Archive for April, 2008
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008
Our launch yesterday of our free rental rates tool has been a huge success. With the massive amounts of data we receive each day for rental properties, we now have the ability to show current and historic rental rates at the city level.
Below is a list of some of the ...
Posted in Free Rental Rates Tool | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 29th, 2008
At rentBits, we aim to offer renters tools to find the perfect rental. We also take feedback to make our product better.
One request from renters and property managers was to add a tool where an average rental price could be seen for any city in the United States. With that ...
Posted in RentBits | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 28th, 2008
Kijiji, the popular site that will surpass Craigslist in the next 5 years is no longer accepting XML feeds. I think this is a great move on Kijiji's part to eliminate much of the HTML postings that many of these sites use to post to Kijiji. Seems like Craigslist may ...
Posted in kijiji | 2 Comments »
Monday, April 28th, 2008
Rentals.com is offering another BOGO offer in certain areas. Similar to the one here.
Below is an email they are sending out:
I am pleased to offer a one-time B.O.G.O (Buy One Get One) FREE offer to you. For all ads you purchase today (April 28th, 2008) until Wednesday (April 30th, 2008) ...
Posted in Rentals.com | 3 Comments »
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
I just read a blog post on MyNewPlace that said their traffic for the keyword Hillside Villas has gone through the roof. For those of you who don't know the Hillside Villas Apartments, they are the famous apartments that much of "The Hills" tv show is filmed in.
Below is a ...
Posted in MyNewPlace | 2 Comments »
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
I just got done listening to a great radio interview with Rich Barton, the CEO of Zillow and Founder of Expedia.com. The interview can be found on MadeFromScratch.
Rich talks about his days at Microsoft where he founded Expedia at the age of 25 as well as his reasons for founding ...
Posted in zillow | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 21st, 2008
Craigslist may limit the amount of html they allow because of excessive abuse from scammers and spammers.
Here is what Craigslist has written on their site:
We're contemplating limiting HTML in classified ads to a specific list of tags.
Unfortunately, much of the HTML in postings these days is used by spammers for ...
Posted in Craigslist | No Comments »
Monday, April 21st, 2008
Greg Sterling wrote a post on newspaper Q1 earnings report.
For Gannett, Real Estate revenues were down 26.3%. For NY Times revenues decreased buy 6.4% compared with the same month a year ago. The Times ad revenue was down 9.2%.
Posted in newspapers | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
Lisa Trosien over at the ApartmentMarketingBlog offers the top 11 things renters want when search on a rental site.
1. Prices
2. Amenities
3. Availability
4. Photos
5. Floor plans
6. Map
7. Proximity to work
8. Length of lease
9. Crime rates
10. Videos
11. Proximity to schools
Posted in Rental Tips, rental sites | 5 Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Odd Number Pricing
From - Ohio State University Fact Sheet
Odd number pricing refers to setting a price just below the psychological breaks in the dollar, such as a price is set at 49 cents or 99 cents rather than 50 cents or $1. Prices may be set at 19 cents or ...
Posted in Real Estate Tips, Rental Tips | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
I wanted to share some secrets and marketing techniques for Google Adwords. These tips are meant for the moderate to expert adwords user.
If you apply these techniques to your ad campaigns, you will see a dramatic increase in CTR (Click Through Rates) and Conversions. Which means more sales and leads.
There ...
Posted in Search Engines | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
While I was at Google, Larry and Sergey used to always say that out of 10, Google search is a 1. Even though Google is the #1 search engine on earth, there is still so much it can do to improve.
From the FT:
Eric Schmidt, Google's chief executive, said gathering more ...
Posted in Search Engines | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
A great blog article written by Cory Treffiletti of online spin talks about how advertising is becoming much more vertical to reach the long tail of users. Advertising platforms are becoming the #1 destination to reach a more targeted audience.
"All of these models signal the shift away from large aggregate ...
Posted in long tail | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
A report from Atlas Institute's "How Overlap Impacts Reach, Frequency and Conversions" states that
"Consumers reached across multiple publishers were twice as likely to convert as those reached only on a single publisher."
Jed Flower , analyst, Atlas Institute States, “Overlap across publishers has tremendous implications for an ad campaign’s performance, marketers ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
I was surfing on rentBits for houses for rent in Simi Valley, and started thinking back to my childhood. I spent my entire childhood in Simi Valley, playing baseball, going to school and graduating from Royal High School.
These memories made me sad in a good way. While searching for ...
Posted in RentBits | No Comments »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
OLX, a distribution partner of Rent Marketer, has recently announced they have raised $13.5 million in series B funding from General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Founders Fund, and DN Capital.
TechCrunch says according to co-founder Fabrice Grinda, that “OLX is probably the largest classified site no one has ever heard of.”
Think ...
Posted in Craigslist | 1 Comment »
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
Apartment Marketer launches with a new look and new pricing. After months of testing and feed back from REITs, Property Managers and Owners, Apartment Marketer has launched a new innovative pricing program for apartment communities looking to fill their vacancies faster.
For property managers, owners and REITs, the subscription model, ...
Posted in Apartment Marketer | No Comments »
Friday, April 11th, 2008
MyNewPlace just launched a new home page for rentals.
Posted in MyNewPlace | 4 Comments »
Friday, April 11th, 2008
Apartment Marketer will be relaunching very shortly. We have been receiving a lot of great feedback from property managers and REITs on how to structure the site and pricing. Our pricing is the most unique in the industry.
Apartment Marketer is very similar to Rent Marketer by offering one place to ...
Posted in Apartment Marketer | No Comments »
Thursday, April 10th, 2008
If you are looking for foreclosures in California and don't know where to start, check out this foreclosure search engine called foreclosureradar.com.
This site is super easy to use and if you are a real estate investor can allow you to:
Search thousands of new properties entering the foreclosure process
Actively track ...
Posted in Search Engines | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 8th, 2008
Interesting data but not surprising. We see this in the rental industry as well. Anytime a website is focused on a particular vertical or industry, they can demand higher advertising rates because those users are more qualified and more likely to convert.
The PubMatic AdPrice Index is a broad-based measure of ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
Monday, April 7th, 2008
Found on TheRealEstateBloggers:
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Monday, April 7th, 2008
I am very late to the game on this one but MyNewPlace now offers more flexible pricing for those looking to rent out their single family homes.
MyNewPlace is known in the apartment advertising community as offering a pay per lease program. In the single family home market the pay ...
Posted in MyNewPlace | 6 Comments »
Monday, April 7th, 2008
I have the privilege to speak at the Apartment Internet Marketing Conference (AIM) on April 24th in Scottsdale, AZ. I am going to be presenting on Information Management and am excited to be part of the leaders in the Apartment industry that were chosen to present.
Bob Parsons, CEO and Founder ...
Posted in Apartment Marketer | No Comments »
Saturday, April 5th, 2008
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Posted in Business Tips | 2 Comments »
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008
Craigslist now has a company blog. Looks like many of the posts all coming from Jim their CEO.
Posted in Craigslist | No Comments »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
RentMineOnline.com, is a trust based online market place that connects asset owners and renters and facilitates rental transactions between them. They are currently integrated into Facebook, MySpace and Linkedin.
They aim to offer services that will allow renters and apartments to:
Rent ...
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008
RentWiki.com has launched in private beta and it looks like it has some legs. It is funded by Minneapolis-based private equity firm, Petters Group Worldwide, and board of directors include Mike Mueller (CEO of Vaultware) and Mary Jeffries (President of Petters Group).
The service will allow people to do reviews ...
Posted in RentWiki | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Bill Quirk over at Residential Rentals noticed that ApartmentRatings has added a Question and Answer service. It doesn't look like there are many questions or answers yet but once ApartmentRatings hits critical mass, this could be a great way to increase page views and monetization of those page views.
Posted in apartmentratings | No Comments »
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008
Ok by now you probably know that Google did not acquire Zillow or Trulia. But in other news, Trulia was named most likely to succeed by The Industry Standard.
Zillow also made the list but for companies most likely not to succeed. I disagree with Bill's analysis and think both Trulia ...
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
