to announce that Sellsius has launched! 🙂
Check it out at: Sellsius Real Estate
Congrats to both Rudy and Joe!
Rain City Guide
Your Guide to the Seattle Real Estate Market
to announce that Sellsius has launched! 🙂
Check it out at: Sellsius Real Estate
Congrats to both Rudy and Joe!
Not to be mean, but…this is what we waited nearly two years for? Yet another real estate listings site without any actual listings?
When will people learn that just because you put up a website doesn’t mean people will use it. There’s got to be compelling content from day 1, or web users will turn to one of the dozens of other listings sites. What is the motivation for agents to list on a site that has no users and what’s the motivation for users to return to a site that has no listings?
Thanks Dustin for your continued support.
Dear anon—I agree with you 1000%. But we are not exclusively a property listing site–we are a classified site–a la craigslist. You can advertise any type of property, for sale or rent, but also businesses for sale, Products, Services and Jobs–even wanted and roommate ads. And you can add content for the hungry google spiders.
Even if you have no property listings, you can list YOURSELF–join and post your professional profile in one of our directories—you don’t even have to be a real estate agent–you can be a home stager, inspector, architect, tradesperson. Real estate is not only about having real estate listings (at least that’s what our market research told us). Ultimately consumers look at houses but HIRE professionals to buy them. They also need professionals to service them, upgrade them and mow the lawn. Real estate is bigger than just listings. We hope to help ALL the professionals associated with housing. That’s our goal. We are a people site.
Please read the writeup by Glenn Roberts of Inman News to get a bigger picture of what we hope to be—and yes, it is only a hope…but we’re going to do our damnest to help promote our members. And we love real estate professionals—we come from the industry & want to help it.
http://www.inman.com/inmannews.aspx?ID=62995
You are right about content. We hope that we and our members can add compelling content over time. If we do, members will be found. We tried to make the site SEO friendly (Permalinks, member articles, forum) so all content will be indexed and found via Google searches.
The benefits of our “exact match” and niche search systems will only be appreciated when data is added. It’s a good engine–it just needs gas.
BUT there is ONE useful tool that will give IMMEDIATE returns to our members—-it’s the Sellsius link. Please check it out. This little do-dad will allow you to pin a tag on a listing which you can then insert in print or online venues where you spend your hard earned dollars to measure your ROI. Let me know what you think of it anon.
Pingback: Sellsius is Live
Anon:
Mike makes a similar point in his blog post, but follows with an interesting conclusion I’m apt to agree with…
If it walks like a duck…the sellsius link is to promote the site thru others advertising…JF – you say you started the site because print ads are getting so spendy…now I have to pay more because your url makes my class ad longer??….and roi tracker…don’t most pros already track their ads by simply talking to their clients??…Who reading this does not know where their customers came from?
Not hatin’ just expected a lot more.
Vern,
Here’s how you can use the Sellsius link if you pay for print ads or even send postcards. What you do is list the property on Sellsius–you get the standard URL (which is SEO friendly BTW). So you take that standard URL and create a new shorter one (the Sellsius link (SL)–it will look like this: http://sellsiusrealestate.com/V24). You insert this SL url in your postcard campaign (or newspaper ad)–& tag it in you dashboard as “my postcard campaign”. Now if someone gets your postcard and instead of calling you, they type in the Sellsius link url (http://sellsiusrealestate.com/24)—that hit shows up in your dash under “my postcard campaign”.
You can create as many unique url Sellsius links as you want for the SAME listing & tag them for different print venues you pay big money for. (You can’t do that with tinyurl or snipurl—only one per url) Using the Sellsius link will help you get a ROI reading on your print ads.
You rightly ask “Who does not know where there customers come from” The answer is “you might” provided:
1. The person calls you from the print ad
2. You ask them where they read your ad
3. They remember
4. You write it down.
But, If they click to your listing (instead of calling) you don’t know if they came from your postcard ad, your newspaper ad or Homes & Lnad magazine ad. You get their IP but not where they saw the ad.
We hope to be able to give you more over time and as we see what our members want. But we are excited about the Sellsius link .
As for making your class ad longer–that would stink but the sellsius link is probably no longer than a conventional url. But check this out–if you insert the link in an online ad, you can insert it in a single word or even a single letter. And when that link is clicked you can tell that the viewer came from that online venue as well.
But it’s the use in print media where we think it might make a difference.
No hatin’ taken Vern-thanks for your feedback.
I just don’t understand why any agent is going to pay $30 a year to list on a site with zero buyers when they can list for free on sites like Trulia and Zillow which have hundreds of thousands of buyers. Makes absolutely no sense.
The quote about the founders of Sellsius knowing real estate may be true, but they don’t know much about the web, and that’s where this business is.
John,
Since NYC has no MLS, the more the merrier as to getting info to the consumer.
John
One good reason is to take advantage of the Sellsius link, a tagging system to measure traffic from print media. Neither trulia nor zillow has it. Nor does any free site. We think that alone is worth the price of admission. We talk about it on the homepage–under TAG
Another reason is to support an IDEA. Or to support a person or company they believe will do their best to promote them. It is a faith of sorts.
As for everything else you say–absolutely true–it can’t be otherwise with a grassroots effort–but unless someone drops a few mil on us, it will take our sweat equity, and our members evangelism, to grow into a valuable resource–and we’re up for the challenge. Is it impossible? Heck we may catch a break somewhere and guess who will take the ride with us? Our Members. Still, it is a risk of the $30 bucks.
Here are some areas where we think we differ from trulia, zillow or other free sites:
1. Free sites get their money in some way—usually ads . We dont have ads. If you run ads, your loyalty is to your advertisers.
2.Most real estate sites specialize in a type—residential or commercial—or only sales. We are all-inclusive, sales and rentals, even timeshares & businesses for sale. No need to open accounts on many free sites.
3. We offer more than the ability to post property listings. Agents can place classified ads for real estate products or related real estate services. Let’s say a real estate agent has a product to sell– a book, video tape, whatever or offers consultancy work or has other marketable skills —they can advertise & promote these as well. ANd some agents don’t have listings—they may be exclusive buyers’ agents–they can list THEMSELVES.
4. For agents who dont have blogs, they can contribute content on Sellsius and get the benefit of that google juice. Can’t do that on many free sites I am aware of.
As for buyers—the research shows buyers LOOK at property on many sites—not just on one—they go to trulia, zillow, realtor and big franchise sites—you never know where a buyer will come from.
Could they not come from Sellsius?
Still, I appreciate your candor.