Hi all,

New to this site...

I have developed a couple of sites www.yourclubwebsite.com and www.yourpropertywebsite.com. Both are fully content-managed sites. Both offer some additional value-added functionality (such as property statistics/enquiry history on the property one).

Now I have a couple of clients on each and they are all very happy. Just wondering if anyone has any suggestions how to go about advertising these services? Not sure about direct email as it can be an annoyance to people.

Also as I know these ideas are two-a-penny, wondering if anyone else has set up similar services and what demand has been like.

All feedback greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Paul O' Connor.

Paul - how much (roughly) is each sale worth?

The obvious place to start would be submitting your site(s) to relevant directories and working on your overall SEO.

You could also try adwords or taking out advertising on websites that are frequented by your target market.

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employ someone for 3 months to build a comprehensive database of all auctioneers & estate agents in ireland. the database back end should record all contact information, website grade, grade of prospect etc. besides recording a log of all contact with the client (including click throughs from emails). When someone calls.. blow their mind as you call up thier info & contact log. "ah, hi there Mary, hows it going up their in Monaghan?....."

Familerise yourself completely with the estate agency business in ireland & also the the other products these people look at &/or buy. This info and knowlwge will help you close when you get the enquiry.

mass mailing of selective groups from your database is very effective, whatever anyone else says. just dont do it very often. Send them on a Tuesday morning.

get yourself found on the search engines for auctioneer web design etc.

as blacknight said ... do some link building on the portals.

adwords ??? hmm ... tried it & wasn't too sure how effective. better to stick with adsense me thinks :-)

sit back & enjoy.

oh yea.. i forgot to mention ... Demand is very high.

talking of link building.... www.webdream.ie

edit: just thought I would add, that according to my records there are 1013 Total Grade A prospects for a mid priced estate agents website in Ireland. These are all independants with either malfunctioning, out of date, or just plain rubbish websites, or no website at all.

9barJoe,

Firstly, thanks very much for taking the time to put together the excellent post.

I have been building up a database myself purely from scouring newspapers, the web etc.

Not sure how many other products there are out there - I have come across a couple - first time I've seen yours (which looks excellent by the wat)..

I've sent out a few emails but got no reponse, not sure if that technique works too well (although my email wording may not be the greatest).

Do you see much benefit in putting the work into getting listed on search engines?

From looking through existing estate agents sites, I've noticed a few things..

- Some have websites that can only be described as shocking
- Most are not Content-Managed - I can only imagine the time that goes into uploading content etc.
- A lot seem to be 'franchised' to some of the big players, e.g. Sherry Fitzgerald etc. They seem to link to the standard site

Once more, thanks again for the help and best of luck with your own projects..

mass emailing has exeeded all expectations in my own experience. It is something I am trying to develop with a couple of clients .. the idea of prospect management & targeted emailing. Well, seeing as I developed the system, I might as well find somene to sell it to .. LOL

regards search engines, yes the importance of good web copy & link building cannot be understated. This is an area I have personaly let slip in the past, as it is time consuming , and often not appreciated by clients. This is now an element of web design that I stress to all clients at the outset.

The main advantage of property sites, or any cms driven project, is that you do not have to solicit or aquire content for the site. This is left to the user.

My experience with the estate agents is like this ... I had the system developed just like yourself, if ever an estate agent came along I pulled it out of the box. That is pretty well the same story now... it's just that more come along. I wouldn't describe it as my core business, but certainly forms a part. I can reckon with atv least one agent a month, which on my price scale is 1800 euro, for a site that you can turn round in 3 days. Funily enough, I just finished one. well under 12 hours dev. for 1600. cavanhomes DOT IE ... well, that will point to the new site once the transfer goes through ... right, blacknight ?

edit: Just to let you know. I had an agent call today from Co. Cork. They were getting quoted around 5k. and that wasnt from barovale either.

They also got some crappy quote from fbi. I have absolutly no doubt that I closed the deal on phone, and expect a call back soon enough. They also wanted a mortgage calculator & search function ... I just chuck it all in at the same price.

warning : do not visit my home page www.ifyoucouldwouldyou.com it is offensive

9barJoe,

Thanks again for that. I will have to do some work on the search engine side of things..

I've done up a brochure and have sent some out by good old traditional post so It'll be interesting to see if anything comes back from that!

I've heard figures like 5K bandied about alright - seems crazy to me! Obviously, some companies out there must be getting business at that level..

there's another one in the bag ... pmcneill DOT IE coming soon to a vebsite near U ..

oh jeez... I realy should do this for a living LOL

9barjoe

Very impressive...
Mind me asking how you secured these clients?
Email marketing/cold calling???

I'm well impressed...

mate .. i havnt a clue whats going on. Just one of those things I guess. 3 of them in within 4 days.

I'm going over to England to buy an Alfa GTV 2 Litre next month .... ah yeah baby, bring it on !


.. to answer your question. that last one had a demo setup for her last year, resulting from direct email

thats me car now. a 146