They’re Here! We’ve Launched BiggerPockets Blogs!

In last week’s newsletter, we told you some of the reasons to blog. Now that we’ve officially launched BiggerPockets Blogs, I’d like to share some of the great features of our blogging system, along with some great reasons to get blogging on BiggerPockets.

Some Reasons to Set Up a Blog with BiggerPockets Blogs Include:

1. It’s EASY - Setting up a blog takes less than a minute, and you never need to know any HTML or other code to use the blog. Easily upload images or YouTube videos, alter your fonts and post layouts, and more using our WYSIWYG (Whay You See is What You Get) blog creator!
2. Customizable Layouts - We’ve made customizing the layout of your blog, quick and easy. Choose your own colors, layout design (more layouts coming soon), sidebar additions and create a blog that fits your personality.
3. Widget Ready - Got a widget that you must have on your blog? Members can simply paste the widget code into our Blog customizer and viola!
4. SEO Ready - Our blogs are search engine optimized so inclusion in Google, Yahoo, Ask, MSN, etc should be fast and effortless.
5. Instant Publicity - All Bloggers with a BiggerPockets Blog will have the opportunity to have their blog and profile promoted across our site. Those bloggers who are more active in their posts and comments will be promoted on our stats page and elsewhere. Additionally, members profiles are promoted to the search engines (unless you request profile privacy), and just having an account on our site allows you to be found by millions of people in the real estate world!
6. Communicate with other Bloggers with Trackbacks - With our trackback system, by simply linking to posts of other bloggers in your articles, both on BiggerPockets and off, our system will notify them, and you’ll instantly let them know that you find their article relevant. Its a great way to stay in touch with other bloggers and let them know that their content is important to you.
7. Build an Audience with Blog and Comment Subscriptions - both BiggerPockets members and visitors can subscribe to your blog or individual articles, either through RSS feeds or email subscriptions. Your audience can easily be automatically notified whenever you post new content, or whenever someone adds to a conversation in the comments of your blog.
8. Save Your Favorite Posts Across BiggerPockets Blogs - We’ve established a system for members to be able to save any post on the site that interests them. Once saved, you can easily find your favorite saved blog posts in your dashboard.
   Promote yourself, your real estate ideologies and thoughts
9. Ping the World - Automatically ping the world upon publication of a new post. Pinging notifies blog search engines and directories that you’ve got a new post, and helps them keep the most up to date records of your content.
10. Make Money - We saved the best for last! BiggerPockets members have the opportunity to make money with their blogs by adding advertising. BiggerPockets does not show any ads on member’s blogs. Instead, we’ve created specific ad slots where you can add advertisements from Google AdSense, Yahoo, MSN, or ANY OTHER AD NETWORK. Just set up an account, find the right ad size to match the specified slot, and paste the code your network provides you. All that’s left is to provide great content so your visitors keep coming back, and you’ll be on your way to make some real cash! (Launching this week!)

What Are You Waiting For?

NOTE: I’m going to be maintaining a blog to help our members use our Blogs and other site functions. Swing by and check out the BiggerPockets Founder’s Blog

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Tags: bigger pockets, biggerpockets, biggerpockets blogs, blog, blogger, blogging, marketing, publicity

Hi everyone and welcome to Volume 8 of the Carnival of Real Estate Investing. While there are many good submissions this week, only 2 are of any help to real estate investors (I’ve marked them with **). I hope upcoming editions of the carnival have more useful information to help the everyday investor out . . . that’s what this carnival is all about, right?

• Advice to Equity Office Bidders by Market Poetry
  While I can’t stand that people blog anonymously (no personal info can be found on their blog), I really did enjoy the creativity of this post. I’m not sure that I’ve read other poems about the business of investing. This is a great little piece to kick off the Carnival!
• ** One of My Favorite Landlord Tools by Anesia Springborn
  The winner of this weeks carnival (I just felt like announcing a winner), Anesia’s article tells us about an AMAZING tool that can really make life a little easier for landlords.

• ** Buyers lesson part 1 by Eric Medemar
  This is a detailed look at how to find buyers for wholesale deals - a well written article for anyone interested in wholesaling.
• The Big Picture About Cash Flow From Foreclosures by Steve Burns
  A nice article that explains how to get paid by helping people avoid foreclosure, and by saving their home.

• What Increases Your Home’s Value and By How Much by Steve Faber
  This article examines how different improvements can affect the value of your home.

• Real Estate Indicators - Nothing Decisive Yet by Nigel Swaby
  Using current economic news and data, this piece examines how the housing market will trend in the near term.
• Is Real Estate Calling You? by Katie
  While it concentrates on real estate investing, this article is a very broad piece that doesn’t really tell you much. I think it is intended to be a motivational piece, but never really does the job.

Tags: biggerpockets, blog, blog-carnival, blogger, blogging, carnival, carnival-of-real-estate, carnival-of-real-estate-investing, real estate, real estate investing

This has been an interesting past few weeks. I guess the blogging world is pre-empting the entertainment business with its awards season. This blogging award season has been kind to us so far, as I’ve been blessed with some very generous honors that I thought you’d like to hear about.

First, as many of you already know, we were nominated in two categories for the 2007 Real Estate Blogging Awards. The nomination alone was wonderful, and it helps inspire me to continue with the mission of this blog. I think today is that last day to vote, so if you haven’t done so already, you should.

This morning, I opened my email to see a message from a great blogger who many of you are already familiar with, Teresa Boardman. She told me that I should take a look at her blog, as I was named one of her 10 good men. It is quite an honor, and I’ve found myself in some wonderful company.

Here is a blurb from her site:

“As I announced last week the St. Paul Real Estate Blog would like to recognize 10 good men who have consumer oriented blogs, today I present 9 good men. My origional criteria was that the blogs should be at least six months old, post on a regular basis and that the content be consumer oriented and “low ego”. The six month requirement was removed because blogs are still new in our industry, and a few good men would have been left out. I could write an entire post about each of our winners and maybe some day I will.

So here are 10 very good men

Josh Dorkin - Real Estate Investing For Real, The BiggerPockets blog is among the top 5 in the nation, with advice and news for everyone interested in real estate. Amazingly low in ego considering the size and reach of the blog. Josh is a very nice person and is a good net citizen, helping and encouraging other blog writers.”

As I mentioned in my comments on her blog post, I have been humbled by this wonderful honor. It does mean a lot to me. I did think that it was worthwhile to mention the other bloggers in the list, as they are all worthy:

Larry Cragun -Mortgages Undressed & RealEstateUndressed
Jonathan Miller -Matrix Blog
Doug Quance - Brokers First Realty Atlanta
Alex Stenback - Behind the Mortgage
Norm Fisher -Saskatoon Real Estate (Check out Pimp my Igloo!)
Noah Roseblatt - Urban Diggs
Ed Rybczynski - Title-Opoly
Erik Hare

I feel like many bloggers don’t have enough focus on the consumer, and I’m happy that I’m not alone in this. Its great to see these other guys really doing their thing. Congrats to the rest of you as well for all your work!

Tags: alex, alex-stenback, awards, bigger, bigger pockets, biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, blogger, blogging, Boardman, Cragun, estate, fisher, joshua-dorkin, Larry, Larry-Cragun, matrix, norm, norm-fisher, pockets, real, real-estate-blogging-awards, real_estate_investing, saskatoon, stenback, Teresa, teresa-boardman

I wanted to extend a warm welcome to Bea Chenowitz, a new contributor to our blog. Bea is a wonderful writer from New York, and will help share her unique views of this crazed real estate market.

Here is a brief bio she threw together for us:

“I have lived in New York City for 16 years, and sadly, my number 1 passion is looking at real estate ads and going to open houses for fun. Currently living in a rental apartment after having bought and sold real estate in Manhattan, I really would like to buy something again. If I can only persuade my husband, who seems pathologically unable to pull the trigger.”

Please help make Bea feel at home here!

Tags: blogger, estate, manhattan, market, New, real, York