Last week, we announced that we’d start focusing on how people can use technology to help their real estate businesses. I think one of the most important ways for both real estate investors and professionals (Realtors, lenders, etc) to begin to market their businesses is by creating a blog.

What Exactly is a Blog?

There are many ways to define what a blog is? Darren Rowse over at Problogger has a great post introducing some of the various “definitions,” and then takes a deep look at the main features of a blog. This is a great read from one of the most famous bloggers on earth. Frankly, I think Daniel Scocco at DailyBlogTips has the most clear and concise look at what a blog is:

A blog is basically a type of website, like a forum or a social bookmarking site. As such it is defined by the technical aspects and features around it, and not by the content published inside it.

The features that make blogs different from other websites are:

* content is published in a chronological fashion
* content is updated regularly
* readers have the possibility to leave comments
* other blog authors can interact via trackbacks and pingbacks
* content is syndicated via RSS feeds

Keep in mind that it is the bundle of those features that should define a blog. An online forum could also offer an RSS feed for example, but that would not make it a blog.

Now that we’ve got a clear idea of what these entities are, its time to get going with the main goal of this post — to start looking at the mistakes new (and many experienced) blogger make in terms of their domain and hosting.

Why Blog About Real Estate?

I’m only going to glance-by this topic, but the short answer is that blogs are, IMO, the easiest type of website to build and spread the word about your business, thanks to the genius of RSS feeds and trackbacks. Blogs have features (described above) that allow your content to easily be spread across the web, which simply put, makes it easier for others (including the search engines) to find you.

If people are reading your blog and see that you’re an expert — be it in your neighborhood (Realtors, service people & Investors), your field (lenders & others), etc. — they are more likely to remember and trust you. With that trust & recognition comes new business!

There is obviously more to it, but like I said before, I just want to briefly talk about this here and now.

Top Mistakes Made By Real Estate Bloggers in their Domain and Hosting

Last year on my personal website, I wrote about the top 77 mistakes that new bloggers make, and I’d like to use that list as a base to start helping all of you with your own blogging.

Real Estate Blogging Mistake #1 - Not Hosting Your Own Blog

One of the most important things about growing your real estate business is to build your own identity or brand. This is why Realtors use their headshots in their cards (personal branding) or why Coke spends countless billions of dollars on marketing their logo across the world (business branding).

The simple fact is that it is difficult to build a brand on a hosted blog (a blog hosted at another domain, such as Wordpress, or even a BiggerPockets Blog). That’s not to say that you shouldn’t explore hosted blogs, but it is difficult to build a brand using one.

The key to this branding is in registering a great domain name. There are many theories about picking a memorable domain name, but you want to be sure that your domain name is not only memorable, but also good for your brand (we’ll get into this in a later post).

Think about it . . . do you think people will find you more easily at denverlandlord.wordpress.com or DenverLandlord.com? There’s simply no question that the latter is easier to remember and to get to.

Additionally, when you’re running a hosted blog, you often times have many more restrictions on personalization of your blog. Simply put, you’ve got more options available to you when you establish your own domain and host your blog there.

Hosted Blogs are Great for Beginners!

I think it is a great idea to establish a hosted blog if you’re just getting started in real estate blogging. Frankly, most real estate blogs are awful; they lack in focus and purpose. Simply put, it is NOT easy to blog. Not everyone is built to write.

What a hosted blog does is give you the opportunity to try blogging out. It lets you see if you like blogging, or if you’re any good at it, without incurring yet another business expense for hosting and domain registration
(aff.).

Conclusion
I hope we’ve given you some reasons why you need to start looking into blogging on your own domain. If you’ve got any questions about hosting, blogging, domains, or anything else pertaining to websites for your real estate business, please don’t hesitate to post your comments below.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or sign up for our real estate social network. Thanks for visiting!

Tags: blogging, branding, domain name, domains, hosted blogs, hosting, real estate blogging, real estate website, website hosting

I’ve realized for some time that the way we all conduct our lives and businesses is dependent on technology. Technology has improved how we accomplish things, but has also proven to be a distraction — think of all of the games we waste time playing on the computer at work or on the phone when we should really be productive. Especially in the world of real estate, people have come to be reliant upon tech. With that in mind, shouldn’t one of the leading real estate communities be talking about it?

How Can Technology Help Your Real Estate Business?

We’re going to start to explore that topic here on the BiggerPockets Real Estate Dispatch, once known as Real Estate Investing for Real. We currently explore topics in almost every other area of real estate, and feel that we’re doing our readers a disservice by ignoring tech.

What Does That Mean?

Some of the topic areas that we’re going to be looking at from here forward will include how websites can improve your business, blogging and blogging tips and tools, social networking, gadgets and toys, and much more! Essentially, we think it is time that BiggerPockets become not only your home for networking, dealmaking, education, and marketing, but also your home for real estate technology! We’ll still be writing about investing topics, mortgages, commercial real estate, the economy, housing, and all the other stuff we currently write about, but in addition, we’ll now be talking about TECH!

Can I Get Involved?

Absolutely! As a part of this expansion into tech, we’re going to be looking for new contributors and guest bloggers to participate. If you write about real estate technology, or you’re simply a gadget geek, and you’re interested in becoming a part of our wonderful team of brilliant contributors, drop me a PM through my BiggerPockets profile or shoot me an email and we can discuss your interest.

Here’s to the future!

Sincerely,
Joshua Dorkin

Photo Credit: oskay

Tags: blogging, gadgets, real estate blog, real estate tech, Real Estate Technology, tech, technology

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

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

Recognize Great Marketing When You See It
When someone has a good idea, you have to acknowledge them. As a long-time real estate blogger (that is in relative terms), I’ve seen thousands of blogs pop up throughout the past year. Many have been good, but I did not really take notice, as I currently subscribe to hundreds of real estate blogs. A few days ago, I was told that BiggerPockets was nominated for the 2007 Real Estate Blogging Awards (the REBAs).

I was not fully aware of these awards, so I took a look at the site offering them, Housing Wire. The site has been around since December, and according to most measures, was not very highly ranked. Over these past few days, I’ve watched the site quickly climb in traffic (according to several sources). I must applaud their efforts, because it takes a TON of hard work to create a popular blog, and they are well on their way thanks to this little Award idea. I guess the lesson here is that linkbaiting does work for real estate (we all knew that anyway).

Now that you know about this smart marketing move, I thought it was a good time to let you know what we’re nominated for:

Best Overall Blog
Recognizes the best overall real estate blog, regardless of how much traffic or what focus the blog has.

AND

Best Corporate Blog
Recognizes the best real estate-focused blog sponsored by a traditional media outlet or other corporate entity.

I am honored, regardless of who established these awards. It is nice to be recognized by your peers for your work. I guess we’ll find out who the winner is of the awards after the 10th of January, since that is that last day of voting. . .

VOTING???
That’s right! You can actually vote for your favorite blogs (you can even vote for us, incase I haven’t gotten my point across). Since we’re already nominated, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to win . . . so, that’s where you all come in!

Take a minute out of your day and let everyone know that Real Estate Investing For Real is your favorite blog in the above categories! Make sure to do so by January 10, 2007, though.

Yes, I realize I’m being a real shill here, but I’ve been having a terrible day, and I wouldn’t mind having a little award on the mantle or something. It may make all the bad feelings go away, sorta like a cone of mint-chip ice cream. Make sure you vote in all categories, or the votes don’t count.

Whether or not we win, the only real recognition we need is your support! Keep coming back to our site and our blog, and I’ll be content!

Thanks everyone!

Tags: 2007, awards, biggerpockets, biggerpockets.com, blogging, estate, real, Real Estate Investing, REBAs

The group writing project goals continue to trickle in, and a few people have thanked me for extending our deadline until January 5, 2007. That said, here are today’s submissions (notice multiple posts from Nick Gifford - he was really detailed with his goals - a MUST READ!)

• 2007 Goals by Jim Duncan
• Real Estate Goals for 2007 by Jason Curts
• The Road Ahead: Net Worth Goals by Nick Gifford
• The Road Ahead: Investment Goals by Nick Gifford
• The Road Ahead: Organization by Nick Gifford
• The Road Ahead: Marketing by Nick Gifford

Tags: 2007, bigger, biggerpockets, blogging, contest, estate, Gifford, goal, goals, Nick, pockets, real, writing