I think Realtors would pay, they are a vulnerable bunch and they are used to paying for things that their brokers tell them they should pay for. Personally I don't go for clone websites or blogs. I just saw a website template #1 agent with a slogan that seemed local then I clicked their link and saw agents in every market with the same website and slogan. I like activerain for the social aspect, I have a free blog on google, I'm not opposed to paying but I wouldn't want the same blog as thousands of other REALTORS.

Sun Aug 5 2007, 16:49

Hi Freddie,

It's a pretty tough space to be in right now, but if you have a great idea and can find a model to support it, more power to you.

A few services / potential competitors that you might want to check out include:
http://activerain.com/
http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/blogs/
http://www.bloggingsystems.com/
http://www.rsspieces.com/
http://realivent.com/

Sun Aug 5 2007, 15:33

Freddie,

Are you trying to develope some new software or blogging platform for agents? If so, I don't think there's any money in it for you, but good luck!

Sat Aug 4 2007, 00:58

More agents will blog in the future. It's still in the early adoption phase. There was a time when only a few agents had websites. There are several website template companies that support agents today. As the number of bloggers increases, there will be room for more vendors and support.
Good Luck

Fri Aug 3 2007, 21:15

There are a lot of Realtors Freddie so I think you could have a market. I do think it makes sense to start out on a free or low cost blog like Blogger or Wordpress before you get your 'feet wet' and see if you are going to continue. Only a small portion of agents are blogging yet. More will do it I think! And the answer to the first part of your question is: I love to blog! lol Good luck!

Fri Aug 3 2007, 17:30

I have a wordpress.org blog and I love it. My only cost is the annual hosting which is inexpensive. This is much better for my business than blogging on ActiveRain because I am not surrounded by a bunch of competitors and I can control the look feel and function of the blog.

I think wordpress.org might be a tough sell to the non techie Realtor. My previous platform was blogger.com and that was a bit easier but not as feature rich.

Mon Jul 30 2007, 01:23

I use Google's blogging system, which is free. I don't think I would pay for this service.

Mon Jul 30 2007, 01:15

this site offers free agent blogs all in one place

Fri Jul 27 2007, 07:44

@ Kristal: Why is Trulia Voices different from Yahoo Answers? Isn't there added value in tailoring a service to the specific needs of targeted niche markets?

Trulia Voices aims to provide a question/answer internet platform targeted specifically at real estate professionals and real estate consumers. Yahoo Answers tries to reach anyone and everyone in the entire world. Obviously, you are a "real estate pro" who finds value in Trulia's specific focus of their technology in the real estate niche or else you wouldn't be using it to provide answers. Luckily for you and me and others, Trulia did not bail out in developing their Voices feature because they saw no difference in questions/answers for the real estate market versus every other question/answer website out there.

@ Others: Thanks for the pointers to ActiveRain and Real Town. I have checked them out and there seem to be many good blogs on there, including yours :)

I wonder if there are features you would like to have in a real estate blog that they are not currently providing?

Sun Jun 10 2007, 14:54

Freddie The Active Rain Real Estate Network http://activerain.com is free and for all types of real estate professionals.
reliberation from Real Town is another free site. There are several more.

Sat Jun 9 2007, 07:54

I agree that ActiveRain presents the best opportunity for anyone involved in real estate, not just agents.

I blog fairly regularly on AR and have found it is very useful to its readers to learn and to bloggers to help people get to know them and SEO benefits.

It doesn't hurt that it is free either. That being said, I think typepad offers a good blogging platform for a reasonable price as well and allows for domain mapping which is a cool benefit. I run two domains to typepad right now, which I just started.

Fri Jun 8 2007, 14:12

I think the activerain network offers similar services for real estate professionals. A lot of agents have blogs these days and maintain them diligently. I'd be very curious to know what kind of features professionals would want from this kind of feature.

Fri Jun 8 2007, 12:43