Blogging For Business And Money

I was slumming on the real estate blogs this morning and I saw something that I just had to relay to our audience that actually wants to make money in what they do be it real estate, selling train horns , providing gout remedies, or even offering ideas on how to stop panic attacks.

Here’s the lesson. If you are looking to make money in blogging or social media even on a site giving information on how to stop a panic attack, then you have to take the time to hone your craft before you toss the towel in on the medium.

Some grand poobah real estate agent named Russell Shaw, wrote a post on a real estate blog recently wherein he said that none of the “top producers” in his business are making money using social media.

While he was heralding this as a great declaration on the inefficiency of Social Media, he instead should have been screaming from the rooftops..”Hey everybody…these so-called top producers and real estate stalwarts are ripe for the taking!”

Well, that’s what anyone who really knows how to use social media is really thinking when they hear this kind of crap. Hey Mr. Grand Poohbah…you’re right, just keep doing what you’re doing and don’t worry about this new thing called Social Media.  And keep on thinking that AOL is the Internet and that the Octomom isn’t in it for the money.

The rest of know all too well that times, they are a changing!

If you are adept on the computer and can actually embed an opt-in form, use PPC to ANY sort of proficiency and know how to set up an autoresponder, you might want to look at spending $100 bucks and a week of your time and getting your real estate license. Seriously, only 1-3% of the real estate agents alive on the planet even have blogs and even less know how to use them to actually drive traffic.

Heck, some of us are making money driving people to sites helping people blow out their colon! IF the same effort was applied by some of the Internet Marketers I know I could not even imagine what it would be like. Can you imagine Frank Kern or John Carlton marketing cheap foreclosed homes to people for 5or6%.

Seriously..doesn’t Frank have like a gazillion Twitter followers. I get Frank’s emails. Some of them are as simple as ..”Buy this now!”. If he can drive people to buy info products to the tune of a couple million bucks in about 24 hours, I think he could make a video, hit a button and sell a few houses…and still have time to hit the next wave.

I can’t even imagine what Andy Jenkins and Brad Fallon could do if they unleashed the power of the Stompernet brigade on the real estate industry. Hey…we’re all looking for that niche right? Well, this one is wide open.

Want proof..I mean like any is needed … anyone had a conversation on any technologically relevant subject with just about any agent lately..it’s scary. (disclaimer..I know there are some out there and I have run across some…but they’re as hard to find as the father of the Octomom’s kids)

But alas, check out this comment exchange I had today with this Einstein of a Social media giant…some Realtor from Phoenix who chimed in about the value of Social Media and blogging:

John Wake wrote…”I don’t think anyone has cracked the code on generating business via blogging “

Yes, unbelievably, those were his exact words. I guess John doesn’t get out all that much or maybe his keyboard is missing some of the letters that allow him to get to blogs that actually make money. Must be tough to live in a bubble…with all of the other bubble people.

So here is the response I gave him to his comment above:

Our business is marketed 100% online. )If we were stupid enough to tell Realtor.com our income, I think we would qualify for “top producer” status (again…whatever that is)….

Here’s maybe why you aren’t seeing the results from your blog:

If the sitemeter numbers that are shown on your blog are correct, you are bringing in about 450 visitors per day. Not bad..not great..but not bad.

But how are you capturing those visitors? A lot of realtors ask us how we generate so many buyer’s from our visitors. Well On every single page, on every single blog we have a large opt-in form enticing them to give us their information.

When i say entice….I mean we offer something of value, for free…that we give in exchange for their information. Works wonders…

Secondly, are your posts about topics that buyers are actually looking for? We don’t guess…we know what buyer’s are searching for and when we take the data that they are searching for we made sure we seeded our blog with those topics and they feed us hundreds of prospects per week.

Do you know for sure whether or not you are writing the articles that buyers want? it’s pretty easy to find out. At first glance, it would appear not.

I could go on and on but you hopefully see my point. When people say that blogging doesn’t work or this doesn’t work, one has to look first at themselves and wonder if they are the ones who aren’t working it.
For instance, here’s one thing that buyers REALLY want right now. DEALS!!!

You are in a foreclosure laden area…yet..when I search the power terms regarding foreclosure in your area, you don’t show up at all in the SERP’s.

You did have one story I noticed under “Phoenix Short Sale” but it was like # 19 (meaning no one will see it),it had no diggs or social bookmarks of any kind and ZERO backlinks.

Then I read the article and almost threw up. The first sentence reads EXACTLY as follows: “I don’t do short sales”.

Dude…it’s your decision but an agent not being proficient in short sales these days is sort of like a baseball pitcher not having a fastball!

If you want the fish to bite, you have to put bait on your pole. Otherwise you’re just out in the ocean getting a tan. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon…but it won’t make you any money.

Before you say something doesn’t work…you should at minimum know how it does work, have tried it in earnest and then adjusted and tried it some more.

I guess he wasn’t too thrilled with my answer. However, it’s much more likely he did not understand the answer. Here’s how he responded:

As I recently told the commenters on my blog, “If you think someone is crazy, the traditional response is to ignore them.”

Yes, there you have it. A full on finger in the ears, tongue out, “na na na” from a “professional”.

Frank, Andy, somebody…anybody want to work this niche with me? There is some serious low hanging fruit here and we won’t have to use any black hat! It’s that easy!