Virtual Results Blog

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When it comes to real estate websites, if you are doing something for any other reason than TRAFFIC or CONVERSION, you shouldn’t be doing it at all. Quit throwing your money away on website and internet marketing solutions that don’t work. We measure everything and deliver ONLY what works. Read More »

You’ve likely seen a few examples of our new predesigned websites already (LoriBee.com & HomeSalesOrangeCounty.com), but we’ve been quietly launching predesigned websites that work by the day and thought I’d show a few more. Here are a few more that have gone live recently worth taking a look at!

If you’re tired of throwing your money down the drain on websites that don’t work, like what you see, and know you should be on WordPress (you should be), feel free to contact us or just sign up.

LakeStClairlife.com

WestGateAustinHomes.com

MaryBaldwinHomes.com

Want your own amazing predesigned website that works? Feel free to contact us or just sign up!

When it comes to updating and showcasing YOUR listings on YOUR website, there are two overarching goals we’ve heard over and over from agents and brokers:

1. Listings need to have HIGH RESOLUTION photos. The majority of agents (with good or great websites) use their websites in listing presentations, and no one is going to win a listing presentation if sellers see that your active listings are showcased with compressed MLS photos.
2. Automated data entry. Agents already input their data into the MLS, and would prefer if they didn’t have to manually add that exact same data to their website. And listing price changes? Agents don’t want to have to worry about updating their website to reflect those either.

There is no solution currently available that accomplishes both goals within a WordPress framework. So we had one of our developers go away to a dark room for hours and hours to build a solution. What we ended up with is a new listing management WordPress plugin that integrates with Diverse Solutions dsIDXpress (the IDX plugin that comes with each of our predesigned websites).

There are two mandatory components to adding an active listing to your website using our new plugin — listing settings and listing photos, both of which I’ve outlined below.

Settings: Pretty simple: add the Address and MLS #. Optional fields are a Title to tweak the header of the page, YouTube video to showcase a virtual tour, and a community drop down to link the listing to one of the “community pages” entered in your website.

Photos: Upload your own high res photos, and then re-order them to your heart’s desire. The first image can be used as a home page slideshow widget to showcase your listings.

Once you hit Publish, you’ll get a listing that includes your high res photos and data straight from the MLS that looks like this. You can view the listing slideshow at work on the home page of HomeSalesOrangeCounty.com.

Great software takes time to build correctly and this is no different. What’s detailed here is only version 1 of the plugin; version 2 of the Virtual Results listing management plugin will support adding past sales as well as actives for those not using dsIDXpress (though of course the automated data portion won’t work without connecting directly to IDX).

High resolution listing photos and automated data entry made simple.

And that’s a wrap!

Note: You have to be a Virtual Results client to get access to this new plugin. If you want a best in breed WordPress website with this functionality built in, sign up for a custom or predesigned site today; we’d love to work with you.

Since Jim and I are both attending RE Bar Camp Seattle 2011 on Thursday at the Seattle Center, we’re running a “RE BarCamp Seattle special” on our new predesigned websites. For the next week (until March 9th), we’re offering $200 OFF ($699 regular price) when you sign up for a predesigned website that works. But there is a caveat: you have to donate $50 (or more) to Solid Ground (the charity being supported by RE BarCamp Seattle – DONATE HERE).

That means you get an awesome website that works for $499 + $50 donation to Solid Ground. So, net, you save yourself $150 off the standard $699 pricing. Pretty darn good deal if I do say so myself.

This is a win-win all the way around; you help raise money for a great cause, and you get $200 off an amazing WordPress website product at the same time! As I’ve said before, our focus at Virtual Results is to build the best real estate agent and broker sites anywhere on the web, and I think these are the best sites you’ll find under $2,000. I won’t go into all the ins and outs of the predesigned product offering since it’s already explained in detail here (and our FAQ here). I know most of you are visual, so here are a few example sites for you to look at:

• Lori Bee
• Amy Mosley
• Ken Dara
• Ric & Pamela Dizon

So, are you badly in need of a new website? Want a real estate website that actually works and is professionally designed? We know numerous agents still have websites built 5 or 10 years ago with a huge agent photos and fancy flash pages that don’t work to satisfy today’s internet consumer looking for information. We also know from analytics that consumers don’t search the web for AGENTS; they are looking for homes for sale, market statistics, neighborhood information, mortgage rates, insights into their local market trends, and home values. We are offering an awesome website platform you can use to provide that information to consumers while taking advantage of the SEO friendly blogging capabilities of WordPress. Yes, we’re obviously biased, but 2011 IS THE YEAR you should move to WordPress.

Interested? Use the discount code “REBCSEA” in the embedded form below and hit apply discount to get the $200 off your invoice. You can email your Solid Ground donation receipt (donate online here) to drew at virtualresults dot net so we can verify and get your site up and running within a few days!!

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And, it goes without saying, if you are at REBarCamp on Thursday (or at either of the Tweetups occurring on Wednesday evening before and Thursday evening after), Jim Marks and I would love to speak with you and answer whatever social media, website, or internet marketing questions might be lingering in the back of your minds.

I wanted to clarify a couple things regarding our post on the Lones Group lawsuit on Friday.

First of all, Daniel Rothamel is a friend of Jim and mine. I can speak for both Jim and myself when I say that Daniel’s one (of many) class acts in this industry. I’ve personally never heard a negative thing uttered about him – by anyone over the course of the last five years. That said, I wrote that post for 2 reasons:

1. I happen to think frivolous lawsuits are a crazy waste of everyone’s time and money
2. I wanted to defend my friend Daniel from his attackers.

On point number 1, it’s my personal opinion. Nothing more. Nothing less. No good whatsoever will come from lawsuits like the one Daniel is facing now. It’s a waste of time, money, and effort for all of society to endur — and the lawyers win no matter what in the end. I would feel the same way on that subject whether or not I knew the defendant.

Regarding point number 2, think of it this way. Imagine someone ran up to your friend and sucker punched them in the stomach Ask yourself two questions. 1) Would you defend your friend? And 2) if you were talking about the matter with another friend a day later, would you give them a neutral account of the incident? I hope the answer to number 1 is yes, and absolutely know the answer to number 2 is “no”. Those who know me well know I’m loyal to a fault, and that certainly played a factor in writing the post as well.

There were some strong comments voiced by Kevin Tomlinson and a few others regarding the fact that we were bullying the Lones Group by taking a SEO angle. Everyone makes mistakes, and we’re more than happy to admit we were in the wrong if that’s the case. On careful reflection, we have decided that although we feel strongly that the post itself was well intended, the SEO comment may not have been. Thanks to all for your input and thoughts left in the comments — this is what makes social media such a powerful medium.  I  have modified the original post as a result.

What we were doing with our blog post is defending. What the Lones Group did to Daniel and his family IS bullying.

Lastly, please do contribute to the ZebraDefenseFund if you can. Our thoughts are with Daniel and his family and hope this lawsuit is laid to rest soon.

Obligatory Disclaimer:  I am not an attorney, in any way, shape or form.  I consider Daniel Rothamel and his family (also parties to the lawsuit I’m about to discuss) personal friends. And until today, I had never heard of The Lones Group (although I have been around the Seattle real estate scene for about 6 years). Furthermore, I have no idea if they are good at what they do – that’s not the point. Finally, what follows is simply my personal opinion.

Before l I start (my rant), a brief recap of the news that hit today — The Lones Group Inc filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Daniel Rothamel and his family brokerage, Strong Team Realtors, for infringing on their “Zebra Report” and “Zebra Blog”. Supposedly, Lones Group and Strong Team Realtors are in direct competition (even though they are 3,000 miles away) and the fact that Daniel has been known as the Real Estate Zebra for the last 5 years is “unfairly diverting business” from Lones Group. They are asking for $75,000 in damages. Here is the Inman News article: ‘Real Estate Zebra’ hit with trademark suit.

In my eyes, The Lones Group just destroyed their reputation with a single strike of their pen and a court filing on Tuesday. Unfortunately, I think it’s safe to say the Lones Group had no clue what deep public crap they’d get themselves into by filing this lawsuit against a blogger as well known and respected as Daniel Rothamel (the real Real Estate Zebra), who has hundreds and hundreds of friends (all of whom have blogs and Twitter accounts) all across the country. Doing what they just did is PURE brand suicide in today’s social media world. A single quote, link, or picture can reach millions of eyeballs within minutes. Like it or not, that is the way our intertwined world operates. Companies can operate within that framework, or cease to exist. And Lones Group is now suffering the consequences. You would think an Internet Marketing Company would know this?

FEAR of competition is completely unhealthy compared to competition itself. Here’s an idea for the Lones Group. Instead of filing a trademark lawsuit because you are scared, you should have done things SUCH AS the following:

• Put “Zebra” in your title tag of your blog
• Connected with a few real estate bloggers over the past 5 years in the social media space
• Put the word “Zebra” in the header of your blog
• Place your blog on your own domain name instead of using WordPress.com

The Lones Group  lost the online fight for the Zebra brand name (if there ever was one) in the ONLINE real estate space. The fact that someone would rather file a lawsuit rather than figure out how to settle their matter privately is a disgrace. But, hey, maybe that’s just me. To win in life and business, you’ve got to show up. And if you lose? Learn from your mistakes and move on. Don’t file a stupid lawsuit; it’s a waste of everyone’s time and money. As I’d said before, business and life comes down to execution. Daniel succeeded with branding himself. The Lones Group didn’t.

Competition should be motivation for you to get better. Not motivation for taking legal action.

Last, but not least, if you want to help Daniel defend himself, you can donate to his defense fund at ZebraDefenseFund.com. All extra proceeds will go to charity.

#savethezebra

We’ve been working months and months on our brand new Predesigned Websites that Work platform. If you follow this blog, you know we’ve been in BETA stage for a couple months. We have about 25 people in our beta program, have worked out the kinks, and are finally ready to remove the BETA tag. We’ve talked to agents all over the country and the verdict is loud and clear; here’s what you’ve told us you you want in a WordPress real estate website offering:

WordPress: You want your website to be built on WordPress to take advantage of it’s ease of use, blogging capability, SEO friendliness, and long term flexibility.

SIMPLE: Above all, you want something that’s simple and just WORKS. You don’t want to deal with the headache of setting up & customizing WordPress.org on your own. And you want a simple interface to manage your entire site.

Beautiful, professional design: You want to make it clear to buyers and sellers that you are serious about your business. You know first impressions matter, and even more so online than in person because it’s so easy for someone to click over to someone else — and never to be “seen” again.

Built with conversion & SEO in mind: You know that if your website is not converting your traffic to leads and clients, then you’re missing out. Yes, you want a professional design, but you want a site that generates business and maximizes the chances you’ll attract organic SEO traffic if you are putting time and energy into creating unique content.

And last, but not least, you want it to be affordable.

Does this sound like you? If so, we have just the product for you. Our brand new Predesigned Websites that Work wordpress platform. For $699, we handle your website setup and it’s up and running within days with zero hassle. It’s simple, professionally designed, and built with results in mind. We manage your web presence so you can focus on what you do best — selling real estate. You’ll still want to add content to your site to generate traffic and build engagement with your audience, but we take the guesswork out of the setup, design, and activation step. Our predesigned sites have a monthly charge of $99, which covers support, automatic upgrades, security fixes, hosting, dsIDXpress, and Altos Research “lite”.

Here are a couple predesigned websites to look at:

Loribee.com – Waxhaw and Charlotte Real Estate

Lori was the absolute FIRST person we signed up for our BETA program back in late November. Her feedback and patience throughout the process has been invaluable to us along the way. Though we had to go through a few iterations of her branding (she recently switched to Allen Tate), we’re absolutely thrilled with the way her site turned out.

HomeSalesOrangeCounty.com – Laguna Beach and Orange County Real Estate

Amy Mosley & Steve Craig – This was our 2nd signup. I knew Steve and Amy from their time with YouReach Media last spring and summer (at the time, I was working for YouReach part-time). They’ve been amazingly patient with us over the past few weeks as our first “live” site sitting on an external domain. They have 2,100+ pages indexed on their domain already, which is awesome to see!

The WordPress theme you see on these two sites, which we’ve named “Under Pressure” (after the Queen song), is only the first theme on our platform. This theme is currently available in 10 different colors. We’ll be adding entirely new themes as we go, and certainly be announcing those new themes here on the VR Blog when they are released. We have a number of additional sites just about ready to unveil, but waiting for a few IDX activations & a bit more content to be added to them before showing them off.

Tech savvy agents KNOW that WordPress is the ONLY option when it comes to a complete blog and website platform. Tech savvy agents also know that when it come to WordPress, there are four options:

• WordPress.com – free, but very limited flexibility
• Do It Yourself WordPress.org – Frankly, we’ve really yet to see an agent pull this off and build a PROFESSIONAL looking website on their own. But feel free to try.
• Template or Predesigned w/ Customization – price range varies from $500-$3000 depending on level of customization. And if you are dealing with a freelance designer or developer, be prepared to spend a considerable amount of time going back and forth getting the website to look the way you want it to.
• Full custom – $5k and above

No one is telling you that you can’t learn the ins and outs of setting up and customizing WordPress; you can. But the trade off is your time. You can spend your time learning WordPress, or you can spend your time selling real estate and building your sphere. You decide what’s a better use of your time.

If you know Jim Marks or me, you know selling low quality products just to make money doesn’t get our juices flowing. We are not here to beat all our competitors with the lowest priced WordPress offering available, we’re here to knock your socks off with the best damn real estate sites available anywhere on the web. These websites ARE the best real estate website product available under $1,500. Bar none.

What are you waiting for? SIGN UP for your site here and have a professionally designed blog working & functional by Monday (*IDX approval in some areas may take longer)! You can take a look at our FAQ page and product overview if you want to learn more about the features and benefits of the predesigned websites. If you have questions beyond that, feel free to give us a call at 206-395-6338.

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If you made it this far, you’re obviously somewhat interested in upgrading your website in 2011 — and we’re going to off you a special reward for reading every last word of this post. Enter the discount code “websitesthatrock” in the form above and you’ll receive $25 off the setup cost – for a limited time only.