It’s time to get serious about your business this year

Homes.comIt’s now halfway through 2011. How is your business doing? Are you on track to achieving the goals you set in January, or are you worrying how you’re going to pay for Christmas this year?

If it’s the latter, then maybe it’s time to start getting aggressive about pursuing your goals.

First, start by breaking down your goals. You might have yearly or quarterly marks to hit, which is great. Now, break those down month by month, week by week and finally day by day. This gives you something to work toward on a daily basis, which not only keeps your momentum going by making your goals more immediate but also keeps your spirits up.

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5 Tips for Maximum Results from the Q&A Community

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The Homes.com Questions and Answers community connects home buyers and sellers with real estate professionals like you. If used to it’s full potential the Q&A community is a valuable tool for you to receive more leads for FREE!
Below are 5 tips to maximize your results from the Q & A community:

  • Complete your profile: Maximizing your MyHomes agent profile is the first step to success on the Questions and Answers community. By adding a photo to your Agent Profile home buyers and sellers will associate with you on a more personal level and thus heighten the chances of them picking you for their agent. See our MyHomes Profile Quickstart Guide for step by step instructions on setting up your profile.
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Become a Featured Top Contributor on Homes.com Q & A

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Join the Q&A Community

Looking for a way to connect with potential leads and direct more traffic to your MyHomes agent profile? You can be featured in the Homes.com Questions and Answers Community as a top contributor for FREE! Advertise your knowledge and expertise to buyers and sellers by answering more consumer questions and become a featured Q&A contributor!

One of the most important things a real estate professional can do for his or her business is to establish a good reputation. The National Association of Realtors reported in 2010 that buyers identified honesty and trustworthiness as well as the agent’s reputation as the most important factors when choosing an agent. Establishing your reputation can be as simple as asking your clients to write endorsements that will appear on your Homes.com agent profile, you can also go the extra mile by actively demonstrating your value to potential clients in the Q&A Community.

The Homes.com Questions and Answers Community offers a great opportunity for real estate professionals to connect with buyers and sellers. Continue reading

Top 5 reasons to advertise real estate listings on Homes.com

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Advertising real estate listings on Homes.com

It’s the beginning of a new year, and much like the beginning of every new year, you have new choices to make for your business, including the important decision of where you are going to advertise your real estate listings online. Much like all other businesses, you want to ensure you’re advertising is getting you the best results for your investment. So, how do you ensure the best results?

Initially, a good starting point is to monitor your current advertising and each of the results separately. There’s no easier way to determine your best advertising investment than by understanding the results you’re receiving from each of your current advertising channels. For example, do you know where you receive the bulk of your real estate leads? Or, do you know which site makes your cell phone ring most frequently? Monitoring each and every real estate lead is a great start to understanding your best results.

But, where do you start when you’re looking to advertise your real estate listings on a new site? First, you need to understand how that site connects you with homebuyers. Next, once you’re familiar with how the site connects homebuyers and sellers with real estate agents, you need to set your expectations. How do you set your expectations? For starters, simply look at how the site has performed over the past year. Did traffic to the site grow? Did the company implement additions to the site to aid real estate agents in connecting with more home buyers? Is the direction of the company moving with the advances in technology?

With these questions in mind, here are the Top 5 reasons to advertise your real estate listings on Homes.com:
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Homes.com Traffic and Leads Reach Major Milestones in 2010

In spite of down market, consumer leads increase 57 percent for real estate professionals

NORFOLK, Va., January 5, 2011Homes.com, a division of Dominion Enterprises, announced major milestones in traffic and leads generated by Homes.com in 2010. Despite the shaky housing market, over 66 million consumers visited Homes.com, viewing well over 1 billion pages in 2010, representing a 66 percent increase in page views over the previous year. This dramatic increase in traffic resulted in a 57 percent increase in consumer leads generated for real estate professionals on Homes.com.

Powering this increase in traffic and leads was the launch of Homes.com’s new Questions and Answers community, where consumers actively searching for their next home or selling their current home can connect with local real estate agents for advice. Since its launch in June 2010, this new feature generated over 10,000 questions, providing real estate professionals a host of opportunities to connect with consumers in their local area at no charge. This year, Homes.com also boasted a 151 percent increase in consumer and real estate professional signups from 2009. Continue reading