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Going to need a website...any advice?
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Getting started in real estate and I am going to need a website. I've done some quick searches online and the information is pretty overwhelming.

Where to start?
And what kind of cost am I looking at for a quality site?
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [Duffy] [ In reply to ]
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So all I need is hyperlinks, jpegs and shit?
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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what kind of real estate? residential/commercial? are you doing listings or property management? is your focus hyper-local or national? lots of questions i think before you decide on a website.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [wdrhoads] [ In reply to ]
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Will be in local residential listing and working with buyers. I live in probably the fastes growing city in South Carolina, with a great deal of people relocating to our area near the coast. With that in mind having local information on current events as a part of the site, being able to display current listings and properties sold. Making it mobile friendly is a must. I think having IDX for viewing current listings isn't necessary, I think Zillow and the other sites have that locked down and it I probably wouldn't warrant the cost for that feature.

Most large brokers provide a generic website as part of the fee they charge but it's probably pretty worthless I would think, not really generating any business.
Last edited by: SkipG: Oct 22, 17 12:14
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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Wordpress.

You can basically build any kind of site off of the wordpress system including RE listings (IDX), email newsletters, local news and blog posts, etc etc.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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skipG -- you are in Greenville?
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [wdrhoads] [ In reply to ]
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Bluffton between Hilton Head and Beaufort
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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SkipG wrote:
Getting started in real estate and I am going to need a website. I've done some quick searches online and the information is pretty overwhelming.

Where to start?
And what kind of cost am I looking at for a quality site?


Wordpress is a little more involved, there are others that require less 'coding'.

Search the forum here. Plenty of advice.

http://top5-websitebuilders.com/...QEAAYASAAEgLbyfD_BwE
Last edited by: windschatten: Oct 23, 17 0:05
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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Really depends on your market and what you want out of the site. If your market is really competitive and saturated then it is going to be more costly to get your site up there in the search rankings and generating business for you. If your market is not saturated it is easier to get up toward the top of the rankings.

Then it depends on what you want from the site, do you want the site to generate business for you?

I work in insurance, in a relatively small market where it isn't terribly hard to compete for decent search rankings. Also a lot of the calls I get from people googling are not the kind of calls I want to get, often they are undesirable clients who just take up a lot of time and cost me money. The good business I get is from referrals. So the point of my website is to provide info on me and give people a really good feel for what they are getting into after they are referred to me. They are actively looking for specifically me so my site just has to be there and provide as much info and "feel" as possible.

I built my site myself using squarespace. I have used Joomla in the past and dabbled in wordpress. The issue with wordpress is they are constantly updating and the plugins you use are constantly updating but not automatically. That means you are constantly messing with the site making sure everything still works. With squarespace it is all internal so if something updates it happens automatically and you don't have to mess with it. It is also much easier to build than anything else.

Sounds like you might need a pro to build your site and to build your SEO. If you are more referral based and just providing info then a self built site with squarespace is easy and cheap. If you hire a pro expect to pay anywhere from $5k-15k.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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SkipG wrote:
Getting started in real estate and I am going to need a website. I've done some quick searches online and the information is pretty overwhelming.

Where to start?
And what kind of cost am I looking at for a quality site?

If you have any type of design/know what looks good skills, you could do everything with a squarespace page.
I am not a designer and I have come up with this: https://www.miles4matt.run/ . Took a couple months but I wasn't working on it full time.

Essentially, I bought the domain name, attached it to a squarespace account (also had to purchase that) and then I was in business.
Mark
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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SkipG wrote:
Getting started in real estate and I am going to need a website. I've done some quick searches online and the information is pretty overwhelming.

Where to start?
And what kind of cost am I looking at for a quality site?

Before you put crappy iPhone pics of your listings on that new site, give me a call to come shoot them. I'm 4 hours from you, and get down that way from RTP every so often.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [tickyboy] [ In reply to ]
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tickyboy wrote:
Wordpress.

You can basically build any kind of site off of the wordpress system including RE listings (IDX), email newsletters, local news and blog posts, etc etc.
x2 on Wordpress. You can also use your own hosting service and there are thousands of amazing customizable templates that feature one-page, parallax effects, galleries, video, etc. There was a slight learning curve, but I didn't have to do any coding to build my site. Plus it's completely free to use. I suppose something like Wix is easier, but then your site will look like everyone else's.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [EndlessH2O] [ In reply to ]
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EndlessH2O wrote:
SkipG wrote:
Getting started in real estate and I am going to need a website. I've done some quick searches online and the information is pretty overwhelming.

Where to start?
And what kind of cost am I looking at for a quality site?

Before you put crappy iPhone pics of your listings on that new site, give me a call to come shoot them. I'm 4 hours from you, and get down that way from RTP every so often.
got it, real estate photographers seem to stay pretty busy in this area.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [aarondb4] [ In reply to ]
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aarondb4 wrote:

Sounds like you might need a pro to build your site and to build your SEO. If you are more referral based and just providing info then a self built site with squarespace is easy and cheap.
Agree with this, and another vote for squarespace for those interested and only need a info type site. Built mine in a weekend and along with a very cheap google adwords campaign, I have more than enough work being generated by it for under $200/m (Im in Australia)
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [aarondb4] [ In reply to ]
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aarondb4 wrote:

Really depends on your market and what you want out of the site. If your market is really competitive and saturated then it is going to be more costly to get your site up there in the search rankings and generating business for you. If your market is not saturated it is easier to get up toward the top of the rankings.

Then it depends on what you want from the site, do you want the site to generate business for you?
The market is pretty competitive here, and just starting out it will take a while to generate a solid referral base, so It would definitely be beneficial if I could generate some business from the site instead of just having the same broker in charge supplied site that 95% of all other agents have. Basically a do nothing page that has a short about me message and contact info.

Spending $5k on a site is doable, would sting a little dropping the money at first but wouldn't take long to recoup that investment if it brought it a couple of clients. $10-$15k not sure that's a hefty investment.
Last edited by: SkipG: Oct 25, 17 8:56
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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SkipG wrote:
aarondb4 wrote:

Really depends on your market and what you want out of the site. If your market is really competitive and saturated then it is going to be more costly to get your site up there in the search rankings and generating business for you. If your market is not saturated it is easier to get up toward the top of the rankings.

Then it depends on what you want from the site, do you want the site to generate business for you?
The market is pretty competitive here, and just starting out it will take a while to generate a solid referral base, so It would definitely be beneficial if I could generate some business from the site instead of just having the same stock broker supplied site that 95% of all other agents have. Basically a do nothing page that has a short about me message and contact info.

Spending $5k on a site is doable, would sting a little dropping the money at first but wouldn't take long to recoup that investment if it brought it a couple of clients. $10-$15k not sure that's a hefty investment.

I'll just give you an anecdote from Boise, ID. I used a local company (friend of mine) who does commercials, web development, graphic design, photography (including drone) etc. He started in real estate photog and went nuts from there. They did a brand design package including new logo for me for $1,500 with printing costs included.

This same company put together a bid for my wife's employer who is a criminal defense attorney and wants his site to make money for him. Their initial proposal was in the $5-6k range, eventually got it down to $3,500. That was for a simple attorney page. They build pages for realtors pretty often and from what I understand it is generally north of $10k as a realtors site is going to be quite a bit more robust than a lawyer.

I think the problem with going with someone in the $3k range is that you may get a site, but as far as SEO and rankings go you are likely to be disappointed. I can build you a really nice looking site using squarespace, it won't take me much work to put together and based on market I could charge you $3-5k to get it done. It would look really nice and you would probably really like it. But I don't know jack about SEO so your ranking likely wouldn't be very good (unless you buy adwords) and thus your ROI is not going to be there.

I still wouldn't spend $10k on a site so if I were you I might build my own with Squarespace (it really is easy), see how it goes, maybe invest in some adwords and go with that for a bit. If it is working, great, if it does nothing, you aren't out much and can always go the pro route later. Where people get pissed is when they hire an unethical me to build a nice looking site that doesn't perform, then they are out $3-5k for something they could have done themselves.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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What brokerage are you with? Buyer's agent, listing agent or both? Is the brokerage going to feed you leads or are you flying completely solo?

Some of the larger brokerage's offerings aren't as bad as you think. Your website obviously can't be garbage, but getting people to it is the bigger deal. Or, even more importantly getting people to your listings is the big deal whether they're hitting your website or not. It's been 3-4 years since I left, but I was at the Coldwell Banker franchise in Greenville for 5 years. The package available to our agents was pretty solid back then.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [go so slow] [ In reply to ]
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go so slow wrote:

What brokerage are you with? Buyer's agent, listing agent or both? Is the brokerage going to feed you leads or are you flying completely solo?

Some of the larger brokerage's offerings aren't as bad as you think. Your website obviously can't be garbage, but getting people to it is the bigger deal. Or, even more importantly getting people to your listings is the big deal whether they're hitting your website or not. It's been 3-4 years since I left, but I was at the Coldwell Banker franchise in Greenville for 5 years. The package available to our agents was pretty solid back then.
I haven't settled on a brokerage yet, still researching what each offers. I have heard good and bad about all of them. The bigger national firms as well as the smaller local guys. My brother n law has his brokers license for the family business in timber so I will keep my license under him until I get a better understanding of where I want to be.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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Makes sense. My $.02 if you start looking at brokers. The compensation plans are all over the board in terms of how they're built and how they're presented. At the end of the day if you run sales numbers and figure out expenses a lot of them end up paying out very similarly. Differentiating factor is what a broker can do for you in terms of helping you bring in business. Are they getting listings? Are buyers calling them? How will that funnel to you?

Good luck to you. It's a good living if you can get it rolling.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [go so slow] [ In reply to ]
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go so slow wrote:
Makes sense. My $.02 if you start looking at brokers. The compensation plans are all over the board in terms of how they're built and how they're presented. At the end of the day if you run sales numbers and figure out expenses a lot of them end up paying out very similarly. Differentiating factor is what a broker can do for you in terms of helping you bring in business. Are they getting listings? Are buyers calling them? How will that funnel to you?

Good luck to you. It's a good living if you can get it rolling.
thanks I know a few that are making serious $ at the moment $250k+, the main reason I wanted in was to be in the position to buy rental properties and to have a little more freedom and control in work life balance. Spent the last 25 years working for a large company 50+ hours a week as a manager for the last 20 years. I feel it's time for a change.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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For inspiration you can start here:

But seriously... it really depends on how much work you want to put in yourself... or just hire someone.

WordPress is great and probably the most you will ever need. You will want to hire a WordPress developer to build the site. It is relatively cheap (compared to a custom built site) and there are plenty of Real Estate related themes. Later you can keep the site updated. It is easy to learn.

And there are other platforms which you can build your site on your own, no need to hire anybody. You will have limited options available on what you can do. However, this could be a good start.
Here are some platforms to consider:



I hope it helps.


Last edited by: BianchiRide: Jun 21, 18 13:07
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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SkipG wrote:
So all I need is hyperlinks, jpegs and shit?

You need a lot of pixels, so I'd try and pick some up on sale if you can.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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SkipG wrote:
Getting started in real estate and I am going to need a website. I've done some quick searches online and the information is pretty overwhelming.

Where to start?
And what kind of cost am I looking at for a quality site?

Drop me a PM if you want to discuss.

I worked as a graphic designer/web designer prior to my current role, dealing primarily with small/medium business inc. real estate.

Confirm CMS (content management system) websites like wordpress, Joomla and drupal are a happy medium between "do it yourself" websites which end up all cookie cutters of one another, and full HTML sites. You'll need a developer (most likely) to set the site up initially, but if they do it right, you can then modify content yourself with no issue.

Biggest money pit will be yourself - if you change or add ideas through the project, it'll add time. Sit down and have a clear picture of what YOU want. Its your website after all. Take to the designer 5 sites you like, and why, 5 you dislike and why (these sites dont necessarily have to be estate sites), a colour template (say 3 colours), and the likely pages that you'll want - they should be able to direct you well from there.
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Re: Going to need a website...any advice? [SkipG] [ In reply to ]
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I have built a few websites and paid to have a few built. My advice - think long and hard before you start. Building websites is like building a house. You can't live in it for a year and then decide you want to rearrange where the bathrooms are and move the kitchen to the second floor. You can remodel a website without much fuss, but even modest changes are a monster.

An make sure the developer you use has your same vision for scaling it should it grow rapidly.

Lastly, some people have the technical ability to design great sites, but maybe not the design acumen to make it attractive.

My best advice - look around an steal ideas from other sites. They don't have to be in your area or real estate space. And don't feel bad, they probably did the same. :)
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