In my previous post I talked about our old site and how successful it’s been for us. Well today, I want to talk about our new site. We’re very excited about some of the major changes we’ve made.

Let me first say that this site is a complete do-over in many ways. The old code was getting stale and some of the design was getting outdated for what could be done today. We wanted to update the back end structure along with the front end to make it easier on everybody. Plus we added some new kick-butt features that we hope everyone will find useful.

Without further ado…here are the newest features that we’re excited about.

Agent Interviews: We’re proud to announce that we’ve created the newest way to find a Realtor online. We’ve built the ability for consumers to Interview as many Realtors as they like using our patent pending interview process. A consumer simply needs to choose the Realtors they want to “Interview”, ask their questions and wait for agents to respond via our website. They will then be able to hire the Realtor they want to use based on the responses and we will then connect the two parties. This service is 100% for free to all Realtors and all consumers.
***Agents are also able to use our website and Interview process to recruit their own exclusive agent interviews for free.

Agent Scoring & Rankings: Now every agent will have a score next to their photo. Their score is based on reviews left on their profile along with additional information about each agent including how much they’ve updated their profile, how many years they’ve been in business, how many homes they’ve sold and much more.

Free Agent Profile Enhancements: We have decided to no longer charge to enhance an agent profile. All agents are now able to update their profile with their photo, office logo, cities they work, homes sold, website, welcome letter, welcome video and Realtor designations.

Review Responses: We have also decided to no longer charge in order to respond to reviews. All agents are now able to respond to reviews for free. If they have an issue with a review that was left on their profile, they are now able to clarify the issue for everyone to see. This includes reviews that were previously posted on the old version of IncredibleAgents.com

Social Networking Links: Agents are able to link directly to other profiles on websites they participate in including Zillow, Trulia, Active Rain, LinkedIn, Facebook and MySpace.

New Widgets: We’re providing agents with a few widgets for their websites and blogs to help them recruit more reviews to their profile and exclusive agent Interviews.

City Sponsorships: Agents are now able to be the exclusive sponsor of the cities they work. The agent’s sponsorship ad will be displayed across every page within the city, including other agent profiles. Each city will have one sponsor and is on a first come first served basis. The first 100 agents who sign up will receive a 50% discount for the cities they sponsor.

Overall, I hope it’s a smoother user experience than before. There was definitely some clunkiness to the old site that is hopefully ironed out with our newest version.

As you can tell this not a small update. These are huge changes for us and we are very excited about them. I’m sure there will be some bugs, so feel free to send us an email and let us know what you think.

PROBLEMS: We’re having a few database problems with the new launch. Hopefully they’ll be resolved soon.

About 1 1/2 years ago we very quietly launched a little website called IncredibleAgents.com. It was meant to simply be a place to help Realtors build credibility with their clients outside of the standard testimonial. It’s really turned into something that’s a whole lot more than we ever really expected. I guess being ranked #1 when you google the names of a whole lot of Realtors can tend to spark some debates. I assure you causing problems was not our intention. Nonetheless, it sure has begun some interesting discussions within the RE.net community, internally at Incredible Agent and most certainly with agents (and their lawyers).

We usually don’t like to pat ourselves on the back too much because we simply don’t roll that way. However, since we’re launching a new version of the site tomorrow, I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate our success from the site since we initially launched. Here are some of our current statistics as of 1:00 pm PST today.

#1 most visited Realtor review site with over 300,000 visitors/month
14,330 agent member sign-ups
1,015 agents interviewed
4599 reviews posted
778,000 pages indexed in Google.
>$1,000 spent marketing it

We’ve also passed some very well known sites out there in regards to traffic according to compete.com. Some on that list include Redfin.com, RealEstateABC.com, Number1Expert.com, RealEstateWebmasters.com, GMACRealEstate.com. Not too bad for a small little website with $0 investment dollars.

Well it’s sad to say goodbye to an old friend that’s done so much for us, but tomorrow you will see a whole new IncredibleAgents.com. The details of which will be coming soon.

The folks over at Agent Genius & Bloodhound Blog have put together a fund raising drive to help the people affected by the recent Tornadoes that occurred in the South on Tuesday night. Please if you can afford a donation and would like to help some people get back on their feet, click the link below and send some money over to PayPal. Jay Thompson from Phoenix Real Estate Guy will make sure it gets the right people.

PS: Don’t forget to spread the word!

I’ll be headed out to NYC tomorrow to participate at another Inman conference. It should be another great time. I just hope the rain that’s being predicted doesn’t turn to snow.

In the meantime, enjoy my interview with Joel from Inman TV.

Ok, so my Sun Devils got their rears kicked in by the University of Texas Steers. As part of a blogging bet with Lani “UT” Anglin and Jay “Trader” Thompson I have to now put “I Heart UT” on my forehead with black permanent marker. Fun!

I know I’m a little behind on this. It’s taken me this long to get over the butt whooppin’ we got at the Holiday Bowl.
Here you go.

Ok, so we got back from Vegas and were a little swamped with follow-up, clean-up, thanksgiving, rest, football, etc. This post is a long time coming and we know it.

The questions we had on our mind the whole time…”Was sponsoring the NAR convention going to be worth it?” It’s hard to say yes to that, but we met plenty of new people and potential clients at the convention. The only problem I had was telling the “potential partners” that we were too busy to talk them. You should see my stack of Biz Dev cards vs. my stack of Realtor cards. Ughh! At least our buttons were a hit.

Anyways, overall we had a good time meeting everyone who participated in the GeekEstate blogger panel and were overwhelmed with the response to our product from many who stopped by the booth. What we found out was that many people knew about us, but weren’t familiar with everything we do or our systems. I admit it’s kind of difficult to communicate everything we do for Realtors…but basically it’s everything they need online. Websites, leads, blogs, SEM, SEO, contact management, reputation management, etc, etc., etc.

Here are a few photos from the convention.

Ok, we’ve been more than a little busy over the past few months getting ready for the National Association of Realtors conference in Las Vegas. The day has finally arrived and we are on our way. You’ll be able to catch all of us at our booth #3444.

We’re also hosting the “Meet the bloggers” event for the Geek Estate Blog. Super props to Mike Price from MLBroadcast.com for helping us set up the event.

If you’re going to be at the convention come on by and say hello. If not, we’ll be posting some photos and updates throughout the week, so stay tuned.

After the Fed cut the interest rate last month, many opined that it would do little to help out the housing situation and instead would only weaken the US dollar. Although one data point does not make a trend, in the immediate term those opinions appeared to be correct as evidenced by mortgage rates which for the most part held steady. Something interesting did happen as a result of the cuts however.

Within days of the Fed announcement, our phones starting ringing off the hook. Our real estate agent clients were calling us asking what we had changed with our online marketing because an abnormally high percentage of their real estate leads were coming from Canada. Of course we had changed nothing. Upon further digging and talking to clients, we estimated that real estate leads coming from our northern neighbors increased by approximately 300% after the announcement. Most of the flurry of activity came from the traditional real estate investment markets, namely California, Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Florida. Since real estate investment is so heavily tied to speculation, it only makes sense that speculation about the value of the Canadian dollar vs. the US dollar based on interest rate drops would create such a spike.

My original thought was that this would just be a quick blip on the radar screen, caused mostly by curious Canadian investors simply looking for some information. I have recently received word however that these individuals are indeed showing up, looking at houses, and diligently preparing to purchase. I don’t see this as a market saver by any stretch but perhaps a less expected benefit.

We will be hosting the “Meet the bloggers” event at the NAR convention in Las Vegas in a few weeks. So far, Mike Price from MLBroadcast.com has been doing a great job at getting bloggers lined up for the event. It should be a good event with lots of bloggers in attendance.

If you’re going to be in Vegas for the NAR convention, feel free to stop by the Incredible Agent booth to meet up with all the bloggers. Our booth number is #3444.

Click here for the full lineup of speakers.

If you have any questions, please contact Mike Price and he’ll be able to take care of you.

It’s been rather interesting around Incredible Agent lately. Between getting ready for our giant booth at NAR, launching new features every week on our platform and trying to help our clients survive the current real estate market, we’ve been awfully busy.

One of the things we’ve been running into lately is defining the difference between our product and Point2, Superlative, Z57, Advanced Access, Homes.com, etc., etc. etc. For us it’s very simple, but we’re starting to realize the challenge ahead of us for defining the difference. Here’s my quick shot at it.

We’re creating a network of real estate brokers and agents to collaborate and create an open enterprise platform for themselves and their companies. The other companies products are simply real estate websites.

Example: MS DOS/Windows is a platform (Incredible Agent), Outlook is a product running on a platform (all the others).

Our philosophy is rooted in the fact that real estate 1.0 was all about competiting against one another and that real estate 2.0 will be rooted in collaboration.

There has been lots of talk lately about the direction of RE 2.0 and where it will take all of us. At Incredible Agent, we believe collaboration will be the name of the game. Collaborating together to build better products for brokerages and agents. Collaborating together to create a product better than Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com, etc. After all, collaboration is what Active Rain, Facebook, Youtube, Trip Advisor, IncredibleAgents.com and all the other successful User Generated Content(UGC) sites out there are built on.

User generated content is an overused term with little clarity. Some seem to implement UGC just to show off that they’re a Web 2.0 company. Yawn! RE 2.0 has nothing to do with Questions and Answers. It has everything to do with collaboration. Collaborating to solve problems and find great solutions.

Incredible Agent is building a team of brokerages and agents who have come together to build a better solution for their companies, themselves and their clients.

We’re not building websites! We’re building a platform!

That’s why we don’t sell websites, we sell memberships.

Side Note: The term “Platform” is becoming a buzz word lately around the RE space. Remember, a platform is something that can grow as the users build onto it. A simple website with a few tools is not a platform.