realweenie

Huh?

Full post

Whether we like it or not there are influencers on the re-net.  Some are a positive influence and some are not. I don't believe any real estate bloggers are active exponents of knowing evil, but they could be, I am not sure what it means.  Some days I think the hound doth protest too much. The people who influence the hound don't influence me.  None of it really matters because the internet isn't just for Realtors any more. The re-net is a very small world, it is a pimple on the butt of the internet, lets not lose site of that, and stop taking ourselves so seriously. 

Now I know I have arrived

Welcome to my bad blog cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand.  There have been theories as to why this blog exists.  To me it is important for several reasons.  It provides a forum for some and for me it is an opportunity to creatively express my ideas.  If no one read it I am not sure I would want to take it down.

As I have said more than a few times on my other blog, neither blogging nor real estate sales are for wimps.  In the 2.5 years that I have been writing blogs no one has threatened me with legal action and to be honest I was feeling like I am not much of a blogger.  Now all that has changed and I feel like I have arrived.

Don't get me wrong  being threatened in any way has never been my goal but I know from my past experience running a small newspaper that writing something that ticks people off goes along with being published most any where but only if the piece is controversial, or is strong enough to move someone to anger.  I did receive some threats when I started the blog but I stood my ground and it was worth it.

I strive for honestly and transparency.  I don't always hit the mark but it is my goal.  Some of my posts leave out names and other details.  If I included the details they would be more transparent but they would also attract threats of legal action.  It is a fine line and I try to walk it without falling off.  I do stand behind every word I write and take responsibility for it and there is a reasonable chance that I even make mistakes some times.  I am not the kind of person who is terribly risk adverse.

We live in a society where everyone believes that perceived wrongs can be settle through the legal system.  I often hear people say that they will take legal action.  Anyone can take legal action against anyone else anytime they want to, as long as they have the time and money to get the job done.   It can be frivolous or it can have merit, it is up to the courts to decide.   Google the word "legal " and get 1,280,000,000 hits.

Bryan & Yvonne Carpenter

By: Todd Carpenter

Bryan & Yvonne Carpenter

I'd like to tell you about my good for nothing aunt Yvonne, and her low life husband Bryan. They haven't a clue about the importance of family. I mean, I only have 15 years of experience in the mortgage industry, but do you think they would solicit my services? Even once? NOT! I know many of you have relative who act with such discourtesy, but you don't fully understand the scope my aunt and uncle's crass. You see, Bryan & Yvonne Carpenter have purchased hundreds of homes over the past few years. Hundreds. Don't believe me? Just Google "Bryan & Yvonne Carpenter" . Seriously, you have to click the link to really understand where I'm going here.

Look, here's one, and another, and another... It's as if these agents are using the same exact referral. But there's no way that could happen... These folks took ethics training. Yvonne and Bryan are real! I swear!

Never once have they given me the opportunity to earn their business. What's even worse is that it's not even like they always work with the same professionals. In fact, they work with somebody new in nearly every transaction. That's the part I really don't understand because they always offer to give each agent a nice referral to place on their web pages. They don't even give me the time of day though. Jerks.

Hat tip to Shannon Stanbro for cluing me in on my weenie relatives. 

The seven stages of real estate weeniedumb

By: Todd Carpenter

Stage one: Contribute to your own, independent blog. Stage one, being more like stage zero. The is real estate steak compared to real estate weeniedumb. If you want to waste time, money, and effort on the Internet, you're going to have to move beyond stage one.

Stage two: Contribute to someone else's blog. If your name is Chris, Paul, Mike, or Gina... move along. No need for you to read this stage.  :) I'm a proud stage-two weenie myself, blogging for the Inman News Blog, and occasional here at the Weenie. Do I get as much out of it as I put into it? Probably not. But at least two people bought me a beer when I told them I blogged for Inman at the Blogger's Connect parties this summer. So that's something. Blogging for others can be good, just make sure it's driving your own personal brand as well.

Stage three - Blog for Active Rain, and only Active Rain. Eventually, you want to drive your own customers to your blog. Do you really want to send them to a site with 50,000 other real estate agents?

Stage four - Blog for The Man. Who dominates in Google for real estate queries? Move.com. Who charges you to be a member of this merry club? Move.com. Who want's to let you blog for "free", thus boosting their own search engine relevance of their network of real estate domain names? Yep. Move.com. I don't know, it seems to me that bloggers who blog for The Man are helping Move to justify higher and higher membership/advertising rates. What does Move give you that Wordpress.com does not? Stage-four weeniedumb is starting to not make sense to me.

Stage five: Blogging for Google Love. First off, have you seen the two guys who created Google? I don't care how much money they have. The term "Google Love" grosses me out. Anyway, blogging for Google love is when you go type a bunch of words and stuff on a well ranked site like Active Rain for the sole purpose of creating some Google Juice (oh, wait, that sounds even worse) back to your blog. It's one thing if you are using a site like Active Rain to advocate a cause among your peers. It's one thing if you are writing good content for Localism. But if you are simply phoning it in, you are a stage-five weenie, and I'm officially starting to not like you.

Stage six - Leaving weak comments, or spam comments. "Great post man" is pure garbage. I know it, you know it, even Daisy knows it. At least try to add to the conversation. "Visit my site for more articles like yours" is pathetic. You're one step away from a spammer. All you are going to do is irk the blogger who's giving you the opportunity to comment in the first place. "Great investment opportunity in Costa Rica, costa rica real estate, real estate beach, costa rica condos. Visit us for more information at www.jaco-bay.com" is full fledged stage six weeniedumb. Leaving spam like that is liable to get you a serious case of Google Hate.

Stage seven - RIS Media ought to be ashamed of themselves for even putting this out there. If you are really willing to pay $2000 a month to commit stage two, three, four and five weeniedumb, then let me tell you about a well ranked mortgage industry blog with just as much Google love as RIS could ever give you. I also have a bridge in Brooklyn and some land in Florida that you might be interested in.

Thank You!

Todd Carpenter
mariah.com | bizomi.com | rembex.com | lenderama.com

Do you have something to say?  Put it on the Weenie, the evil blog cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand where anything goes . . . well almost anything . . . I really resent the term "weeniedumb"

Are you a 879 Yahoo?

I wrote this post last December on the Active Rain real estate network, for other Realtors.  Even though it is buried deep in my blog as a members only post it has been getting comments each month.  I thought I would bring it out into day light.

Are you a 879Yahoo?                (Members Only)              

      

What does your email address say about you?

If you are John879@yahoo.com, you may have more problems that you think. Not to mention the depersonalization of having a ton of numbers after your name to separate you from all the other people with the same name or user name.

Sure your email account is free, actually all of my email accounts are too, and each uses a domain name that is unique and only used by me.

Sure you can get your email online from anywhere.  Hmmm I guess mine works that way too.  I can log onto the internet and read my email anytime, or I can get it on my laptop through MS-Outlook, and I get it on my blackberry.

Sure you have spam filters, well I guess I do to.  Imagine that.

Your spam filters are better than mine, so good in fact that the email from your clients and future clients never reaches you.  I do get maybe four or five unwanted emails a day, but I also get a few leads a week.

When I see your email address, I think is this a professional, or some kind of a hobby REALTOR.  Then I check to see if the agent is with Prudential realty, because every time someone uses Yahoo they are indirectly advertising for Prudential realty.  Yahoo has a real estate portal and Prudential has an exclusive relationship with them.

"For Prudential Real Estate, which has put an emphasis on developing and honing its Internet strategies, it's an opportunity to capitalize on what the company has built-and, say executives, to take the lead in winning home buyers and sellers in this changing environment."
"With our Platform technology, and our exclusive marketing relationship with Yahoo! Real Estate, we took the early lead in providing home buyers and sellers with precisely what they were looking for," says Earl Lee, president, Prudential Real Estate Affiliates, Inc. "We give them 24/7 access to the most current property information and instant interaction with local sales professionals when and how they want it." Read More

So john879@yahoo.com, I don't have any respect for your tech skills, which are becoming more important for REALTORS to have.  I don't have much respect for you professionally either.  To me you are just another 879@Yahoo.com, it could be worse for you, if you were another 12233@AOL.com, because you would actually have to pay for the email account that has so many filters on it that almost no one could ever reach you, not to mention that you can not accept or open all types of attachments as an extra protection against viruses.  That's right I have that protection too, through my anti virus software.

I could write a lot more on this topic, but will close by saying that having your very own email address is the best way to go.  Your real estate company address belongs to your real estate company and is used by hundreds, thousands or maybe ten's of thousands of agents.  The well known domain names have been added to many spam filters right on the server where the end user has no control, making your messages less likely to get through to those Yahoo's or AOL's.

Cheap agents

I was out showing homes last week and I went to this home.  The sign cracked me up so I took pictures of it front and back.
It is a regular real estate sign, with a pool rider, and a flyer inside a sheet protectory tie wrapped to the rider.
So the agent only had one color flyer of the property and it is not to be removed,  there were no other flyers available.
I wonder what this agent's listing presentation was like. 

"If you want me to list it for 5% instead of 6% I'll have to limit the marketing budget to only one color flyer out front"

Seller, "Ok, sounds good to me"

This sign cracked me up so I snapped the pictures, but I don't have anyplace to post it.

Dave in Tucson - Author of the most excellent Real Estate news in Tuscon

Dave also has an amazing blog called:  Oro Valley Real Estate

Have you found something that might be fit for this bad blog cleverly disguised as a hot dog stand?  Just send it.

Do you want to get roasted?

When I was in grade school, yup I went to school just like everyone else, walked in the snow bear foot, up hill both ways to get there.  The teachers told me that it was wrong to copy from another students papers. We listened to teachers back then because they could strike students without going to jail.   

When I was in High school students who copied from other students or from books were suspended or even expelled from the school, and teachers could still use corporal punishment, and did.  Now that I think about it childhood was hell.  Sorry for the digression, I only get to write on my bad blog in the middle of the night, when no one is around.  I must be sleep working again. Happens all the time, I wake up and find a blog post, when I read them it is like seeing them for the first time.

Can I say hell on a blog?  I guess I can on this blog.  So much for my no casual swearing on business blogs rule.  Is this a business blog?  No way, it is a hot dog stand,  or is it?  . . . . back to my post . . . .

Much better!

In recent weeks I have found some of the content I have written for The St. Paul Real Estate Blog, and on *Active Rain on other blogs.  In a couple of cases bloggers are using lead ins to my articles and linking back to my blog but they are using my content to sell products, services or ads.  I do make a few bucks myself off of the words I spew into cyber space each day, but that's different because it is my very own spew.

In other cases blog writers are simply taking my content and putting it on their blogs, which is theft plain and simple.  I have started sending out some cease and desist emails, but will have to take stronger measures.  Some of the *Active Rain content that is being lifted is for members only, which means that it is a member that is logging in and copying the content. They can't link to my content because readers who are not members would not be able to read it, so they just take it. 

If you are reading this post and can think of some posts you might have of mine on your blog please take them down.  I may be crazy busy, and probably crazy, but I always have time to deal with post thievery, and it is easy to find.  It is wrong to copy from another blog, and make it look like your own content.  I can't believe I have to explain this and on the weenie no less, the blog that is in such poor taste that it just shouldn't be, yet it is.

Maybe I should use this post in on of my classes as an example of how not to write a post.

*Active Rain is where I spew side-by-side with thousands of my competitors, we spew words in great quantity each day, you have to read it to believe it, so far we are the largest group of people to have ever achieved such a high level of mediocrity together, as a group. . .  Ouch!  That one is going to cost me, no more sleep working . . . . 

You can use MLS, unless you are a member of the MLS

As a member of member of the RMLS, (Regional Multiple Listing Service) I have to abide by the rules, as stated in the graphic above.  When someone does a google search "Minnesota MLS" or "St. Paul MLS" they get links to homeavenue.com, mlsonline.com, homegain.com and the list goes on.  Most of these companies are not members of the RMLS, so they can use the letters MLS any way they want to.

The rule change just gave all non-members an unfair competitive advantage.  When home buyers use "MLS" in their search terms they get mostly lead aggregation web sites.  These internet companies, display our listings and then sell us leads off of the data.  How fair is that?  Who really owns the letters MLS?  Apparently just about everyone except of course members.

business blogs

I would argue that companies that invent products or services that really suck can get a lot of exposure through blogs.

Making Fun of Real Estate

This cracks me up!  Wanted to do a Friday fun post about it on St. Paul re blog, which is my good blog, but decided that it works on my bad blog just as well.  Welcome to Friday on the weenie!

There are some Google ads on the right side bar of my good blog, the one with the pictures and real estate stuff all over it.   Other bloggers have asked me why I allow competitors to advertise on my site.  These advertisers are real estate agents but, are not competing with me on the Internet.

Today I clicked on one of the ad links because it said "Free Home Search", cracks me up, kind of like a link to Target stores on line that says "shop for free".  Since when does anyone charge consumers to search the web for items, including homes that are for sale.

So I clicked on the link, and put in all of my search criteria, and clicked submit.  No homes appeared on the screen because I did not fill in the form which had required fields including one for my email address.

No this real estate agent is not competing with me. All of my sites have a home search button on them.  They don't state that they are free but anyone can search with out leaving their contact information and I don't have any way of billing them, so I guess it really is free.

I know agents who have sites that require people to sign in to search for homes.  The idea is that they can "capture leads".  I love the use of the word "capture" because that is what they are trying to do.  These same agents hide behind trees and jump out and grab anyone walking by who might be talking about houses and wrestle them to the ground and beg for business.

Once the lead is "captured" then the agent starts dripping.  I love the idea of dripping.  Dripping is sending spam, which is unsolicited email, on a consistent basis. In real estate we call it a "drip email campaign" because it sounds classier when we explain it to our families than if we said, I spammed a few thousand people to day, how was your day honey?

Don't we all just love spam?  Almost as much fun as getting calls from telemarketers. Just can't wait to open my email to see who might be dripping on me today!  Who ever it is I am sure we will become the best of friends through the dripping process.

To home buyers I would like to say that no one will charge you money to use their on line home search. Home searches are free.   If you find a search where you have to give up contact information to search, just go find another.  There are zillions, and I do mean zillions of home search sites out there.

To real estate agents I say, you future clients are not leads that want to be captured or dripped upon.  Instead they are people that may have a real estate need.  In general you will need to build a relationship with them which will involve giving, if you expect to get.  Give people information and advice first, then get their contact information and stay in touch with them.  Add value, don't capture.