Want an easy way to give your Web site or blog some sizzle? Then it's time to enter the wonderful world of widgets—snippets of code you can place on a Web page to add new functions or interactive features, such as mortgage calculators, driving directions, property search boxes, or even Google ads. They're usually free and they're remarkably easy to use—even if you have no knowledge of computer programming. It's as simple as copying and pasting code from a source (usually a different Web site) directly into your blog or into an HTML box on your Web page.
If your widget displays data that change frequently, such as mortgage rates, real estate news headlines, or weather reports, the information is automatically updated on your Web site.
Widgets appear as self-contained components of your blog or site, and many can be customized to match the color scheme of your site.
"Widgets are one part of providing customers with all the information and tools they need at your site," says broker Liz Sidorowicz with RE/MAX Signature in Chicago, who uses widgets on her Web site (www.lizshomes.com). She worked with a Webmaster to develop widgets that allow consumers to compare mortgage costs, estimate proceeds from selling a home, and determine whether it's smarter financially to rent or own. She made all of these widgets available to other real estate practitioners at Widgetbox, an online library of widgets.
Where to Hunt for Widgets
Eager to scout out some cool widgets that will enhance your site? Head to the Web, where you'll find a wide range of free options at sites such as Widgipedia, Google Gadgets, and the above-mentioned Widgetbox.
Real estate–focused companies, including Trulia and Zillow, also offer free widgets you can use on your site, as long as you don't mind the sometimes not-so-subtle branding and the idea that these widgets may direct users off your site.
Here are some widgets worth checking out:
Meebo. Customize the look of this instant-messaging widget and add it to your site to chat in real time with visitors. Free registration is required.
Google Translate. If you cater to an international crowd, consider Google's translation widget, which renders all of your Web page content in Spanish, Polish, Hindi, or any other available language your visitors choose.
YouTube on Your Site. This widget lets visitors watch YouTube-hosted videos without leaving your site.
Altos Research. Just select your metro area and get real estate stats—days on market, median price, inventory, and more—specific to your market.
And Now, the Fine Print
If all this seems too easy, be warned; free widgets usually come with a catch or two.
Widgets are normally branded with a different company's logo and Web site link—that company may have developed the widget to draw traffic to its own Web site. Read the terms of use, and test it out before making it a prominent feature of your site.
Also, remember that in the world of widgets, it is possible to overdo it. Be selective. Choose tools that match with your prospects' interests and needs.
With a little caution and discretion, widgets can be one of the most effective low-cost tools for distinguishing your site. "My widgets keep people coming back," says Sidorowicz.
Widgets Are Simple as 1-2-3
To use widgets on your site:
1. Find a widget you'd like to use and choose where you'd like to use it, presumably on your blog or Web site.
2. Copy the provided widget code and paste it into your page's code.
3. Reload the page to make sure the widget is working. Periodically recheck in case servers that supply the widget's data move or expire.
By Michael Antoniak, February 2009 From realtor.com
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Notice
The KW office is closed and All Rockwall ISD schools and facilities are closed today (Wednesday, Jan 28) due to inclement weather.
Be safe!
Amber
Be safe!
Amber
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
Great Recipe for 2009
1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Talk to God about what is going on in your life. Buy a lock if you have to.
3.When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement, 'My purpose is to__________ today. I am thankful for______________'
4.Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
5.Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.
6.Try to make at least three people smile each day.
7.Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
8.Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
9.Life isn't fair, but it's still good. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
10.Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
11.You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
12.Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
13.Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all
about.
14.No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
15.Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years, will this matter?'
16.Forgive everyone for everything.
17.What other people think of you is none of your business.
18.GOD heals everything - but you have to ask Him.
19.However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
20.Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch!!!
21.Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
22.Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements: I am thankful for__________. Today I accomplished_________.
23.Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
24.When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You'll be smiling before you know it.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day. Talk to God about what is going on in your life. Buy a lock if you have to.
3.When you wake up in the morning complete the following statement, 'My purpose is to__________ today. I am thankful for______________'
4.Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
5.Drink green tea and plenty of water. Eat blueberries, wild Alaskan salmon, broccoli, almonds & walnuts.
6.Try to make at least three people smile each day.
7.Don't waste your precious energy on gossip, energy vampires, issues of the past, negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment.
8.Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid with a maxed out charge card.
9.Life isn't fair, but it's still good. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
10.Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
11.You are not so important that you have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.
12.Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
13.Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all
about.
14.No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
15.Frame every so-called disaster with these words: 'In five years, will this matter?'
16.Forgive everyone for everything.
17.What other people think of you is none of your business.
18.GOD heals everything - but you have to ask Him.
19.However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
20.Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will. Stay in touch!!!
21.Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need.
22.Each night before you go to bed complete the following statements: I am thankful for__________. Today I accomplished_________.
23.Remember that you are too blessed to be stressed.
24.When you are feeling down, start listing your many blessings. You'll be smiling before you know it.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Top 10 Tips for New Agents
Here are ten other things you can do when you are first starting your real estate career to be more successful:
1. Find the right managing broker.
Your first real estate company and broker can set the tone for your success or failure in real estate sales. Look for a managing broker that advocates sales, prospecting, technology and transaction training. You should feel comfortable with your new broker's professionalism, ethics, and time management skills. Expect your new broker to run an efficient, organized and real estate consumer-centric office.
2. Find the right real estate company to hang your license. Your new company is as important as your new broker. Is management agent-driven? Look for a strong market presence backed up by thorough penetration in newspapers, yard signs, direct mail, Internet and other media from your new company. A solid training department is a must if you want to acquire the skills to go to the next level in gross closed commission sales. Keep in mind that the costs your company incurs to provide you with an office, administrative staff and technology are high, and they are expecting a return on their investment when they welcome you aboard.
3. Create a business plan for your first year in real estate.
Your new business in real estate is a business within your new company. Don't expect to succeed in real estate sales if you don't have a solid, realistic business plan. Your mentor or managing broker, in addition to your local library business section, is good resource on how to develop a business plan.
Your plan should include the following areas: realistic sales goals, how you will prospect for clients as well as how will you reach these prospects through your marketing plan. How much of your financial resources will you spend on technology, marketing, and professional development?
4. Build yourself as a brand.
Choosing a company that has an established presence is a good foundation to build your own brand as an agent. Start marketing yourself to real estate consumers as a brand within your brokerage; consumers identify more with the agent than the brokerage they're affiliated with. Your agent brand is mobile and can move with you if you decide to change companies.
Develop a tag line such as "Rebecca Salesagent makes the market work for you". Train consumers when they think of real estate to think of you. Study a variety of consumer product marketing pieces, and pull elements that you want to test in your marketing plan. Look for ways to differentiate you from other agents. If everyone is farming, try niche marketing. Market yourself to other agents from around the country to send you referrals in your market. Market business-to-business to transaction participants such as attorney's, home inspectors and mortgage brokers for referrals.
5. Find a mentor that can fast track you beyond the basics.
Find a mentor in your new real estate office and fast! New agents spend a lot of time in the first few months in real estate learning the multiple listing service, the transaction process, office and industry jargon. But they don't learn how to negotiate, close a sale or prospect for new clients, because they're so busy learning all that non-revenue producing administrative procedures and protocol.
To get you up to speed fast find a mentor in your new real estate office that has similar professional habits and style as yours. Your mentor can focus you day-to-day on what's important to start those commission checks rolling in. Mentor's are great at telling you not to waste your time with a client that's eternally looking and not going to buy. Or to help you move forward with a stalled negotiation, your bad breath or body language that might be offensive to clients, or how to write a prospecting letter thanking those that came to the public open house you hosted this last weekend.
6. Love people and their personalities.
Having an appreciation of architecture, decorating or interior design won't be of much help with those emotional, stressed and volatile clients you will be working with. Real estate is about people and their personalities. Houses are just the vehicles for the personalities to interact. You have to truly like people and want to help them to achieve their goal of buying or selling real estate through the good, the bad and the ugly.
Out-goingness, reliability and even-temperedness are all traits of successful real estate agents. Consider role-playing difficult client personalities with your mentor to gain experience in dealing with the emotions that come with real estate transactions. Having prepared for these situations in advance, you will be able to show your clients that when they are strung out you are the voice of reason.
7. Work smart and use good time management skills.
After the fiftieth home you have shown your potential buyers, it's not about the homes anymore, it's about your clients. Learn how to qualify your clients from your mentor to save yourself time and energy that you could spend on clients that are ready, willing and able to go to contract. The sooner you learn to terminate nonproductive clients the easier it will become. Many agents dislike firing clients because of all the time they have invested with them. These same agents though are the first to announce they're self-release from the clients that were really just shoppers, abusive, or were working with multiple agents.
Real estate offices can offer many distractions to new agents. The constant parade of other agents, clients and administrative staff through the office can offer social interaction that eats up a lot of time. If you don't feel as focused or productive as you would like to be at your brokerage office consider spending part of your time at a home office. I have struck a balance between the two and the quiet, privacy and focus my home office offers clients and myself is attractive.
8. Use the Internet. It's changed how buyers start their purchase process.
It wasn't all that long ago that a buyer had to call agents to find out what properties were available to purchase. But as multiple listing services moved to the Internet and the public could access listing information. a dramatic shift started to occur in real estate brokerage. Instead of floor duty originating buyer leads calling on office listings, buyers started their home search on Websites such as Realtor.com before contacting a real estate agent. So how do you get in the path of these technology-savvy consumers? Have a Web presence on both your brokerage site and have you own real estate website.
Learn how to be technology proficient. Ask your mentor to teach you how to e-mail listings from your multiple listing service. If you are considering a computer purchase, a laptop will offer you the portability to take it out with buyers as well as on listing presentations. A digital camera is an efficient way to take listing photos and have them available in digital files to e-mail or use in marketing materials. New model cell phones with cameras can offer on-the-spot pictures of listings you see on office or brokers tour for your buyer clients. Virtual tours give home buying consumers an easy option to have a virtual showing from another city or locally 24/7.
9. Know all the details of the transaction process.
When you deliver your one of your first offers to a listing agent and she says to you that there are multiple offers on the property, this is not the time to learn about the strategies for multiple offers. Have your mentor or managing broker explain the transaction process, participants, documents, and disclosures. You need to know all the transaction terms from attorney review to walk-through. Ask about common wrinkles in transactions in your market and what you can do proactively to eliminate them.
Remember that your clients have only one focus and that's buying or selling a home. If you don't know something, don't improvise, find out and report back to your clients. Don't give legal, don't violate fair housing laws, but do celebrate after a successful closing!.
10. Keep your client pipeline pumping.
You'll find other agents at your office multitasking to the tenth degree, talking on the cell phone, landline, and e-mailing at the same time. They have four transactions going and all they do is manage them, they're too busy for open houses, prospecting or direct mail campaigns. Then suddenly they all close in the course of two weeks. The agent has now hit what I call "pipeline failure." It could be at the least thirty days before the agent finds a qualified buyer or seller, puts a contract together and goes to closing.
Transactions are exciting, but don't get distracted by the day-to-day management of them. You have to keep looking for new clients that will keep your pipeline going after your current transactions close.
Write this simple message and keep it in a prominent position in your work environment: Is my pipeline filled for the next six months? If you can answer yes every time you look at that question you will be a great success in real estate. BY Mark Nash
1. Find the right managing broker.
Your first real estate company and broker can set the tone for your success or failure in real estate sales. Look for a managing broker that advocates sales, prospecting, technology and transaction training. You should feel comfortable with your new broker's professionalism, ethics, and time management skills. Expect your new broker to run an efficient, organized and real estate consumer-centric office.
2. Find the right real estate company to hang your license. Your new company is as important as your new broker. Is management agent-driven? Look for a strong market presence backed up by thorough penetration in newspapers, yard signs, direct mail, Internet and other media from your new company. A solid training department is a must if you want to acquire the skills to go to the next level in gross closed commission sales. Keep in mind that the costs your company incurs to provide you with an office, administrative staff and technology are high, and they are expecting a return on their investment when they welcome you aboard.
3. Create a business plan for your first year in real estate.
Your new business in real estate is a business within your new company. Don't expect to succeed in real estate sales if you don't have a solid, realistic business plan. Your mentor or managing broker, in addition to your local library business section, is good resource on how to develop a business plan.
Your plan should include the following areas: realistic sales goals, how you will prospect for clients as well as how will you reach these prospects through your marketing plan. How much of your financial resources will you spend on technology, marketing, and professional development?
4. Build yourself as a brand.
Choosing a company that has an established presence is a good foundation to build your own brand as an agent. Start marketing yourself to real estate consumers as a brand within your brokerage; consumers identify more with the agent than the brokerage they're affiliated with. Your agent brand is mobile and can move with you if you decide to change companies.
Develop a tag line such as "Rebecca Salesagent makes the market work for you". Train consumers when they think of real estate to think of you. Study a variety of consumer product marketing pieces, and pull elements that you want to test in your marketing plan. Look for ways to differentiate you from other agents. If everyone is farming, try niche marketing. Market yourself to other agents from around the country to send you referrals in your market. Market business-to-business to transaction participants such as attorney's, home inspectors and mortgage brokers for referrals.
5. Find a mentor that can fast track you beyond the basics.
Find a mentor in your new real estate office and fast! New agents spend a lot of time in the first few months in real estate learning the multiple listing service, the transaction process, office and industry jargon. But they don't learn how to negotiate, close a sale or prospect for new clients, because they're so busy learning all that non-revenue producing administrative procedures and protocol.
To get you up to speed fast find a mentor in your new real estate office that has similar professional habits and style as yours. Your mentor can focus you day-to-day on what's important to start those commission checks rolling in. Mentor's are great at telling you not to waste your time with a client that's eternally looking and not going to buy. Or to help you move forward with a stalled negotiation, your bad breath or body language that might be offensive to clients, or how to write a prospecting letter thanking those that came to the public open house you hosted this last weekend.
6. Love people and their personalities.
Having an appreciation of architecture, decorating or interior design won't be of much help with those emotional, stressed and volatile clients you will be working with. Real estate is about people and their personalities. Houses are just the vehicles for the personalities to interact. You have to truly like people and want to help them to achieve their goal of buying or selling real estate through the good, the bad and the ugly.
Out-goingness, reliability and even-temperedness are all traits of successful real estate agents. Consider role-playing difficult client personalities with your mentor to gain experience in dealing with the emotions that come with real estate transactions. Having prepared for these situations in advance, you will be able to show your clients that when they are strung out you are the voice of reason.
7. Work smart and use good time management skills.
After the fiftieth home you have shown your potential buyers, it's not about the homes anymore, it's about your clients. Learn how to qualify your clients from your mentor to save yourself time and energy that you could spend on clients that are ready, willing and able to go to contract. The sooner you learn to terminate nonproductive clients the easier it will become. Many agents dislike firing clients because of all the time they have invested with them. These same agents though are the first to announce they're self-release from the clients that were really just shoppers, abusive, or were working with multiple agents.
Real estate offices can offer many distractions to new agents. The constant parade of other agents, clients and administrative staff through the office can offer social interaction that eats up a lot of time. If you don't feel as focused or productive as you would like to be at your brokerage office consider spending part of your time at a home office. I have struck a balance between the two and the quiet, privacy and focus my home office offers clients and myself is attractive.
8. Use the Internet. It's changed how buyers start their purchase process.
It wasn't all that long ago that a buyer had to call agents to find out what properties were available to purchase. But as multiple listing services moved to the Internet and the public could access listing information. a dramatic shift started to occur in real estate brokerage. Instead of floor duty originating buyer leads calling on office listings, buyers started their home search on Websites such as Realtor.com before contacting a real estate agent. So how do you get in the path of these technology-savvy consumers? Have a Web presence on both your brokerage site and have you own real estate website.
Learn how to be technology proficient. Ask your mentor to teach you how to e-mail listings from your multiple listing service. If you are considering a computer purchase, a laptop will offer you the portability to take it out with buyers as well as on listing presentations. A digital camera is an efficient way to take listing photos and have them available in digital files to e-mail or use in marketing materials. New model cell phones with cameras can offer on-the-spot pictures of listings you see on office or brokers tour for your buyer clients. Virtual tours give home buying consumers an easy option to have a virtual showing from another city or locally 24/7.
9. Know all the details of the transaction process.
When you deliver your one of your first offers to a listing agent and she says to you that there are multiple offers on the property, this is not the time to learn about the strategies for multiple offers. Have your mentor or managing broker explain the transaction process, participants, documents, and disclosures. You need to know all the transaction terms from attorney review to walk-through. Ask about common wrinkles in transactions in your market and what you can do proactively to eliminate them.
Remember that your clients have only one focus and that's buying or selling a home. If you don't know something, don't improvise, find out and report back to your clients. Don't give legal, don't violate fair housing laws, but do celebrate after a successful closing!.
10. Keep your client pipeline pumping.
You'll find other agents at your office multitasking to the tenth degree, talking on the cell phone, landline, and e-mailing at the same time. They have four transactions going and all they do is manage them, they're too busy for open houses, prospecting or direct mail campaigns. Then suddenly they all close in the course of two weeks. The agent has now hit what I call "pipeline failure." It could be at the least thirty days before the agent finds a qualified buyer or seller, puts a contract together and goes to closing.
Transactions are exciting, but don't get distracted by the day-to-day management of them. You have to keep looking for new clients that will keep your pipeline going after your current transactions close.
Write this simple message and keep it in a prominent position in your work environment: Is my pipeline filled for the next six months? If you can answer yes every time you look at that question you will be a great success in real estate. BY Mark Nash
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
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