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Category: Blogging (page 61 of 84)

January 3, 2007

Kibble and Bits

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

KIBBLE

Odysseus, meet Simon. Tell me, can you really teach an old dog new tricks?

Simon

Odysseus is our resident cover boy, a Bloodhound, described as a large, powerful dog tireless in his keen pursuit of a scent. Simon is a Golden Retriever, my family pet, or as we like to call him, the world’s dumbest dog. Goldens are a friendly and people-loving breed valued for their high level of socialability, yet they make poor watchdogs.

Astute and inquisitive versus dumb-as-dirt and lovable – You make the call.

BITS

Agents, as I see it, generally fall into the Bloodhound or Golden categories. I can’t speak personally for Odysseus, but I know Simon all too well.

  • Puppy Agent: Fresh out of their Principles class and newly armed with a License to Sell, these agents attend the mandatory company obedience school. They quickly learn to perform rote tasks, such as announcing their new and exciting career to all of the people in their Sphere of Influence, sending letters to Expired Listings, dropping notepads at the doors of the neighbors, and shoving business cards in the hands of unsuspecting waitresses. Puppy Golden: I did my “business” where they told me to. I’m a Good Boy!
  • The Programmed Agent: You know him. He is the one that spends all of his business development time sitting in costly training classes in search of the “answer”. He is the first in line to purchase the costly books and cassettes which will reveal the “secrets”. While he is being coached and trained and recoached and retrained, others around him are building actual businesses and establishing successful careers. The Programmed Golden: Look! Another tail to chase! I bet I catch this one!
  • Myopic Agent: A conversation was related to me in which the broker of a small, local real estate firm said, in reference to our blog, “I could have a blog, but I prefer to spend my time serving my clients. Meanwhile, at the office holiday party, I was chatting with two veteran agents about the latest Zillow news to learn that neither had ever heard of Zillow. Myopic Golden: My snout is stuck in this soup Read more
January 3, 2007

Glow, baby, glow: The revolution will be illuminated . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Seth Godin is on a tear about fluorescent light bulbs, and I join him in it not just because he’s promising a link for a trackback.

No, there is a matter of profoundly-important principle here: The redemptive power of Capitalism. The curly fluorescent bulb shown above is one of many in our home. Bulb-by-bulb we are swapping out the old Edison-style bulbs with fluorescent bulbs.

Is it because we’re granola-fed greenies right down to our Birkenstocks? Not hardly. It’s because we’re greedy, and we want to hold on to as much of our money as possible. Lumen for lumen, fluorescent bulbs are a lot cheaper than incandescent bulbs, and, because they are outrageously long-lived, they are cheaper to replace as well.

I have zero faith in the good intentions of capital-E Environmentalism as a movement. I see it as a further expression of the global totalitarian movement. The original Marxist argument — the vicious exploitation of the incredibly rotund poor people — is so obviously absurd, Environmentalism was cooked up as an unanswerable substitute.

If there were such a thing as a true environmentalist movement, its very first target would be government interference in real estate — starting with the collectively-owned roads that yield up thousands of acres of pristine land to taxpayer-subsidized development every month. The fact that capital-E Environmentalism does nothing to combat the massive environmental destruction caused by government argues to me that its actual objective is — surprise! — more government, not “saving the earth.”

But this is not about Environmentalism, it’s about Capitalism. Just as companies like Pur and Brita used the free market to solve the problems resulting from government mismanagement of the potable water supply, so, too, are entrepreneurs using simple market solutions to reduce the costs of government-regulated energy — “saving the earth” as an unintended consequence.

You have to give Marx his due, though. World-wide, 159 years after the publication of The Communist Manifesto, Marxism has produced nothing but mountainous mounds of corpses — 160 million and counting. In that same time, Capitalism has taken us from coal oil lamps to fluorescent bulbs (and light-sensitive LED night-lights in Read more

January 2, 2007

Riccelli.com launches — with a chance for you to win . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Erstwhile BloodhoundBlog contributor Richard Riccelli has launched his new web site. Richard’s real job is circulation marketing for magazines, and that is the new site’s focus. He’s looking for help ironing out the wrinkles, though. If you pay him a visit and offer constructive criticism, you might just win a free subscription to a magazine:

The new year starts with a new and improved resource for subscription marketers.

Click and you’ll get 113 Certainties for Circulation Success plus several other free and fun-to-read articles.

You’ll see examples of e-mails, landing pages and banners that captured new subscribers.

And check out the new logo. Yes, that’s a carrier (actually homing) pigeon on the badge. Humble and hard-working, soaring but direct — you get the idea… 

Bonus: You can win a free subscription to The Week or Harvard Business Review — your choice — just for taking a look and telling me what you think.**

Hope to hear from you soon. And happy new year!

Richard Riccelli, Inc.
32 Claremont Park
Boston, MA 02118-3002 USA
T +1 617 266 1036
F +1 617 266 0191

Riccelli.com –> new web address –> but no worries…

…your old bookmarks and e-mail addresses should automatically take you to my new site and inbox.

 
**P.S.  I’m after picky-picky-picky criticisms, frank reviews, even anonymous “you-need-to-knows.” Anything and everything you think would make the site better (or at least better spelled). Send them to richard@riccelli.com. The best comment or contribution before January 31st wins a gift subscription to one of two splendid magazines. OK, you’re right, they’re clients.

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January 1, 2007

Today’s Forecast

by

Realtor, Associate Broker

Author website

From my 14-year-old daughter, the very girl that brought you “Louis Vuitton and the French Revolution”, and the (unpublished) account of a local police chase which, according to Emily, resulted in the bad guy “varnishing a weapon”, we have her weather report: A chance of participation. We call her our little American Idiom.

So I am here with my New Year’s resolution: Participation. Ardell warned me, in response to my coming-out acceptance speech when asked to join the Bloodhound gang:

Welcome to “the juggling act”! Let’s see…my blog, their blog, my blog, their blog eenie meenie minie mo…

Oh, youthful exuberance! It has become clear that time management is becoming critical. Unlike Greg, I am not a Broker-Owner, just a Broker Associate. Unlike Russell, I don’t have a multi-level office support structure in place; my organizational chart includes Steve and myself. Unlike all of the other contributors (Cathleen excepted), I don’t have a wife. I am the CEO, COO, CFO, IT and Marketing and Business Development and Human Resources Departments, the wife, the mother, the orderer of the take out dinners, and the cleaner of the litter box. So Ardell’s prophetic juggling act has me, at present, precariously poised on a high wire without a net below.

Despite this, I, like Dan, am committed to more frequent posting of substance (the “of substance” part being the operative) and more consistent and meaningful commentary. Somehow, amidst all of this madness, Steve and I will continue to represent clients in 40 to 50 transactions a year – Pathetically modest by Russell’s standards, but as Greg would say, a respectable amount of Ramen.

Along those lines, I endeavor to accomplish the following in 2007:

  1. Bring more structure to my work day. Being a notes-on-the-back-of-a-cocktail-napkin kind of girl, I have hit the glass ceiling of efficiency with this approach. I need to set times to work, times to play and times to blog. And I need to set some boundaries.
  2. Produce those podcasts rattling around in my head. I vow to have a how-to library completed by year’s end for consumers, available on-line and on disk for potential clients. I am ever Read more
January 1, 2007

That’s The Way It Goes – First Your Money – Then Your Clothes

by

Associate Broker

Author website

It’s funny how just when you start to learn a little about this blogging thing… and about monetizing your blog… you then start to notice the thieves out there stealing your content.

At first, I thought I should feel flattered that someone felt my stuff was good enough to steal. Kinda felt good, in a perverse way.

Then I got pissed and started writing emails demanding the practice stop. As a blogger, you don’t want to be penalized for the duplicate content. Rojo is already hosing me as my content often gets indexed there, first.

Now I’m thinking more about revenge.

Oh, it’s not just my blog… a bunch of you guys are being ripped, too.

So I am noticing this latest theft, and I sez to myself “Self – let’s have some fun!”

The recent theft was of my last post, which included a picture. Oh yeah… they are stealing my bandwidth, too. So I went in and replaced the picture with another one. Oh – I kept the original… I just renamed it and relinked it for my blog. The theives, however, get a new one: (click on it to enlarge)
blogtheft.jpg
You can go see this particular thief at www dot nakedrepublic dot com. While you’re there, take a look at the other blogs they’ve ripped. Including BloodhoundBlog.

Next time you find yourself getting thieved on – have a little fun!

January 1, 2007

LongTail.TV: Welcome to five-hundred-thousand-channel television . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I’ve written a lot about radio here, to the extent that you might get the idea that I really like radio. I do, and I think this might apply to a lot of people who habitually work very long hours.

One of my very favorite radio movies is Pump Up The Volume. It’s actually a teen angst film, I suppose, but the interesting wrinkle for me is pirate radio. In the end the protagonist calls upon his audience to set up their own pirate radio stations, to break the mainstream media monotony monopoly with thousands of new voices.

That much is impractical, of course: Pirate radio stations cost money and require technical expertise. But guess what? The there that could never be there turns out to be here, in weblogging. This is pirate radio made practical, 57 million alternatives to Dan Rather. Quality comes and goes, but — my goodness! — choice abounds.

Here’s a further development on the same theme: WatchItVegas.com. What is it? A net-based, on-demand TV station. The owner produces the videos used by the DiamondScan signs on Las Vegas Boulevard, so he has the technology and the content to set up his own TV station.

What does it mean? In the short-run, practically nothing. It’s net video, after all, small and crappy. But in the long-run…

I have an uncle who shoots trap and skeet. He’s good, maybe two or three rungs below the Olympic level of competition. The guys who do this are fanatics in the best web-based sense of the word. There aren’t many of them, but they are devoutly interested in what they do, and they are free-spending to the point of extravagance to get their hands on the absolute best of everything.

Can you say LongTail.TV? Sure you can!

We are graduating from five-hundred-channel television to five-hundred-thousand-channel television. If there is a niche, if there is content and if there are advertisers, there will be a net-based TV network. The advertisers are optional, actually. We don’t want them here, for example.

But: Advertisers want the biggest possible return for the smallest possible outlay. If an internet television network devoted to fanatical Read more

January 1, 2007

Real estate resolutions: Cough less, earn more . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

When I get sick, I get really sick. I’ve had full-blown pneumonia twice in recent years. I have always been able to blast through illness, but, sometime after my arms got too short to read without glasses, that privilege was revoked. In consequence, when I get a respiratory infection now, I try to take it very seriously. Not as seriously as Cathy and our doctor might like, but I do my best.

In consequence, I’ve been laid up through the span of time we might have spent on big-picture business planning. Our course is well set, so we didn’t have a lot to worry about. But today Bonnie Erickson goes us one better with an excellent list of real estate resolutions for the coming year. Here’s a sampling:

  • Narrow my marketing focus to a manageable farm or neighborhood where I can meet the people and become known personally.
  • Focus my existing marketing to the narrowed sphere.
  • Contact each person in my sphere of influence at least once a quarter.
  • Contribute more to my networking group possibly through technology.
  • Finalize a cold calling system and stick to it.
  • Continue to contact expired and unrepresented listings.
  • Restructure my blog to incorporate more consumer friendly resources.
  • Re-examine my websites for consumer friendliness and SEO.
  • Continue to "bird dog" for investment properties which will be purchased for rehab and sale, rehab and holding, or sale without rehab to other investors.
  • Learn from losses in the business.

One of the things we were going to do last year and didn’t get to was implementing Daylite, CRM software for Macintosh networks. The big hurdle is taking all of our existing contact management “solutions” and merging them into one database, cleaning that for duplicates and errors, and then systematically adding to it. The task is even more daunting by now, but many of Bonnie’s resolutions show why it is worthwhile.

Easy for me to say. It’s a chore for Cathy and her pack of teenage hound-puppies. But touch-management, even if it runs on a database as faulty as memory, is worth money…

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December 31, 2006

My 3 Blogging Resolutions for 2007 (Bloodhound Blog Edition)

by

Mortgage Planner

Author website

I am not a big fan of New Year’s Resolutions for a lot of reasons. Mostly, it’s because when I identify a part of my life that I want to change, I don’t wait until January 1 to change it. I do it right away.

So, it’s December 31. Here are 3 things I resolve to do on the Bloodhound Blog in 2007… starting tomorrow.

  1. I resolve to discuss “big picture” items that impact real estate and mortgage lending such as government oversight and international economics. If I can help you understand why it’s relevant to all of our businesses and livelihoods, you’ll be the hit of all of your cocktail parties. Not really.
  2. I resolve to respond to comments as often as possible. Even the ones that are clearly trying to bait me. Ask good questions and you’ll get my answers.
  3. I resolve to write clear and concise blog entries. Sometimes it’s easier to watch the commercials than the show.

See my other resolutions on my other blogs, The Mortgage Reports and Bring the Blog.

December 31, 2006

Real Estate Blogging For Cash

by

Associate Broker

Author website

I am noticing a troubling trend.

Many real estate blogs are using text link ads and Google ads – and now some bloggers are even getting paid to post. Does anybody else feel like this is a fundamental mistake for most real estate professionals?

Don’t get me wrong – those bloggers whose blogs ARE their business need to be compensated for their time… I have no problem whatsoever with those guys.

It’s the Realtors that I question.

First of all, I think it’s fairly stupid to allow ads from competing Realtors to be shown on your website. I was on an agent’s site this morning and before you knew it – BAM – I’m on the competitor’s site. Needless to say, I forgot all about the original site I was on – and closed my browser window before returning to it.

Now there are a few companies out there that are paying bloggers to post about advertisers products or services. Although this practice is supposedly done with transparency, I can’t help but wonder…

“What business are you in? Real estate or blogging?”

I can’t believe that the public views it any differently.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong before. Many times, in fact. Maybe I’m just an overly critical type of person.

I will be very interested to hearing YOUR thoughts on this phenomenon.

December 29, 2006

BloodhoundBlog at six months: Getting our legs under us . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

BloodhoundBlog is six month’s old today. The first post, an accidental prophesy, was about the incipient disintermediation of for-pay content providers in the age of the internet:

If almost-as-good is free or nearly free, what is the market value of slightly-better?

I documented the birth of the blog soon thereafter, but it’s reasonable to argue that BloodhoundBlog is a natural progression in the erosion of the castle walls surrounding for-pay intellectual property. When Joseph Rago rails that weblogs are “written by fools to be read by imbeciles,” by what sum, precisely, is the Wall Street Journal enriched? Is it plausible that more wealth was “monetized” in the Rago-reaction than ever was realized by the original rant? If “no man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money,” who made more — Rago or the anti-Ragoons? And what persists, in the end, but another “free” opinion in an unmetered atmosphere of “free” opinions?

Their world is done. Ours is but begun. There may be a way to build a wall around original reporting, particularly where the information is time-sensitive, is difficult to obtain or is available only from an easily-restricted source. The obvious example is a real-time — as against time-delayed — stock ticker. What’s left after that? Habit? Status? Higher production quality — which may be a further expression of status? What argument can the vestigial Joseph Ragos make for the added value of “metered” air? It’s time for a deep breath, isn’t it? Why not? The air is “free.”

Do you want to argue for the superiority of your content? Good on ya! Produce superior content. Is it your goal to argue that your content is so much better that you deserve to be paid for it? Good luck with that plan. You may be able to draw enough eyes that you can dupe some advertisers into paying for the chance to try to hook a few — just like the endlessly preening broadcast news. If you see your future in a box office — a toll booth on the information superhighway — then do, please, take that deep breath. There’s a clue Read more

December 26, 2006

Santa brought us a new contributor: Introducing Brian Brady . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

We’re adding a tenth contributor today, Mortgage Broker Brian Brady:

Brian Brady is a San Diego-based mortgage broker. Working with his wife, Debra, Brian deploys six years of experience on Wall Street to make sure the loans he underwrites fit his clients’ overall financial plans.

You may know Brian’s work from his own weblog or from his participation on ActiveRain. Brian promises that he is “America’s most opinionated mortgage broker,” so we should be disabused of even vestigial errors in short order.

Take note that we are always on the lookout for talented writers. If you think your work belongs here, say so.

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December 19, 2006

A richness of embarrassments: My soup-bowl runneth over with Top Ramen . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I keep thinking that I’m going to have free time for blue sky projects at Christmas, and I just keep getting busier. I accidentally sold another house today — 166,800 packages of Top Ramen to me, but it’s a new build that won’t close until around July of 2008. As the Phoenix market recovers, we could end up with a lot of Top Ramen in the pipeline.

I should be linking more, but I think Christmas has got everyone, one way or another. The much-promoted Yankee Blog Swap was today. I credit Mary McKnight with an impressive amount of preparation, but only three bits of news jumped out at me:

First, Kris Berg is a rare wit wherever she goes.

Second, Dan Green thinks mortgage weblogs are boring. So much he knows.

And third, Glenn Kelman is much more tolerable at his increased dosage.

I have houses closing all week, along with our own refi. It’s cold here, something I almost never get to say. But I caught the wind in a sinus, and I have that half-stupid feeling that precedes a cold. Wonderful. I should probably have some chicken soup, but we have all this damnable Top Ramen to dispose of…

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December 18, 2006

Five by four: Twenty things you didn’t know, with five more to come . . .

by

Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

The four victims I tagged for the “Five things you didn’t know about me” have come forward with their deepest darkest secrets:

Kris Berg is a very smart person with a quick wit (who didn’t know this?) and a perilous driver.

Doug Quance has led a life of Steinbeck-like diversity in a vast host of locations.

Jeff Brown takes you on a grand tour of his life, from his grandfather to his wife. Along the way he explains the origins of the appellation “Bawldguy.”

And Dan Green is gracious enough to show us the everyday life of the hard-charging over-achiever. I say we enter the man in a pie-eating marathon!

My duty is discharged, and I am deeply honored to be working with such amazing people.

But there is a lingering detail…

Russell: Did you notice that Jeff called you out…?

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Inventing Real Estate 2.0

Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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