Did you know that there's a new wave of property portals on the web, and that every real estate professional could benefit from it? New property search engines offer pay as you go, cost per lead setups, and are likely to apply pressure to the old fashioned monthly subscription type. Many of these portals allow agents to list properties for free, too. They use many data fees, and can reduce agent workload and administration problems while including display advertising, sponsored links and featured positions that will bring in more leads. Do traditional portals still offer value for your money? They do, but many people in the real estate field view them as too expensive over all. Agents were asked to check the cost of all the website they used, dividing how much they paid by the number of leads received. That lets us know what the real cost per lead is - probably the most important statistic in finding out how good a portal site really is.
Once you know how much you pay per lead, you'll be able to apply the conversion rate to determine how many of your leads actually turn into sales. That gives you the cost per sale. Divide this number into your average commission received to find out what your return on investment, or ROI, really is. The top traditional sites do provide good value for their money, but there's a possibility that results based payment models used by newer property portals can offer even more value.
One of the big downsides to traditional subscription models is that they're using a one size fits all model, and that monthly rates aren't adjusted to reflect current conditions on the market. That means that regional differences, price differences in housing, and even seasonal changes in the market can have a big effect on your ROI. Plus, this model doesn't address the fact that you might not have the same number of listings as the next agent.
The alternatives include signing up at smaller subscription portals, building and promoting your own website, and trying out new portals that use different payment models. If you're going to try a new site, you'll want to make sure you give it a fair chance, but don't throw in with the first one you see. Compare them all, and try out multiple portals at once to see which one gives you the best result. You might eventually be able to reduce your monthly subscription budget, or get a better stance to negotiate with your existing portals.
Are new-style property portals the end all and be all of real estate promotion? Of course not - but they can provide another option in an increasingly competitive field, and we all owe it to ourselves to check things out and see if these portals are likely to work for us.
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