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.

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.

It’s hard to believe, but yes, we’re giving away our real estate website to every Realtor and brokerage who wants to use it for free. It’s also open to anyone who wants to add new tools, create custom designs and do anything they need to make their website better. No longer are Realtors and brokerages stuck with using old technology from 1998 and limited to only their designs.
Find yourself saying…”You fools, why are you giving your websites away for free?” We’ll tell you…because we’re tired of looking at all the junk Realtor websites that lose leads, get no traffic, cost Realtors valuable marketing dollars and do nothing in the search engines. Yes, we’re talking about Point 2, Advanced Access, Superlative, Z57, Number1Expert and all the others. Those companies have been keeping Realtors behind technological bars for years and we are here to free them. The current web providers don’t understand Web 2.0 and probably never will. Realtors need to stay up with technology if they are going to stay in business in this fast changing environment.

Our websites are very different than the other real estate agent websites you’ve seen. We’ve integrated Google Maps, YouTube, a simple blogging platform, lead capture forms, some fancy AJAX, Home Feeds for listings syndication and much more. I encourage you to check out our demonstration website at http://demo.incredibleagent.com to get a feel for what these sites are truly capable of.

2.0 in 2 minutes:
You can say bye-bye to that stale old website and hello to your new one in a matter of minutes. It’s literally a 2 minute process to create your own website and begin editing it in “preview mode” before you launch. Simply go to http://www.incredibleagent.com/membership.php to sign up and begin using your new website. Once you’re ready to launch all you need to do is point your domain name servers over to ours and you’ll be live within 24 to 48 hours.

Here are a few screen shots for you..

Here are some photos from our Incredible blog fest that we threw last night with the Blog Tour USA guys from Sellsius Real Estate. We were joined by many bloggers and everyone enjoyed the margarita fountain, lots of beers (more than we expected) and lots of mini chimi’s. Blogging and drinking just seem to go together, so we’re looking forward to the bloggers connect party in SF in a couple of weeks. Hope to see everyone there.

Rudy, Tom & myself having a little fun

Tom, Monica & I hanging by the bus

Christoph Schweiger, John Dalton & David Smith talking up a storm.

Michelle Shelton and team member from the AZ Mastermind Group

A little crowd shot for you.

For 100% of my real estate career I have loathed real estate websites. Simply put…They suck! That’s one of the reason’s I started Incredible Agent. I wanted to create good websites that stayed up to date with technology and didn’t look like they were built in 1997. This is a common complaint and I am 100% confident that I am not alone. I hear it all the time from agents, consumers, home buyers…whoever! It’s the first thing on their mind when I say I help agents market themselves on the Internet. Personally, I think the people in charge of the website providers should be taken out back and straightened out. You know who they are….Homes.com, Superlative, Z57, Number1Expert, AdvancedAccess, Etc.

Since starting Incredible Agent, we’ve been able to help a few agents with their website. Not nearly as many as we want, but we have a big announcement coming soon that will help every agent have a great looking and productive website. If you want to help in this endeavor…drop us a line. We’re looking for a few good people to spread the word.

What I love best about the whole web 2.0 revolution is that you can put a website out there and change it over time. That’s what we’ve done with our real estate agent review website IncredibleAgents.com. The only difference is that we left the whole “beta” tag off the logo. Here are some of the recent changes we’ve made to the site.

1. Free Accounts: Ability for agents to edit their account for free.
2. Simple Questionnaires: Simplified the questionnaire process and allow the agents to edit their questionnaire.
3. Video Introductions: Agents can now add a YouTube video introduction to their profile.
4. Dispute Reviews: Allowing agents to Dispute reviews they think are bogus.
5. Confirm Reviews: Attempting to confirm each review left on the site.
6. Highlighting Agents: Incredible and Preferred agents are now highlighted in every city on their profile.

Upcoming Changes: We are working on a few new tweaks to the site to make it more powerful for the agents and their offices. All in due time…all in due time.

As you probably already know, we have a real estate agent review website that gets a fair amount of traffic and a fair amount of reviews left by consumers (Incredible Real Estate Agents). This topic has stirred a lot of controversy and we are a part of it everyday. Many agents want to be taken off the site and don’t want to be reviewed at all. Many complain about the reviews that were left on their profile. Some actually threaten lawsuits and so far we have 1 death threat. Needless to say it’s a very hot topic.

At Incredible Agent we’re about helping agents become INCREDIBLE by using the power of the Internet to capture leads and ultimately sell more homes. One of the key components of this process is re-enforcing your marketing materials with “Third Party Credibility”. We don’t believe reviews are meant to be open complaint sessions for clients to critique their real estate agent. Sure, that can certainly be done, however we believe agents should be utilizing their positive client testimonials to gain even more clients. Agents can view this as a huge liability or they can view it as a huge asset. It’s up to them to decide how to use this.

I have an agent that I’ve been working with for years who hangs all his client testimonials up in his office. Every letter is framed and signed from the client. When working with relocation clients he literally mails them a booklet of the same testimonial letters that he has collected over the years he’s been in business. If you’re looking to nail down a potential clients committment, I assure you this is a great tactic.

Agents have used this same kind of tactic for years. We all know that one of the best ways to gain a client is to be referred by another client. That “Third Party Credibility” is very powerful in all types of sales. Word of mouth travels fast and we all need to embrace it to be successful. Just think how popular Myspace.com would have been if other people weren’t referred to it by their friends. It’s all about creating “Third Party Credibility” and that’s where Real Estate Agent reviews become highly useful.

The only difference between testimonials and reviews is that people can leave negative comments along side the positive comments. The fear of a few negative comments causes so many agents to freak out. The truth is that most comments are positive comments. Especially if the agents send their happy clients to their profile to leave a positive comment. There’s nothing wrong with pushing your clients to your profile for a few reviews.

Many agents understand this point, many don’t. However the agents who take advantage of and manage their online presence will be far ahead of the agents who don’t.

So my question to you is…”Are you for or against real estate agent reviews and why do you feel the way you do?” I’d love to hear some feedback on this issue as it is a daily topic around the Incredible Agent office.

BTW: Sorry for the delay in my posts. Just a little busy being Incredible elsewhere.

Would you rather buy a house or a website? This is a question I’ve often asked myself. I personally believe a website is very similar to an investment property. For several years I’ve been comparing those two items and have found websites to be a far better investment than a home could ever be.

It all comes down to traffic and value: real or virtual. If you have 100,000 visitors a month to a website and you’re well ranked in Google, Yahoo and MSN; why is that any different than having a rental property that has a few hundred a month in cash flow for you. From a business perspective, I see the two items completely identical. There are only a few differences that I can find; 1. A house is not going away anytime soon and will go up in value over time with guaranteed certainty. 2. I don’t get to depreciate my websites like I do with real estate. 3. A website is a small investment compared to a rental property. 4. I don’t have to fix the toilet in the middle of the night with a website. 5. I own 100% of a website.

I want to give you a quick example of what I’m talking about. My first real estate website: Arizona Real Estate Guide (MovingtoAZ.com)
This site was built in 2001 to generate real estate leads for the Phoenix market. It’s only gone thru 1 redesign in the early days and it has been very successful in the search engines. It has been on the first page of Google for “Arizona Real Estate” for over 4 years. That website has generated well over 25,000 real estate leads and millions of dollars in real estate commissions since it’s launch. Not bad for a website that cost me nothing other than my time to build it and get it ranked in the search engines. I admit that it’s not a fancy site for today’s standards, but it gets the job done and that’s all that matters.

Now, if I would have bought an average 3 bed, 2 bath home in Phoenix at the same time I built that website, I would have probably paid around $150,000 or $900/month after the down payment. If I rented the home I would have rented it for around $1000/month, making me a whopping $100 each month in cash flow. Nothing to call home about, the real gain is made with appreciation. If I sold that home today, I would probably sell it for around $275 to $300k. That’s a profit of around $150,000; which would be great over a 5 year period. Not a bad investment at all if you’re able to keep renters in the property 95% of the time.

I don’t dispute the benefits of investment properties, I just don’t believe they are for me. Buying an investment property is like having a baby, you usually have to get qualified for the loan, put down a bunch of money, manage the property, take a significant financial risk, deal with renters, etc, etc. All for a unknown amount of money at the end and virtually little cash flow during the whole process. On the other hand, I can build a website for pennies on the dollar, get it ranked in the search engines, build traffic, develop a financial model and begin making thousands every month with comparatively fewer costs and a heck of a lot less risk. In the end, I can turn around and sell that website to the highest bidder and not have to pay a penny to the bank when I sell it. 100% ownership is the road to happiness.

My frustration:
When I talk to any of the accountants I deal with they like to talk about assets and liabilities. At this point, I usually go into a rant about how Yahoo.com is a website and it makes billions and is therefore worth billions and yet somehow my websites aren’t considered assets even though they make millions in real estate commissions every year. I get the impression they would be much happier about my asset situation if I had a rental property with a few hundred a month in cash flow and a $100k in equity. Trying to get an accountant to understand this basic business principle is like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes your time and just annoys the pig.

When are we all going to realize that websites are assets just as much as any house, office building, land, retail space or business that’s out there? Why is it any different because its on the Internet?

For all you bean counters out there here are a few key definitions:
Assets = Any item of economic value owned by an individual or corporation, especially that which could be converted to cash. (A good website)
Liabilities = A liability is a financial obligation, debt, claim, or potential loss. (A bad website)

Enough beating up on the accountants. I simply believe a website with monetized traffic is a far better investment than any property I could ever own. Just because I don’t have to call a plumber in the middle of the night to fix the toilet, doesn’t make it any less of an asset. In fact, it makes it that much better.

As an agent, following this principle has made me far more successful than ever buying that one house back in 2001. I now have over 170 different real estate lead generating websites throughout the country like the Arizona Real Estate Guide. All generating leads and commissions on a daily basis for other agents in those markets. I could have never done that if I would have bought a house instead of building a website.

Put this to use in your own real estate business. If you buy a house, will it generate the monthly revenue you need to survive? If you have a website that generates leads for you every day, will you turn those leads into commissions? Which one is going to make you the money you need to survive and grow your business? It’s a no-brainer for me, you simply need to decide for yourself.

(2/19/2007 Phoenix, AZ) Incredible Agent announced today that they have launched a new program, making them the first in the industry to provide Live Transfer leads on a national basis directly to their agent network. The service was designed based on feedback from thousands of real estate agents and countless industry studies on lead conversion. Those studies have proven that next to the quality of the lead itself, timely follow up has always been the biggest contributing factor to agents’ success with leads.

Thru Incredible Agent’s new Live Transfer program, agents are guaranteed to receive live leads that have been 100% verified and are researching homes in the agents’ communities. More importantly, the potential buyer is not currently working with an agent and is immediately looking to be transferred to one. Those leads are then instantly transferred to the agent via a “warm” transfer process, therefore creating a conversation between the prospect and the agent. The entire process is completed within a few minutes of the potential home buyer becoming a lead.

“The Live Transfer leads program creates a premium level of leads that no other competitor has ever attempted,” says Damon Pace, CEO of Incredible Agent. “We have known for many years that our lead quality is very good, so we decided to take it a step further and completely eliminate the concept of chasing down leads.”

“From the beta tests of this program, we’ve seen conversion rates skyrocket and we’re certain that the agents who take advantage of this program will be very successful,” continues Pace. “Our goal with this program is to save our agents time and make them money. It’s just that simple.”

The Live Transfer program will be available to agents in all markets in the United States and Canada. The supply of Live Transfer leads in any given market will be limited because of the level of qualification required to obtain them. Agents interested in inquiring about this exclusive program should register at www.incredibleagent.com/livetransfers or call (888)333-8896.