Real Estate Marketing Experiment

**publicrealty.org** · 11-22-2007, 12:44 AM

My name is Josh. I am a Network Engineer. I recently started a website that allows Agents and owners to list homes online for free. The only experience I have regarding Real Estate is my own experience as a buyer and seller.

The reason I started PublicRealty.org is because I realized how expensive it is to advertise real estate. I used two different Realtors in the sale of my last home and realized that this business is tough. I wanted to see if there was a way to offer a free service to and put agents and owners in the same place. Is it possible to offer sellers better exposure? Are people willing to use a free service or do you "Get what you pay for?"

Here are my thoughts and reasoning...
1) Agents and Owners will gain more exposure with a large community.
2) Buyers will search the site looking for a "Deal" due to free listings.
3) Sellers agents will have another place to advertise for free.
4) Buyers agents will have a single place to look for FSBO and Realtor.
5) Everyone will benefit from the yard signs...synergy
6) Agents can gain free backlinks from the site by listing homes.

I would like to hear everyone's thoughts on my idea. Suggestions and criticisms are welcome.

Thanks,

Josh

**VegasRealEstate** · 11-22-2007, 01:32 PM

There are so many sites that allow sellers, fsbos and real estate agents the opportunity to place listings for free. There are two questions that need to be answered in regards to your site.

1. What makes your site unique?
2. How are you generating traffic to make it worth real estate agent's time to input listings on your site?

Hope this helped!

**publicrealty.org** · 11-22-2007, 02:07 PM

Thank you for the reply. I hope to make the site unique with yard signs and establishing a strong presence in the search engine rankings but both will take time. I have also tried to keep the site extremely simple and straight forward.

I am working on an IDX solution to keep Agents from having to manually add listing to the site but this feature is in very early stages.

With the exception of Google Base and Craigslist, I was able to find only a few sites that offered free listings for FSBO's. Everyone seemed to charge agents to list.

Can you give me a list of other free sites you are familiar with? As an agent, what would you like to see? Is there anything that other sites are not doing that would make my site unique?

Josh

**GringoBob** · 11-23-2007, 04:57 AM

good morning Josh -

have you considereds listings outside of the USA ?

**publicrealty.org** · 11-27-2007, 09:35 PM

Sure, I have thought about it. Right now, I am just going to focus on the US.

**Sparks** · 11-27-2007, 10:02 PM

I'm assume you are a non profit with the .org thing right? How do you plan to pay for your costs?

Not to bust your bubble but there are so many places to list properties for sale for FREE it's not even funny. In fact there are too many IMO. I list with the major ones and my site feeds to a few others and thats it. Remember you will be competting with some major players like Realtor.com and all of the local boards that have free search sites. Buyers won't pay either if that is what you are thinking.

I actually did this several years ago. We charged for listings, gave them away etc. The only thing the site was good for was leads and the quality was lacking.

Good luck

**publicrealty.org** · 11-27-2007, 11:26 PM

Thanks for the feedback. Of course, it always sets me back a little to have people tell me I am reinventing the wheel and they failed at the same thing. The good thing is that I don't have a lot invested and if it does fail, I can walk away with a lot of good experience and I still have my day job

How do I plan on paying for my costs? I really don't have any costs. I know how to do all the programming for the site and I already had servers in use for my other websites. Basically it is just my time.

Here's the thing .... Realtors keep telling me about tons of free listing sites but I have yet to find a normal person that knows anything about any of these sites (my site included). This is where I believe yard signs will be the key. So far, that has given me the most local credibility.

My focus is not to sell the listings. I want everything to be free for buyers and sellers. When I start charging for the listings the site will definitely fail. Right now, I have to sell the signs just to keep me out of the red. Otherwise, I would make them free also. I will make money on mortgage leads, affiliate marketing and internet advertising just like I do on my other websites.

Again, thanks for the feedback.

**GringoBob** · 11-28-2007, 03:54 AM

guess all I can say is "thanks, anyway"

**RJacobsen** · 11-30-2007, 03:17 PM

Hi Josh,

I tend to agree... you are in a very competitive market. I've checked out your site and I like the simplicity to it.

My website also offers resale listings from both agents and FSBOs; however we are more so focused on advertising for new homes builders. One of the issues we've encountered with our resale listings is populating that section of our website. Even though we offered free listings, many agents were skeptical.

Have you experienced similar obstacles?

How is your traffic?

You mentioned house signs, and (in my opinion) has been traditionally a descent way to promote your product. However experience (the last 6 months) has taught me that search engine optimizing (SEO) is a far more effective approach.

Have you utilized SEO for PublicRealty.org or any of your other websites?

**publicrealty.org** · 11-30-2007, 09:52 PM

Thank you for taking a look at my site and posting a review. I have ran into a few obstacles. Most are just negative comments. I can't tell you how many times I have been told that my site is a waste of my time....

Well, I have been promoting for a month and have only had a handful of people list houses completely on there own. Others I have had to contact and offer to list their house for them. I figure I will have to do a lot of leg work myself until the site can earn more trust. People do not trust free (Realtors or Owners). I guess I understand....it feels like a scam. It will just take time.

Traffic? I have had ~600 unique visitors in my first month. Not great, but I have had worse openings...

I am working on SEO. But, as you know, you really can't see a lot of results in a month. Maybe I will start to see some of my work paying off in Dec. I am focusing mainly on link baiting techniques, social networking sites, a couple paid blog posts and guest posting on other blogs. I don't have the money to purchase lots of links and want to avoid "buying" my way up the rankings.

How has your traffic been?

What SEO techniques are you using?