Todd Carpenter found my brain and is selling it on ebay. It is nice the way Todd is always there for me. I have to give him credit for his creativity and entrepreneurial spirit. I am sure that in a future post I will tell you what I really think. I can't do that right now because of the missing brain and all.
It is good to be back on this blog of mass destruction cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand. I feel so at home here, mu
st be the food. I can almost smell the fire and taste the dogs.
Without even realizing it I picked up a valuable skill through my participation in social networks. The FBI, has special software to do what I can do in my mind. The ability to take a photo and use it to determine what someone will look like in 10 or 20 years.
I see the pictures of my friends online, and sometimes know them for years before I meet them in person. If they are Realtors, they seldom look like their photos. At first it was hard. I would see them and they would say hello and extend a hand, I would look back with that doe in the headlight look, and they could tell that I didn't know who they were.
Since then, I have learned how to save mental pictures of my online friends and age the photo by 10 to 20 years so that when I meet them, I can figure out who they are. It is a useful skill, it doesn't help with some of the avatars but it helps with the online portraits, and who knows maybe someday it will lead to a job in forensics.
I am not sure that I can add 40 or 50 years to a photo, but I am working on it so that I recognize David Smith when I meet him. I know that this photo is his way of making a statement but I think he may have gone too far. He says he has grand children so it is likely that he doesn't look like the child in the picture.
I was spammed today by this Realtor via Top Producer. He has a blog but apparently has not caught on to the whole RSS thing where instead of dripping or spamming it is possible to get readers to come and subscribe. Think I have 1200 or so subscribers to one of my blogs and 160 people who have signed up for an "opt In" email newsletter.
For those who don't know what opt in is, it is the opposite of opt out. Instead of me sending you spam and you having to take action to make it stop, opt in is where you sign up for my newsletter or you don't get it at all, not ever, no way no how. (I mean it too!)
As if that was not bad enough he sent this picture too. It was embedded in the email and I have posted it here in the actual size as shown on the email. I may have added a little text but other than that this is the picture.
I am not going to say anything about the picture. I don't think I need to.
I hate spam. This was a canned email sent to a huge mailing list (like I have to define spam). Bloggers contact me all the time, daily even. Some send polite notes, you know the kind that are just to me and do not go out to a huge mailing list. Others call, and some leave comments on my blog. That is all fine and I have friends that I met just that way.
I know my email should not frighten me but the amount that I get is almost staggering, and some of the content is appalling. The type of email the gentleman sent is simply annoying. He came uninvited into my business email and to make it worse he sent himself along to.
Generous Realtors donate several hours of their time each week so that companies can make a profit. These dedicated men an woman give selflessly of their time so that sites like Trulia, Zillow, Active Rain and others can be successful. User generated content is needed to populate the sites with information.
How do these companies get so many writers to write for free? Easy they convince them that if they provide content to external corporations they will some how get more business. It is working, every day more Realtors write for web sites without understanding that it isn't the web site that is getting them some leads, it is their own content.
These companies are not the first to get people to work for free. It is becoming a common practice in the internet world Time Magazine has an interesting article about getting rich off of those who work for free. There are products like the browser I use, Mozilla Foxfire that are created and developed through the mutual cooperation of people who work for free. Wikis and Linux work the same way. How much work will people do for free? That is the big question. I can see my self working for free to help create something of value that could be used by many, or to raise money for charity or for some other worthy cause. I just can't see myself doing it for real estate web sites when I have one of my own.
There are several successful Realtors out there who get business by writing on their own blogs, and do not provide free content for other companies. I provide some free content to other companies but not much and the local content that drive my business stays on St. Paul Real Estate Blog becasue it really is one of my most valuable business assets. I would consider selling it, but not giving it away.
My local content is somehow more valuable if it can only be found in one place. People have to come to my web sites to read it. I get traffic and generate business becasue of it. I don't have to share the stage with my closest competitors, or depend on another company for an internet presence. It is really very empowering to be my own rain maker.
Now housevalues.com has become an investor in Active Rain, with 65,000 members and maybe 1000 active real estate professionals working for free to provide content for Active Rain and their Consumer Site Localism. It was a smart move on the part of housevalues.com They can see the value of unqiue content provided by industry experts and are willing to invest 2.75 million.
I know that I am a late comer to the party here but I have begun to explore some business models where I get people to work for free so that I can make more money. Active Rain apparently has not made a profit and I don't know about Zillow or Trulia or the others but I suspect there is some money to be made off of the free content. This blog is open for anyone who has something to say. I could sell ads on it and beef it up a bit. Make it the go to place for people who want to go on a rant.
Thousands of real estate pros will continue to give away their content and perhaps that will create more opportunities for someone to make money. They do not understand how powerful there words are and that they alone can beat out the bigger companies and have a strong internet presence in their own market. They don't understand the value of what they give away or that they don't need to give it away to make it work for them.
There is nothing wrong with working for free. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. The writers on Active rain may own the content but I think Active Rain owns the web site. They can delete it, sell it, change the domain name or do anything they want to it. They could go out of business and just shut the whole thing down. Writers who contribute to active rain's Localism site are helping their competitors attract readers and if they have another real estate blog they are competing against themselves and their own blog.
I do love the idea of getting people to work for me for free and I welcome anyone who would like to do it.
Taken from the site referenced in orange in the above graphic:
" IReference.org used to be a blog portal for local area blogs. After some time, I got tired of dealing with it and decided to turn it into a funny reference blog.
As the site grows you will be able to search for different things that I find interesting and have put a funny twist on or simply some useless information that you may find funny or interesting.
I found this comment on the Sellsius blog, and it answers some questions for me. I have often wondered why one real estate blogger cares about what another real estate blogger does.
If the re-blogger sees himself as the guardian of a flock of re-bloggers, or potential re-bloggers then I guess it would make sense that he would express an opinion, in an attempt to lead the unwashed masses into the holiness of proper blogging.
Jonathan Dalton, responded to the comment much better than I could have:
Yes I must confess, I am as independent as the day is long. An outside the box thinker who values the finer things in life like freedom and of course humor. I am not a follower, and have always hated being told what to do.
I have made many mistakes, and I am thinking I will be making more of them as I go. That is one of the great joys of being a grown up, I have the freedom to make my own decisions. I get to experiment, learn, grow and even make mistakes.
The leader of the flock, is all knowing. He knows how you will behave as individuals or as a group. I am not so sure that I would take such a remarkable ability and use it to help real estate bloggers find their way. Maybe such a gift could be used to give our country a strategic advantage against terrorism, or if I were a candidate in the next presidential election I might want to pay someone with such an ability to tell me how voters will behave on election day so that I could campaign more effectively. It is a shame to waste such vast talent, and intellect on real estate blogging.
Greg, what am I going to do next? I hope you know, becasue I never have a clue.
