I’ve posted in the past that bringing your own lighting with you to a home to shoot interior photos is important. I usually bring 2 lights with me - one to add light from behind me and another smaller light off in the distance and out of sight where the camera doesn’t pick up enough light so that I can add the necessary depth to the picture. I may still bring the lights with me, but, my life is certainly going to be a lot easier now and the pictures, well, there will be no comparison.

I’ve only had this camera for one day and the sun has yet to come out from behind the clouds so I can’t actually get outside and do any shooting, but there is no question - if you are not using a digital SLR to shoot photos of listings (or hiring a photographer who will) you are not doing your job as well as you should be.

Take a look at this photo - it is an absolutely unedited photo that has simply been cropped (it was about 6 megs so I cropped it to only see the detail I wanted) and it was point and shoot in the auto setting. No tripod or anything. Simply On/Aim/Shoot. The same way you would shoot from a little camera. It was also the thrid picture I took so I didn’t hadn’t even read the manual all the way through. My point being is that if you buy the right camera, it isn’t any more difficult. Here is the photo. The photo should enlarge when you click on it. No way you get that much true color and detail from a little point and shoot.

I know, it’s a flower - not exactly someone’s living room, but, try that with your little point and shoot and it won’t take long to see the difference. My point and shoot camera wouldn’t even take the picture for a comparison shot! There is more and I’ll post a quick blurb with a couple of links to actual comparisons (I’m not shooting pictures of my house the day after Christmas).

Now imagine. You have a nice new listing that is well cared for and staged properly. You walk in with your little pocket camera (like I used to) and set up this elaborate mess of cords and lights to take your photos only to get home to see that the photos are overexposed on one part, glare from the lights is somewhere else and another part is completely washed out by the flash. This camera doesn’t even need a flash for most interior shots. You get home to edit the photos only to find that many of them just don’t really show the house off well and the colors aren’t as vivid as they were when you were at the house. But there’s more. This camera comes with a lense that will take a wider shot than your a point and shoot so you will be able to get more of the room in the picture. Have you ever backed out of a doorway to try to get a wide enough shot to get the whole room only to find that the door frame gets in the sides of the picture? Not with this camera.

This next week, I’ll be getting out to all of my listings to take new photos. No matter what part of the country you are in, your listings need to have the best pictures you can take. Unless you are using an SLR, you are not going to get them and the Nikon D60 is the perfect SLR camera because it is simple enough for any of us to use.

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Real Estate Statistics

Another example is here where I have put together some numbers and added them in to my new Atlanta real estate market statistics page on my website. There are lots of available flash graphs - some are free, some you pay for and some have free and paid versions. I’ve been playing around with several different ones for a while before I decided to use the ones that I am using, FusionCharts. Check out their free flash charts and there is lots of documentation to go along with them, but, it is much more information than we need to put together some great looking graphs for real estate so I’ll summarize here.

Let’s Get Started

To get going, you need FTP access. Download this file to your computer and unzip it. Create a folder in your root directory named “FusionCharts” and a subfolder named “FusionCharts” to hold all of your swf files. Upload the swf files (found in the “Charts” folder) to your FusionCharts subfolder of FusionCharts. Create another folder under the main FusionCharts folder and name it “Data”. Upload Data.xml to your “Data” folder and you have everything you need to replicate this chart. Your “Data” folder is where you will upload all of your XML files. Do not be scared because I said XML!

Pulling it all together

What you have now is a FusionCharts folder, a subfolder with all of the swf files and a seperate data folder containing your XML files. Your next concern will be only that you make sure that the path to these files is correct because all you need to do now is copy and paste this into a post:

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<div width="520">
<OBJECT classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase=http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0" width="500" height="500" id="Column3D" >
         <param name="movie" value="/FusionCharts/FusionCharts/FCF_Column3D.swf" />
         <param name="FlashVars" value="&dataURL=/FusionCharts/Data/Data.xml&chartWidth=500&chartHeight=500">
         <param name="quality" value="high" />
         <embed src="/FusionCharts/FusionCharts/FCF_Column3D.swf" flashVars="&dataURL=/FusionCharts//Data/Data.xml&chartWidth=500&chartHeight=500" quality="high" width="500" height="500" name="Column3D" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" />
      </OBJECT></div>

So, your variables here are the .swf chart style that you want and the data (XML file) you want to use to pull your data from into the chart. Check out your different chart styles by opening the folder on your computer “Charts” and click on the files to see the different options you have available for styles and types and don’t forget to read the documentation here for more complex graphs. Also check your Contents/ChartSS folder for examples with XML data that you can save as your XML file and alter as necessary for your purpose. The only other thing that I had to do to make this work in both Internet Explorer and Firefox was to place the chart inside a “div” container. That’s really about it to get started. If you play around with it, let me know what you think and post a link in the comments.
 

The internet has 2 basic methods that you can utilize to obtain leads; links placed strategically on relevant search results pages that are paid advertisements (Pay Per Click) and the other way is what is called “organic” search engine placement. Today we are going to talk specifically about the Pay Per Click model.

All of the major search engines MSN, Yahoo! and Google have Pay Per Click as well as organic search engine placement and all work with the same basic premise. You pay for your website to be listed in the paid section and you are charged a fee only when a consumer clicks on your link. The cost of this can range from as little as $.05 to over $3.00 per click depending on the competition for the term and frequency in which consumers click on the links. The more popular the search terms, the more opportunities you have to receive clicks through to your website. Typically, the more popular terms will also have more people competing to be listed on the first page which drives up the cost per click.

First, we’ll talk about a few definitions, then how to set up an account and then some strategies to get the highest results in terms of clicks through to your website for the lowest possible cost. The examples given will be for Google only, but, you can run ads on any of the search engines.

Definitions:

• Adwords – This is the name of the advertising program offered by Google.
• Campaigns – You can set up multiple campaigns to target specific markets. We will go through the set up of one campaign.
• Clicks – the number of times someone clicked on your link.
• Impressions – The number of times your ad was shown on a specific search result page.
• Click Through Rate (CTR) – The percentage of times your site was clicked/impressions.
• Cost Per Click (CPC) – The cost per click
• Position or Average Position – The placement of your ad on the page. Typically there are 10 places per page. You need to be on the first page if you expect to receive any traffic. The higher you bid for your cost per click, the higher you can be placed on thepage.
• Bid – The maximum amount you are willing to pay for an individual click.
• Keywords – Search terms you might use for your ad campaign.
• Negative Keywords – words and terms that you do not want your ad to be placed on.

Setting Up Your Account:

To set up your account, you will need to sign up with Google, many of you may already have a gmail account so you already have an account. Set up a new account here: https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount
Once your account is set up, you will need to set up an Adwords account. Log in to your Google Account and click on the “Adwords” link. This is a simple set up process that requires credit card information to activate your account.

Set up a new campaign and give it a descriptive, but general name and select the parameters as needed to complete the form.

Strategies:

The goal of your campaign is to generate targeted visitors to your website based on your keyword selection for the lowest possible price while generating leads for you to try to convert into clients for life. These are ads. It is as simple as that. Do not turn this into a project of reinventing the wheel or sending the next person to the moon.

The first concept you will need to experiment with is the actual text of your ad. You are given a very limited space of 3 lines. The first line is 25 characters and is the “title” of your ad. The next 2 are 35 characters each for your description of the add and there is one additional line to display your website URL. Choose your words wisely. They should closely correspond to your targeted keywords. The better relation to your keywords, the better chance your add will be clicked. Be sure to include a call to action such as “Search”, “Find” or something else that will tell the consumer to do something. The better your ad, the better your click through rate to your website will be.

Since we know that some keyword phrases are searched more and cost more than others, you need to think and correct your campaign to improve your cost per click as you go. This is not perfect science, but, something that needs to be managed and can be quickly controlled in a matter of an hour or so per week depending on how much effort you want to put in. There is an extremely useful keyword research tool built directly into the adwords manager.

One very effective strategy is to target an area you know – use” keywords” that will optimize your ads  for specific  subdivisions. They aren’t searched frequently, but there are lots of them, there is little to no competition and the cost per click is extremely cheap. Some examples of keywords you will want to choose related to subdivisions will be like these. Everything is lowercase:

• Subdivision homes for sale, subdivision homes, homes for sale in subdivision, subdivision real estate, real estate in subdivision and real estate for sale in subdivision.

The next set of keywords to use will be words called “Longtails”. Longtails are detailed words strung together to form a specific search phrase that consumers might use to search homes for sale. I believe that “longtail” keyword searches are the future of search engine marketing in real estate. The reason for this is because as more people become familiar with utilizing search engines to find what they are looking for, the more specific they search. This helps in a number of ways, byt, most importantly you are beginning the process of qualifying your leads (actually, they are doing this for you) and they in turn will have higher conversion rates. “Subdivision” type keywords would be an example of specific “longtail” keyword searches. Some additional  longtail terms might look something like this:

• Homes listed for sale around windward, homes in the windward area, windward parkway and homes for sale, best map search to find alpharetta real estate, homes for sale off of haynes bridge road. Get creative here, because these are the cheapest and best converting terms. Often you will find that you might be the only pay per click search result on the page which will greatly increase your chances of having a consumer click through to your website.

The third in an initial set of keywords would be misspellings. This is why I prefer to use only exact matches for my pay per click campaign. It is more time consuming to set up the first time, but, you can always add little by little and this way, you control exactly what you are paying for.

Finally, if you choose to use only exact matches for your keywords, you won’t need this, but, you should know what they are nonetheless. The are called negative keywords and they are exactly what they sound like. Here are some examples:

• -alpharetta doctors, -alpharetta dentists, -alpharetta restaurants, -alpharetta hotels, -alpharetta mortgages

So that is the basics of a pay per click campaign. There are a few last thoughts that I do want to add even though they are better left for another class. The ads themselves are carefully tracked and rated. They are given a quality score based on a number of factors. The higher your quality score, the lower your cost per click. Your quality score can be affected by a number of factors and the most important are your click through rate, the relationship between your keywords and the words in your ad. Basically, your ads performance.

Landing Pages

If you are looking for Alpharetta real estate and you click on a website that is about Roswell will you stick around and comb through a website until you find what you are looking for or will you click the back button and find something that is what you are looking for right away? So will consumers! Landing pages can be set specifically for each ad. If you are running 5 ads, you might want to use 5 different landing pages. Here are some examples:

• Ad – “Search Alpharetta Homes” – Send them straight to a page that searches Alpharetta homes for sale.
• Ad – “Alpharetta Foreclosure Search” – Send them to a page designed specifically to what Alpharetta foreclosures.

With time, patience, some analyzing and tweaking, you can run a campaign that will bring you internet leads every day. Like any other form of prospecting for business in real estate. It will require effort, thoughtfulness and attention on a regular basis if you are to be successful. There is no reason that you cannot generate opportunities with a pay per click internet campaign on a daily basis and then it is up to you to convert them into a client for life.

When I began marketing online and had my Atlanta real estatewebsite up for a short time, I utilized pay per click as the beginning of my online real estate marketing efforts. It helped me make improvements to my website by analyzing conversion rates so that I could improve upon them over time. I no longer use adwords to generate leads, but, I do occasionally use them for other items like marketing single listings as well as open houses. Used effectively, pay per click can be a tremendous benefit to both you and to your clients.

Additional Resource

The best place to start looking for more advanced tips on how to improve your pay per click campaign are of course, right on Google. Start from within Adwords itself, but, don’t necessarily read every word. Use the search engine itself to learn more by “googling” words like: how to use adwords for real estate and so forth. So much can be learned by just taking the time and doing it.

Resource link

http://www.realestatewebmasters.com/pay-per-click.html - tons of information can be found here with a community of people at various stages of the learning process as well as some experienced agents who run successful campaigns. Ask a question and someone will answer you.

View and demo the theme here.

Download the theme here.

I say “real estate” ready because it has a built in additional custom page template for framing in your IDX solution. So many themes out there for you, but, so few who realize the importance of being able to integrate an IDX solution. Well, this one is ready for you!

If you have any questions or comments, please leave them directly on the theme page. I’ll try to answer relevant comments directly from the theme the questions will be about. In the next week or two, I’ll be putting out this theme in several additional colors, but, it will be a middle of December before they launch…

Instructions

Pretty straigthtforward and standard. Dowload the theme, unzip it, save it to your computer and upload it to your wp-content/themes folder and activate it. Let me know if you have any questions.

I’ve got most of it completed now and should have some time to get things working again within a week or so. All of the themes are also undergoing updates. They will all go from 800 or 900 pixels to the larger 1024 which will take up the whole screen. They will also all have a page that will allow you to frame in any of the aftermarekt IDx solutions which to me, remains a problem for agents looking for solod internet solutions to get started with without paying a fortune, of course, you could always go with a real website solution if you can afford it from Real Estate Webmasters…

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml">
<head>
    <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html charset=UTF-8"/>
    <title>Atlanta Open Houses</title>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&v=2&key=ABQIAAAAkGkNKtD-s2q61G6j_APHThQeHGlUq97mBStWwakmxOCYH8eSjhQqcJByc20fLPliGoyayjJT8Ly29A"></script>
</head>
 
<body onunload="GUnload()">
<div id="map" style="width: 500px height: 450px"></div>
 
    <noscript><b>JavaScript must be enabled in order for you to use Google Maps.</b> 
      However, it seems JavaScript is either disabled or not supported by your browser. 
      To view Google Maps, enable JavaScript by changing your browser options, and then 
      try again.
    </noscript>
 
<script type="text/javascript">
 
//<![CDATA[
// Create our "tiny" marker icon
var startList=function(){
var blueIcon = new GIcon(G_DEFAULT_ICON)
blueIcon.image = "http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/images/house.png"
blueIcon.shadow = 'http://www.ryanwardrealestate.com/images/shadow.png'
blueIcon.iconSize = new GSize(28, 36)
blueIcon.shadowSize = new GSize(60, 30)
// Set up our GMarkerOptions objectmarkerOptions = { icon:blueIcon }
function createMarker(point,html) {
var marker = new GMarker(point, {icon: blueIcon})  
 
// The new marker "mouseover" listener        
        GEvent.addListener(marker,"mouseover", function() {
          marker.openInfoWindowHtml(html)
        })
return marker
}
function load() {
if (GBrowserIsCompatible()) {
var map = new GMap2(document.getElementById("map"))
map.addControl(new GSmallMapControl())
map.addControl(new GMapTypeControl())
map.setCenter(new GLatLng(34.085365,-84.297581),12)
 
// Create the location of each house with lat/long as well as the information to be displayed in the info window
 
var point = new GLatLng(34.092562,-84.361417)
var marker = createMarker(point,'<table><tr><td><img src="http://www.realestatetestblog.com/wp-content/gallery/open-houses/12695-new-providence.JPG" height="80" width="100"/></td><td>12695 New Providence<br />$369,000 - Sunday<br /> October 19th,<br /> 2 p.m to 4 p.m.</td></tr></table>')
map.addOverlay(marker)
 
var point = new GLatLng(34.11136,-84.264235)
var marker = createMarker(point,'<table><tr><td><img src="http://www.realestatetestblog.com/wp-content/gallery/open-houses/600-alstonefield.JPG" height="80" width="100"/></td><td>600 Alstonefield Dr<br />$239,900 - Sunday<br /> October 19th,<br /> 2 p.m to 4 p.m.<br /><a href="http://600alstonefield.homesinmiltonga.com/" target="blank"/>View Details</a></td></tr></table>')
map.addOverlay(marker)
 
}
}
load()
}
 window.onload=startList
//]]>
</script>
 
 
</body>
</html>

If you have any questions about how to implement this, just reply in the comments, but, make sure that you have a Google maps API key or you won’t get anywhere.

These are different than most because the photos you see are actually slideshow. I think it brings a little more life to the page and helps to get consumers to notice them and click them a bit more frequesntly.

The process to create them is quite simple if you are familiar with NextGen. Simply create a gallery of images and insert it into a draft post. Preview that post and view the source code. Take the source code and copy it into a design that you can create using on page divs. These are created using 3 seperate “featured Atlanta homes” divs with tables to hold the information. The code for one of the featured listings boxes looks like this:

<div id="featured-slide">
<table border="0" cellpadding="3" width="145" align="left">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>
<div id="ngg_slideshow21" class="slideshow">The <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer">Flash Player</a> and <a href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/">a browser with Javascript support</a> are needed..</div>
<script type="text/javascript"><!--mce:0--></script></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td align="center"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline">Featured Home</span></strong></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>
<ul><strong>Price: </strong>$650,000</ul>
<ul><strong>Beds: </strong>4</ul>
<ul><strong>Baths:</strong> 3 full, 2 half</ul>
<a href="http://www.sandyspringsopenhouses.com" target="blank">View Details</a></td>
</tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>

That’s it…

Website Theme

Plugins For Theme

Iimage Panorama

Now let’s get to how these sites can help and what you can do to make the most out of them.

First, don’t use the property address for the URL. Use a broader term. The example I will use for this post is for a listing that I have in Sandy Springs. I searched for some terms that might be searched by consumers more frequently than the address. For this home, I decided to go for a search term that included the city and a relevant term - open houses.

www.sandyspringsopenhouses.com

Here are the search results for Sandy Springs open houses

OK so my point here is that you need to take a few minutes to pick your domain name because it’s possible that you could reuse the home and get organic search traffic. We do. In the last 30 days, this home has been found through various search terms 71 times. That may not seem like a lot when compared to what you may get for your main website, but, organic results can turbocharge your listing when others are not being shown at all. Below are the instructions from the readme file that comes with the theme. If you download this and have any questions, please use the comments section so others may possibly be helped by any troubel that you have. I will help any way that I can.

*****

Single Property Website Theme - If you don’t read all of this before you start your first one, you are crazy!

***These instructions are very important for you to read so you don’t become frustrated and waste hours!

There are two page templates used in this theme; page.php and page-2.php

page.php (this is the default page) is used for the home page, photo gallery, virtual tour and map page.

page-2.php template is used for the “Property Description” page and the “Email A Friend” pages.

*****

Go to “Settings” then “Permalinks” then select the box that says “Custom Structure”. Enter: /%postname%/ - This will change your URL stucture so that they are more human and search engine friendly

******

1. Upload your new theme to your themes folder and then select the theme.
2. Create Your pages.
  A. Home - Use Default Template
  B. Property Description - Use Page-2 Template
  C. Photo Gallery - Use Default Template
  D. Virtual Tour - Use Default Template
  E. Map It - Use Default Template
  F. Email A Friend - Use Page-2 Template
3. Go to “Settings”, “Reading” and select “A Static Page”
  A. Select “Home” for your front page. Save Changes.
4. Delete the “About” page.

Your Single proeprty website theme should now have all of the pages except the subpages of additional virtual tours that you might want to include.

***Plugins***

Upload all of the plugins to the plugins folder for WordPress and activate them. I have altered the style sheets in a few places to make them work better for the single property website. Make sure that you use the versions I am providing for everything to look correct when finished.

The exception will be the iimage panorama folder. This folder will go in the root directory (same place as your wp-content, wp-admin and wp-includes) are located. The iimage-panorama.php file will go into the plugins folder.

Please follow the directions for each plugin for proper usage.
You need to download a program to create your panoramas called Autostitch. Place it anywhere you want on your computer. Download it here: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~mbrown/autostitch/autostitch.html. This program will take a set of photos that you took and figure out the order and create a panorama automatically. At that point, you will need to go in and crop out the outside edges.
Photos For the Website

The slideshow on the homepage has a set of photos (I wouldn’t recommend more than 15) that are 665 pixels wide by 400 pixels high.

The Photo gallery has photos that are 800 pixels wide by 600 pixels high.

When you set your photos up on you computer, make a “master folder”, a folder labled “slideshow”, a folder labeled “Photos” and a fourth folder labled “Panoramas”

To make it easier, copy the photos from your master folder; for the slideshow into the slideshow folder, your photo gallery folders into that folder and panorama photos into the panorama folder and edit them from there.

The NextGen Gallery will handle all of your photos ecept the panoramas virtual tours). You can find help here, but, I will try a quick tutorial: http://alexrabe.boelinger.com/wordpress-plugins/nextgen-gallery/

Slideshow on homepage:

For NexGen Gallery settings, go to gallery, options, slideshow

1. Change default size to 600 X 400
2. Uncheck shuffle mode
3. Change “duration time” to 3 seconds. Click update. You can play with these settings.
4. Go to “Gallery”. Uncheck “Integrate Slideshow”. Sort options, change to custom order.

Upload your edited “Slideshow photos” in your slideshow folder. Upload the whole folder into the “gallery” folder. You will need to first create a new “gallery” folder in wp-content. In your FTP you will create the new folder named “gallery” and upload the “slideshow” folder there.

Next, upload your photo gallery folder into the newly created “gallery” folder.

At this point, your website should have a prepared folder named gallery and  your slideshow folder and photo gallery folder inside.

Go to your home page and add this code: [slideshow=1,665,400]

This piece of code will tell the NextGen Gallery to use a slideshow from gallery ID #1 (this could be different in yours, you need to see what number your gallery slideshow is) with a width of 665 and a height of 400. These are preconfigured to work correctly in the theme.

For your photo gallery, enter:

Again, the number 2 will change and correspond to what number your gallery is for the photos.

You can find the number for the gallery by going to “Gallery”, “Manage Gallery and looking at the left side to find the Gallery ID.

Now your files should be loaded and your theme should be installed as well.

There are a couple of things that you will need to do. In the theme, the file “right.php” contains the information you see in the right navigation bar. Edit the information tailored to your listing.The “header.php” file contains a place for name and phone number. Replace it with your information.

The panoramas that you can create for your virtual tour can be a bit more complicated to get to work based on the number of pictures you used and whether the autostitch program recognizes them to create a good panorama. This is your “Virtual tour” photo or photos. It will require some playing around to get them right, but, basically what you need to do is set up a tripod in a room that has even lighting all the way a round and take between 10-20 photos in a circle on the tripod. Once you have the photos, enter them into the autostitch program and let it do the work for you.

From here, I will assume it worked and you have a panorama of your room.

****The WordPress CMS will get confused and mess up the necessary code for your panorama to work right so be sure you are in html mode when working with the panorama.*****

For ease of use, upload your individual panorama pictures to your “galleries folder, but, do not put them in a folder.

The code for your panorama will be this:

<panorama width=”600″ height=”200″ start=”0″ speed=”0.2″ inside=”false” outside=”true” images=”true”>
<img src=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/wp-content/gallery/image.jpg” />
</panorama>

you can adjust the width and height as well as the speed at which the photo is rotating and where on the photo the image starts from “0″ to “360″.

You need to go here for detailed information if you are having problems with the panorama plugin: http://fredfred.net/skriker/index.php/iimage-panorama/

Map Page - This one is easy. Go to google maps and get a google account, http://maps.google.com/maps. Go to “My Maps” and create a map with a marker over the property address. you can do whatever you want in the info pop up window.Then embed that map into your site using the code provided by google.

*****

Email a Friend Plugin

Go to the plugin and configure the plugin with the required SMTP information, etc… follow the directions from the plugin creator. This plugin was very tricky and messed with the theme terribly at first. Feel free to do something different with it, but, it should work ok the way it is.

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