM every single day of our lives.  It’s estimated that now more than 90% of all email is SPAM - 90%!  Insanity. 

So – do yourself a favor and install any of the freebies from WordPress or invest in Askimet for your blog – as far as Email, Outlook does a great job.

Sorry for the lengthy absence – now you know why….

Related articles

• Spam Comment of the Day (insaneworld.wordpress.com)
• How to Reduce Spam comments (best2know.info)
• I get spam (michaeledwardkelly.com)
• PREVENTING SPAM scam on Facebook does exactly the opposite (nakedsecurity.sophos.com)
• Do You Report Search Spammers To Google? (seroundtable.com)

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The new .co domains are available for $29.95 at our site – www.agynt.com – which brings me to the point of this post – there are some AWESOME names that you can grab right now with that new extension. 

Some food for thought – if you are buying domain names for a new website – think search engines first, then marketing second with a different name.  For example, I would buy something like www.Bartlett-Illinois-Real-Estate.com and use that as my main domain – but I would use my branded name on my business cards and marketing material – example:  www.PaulTheRealtor.com and that would forward to the site.  Search engines love word separation!  (really they love content, but every little thing can help)

After “working” with the banks firsthand – I can tell you that the process is laborious, aggravating, unbelievably maddening and is guaranteed to have you on blood pressure meds if you are tackling this for the first time.  That being said, experience is everything and I’m sure that there are REALTORS that can report the opposite of my experience(s).

So – How about it?  How about taking the time to put this down on your site or blog?  I PROMISE – you will get traffic and interaction.