The XBroker: Jeff Corbett (7DS Associates)

Late last week the Listing Router Pay Per Click system was retroactively updated to reflect new, and in many cases, reduced pricing. 

If you have already set-up campaigns in the Listing Router admin pages, you don't need to change a thing.

If you have not already set up your campaigns and personal 'My Markets' section, you should make this a priority in your daily ActiveRain Active-ites. 

The new pricing matrix generally breaks down as follows:

• 65.5% of all available cities will cost $.89 per click.
• 32.5% of all available cities will cost $.1.89 per click.
• ~1% of all available cities will cost $2.49 per click.

The method behind how much 'clicks per city' cost involve a variety of factors including property turnover rates and agent density vs population. 

Below is a screen shot where I arbitrarily chose some cities in the Listing Router admin page to demonstrate the new pricing.

Under the URL column, you would fill in the link to the page on your IDX site for the appropriate city.

If you cannot find a city you are looking for, try being slightly less specific.  Although we've tried to include as many cities and towns as possible, some will not show up due to size or other geographic reason.

The ActiveRain Listing-Router

Feature Your Listings, Get More Traffic and Get Paid to Participate. 

After a ton of feedback from the network, we have decided to offer our new Listing Router product free for the intial two weeks of launch, until November 10th 2008. 

Some of the prevailing factors that led us to this decision:

Test drive before you buy.  Many members would like to set-up their campaigns and test the system, resulting in self-trial clicks that would charge their accounts.  We respect your need to try and test without paying for the privledge.

We tend to fear what we initially don't understand.  AR wants to allow all members the time to read about, understand, and create campaigns with confidence.   New products and services, change in general, can be uncomfortable at first.  A free trial period should alleviate most members concerns around what we feel is a huge win-win service. 

Establishing or refining your IDX sites.  Many members will want to insure their IDX websites are functioning properly and others who don't have an IDX site will want to shop for and obtain one.  Many larger brokerages offer IDX solutions to their agents for free.  For those who dont and are in the market for one, either ask a trusted member or email me for some reccomendations.  A well thought out and managed IDX solution can be the difference between just traffic and a converted client.

$1.99 per click??  Thats alot of coin! We're in the midst of adjusting our pricing tiers that will result in a reduced pay per click (less than $1.99) in 99% of the markets covered.  We understand that a click to a market like Beverly Hills, CA is worth more than a click to say, Waco, TX.  This is in addition to the discount we're offering AR members who have achieved substantial point tiers:

• 3% discount for members over 25K points
• 5% discount for members over 50K points
• 10% discount for members over 100K points
• 15% discount for members over 200K points
• 20% discount for members over 300K points

It's going to take us a couple days to implement the new city by city pay-per-click pricing, so you may want to wait until this is complete before setting up your campaigns, or you'll have to re-do them to reflect the new pricing.  You should still go ahead and set-up your My Markets section, your traffic routed to your serviceable areas will always be free.  In any case, we'll release a post when these pricing changes are updated.

Bugs!  As with any new product or service release, there are going to be some inherrent glitches and bugs.  Some of the initial issues we've discovered include:

Changing credit card information.

Search box semantics...currently you must just enter a city, hit enter and the system will ask which city and state you are looking for...we are changing this to allow one to enter city and state as well as 'predictive text' where as you type the city and state, the system will begin to predictively fill in the most likely results. 

Site/page errors (arrgh!) and other smaller admin glitches.

When signing up you will still need to enter your credit card information, which will not be charged, only authorized for validity.  At the end of the two week trial period, the pay-per-click charges will be zero'd out, however, you will still receive credits for anyone that used your Listing Router toolbar and was routed to an IDX site out of your area of practice during this time. 

Finally, on November 10th the Pay-Per-Click campaigns will begin full tilt and you will begin to be charged for any campaigns you have set-up.

Cheers!

If you haven't already, be sure to check out these related posts:

The ActiveRain Listing Router

Listing Router 'Whiteboard Explanation'

Listing Router - How To Set Up Your Own Click Campaign

Listing Router - How To Setup & Save Your Own Traffic

A Lead vs a Hit.........for Listing Router (how to make the most out it)

 

 

The ActiveRain Hit-Router

Feature Your Listings, Get More Traffic and Get Paid to Participate. 

On Tuesday October 28th, ActiveRain we launched a new service called ‘Hit Router’.  As the name implies, it's ActiveRain's initial move into the Property Listing aspect of online real estate search, albeit with a twist.  Instead of trying to disproportionately aggregate listings directly into the network, we are instead going to route visitor traffic to our member's existing IDX sites in a Pay and Get Paid Click Campaign. 

*Warning*  I write long posts and this one is no exception :-)  My style is to address as much and be as thorough as possible.  To break up the reading, as a team we are going to release information regarding Hit Router in multiple stages and formats, beginning with this post.  Brad Andersohn posted 'how to' tutorials as well as screen shots of the new service and Bob Stewart has a 'white board video' explanation of the new release.  

Before I get into the nuances of Hit Router, allow me to first offer some basic explanations as to how most consumers find ActiveRain, and what they typically do upon arrival…

Prologue

Google and the other search engines love fresh relevant content, granting a high degree of authority to sites that produce such and ranking them accordingly on given search results pages.

Google also grants authority to websites that have other like websites linking to them.  The more linkbacks a website receives, the higher the authority of that website through Google's goggles. 

These last two paragraphs very generally encapsulate what is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or ‘Google Juice’.  The better a website's SEO for a given term, phrase, topic, question etc. the higher Google will rank that site when someone (a consumer) types in a relevant search query, thus increasing the likelihood a given site (or page within a site) will appear on the Holy Grail of search results: The First Page.

ActiveRain’s community members produce a TON of fresh relevant real estate related content.  AR also has an incredible amount of other relative sites linking back to a multitude of pages within the community.  As a result, Google can’t help but consider ActiveRain and the content its community members generate as an authority for a myriad of search topics when it comes to real estate.  Proof of this resides in the fact that 80% of ActiveRain's 2M+ unique visitors a month come from Google and other search engines.

Google is very smart, however, it’s not perfect and cannot read someones mind.    Google knows when people are searching for a specific type of real estate information that ActiveRain is a highly authoritative resource for that information.  What Google doesn’t know is that the next logical step in a consumer’s journey, after they find information on ActiveRain, is a Search for property Listings.

Although many AR members have been extremely successful with generating business from AR, we believe the success found to date is just the tip of the iceberg, so the question we posed to ourselves was:

‘How does AR further leverage its valuable Google Juice to turn prospective traffic into MORE business for our members?’

The answer became this little but powerful property search tool called 'Hit-Router'.

What is Listing-Router and How Exactly Does It Work?

For a visitor, it’s a new header that will permanently reside at the top of every page within the ActiveRain network.  It will feature a search box preceded with phrase “Find Homes for Sale in: _________”.  Once a user completes the search box and hits enter, “Hit Router” will send the user directly to an ActiveRain members existing IDX (or other property listing) site.

 

Hit Router Property Search Bar

 

The idea here is that the prospective homebuyer now has a clear option to continue along in their home buying journey.

For an AR member, Hit Router is effectively a Pay Per Click account campaign that allows AR members to buy traffic from other member’s sites and pages, with one major additional member benefit that I will share with you right after the example below.

For example:

Jane is a AR member who works in Bellevue WA and likes to write about equestrian property. Bill is a horse breeder near Lawrence, KS and stumbled upon a blog post by Jane after doing a search on Google about equestrian property. Bill found the exact answer he was looking for in Jane’s post and is now more excited than ever to start his search for a new home. Since Jane is not licensed to sell real estate in Kansas, Bill would normally at this point leave ActiveRain in search of real estate listings from a website that served Kansas. 

At the same time, Todd (also and AR member) would love for Bill to come to his site and would gladly pay for his delivery or ‘click through’ for the increased potential of converting him into a client. 

 

 

Using the Hit Router search bar, if Bill, on Jane’s site searches ‘Lawrence’ via Hit Router, he will be routed to Todd’s IDX site and Todd will pay approximately $2.00 for Bill's visit.

 

And Now for the Really Cool Part!

Hit Router will credit Jane’s account a percentage of the $2.00 click to route the visitor to Bill’s site!  Jane may use these credits to purchase traffic of her own from other member’s pages in the same dynamic fashion. 

This is worth repeating: 

Any time a visitor uses an AR members Hit Router search interface to locate listings outside that agents area of service, that member receives credit to buy clicks from other member’s visitors.

How many credits do you earn?
How much you earn depends on a number of factors including how much someone pays to have traffic delivered to their IDX site.  The easiest way to track how much you'll earn is to sign up and opt to run Hit Router on your blog pages, then check your Account Billing page.

In the Account Admin and Billing section you can purchase credit that can be used to buy traffic from other member’s sites and monitor the 'Click Credits' you receive.

Keeping Visitors in Your Market for Yourself!

No ActiveRain member wants to send visitors to their own blog, searching in their own market away to someone else.  To insure this doesn't happen, there are two ways that a member can capture visitors in your own market and insure they get delivered to you FOR FREE.

1) Pre-select as many cities as you woud like to direct to your own IDX site.

In the My Markets section of the Hit Router admin panel, you may add as many city markets as you wish.  When someone searches for any of these cities while on your blog, your blog posts or your profile, they are routed directly to your IDX site's page for that city.  Again, this insures the traffic interested in your market is routed to your IDX listing pages.

 

2) Opt out of the program completely.

Simply unclick the checkbox you see below.

 

If you choose to opt out of the program, the toolbar will default to a hyper-linked text message of your choice. 

 

 

While opting out is certainly your choice, doing so prohibits you from accruing credits from traffic that would otherwise leave your site and pages anyway, so why not get paid for it?  

 

As always, your feedback is vital and greatly appreciated.

Here are links to tutorials and the 'whiteboard video explanation'

Setting up a click campaign

Saving your own traffic for free

Opting Out of Hit Router

Whiteboard Video Explanation of Hit Router

 

 

As Bob Stewart announced, I formally joined the team at ActiveRain last week.  To say I'm stoked would be an understatement.  The culture is great, working with a core team of talented people in this space has been an aspiration of mine for quite some time. 

I was reflecting on this personal desire when Jon Washburn serendipitously called me (very) recently, broached the subject and took my temperature regarding coming to Seattle to work with the AR crew. It didn't take long (3 days actually) to decide that this would be a great fit for me and hopefully the community as a whole. 

As i typically do when making a decision that carries any consequence, I weighed out the pros and cons of coming to work at AR...I'd like to share my top 5 pro's (Bob and his love for the Seahawks was really the only 'con' but I was able to look past that since my Buffalo Bills stomped all over his beloved football team).

5)  I've always been interested in Seattle as a city to live in, home to many companies in the 'Web 2.0' space.  Living in New York, North Carolina, Texas, and California, Seattle was the logical next stop on my horseshoe tour of thecountry.

4)  Being called a (AR) God has been a secret desire of mine for quite some time ;)  Seriously though, having the ability to make a positive impact on an industry I love via such a diverse and respected community like ActiveRain has me floating around like an elevated spirit :)

3)  The Opportunity.  While I can't discuss whats 'coming down the pipe' at AR, Localism etc (Jon has a gag order on me) to say that the collective vision of where this company is going is 'exciting', doesn't do it justice.

2)  The Community.  I joined AR as a member over two years ago and the community really taught me how to blog, find my voice and otherwise advance the relative skills to do well in this space.  I indirectly (and now directly) attribute much of the success I've had to the great people I've met via AR.  To now be part of this community, internally as well as a member, is pretty surreal.  'Pay it forward' is the appropriate colloquialism here...

1)  The Team.  From the top down, Jon the CEO to Bob the Janitor (j/k, Bob knows this), the individuals who are part of this company are brilliant, progressive thought leaders and genuinely good people.  Being part of a greater team rather than a lone wolf is the number one reason I took this wonderful opportunity. 

Anywhoo...I look forward to fostering and furthering the evolution of this company in my roles of business development and operations.  The sky really isn't the limit here, its just thebeginning.

 

P.S. Hopefully the mortgage contingency here on AR doesn't revolt, rebel, torch the palce and leave...I'm a pretty reasonable guy who just happens to be passionate about what he's involved with, that now continues withActiveRain ;)

The Mortgage Transparency Train Has Arrived…

Anyone who’s read my writings either here at Active Rain or on my ‘outside’ blog The XBroker over the past 18 months knows I’m a pretty opinionated guy when it comes to how traditional mortgage (and real estate industry) business works.  It’s probably safe to say that I’m an outspoken critic too, but that’s because I’m very passionate about my beliefs and convictions. Although I’ve had my share of ‘run-ins’ and probably made a few adversaries along the way (as well as many many friends), my intent has always been to spur thought and compel the industries I was deeply involved with into embracing change for the betterment of all. 

My rants typically revolve around the need for greater transparency …radical transparency…in the mortgage industry, centered around the belief that consumers and real estate agents should be afforded unabated access to wholesale direct, unmanipulated mortgage rates and their actual costs.   In my opinion, this information was too valuable to be kept in a vault or subjected to a conflicted 3rd parties idea of what they thought a consumer should see and be sold.  So I decided to do something about it…

On Monday June 14th 2008 at 2pm PST I (rather) quietly launched a website and product called RateSpeed.

The easiest way to explain this, is to ask myself some questions:

What is it?   An anonymous, automated, transparent, mortgage program and interest rate pricing pre-qualification Search Engine widget, thingy.
Why is this important? For the first time anyone can transparently access wholesale direct mortgage interest rates and program quotes without having to talk to a licensed mortgage professional first.  Yep, this is important to a lot of people. 

How is this possible?  RateSpeed is a completely objective, non-conflicted 3rd party piece of software, so we configure and maintain the flow of mortgage rate and price information between the consumer and the wholesale direct source to insure it’s 100% transparent.
This is the most important value proposition RateSpeed has to offer both consumers and professionals. Maintaining the integrity and purity of the information flow between the wholesale market and the consumers eyeballs open’s a clear channel where consumers can shop for a mortgage based on service and experience rather than ‘What’s my rate?’  Since you get to see exactly the same information a broker or banker does, you never have to wonder if they can really ‘do better’. 

So, you’re trying to put the mortgage professional out of business?   No, RateSpeed is a licensable piece of software that is embeddable on a qualified mortgage professionals web or blog-site. The good mortgage pro stays where they should be, firmly in the middle of the transaction to offer advice and close the loan.  We do require the mo-pro to offer a flat fee for service to the consumers who want to retain their services via their RateSpeed application.  How much this flat fee is, is completely up to the mortgage professional. 

So, you’re a lead generator?   No and Yes.  No we don’t buy or sell leads.  Yes we create leads for the mortgage professional by offering consumers the confidence of knowing the information they see is 100% transparent and deliverable from this professional, so when they are done shopping they’re buying from this professional. 

Why is this different again?   You know the drill: A consumer or real estate professional needs a rate quote they have to call or go online and ‘shop’ a bunch of mortgage professionals hoping to find the lowest rate at the lowest cost. Shopping for clothes may be fun, but shopping for a mortgage is a confusing, frustrating, inefficient, and very COSTLY process for both the consumer and mortgage professional. Neither one trusts the other to provide good information; everyone kinda looks at each other with that suspicious evil eye. 

This is where RateSpeed steps in, kind of like e-Harmony, using ‘19 dimensions of credit, property, and financial compatibility’, RateSpeed automatically matches consumers with a program, rate, price as well as a trustworthy ‘date’ to accompany them to the closing table.

Consumers: Shop as much as you like without having to talk to a person, contact the mo-pro when you see the rate and price you like and are ready to do buisness. 

Mortgage Professionals: Get shopped all day long without having to talk to every ‘tire kicker’. Spend more time helping your current clients.  The consumer who does contact you likes what they see and is ready to share some thoughts and explore a deeper relationship.  Think about it, you get really cool mortgage rate trending data, a customized rate pricing aggregator, a consumer shopping assistant, and a quality organic lead generation application all in one...smashing!

Real Estate Professionals:  Contact your mortgage professional, tell them to get on the RateSpeed program and that you want a RateSpeed thingy on your site, we can embed the application for you too with their consent.   While all the data goes back to the mortgage professional, you can represent to your potential and current clients that the mortgage rate quotes they get from RateSpeed on your site are the most accurate and transparent in the marketplace.  What’s better is that you know that any of your clients who retain your RateSpeed licensed broker or banker are going to be in good hands, which typically means less headache for you. 

What’s next?  I’m looking for 10 licensed mortgage professional beta testers from Active Rain to pioneer hosting RateSpeed on their sites, for free.  I’m not looking for just anyone, I’m looking for the mortgage professionals who can provide constructive criticism and sound suggestions, for they will have a say in new functionality features that go into future iterations of RateSpeed, and be credited with such.  I’m not 100% on exactly how to select the 10 members, and so working with Bob to come up with something cool.  There are huge early adopter advantages here ‘wink-wink’…

In closing, I know I’ve waded deep into the waters of self-promotion here but I’ve put in my time, blogging almost 500 pages of material over the last 18 months to give and gain the invaluable advice from the collective wisdom of this and other wise crowds.  The exchanges weren’t always pleasant but I learned a little something from every one of them. There was a much different plan in the beginning for RateSpeed, it was from the feedback I received in many forms from many members of Active Rain that fostered and molded what RateSpeed has ultimately come to be.  For this I’m very grateful and just too excited to share, so I’m willing to risk sounding a little too promotional.  That and I think this product/service can help change the mortgage industry for the better, for everyone.  :)