Aug

These days most estate agencies have a website or at least have a web presence on a real estate portal. But in my experience, many estate agents are unhappy with the return on their investment in online property marketing car donations have little interest in striving to maximize their property websites. Yet for others the Internet has brought sales and networking opportunities that would have been impossible without the great reach and the 24/7 visibility of the Net.

I have no doubt that estate agents who want to tap into the great opportunities of online property marketing, will benefit if they observe the following 5 golden rules:

1. Good site structure

A clear, simple site structure with a few easily understandable menu links ensures that people can quickly and easily find the category of property they are looking for. There are many choices on the Internet and if homeequity loans do not make it easy for people to find their way around your site, they will simply try another site. Common mistakes are trying to put too much stuff on the home page, with the result that visitors are uncertain where to look or click. Another common error is to confront your visitors with a complicated search tool with numerous options and steps or just plain "glitchiness". After several unsuccessful attempts at using such a tool, most visitors will move on. If in doubt, ask friends to search for property on your site and advise you how easy it was to find what they were looking for.

2. Good content
Informative headlines and informative, well-written property descriptions supplemented with a generous number of good photographs will keep visitors on your site and will keep them coming back again and again. Conversely, poor grammar and spelling and skimpy information will create a poor impression of your professionalism. It is important to remember that many people who view property on websites are from far away and are hungry for information and photos that will help them in their search for properties to shortlist. Space is cheap on a website and as the site owner you should make the most of the opportunity to promote your properties effectively, thereby increasing the chance of your listings being added to shortlists. It is surprising how many property descriptions run to a few terse words accompanied by one poor photograph!

3. Search optimization
Search optimization - the science and art of getting noticed by search engines - is a big subject and I do not intend to go into it in depth here. But I am amazed that from time to time I see quite sophisticated websites that do not even show any awareness of the need to say "hello" to the search engines. A dead giveaway of this sorry state is a failure to optimize the "Title" tag. Here is how you can check your website: look at the bar at the top of your Internet browser screen. The text that you read in that bar is the "Title" for that page, and if it is optimized it should contain keywords that people might type in a search engine in order to find a page like yours. Your home page "Title" should certainly be optimized and ideally so should the other pages on your site. If this is not happening on your site you should get expert help.

4. Good replies
An overseas client who bought several properties through our company told us he had originally sent email enquiries to several websites and we were the only website that had replied! This seems amazing and highlights the need to ensure that your online marketing efforts do not break down at this critical point. The first precaution you can take is to make a test email enquiry on your own website and confirm that the email is sent to the designated recipient. Another pitfall with replying to emails is "email overload". It takes time and effort to reply to emails and if you are at the receiving end of lots of mail you may not get around to addressing all enquiries from your website. One solution is to assign somebody the job of sending the first polite reply to all emails and assisting in the process of identifying which enquiries require your further attention. Prompt and helpful replies boost your image as a professional business and pave the way for building lasting relationships.

5. Realistic expectations
An estate agent colleague told my partner that her website had been running for two years but had not delivered. My partner questioned her further and found out that she had made "only one sale" through the website. He asked her how much commission she had earned from this sale and how much the website had cost her. It turned out that she had earned about $15 000 in commission from her sale and had spent about $1 500 on her website. Even she was quite impressed when she thought about it like that. Because of the relatively low cost of Internet advertising compared with advertising in other media, even a modestly performing website can deliver a significant return on investment. Perhaps you will appreciate your website more if you revise your expectations!

Andre Viljoen is a registered estate agent who specializes in online property marketing. He is a partner in Skilpad.Com Property Portal www.skilpad.comhttp://www.skilpad.com South Africa's new real estate portal and African Showcase Realtors www.afshowcaseprop.comhttp://www.afshowcaseprop.com which markets game farms and tourism property in South Africa. Before joining the real estate industry he was active for many years in the journalism, media and advertising fields.

As the worlds economy continues to decline the choices that we make in regards to our finances increases in importance. Everyday we must ask ourselves do we really need this or that? Do we need to get a second income or in some cases a first income? As the economy worsens the unemployment rates rise. We may even start to look at income possibilities that we never have in the past, such as a work from home online business.

Therefore let's use this time to do just that, examine a work from home online business and whether it can work for you. Just how would you go about starting a work from home online business? You would more than likely begin web hosting asp net doing a search on Google or some other search engine for the available opportunities.

Once you do that you will find millions listed and you will ask yourself which do I choose. My advice would be to start you planning stage before you even turn on your computer. Sit down and figure out just how much time and money you will have to invest into this new path that you are about to journey down. Also start to think about the things you are passionate about. For example; golf, hunting, fishing, woodworking, health issues, environmental issues, bodybuilding, or any other interests you may have. The world wide web is a bounty of information on just about any topic you can think of and information sells.

Now once you have a topic to focus on and you know your available time and budget you will be able to fine tune your Google search to a specific passion you have. Starting a work from home online business is far less costly than starting an offline business. Working with affiliate programs in your chosen niche will cut your costs even more. This way you are the marketer of some one else's products and they handle all the car to donate and customer service and you just drive the traffic to their sales page and site by way of your affiliate links.

Make no mistake however, whether you choose to work from home online with affiliate programs or build your own website with your own products there will be some level of investment of time and money. If you have never done anything like this you will also need training. So when looking for the right affiliate program to join, do your research and be sure they offer free on going training. Most will also offer free gateway affiliate websites and many marketing tools to help you succeed. After all if you succeed then their products are selling and they have also found success.

By making the choice to work from home online you will save time and money in other regards as well. You will still be commuting to your offline job but for your second income source you will doing this from home so no added travel expenses or time to get to a second job. You will still be at home for your family and yet earning an income at the same time. Just keep in mind that time schedule you gave yourself when making your plan. Working from home can have many distractions and if you are serious about making money from home then you will need to be disciplined and stick to your schedule except for any emergencies of course.

In closing make your work from home online choices carefully and be sure your niche is something you are passionate about. This is important since one of the fastest and free methods of driving traffic to your product or program is through article marketing. If you choose a niche that you are passionate about you will be surprised how many articles that you have locked away in your mind. Remember it's your passion and you have all that knowledge stored away so once you learn how to work from home online you will use that knowledge to take your new business venture to the next level.

Copyright 2008 Roy J. Keller (All Rights Reserved)

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For the best www.royjkeller.comWork From Home Online business ideas and opportunities so you can earn a part-time or full-time income from home visit www.royjkeller.comRoyJKeller.com

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