Here are nine places to advertise your property listings on the internet that won’t cost you a dime.  This list is by no means complete, but should be considered a starting point.

• Craigslist -  It’s not even required for you to sign up for an account (you can confirm your ad via your email).  Don’t necessarily limit yourself to your own city.  Is it a good investment property?  Would it be a good vacation or second home?  You may want to choose another city to advertise in.  Be sure to read the Craigslist terms of use before you start your ad.

• Trulia - They have a few different ways to submit your listings, all free.  Recently Trulia introduced the Trulia Pro account, for $39 per month, which allows you unlimited featured listings and unlimited local spotlight ads.  Just submitting your listings is still free, though.

• Active Rain / Localism - at first glance, you’re going to think I’m nuts.  Why would you advertise your listings on what is basically a big community of real estate agents?  Well, you never know who may be working with a buyer who would love it.  But, (and possibly more importantly?) google absolutely loves this site.  I once posted a listing and had it indexed in google in under three hours.  Sign up for a profile / blog, then use your blog to advertise your listing. 

• Windows Live Expo - UPDATE - I went to the site to verify before posting, and got the following message:
  (click to enlarge)            Disregard this one. 
  I’m honestly not sure what kind of results this site gets, but I figured since it’s a big name, you might just want to be safe.  You can place up to four photos, and choose from one of four backgrounds/themes for your ads.  It does require signing up for a Passport or Hotmail account. 

• Zillow - Chances are, your listing is already there, but you can sign up as an agent, and claim it.  This will enable you to add lots of details about the home that are missing, plus add more photos.  You contact info will be seen on the listing, too.

• Google Base -  have you ever done a real estate search on google and seen the following little box come  up?:                                           
  That’s google base.  A good many listing feeds are already pushing listings there, so it’s a possibility yours are there.  If not, you can add them for free. 

• Kijiji -  Cute name, but also a pretty big classifieds site.  It certainly can’t hurt to try it.

• Backpage - another classifieds site, that I believe pre-dates kijiji.  The only problem I see is that they do not have listings for all cities.  If your in a smaller city, you may need to advertise in a larger nearby city section.  Or, again, think investment/vacation/second home potential, and find a suitable city in a completely different area.

• Hoobly - while not the most attractive site, it is free and does seem to get some love from the search engines, from what I could tell.

• House.info - I tried this one as an experiment, not really expecting much.  However, after a few months, I found the listing was getting indexed by google. 

There are many more sites out there, but this should be enough to get you started if you haven’t been advertising your listings online much.  I restricted the list to sites I’ve actually used before, and sites that are truly free. 

If you have trouble with any of them, and would like me to do a step by step tutorial, just let me know in the comments!  Also be sure to leave a comment if you’d like to share a free site that works for your listings. (comments are moderated - they will show after approval)

These handouts would be perfect to offer on your web site as Free Reports, to pass out at an Open House, or place in your listing or buyer presentation.

The categories of handouts include: 

• Get Ready For Homeownership
• Finance Your Home
• Find the Right Property
• Buyers:  Prepare for Closing and Beyond
• Before You Sell
• Get Ready For Showings
• Turning FSBOs into Clients
• Sellers:  Prepare for Closing and Beyond

Each category has between seven and ten handouts!

Click here to head over to REALTOR.org and start printing and downloading, today.

If you have any difficulty getting your own branding information on the handouts, let me know and I will do a tutorial on that.

• Send direct mail pieces to your buyer and seller clients, branded with YOUR info, and including a discount on Lowe’s merchandise. These are at no cost to you!
• Set your clients up to receive personalized HGTV emails, - again branded with your info, and containing links to special HGTV videos, as well as a merchandise discount.
• Order Lowe’s gift cards with a 5% discount!  These gift cards can be sent as closing gifts directly to your clients with personalized letter branded with your info.
• Receive monthly real estate related news in your email that you can share with clients, positioning you as the expert.  Also, access any of the past articles on the site, at any time.  They are available only to registered members of this program.

As I said, this program is FREE.  It doesn’t cost anything but few minutes of your time (except purchase of gift cards).  The direct mail pieces are sent free of any postage or printing cost to you.  Simply fill in your clients’ info, and click to send!  Visit Lowe’s REALTOR Benefits, sign up and get started right away.

** You must be a member of the National Association of REALTORS to participate.

• Try to focus on learning ONE thing per week. Set aside a time when it’s quiet, and you’re not likely to be interrupted. (2 am? I know - easier said than done)
• Prioritize what you want to learn. Is it really a good idea to learn start a new blog, if you’re not even happy with your current listing web site?
• Don’t assume that just because you’re learning about it, that YOU have to be the one to implement it! It may be something you can teach your assistant, or hire a virtual assistant to do.
• Choose a few trusted sources to read for your information. You can’t possibly read everything out there, and still be committed to actually selling real estate. Choose a handful of bloggers, authors or experts that focus on different types of information, or that have different perspectives, let THEM wade through the mountains of information and bring it to you through email or RSS feeds.

So remember to try to keep some balance. There IS an overwhelming amount of information out there, but if you break it down in to smaller chunks, it will be much easier to process and to learn. Even if you are only able to learn a small fraction of information (realistically), you will still be far ahead of the thousands of agents who will be left behind as this business becomes more and more technology / internet centered.

This blog was originally intended to be about marketing yourself and your real estate listings on the internet. However, as I began to put it together, it occurred to me that the topic may be too narrow, due to the fact that we’re all at different levels of technological ability. So, while the main focus will be on internet marketing for real estate, I will also be venturing out into other real estate related technology, off-line marketing, as well as basic computer and internet use. It shouldn’t matter if you are brand new to computers, only use the internet for email, or have a background in IT…you should find something of use here.

How much will it cost?

The information is free! Most of solutions I will be presenting, reviewing and recommending will be free, or very inexpensive. However, as you all know, it is absolutely impossible to have a successful career in this business without investing serious money somewhere along the way. At times, I will recommend something a little pricey, but with the full belief that the results will be worth the expense.

Join in!

Please feel free to ask questions, or discuss what I’ve written. I would love for this to be a discussion! For those who attended them in the past, I consider this a continuation of the Internet Marketing Group meetings. It became too difficult to schedule meetings, so my hope is that this can be a kind of solution. If you’d like to contribute an article, email or call me so that it can be arranged.

Note:
**Occasionally, some of the things presented here will apply primarily to Florida Real Estate agents and the technology to which they have access, or even Marion County agents, as those are likely to be the only readers of this blog. If you’ve stumbled across this blog from another source, however, please stay! You’re more than welcome to use the information here and participate! For more information, please see the About Page.