Should RCG Allow Anonymous Comments?

Posted on February 24, 2006 by Dustin Luther

In my mind, the best thing about Rain City Guide is that the site has grown into a wonderful community with a constant stream of interesting posts and comments. In no way do I want to mess with this!

However, I’m a slightly concerned with the rise in anonymous commenters on Rain City Guide because I’ve seen a few blogs and forums where the discussions degenerate once people start leaving anonymous comments in bunches. So far this hasn’t been a problem on Rain City Guide, but I don’t want to let things slip to the point where anonymous people (like Bob Cat, el nino, Milton Friedman) make others feel uncomfortable posting their comments.

Here are the options I see in dealing with anonymous comments:

No change… Leave all non-spam comments on the site (anonymous or otherwise)
Selectively delete anonymous comments that are clearly meant to antagonize or bait people.
Try to preempt any issues by requiring that all posts be from people with a valid email address. I could check this by emailing anonymous posters after they leave a comment and if they don’t respond in a reasonable amount of time, I would delete their comment.
Require people to register with Rain City Guide before leaving a comment. This would include an automatic email address verification.

If I was going to make a change, the purpose of the change would be to discourage degrading comments (before they start to occur) and to encourage people to leave comments with less chance of harassment. What do you think? Am I making much-to-do about nothing? Should we just assume that only people with a think enough skin are going to leave comments anyway?

I’m definitely interested in your feedback! (and feel free to comment anonymously… for now.) 😉

The Importance of Making Stuff Up as You Go Along…

Posted on February 16, 2006 by Dustin Luther

Jon Strum of the LA Real Estate blog put together a very interesting ~~article~~ manifesto that outlines what it will take for real estate agents can be successful in the future. It is a fascinating article and was picked up by both the NYT real estate blog and Redfin’s blog.

While he was picked apart in the comments section of the NYT’s blog, I think a lot of what he has to say is extremely relevant and that the successful real estate agents of the future will be the ones that learn how to re-invent what they do!

Jon’s point that “real estate professional is in the unique position of adding massive value on behalf of their client to the final outcome of the sale or purchase of a home” is extremely important. Many people are simply not equipped to buy and sell their own home on their own and are going to benefit from the assistance of a professional. While programs like Redfin Direct that allow people to buy and sell homes via the internet may some day capture 10 to 20 percent of the market that still leaves 80 to 90 percent of the market requiring more assistance. (This comment is not meant to invalidate Redfin’s business model as 10 to 20 percent of the real estate market is a HUGE chunk of change!).

The crazy part is that anyone would disagree with Jon’s general premise that real estate consumers are becoming better equipped (information-wise) and they are going to continue to demand more “value-added” services from their agents. The vast amount of money that is currently spent on “branding” techniques by agents (ads on postcards, billboards, magnets, super-market dividers ???, etc) will inevitable need to give way as the commission structure on many deals change and successful agents learn how to operate on a much leaner budget. People are going to turn to the internet to find out about not only the value of their home (Zillow?), but context around how that value might change (blogging?). People moving to a new area are not only going to want neighborhood information (homepages), but context around those neighborhoods (blogging?). The agents who figure out how to use the efficiencies of scale that the internet can provide are the agents who will be successful into the future!

So what are the internet tools that agents should be using? I had a great email today from a Seattle real estate agent who has a very prominent position in the local search engines (he or she shall remain anonymous). They mentioned that they had been following Rain City Guide for a while, but it took them a while to figure out what I was doing… That brought a big smile to my face because I’m not sure that I’ve figured out what I’m doing! I’ve seen a huge growth in Rain City Guide traffic as we’ve added some wonderful contributors, but I’m convinced that there are still hundreds of ideas and opportunities that I’m yet to take advantage of. Will Rain City Guide learn about those opportunities? You can bet on it!

My advice? Agents who do not want to get lost in the internet shuffle that is sure to take place in the near future should get involved in internet. But don’t waste your time posting your marketing materials on-line because people rarely read that stuff when you spend good money to send it to their homes! It seems like a no-brainer to me that agents should start blogging… But do more than that… Put interesting and challenging ideas on your blog. Blogging may not be the panacea for the future of real estate agents, (there is a lot more to being a good real estate agent than being an engaging writer), but by blogging to learn more about the internet, you will learn about the trends that are shaping the industry!

Another Round of Updates to Rain City Guide

Posted on February 6, 2006 by Dustin Luther

You might have noticed that I’ve done some updating here at Rain City Guide… (Didn’t I just do that?).

What inspired me? WordPress came out with another major update (from version 1.5 to 2.0), and I decided to upgrade. Then, while I was making those changes, I just kept going until I had implemented a few more ideas I’ve been thinking about for a while…

The big changes are that I got rid of the third column and moved a lot of that content onto separate pages. I’ve wanted to do this for a while because (1) I noticed that the main blog page was taking way too long to load, and (2) the layout didn’t look good on some monitors.

For those interested, here are some details of the changes I’ve made:

I did a slash-and-burn operation to my side-panel in order to get it down to the basics. Only things I kept was a tips link, the frequent contributors section, an expanded comments section (the comments have been a highlight of the site recently!), some buttons, and a “Meta” section that makes it easy to register and log-in with the site.
I moved the About section to it’s own page where I’m able to go into much more detail about Rain City Guide and blogging in general.
I broke out the Agent Recommendation page into For Buyers and For Sellers pages.
Moved the Worth Noting column to its own page where it has gone from being the ten most recent entries to the 100 most recent!
Moved my blogroll to a new page (appropriately title linkation) where I have a TON more flexibility. I’m using a new feature of del.icio.us that makes updating this page extremely simple! And now each of the real estate sites that I link to include a description on what makes the site special! I have a bunch more ideas on new link sections to add and new ways of formatting the page, but I really like the general layout.
Added an archive page using a very cool SmartArchive plugin
Upgraded to WordPress 2.01, which has an updated backend that should make it easier for contributors to post!
Throw some Google Ads on the individual posts. This is really just a test and unless they are extremely lucrative, they probably won’t last long.
Added some more red to the layout… (Is it too much?)
Added Grier Smith as a Frequent Contributor
Fixed the problem that was causing the footer to not show up in Safari browsers.
Added the author’s name in bold under each post.

So, I’ve done some testing, and it seems like everything is working to me. However, if something about the new layout is not working for you, please let me know!

UPDATE

I got an email letting me know that some of the navigational links on my photos broke, so I spent some time upgrading my photo plugin… This one thing lead to another, and before I realized it, I’d blown a whole evening organizing photos. By my evening of organization is your gain… I’ve added categorization to the photos and fixed up a bunch of titles and descriptions. The upgraded photo plug-in also makes it easier than ever to include photos in posts, so hopefully more of the contributors will take advantage of this feature!

Contributing to Rain City Guide…

Posted on January 30, 2006 by Dustin Luther

Several real estate agents (and one broker) approached me last week with an interest in contributing to Rain City Guide. Just about every one of them said they had noticed that Rain City Guide has a very high rankings on some key Google search terms, like Agent Recommendations (#1), Seattle Real Estate (#6), and real estate (#2 on blog search). (All of them were surprised to hear that we got these high rankings despite being less than a year old and not spending a dime on typical search engine optimization (SEO) techniques!) I’ve been trying to spread the blogging gospel for quite a while that if real estate professionals work together to create their own useful content for their potential clients (i.e. blog together!), all the agents involved would benefit. It is nice to see that some local real estate agents are finally starting to “get” it.

So back to the original question… What does it take to become a contributor on Rain City Guide?

It’s easy! Here are three steps that are guaranteed to get my attention:

Join in the discussion by leaving comments! The number of people writing comments has grown dramatically in the last few months, with many popular and/or controversial posts getting dozens of comments. (If you have been only reading the posts and not the comments, then you’ve been missing out on some of the most interesting real estate conversations on the web!).
Register with Rain City Guide. (As a bonus, this gets you a username so that you can log-in and edit your comments.)
Email me and let me know you’re interested!

Who do I think should be contributing to Rain City Guide?

Curb Appeal Enthusiasm Anyone who is willing to share their unique insights on the Seattle-area real estate market! There is no doubt in my mind that the site will be a better resource as more and more experienced real estate agents/brokers, mortgage brokers, and title representatives join the discussion. I also think the site would benefit from having a few other real estate professionals, like photographers and investors, adding their unique insights. All-in-all, there is plenty of room to grow and improve!

One more idea… Maybe you’re an agent who doesn’t want to jump into the blogosphere where your opinions can and will be closely examined (dare I say, “examined with hostility” 🙂 ) but you still want to benefit from the exposure that posting on Rain City Guide will provide. I have an idea on how you can get involved as well! I’m looking for someone who would be willing to post an article each Friday that lists the most promising Open Houses of the weekend similar to the wonderful Curb Appeal Enthusiasm column that Alex of Behind the Mortgage puts together! I know that some agents already do this type of research, and if you are one of them, this would be a great way to get additional exposure for your hard work and knowledge! If you’re interested in putting something like this together, or have another idea for a regular column, let me know.

UPDATE:

I had an email from a reader asking me how many hits Rain City Guide gets per month from Google… Not knowing the answer right away, I dug into my stat program and produced this chart:

Unique Visitors Per Month on Rain City Guide

Some interesting notes:

More than half of Rain City Guide traffic comes from Google searches
In January of this year, Rain City Guide received more visitors from Google Image search (378) than from either Yahoo search (333) or MSN search (194)! (While I’m missing data from one more day in January, the trend will almost definitely hold!)
The uptick in May ’05 was almost definitely due to my release of gHomes (now replaced by this home search).

Playing With Rain City Guide's Real Estate Search Tool

Posted on January 24, 2006 by Dustin Luther

Robbie Paplin of Caffeinated Software has built a great home search tool for the Seattle area and he put some very interesting posts together giving background on his effort, but I’m not sure he’s done a great job letting everyone know just how cool it is.

So, let me clarify the situation… The search tool is AWESOME!

What’s so cool about it?

Google Earth. It exports any and all of your searches to Google Earth! This means that you can get extremely clear aerial images of the home and nearby neighborhood.
Real Simple Syndication (RSS). Every search can be exported as an RSS feed an imported into a Blog Reader.
Sort by Price/SqFoot. . This is subtle improvement, but it can lead to some surprisingly relevant insights. On any search, let’s say “Seattle Homes” or even “Million Dollar Listings“, you can sort the results by the price per square foot. (This would be an even more useful feature if more homes didn’t have “0” listed as their size, but that’s better left for another post… 🙂
Search Statistics. With every search result, a box is presented that gives you statistics like the average list price and size for homes for that search.
Complete Seattle Listings. Unlike some of the other search sites that are cropping up, we’ve got a complete list of homes that are for sale by real estate agents in Seattle. (I’d tell you that it is “MLS” data, but I don’t think I’m allowed to say that… 🙂

So who might find this search tool useful?

Home buyers who want to be updated on new homes as they hit the market! (it only takes a few hours (minutes?) for a home to be listed by an agent before it hits our servers and is picked up by the blog reader of your choice!
Home owners who are curious what homes are being listed in their neighborhood (or zip code!)
Real estate agents (like home buyers) who want to be notified of listings as they hit the market via their RSS reader!

And I’m sure there are others…

By the way, because of the nature of RSS feeds, I’ve been able to present the results from selected home searches as they get listed on my sidepanel. I’m sure that there are a ton of other interesting ways to use RSS feeds on real estate sites… Any recommendations?

Heard around the web:

A Birthday Request!

Posted on January 23, 2006 by Dustin Luther

This past week I received the ultimate gift for my 30th birthday, which just so happens to be today!

With everything going on, I really haven’t spent much time thinking about my birthday (surprise, surprise!), but it did occur to me that maybe I should mix in a new feature of Rain City Guide with a birthday request.

Some background… I’ve been inspired by Jim over at J. LeRoy to write more book reviews. Some of the book reviews will be directly related to real estate (as in “how to buy, sell, invest” books), while other books will only loosely (very loosely) be connected to real estate (but I’m pretty good at stretching things!). The important thing is that I’m going to keep reading (and reviewing) and switching off between fiction and non-fiction in order to add some balance!

Knowing for a few weeks that I’ve wanted to include book reviews in Rain City Guide, I’m a little ahead of the game and have prepared a few book reviews that I’ll be publishing soon. However, I’ve got a problem. Only a few weeks into this endeavor, I’ve got plenty of non-fiction books lined up in my Amazon WishList, but I’m already out of fiction books. I’m in desperate need of some good fiction stories!

All this leads to my birthday request…

What books do you recommend I read in this upcoming year?

Despite my preference for fiction, there are no rules for your recommendations. Feel free to include one, two or ten books… Feel free to include books about investing in real estate, building environmentally-friendly homes, blogging, history, Japanese culture, and so on… Feel free to include books that have taught, inspired, or challenged you… Most importantly, I’m just looking for books that will keep me turning the pages!

Where in the World?

Posted on January 20, 2006 by Dustin Luther

Since last September, I’ve been using a free stat program that maps the visitors to Rain City Guide. Last time I logged into the site, I notice that they’ve added a new toy (a poll feature) that has inspired me to ask a question I’ve wondered for quite some time…

The “cool” part about the poll is that the results will be mapped out based on where you are when you click “Add my Vote”! To see the map, just click on the “Show Results” link (or click here!)

How does it know where you are? The results are based on the IP address you use to access the internet. Big brotherish? Maybe… But that’s the reality when you surf the web, so it is probably best you’re aware of it!

What Seattle-area real estate professionals would you like to see blogging?

Posted on January 19, 2006 by Dustin Luther

First-things-first: Wow! Life is Beautiful!

It’s been wonderful to take a few weeks off from blogging and I’m so glad that Galen, Robbie, Marian, and Ardell picked up the slack and continued to post very interesting articles! Thanks to all of you!

With that said, I’m definitely looking forward to writing again and I have a whole bunch of ideas for Rain City Guide that I’m planning on implementing in the near future! The most obvious improvement that you’re likely to see is that even more real estate professionals have signed on to post articles! I have a vision for building Rain City Guide into the best resource for real estate information in Seattle and I plan to do that by seeking out a diverse group of real estate professionals with excellent writing skills!

With that in mind, what Seattle-area real estate professionals would you like to see blogging?

Some of the people high on my list include:

Rich Barton of Zillow . It definitely would draw some much needed press to this attention deprived start-up!
Marlow Harris of SeattleDreamHomes. She’s web-savvy and the odd–ball type stuff on her site would make for some great blogging. (Whoops! just before posting I noticed that Marlow has had a blog since October 2004, six months before Rain City Guide! I guess this only goes to show that unless you embrace the blogosphere by linking to other posts, you’re likely to hide away in obscurity!)
Elizabeth Rhodes of the Seattle Times. I’m thinking a few blogging posts would loosen up her style a bit and we might get interesting real estate reporting along the lines of what John Cook does for venture capital reporting on his Venture Blog.
Tom Holst of SeattleModern. Some might argue that Tom already has a blog with his weekly redesign of his site, but the site is missing some key ingredients that make for good blogging (and easy reading), such as comments, RSS feeds, link-friendly URLs. Because he changes the URL of his pages every week, I can’t link to any of his articles because they will quickly be out of date! With all that said, once I make my way through the ever-changing layout of his site, I find Tom’s writing and photos to be very interesting and top-notch… Hence, the reason I wish he was blogging!

Of course, I realize that some of these people are not yet ready to post on Rain City Guide, but it is fun to imagine the possiblities…

Who makes your list?

Winding Down 2005, Answering My Own Interview Questions, and Ramping Up for 2006

Posted on December 30, 2005 by Dustin Luther

The year 2005 is winding down and the next interview that I post will be my last post of a fantastic year as well as my last interview in (what I think has been) a great series of interviews. In addition to all the blogs that I’ve added to my blog reader, I’ve learned a ton from these interviews and I’ve filed away a bunch of ideas for future posts.

I have been requested a few different times in both comments and emails to post my own answers to my interview questions, but this seemed a little awkward. Instead I asked Andy Kaufman if he would be interested in interviewing me and conveniently, he asked the same 10 questions I asked all of my interviewees :). You can see my responses over at MyEastBayAgent .

In addition to being my last post of the year, I’ve also decided to take a few weeks off posting to give some much deserved attention to my wife, and soon enough, our newborn child. However, as I mentioned in an earlier post, Galen has offered to step up to the plate in my absence. If his first post is any indication of his future posting content and style, then I’ve definitely left Rain City Guide in some good hands!

I wish everyone a Wonderful New Years and many Exciting Adventures in 2006!

New Guest Blogger: Galen Ward

Posted on December 28, 2005 by Dustin Luther

In the real near future, I’m going to be taking a break from blogging for a few weeks. However, I didn’t want the lights to go out on Rain City Guide while I’m taking a little break, so I’ve asked a friend of mine (who happens to run a great photoblog) to take over. He happens to be one of the two men behind ShackPrices, the creator of the Google map hack Los Taco Trucks, and an all-around fun guy. I fully expect his posts to be very entertaining.

By the way, I have a few more interviews queued up and ready to roll over the next few days, so keep checking back in for more of those…

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