How can I get more people to my real estate classified website

I am looking for ways to get people to list their properties on my real estate classified website at http://www.thehomedirectory.net. I have tried many different ways but can't find any can someone give me some ideas?

 

As far as I know the Realestate market has a pretty tight grip on things with the MLS listsings. YOu can always try ppc advertising, perhaps community bulletin boards or even radio adverts if you have the funds for it. Something like that I would want to start off in my own city. Once if grows from there it would be time to branch out into other cities.

 

Promote Promote and Promote. How would people list there if they can't find the website. Don't rely on SE traffic since that niche is very crowded.

You can also directly contact Small time Real Estate agents by email

 

To sell a house you must first start to think like a house.

Sorry, i couldnt help myself.

Why don't you step back for a minute. Instead of trying to work out what you can do, why don't you have a look and see what the successful real estate classified websites do. Is there something that they are doing that you are not doing. Do they have any good ideas? Is there anything that they are doing which you think you can improve on.

On a day of an Auction, when there a plenty of people around interested in buying houses, why dont you park your car close by, which might have a banner or sign on it. That way everyone attending the auction will see your website.

Cheers

 

List your site free @ Company Advertising Klassifieds

 

I looked at your site, and I in just browsing I can't find out if you charge for a listing, is a listing free? If so you should advertise that right away on the front page. I don't want to have to register to find out if I have to pay or not.

You may also want to advertise a classifieds ad on ebay. You can target fsbo's in your title/ad. Even if you are giving listings for free, you can start the auction at 0.01.

You can write a press release, write articles and submit them to directories, etc.

 

You may wish to consider regional listings... at least for the states (or your primary country) Maybe list by state, or even "north east", "south west", "Central", etc. Then offer a bunch of smaller agents the options for plugging their own entries into the thing.

[Agent] Memberships, reciprocal linking, paid listings, bonus listings... keep the greedy nature of your average agent in mind and help them help you by helping them help you...if you can follow that

 

Have you tried contacting owners directly on Craig's List? You could consider posting an ad on there as well.

 

Take an ad or sponsored review on my site http://financial-independence.net/advertise-financial-independence

 

Hey when did you register I have not had anyone register in the past few days. To contact us you can just go to the page on the front page has a link and on the sidebar. It is http://thehomedirectory.net/contact.php. When you log in to your members page first thing it will say add new listing or view saved listing and underneath it there will be something that says view your listings and it will show pictures and basic info for each one you listed.

 

Is this site free to advertise ? I prefer u to make it free first time and after that u can make it paid.

Just go for local newspaper ads.It can help u to get more!

 

my bad. i was visiting another one. took the post off.
that was another classified site with no "post ad" option, no contact.

 

Yeah it is free for an advertisement that lasts 30 days and includes one photo of the property. There are other packages that last longer and you can include more photos but all of the properties have a google map integrated to show exactly where property is as well as any property that has a virtual tour can put in the url and it will show up directly. The bigger packages are just to cover the larger costs of hosting all of your images. You can also pay a small fee to get the property featured on the home page and top of the category you are posting in.

 

Until you get enough content I would make it "free until it sells."

As one of the other posters mentioned you should start marketing it to your local Realtors. Odds are that they won't do it themselves so you should consider creating the ads for them.

From an SEO perspective, real estate is one of the toughest verticals there are (behind the 3Ps - poker, porn and pills) and you should first focus your attention on optimizing for your local community - "community name real estate." Once you rank there, expand out.

 

Thanks for all the tips and advice so far. I am going to do an advertising campaign in the newspapers of a few small markets where there are a lot of realtors as well as advertise in a realtor blog. I have a background in public relations so I am going to use that to my advantage also. Anyone from DP who lists a property please PM me and I can change your listing to a platinum package listing once it is up. Thanks again for the help so far and keep it coming

 

Good Idea.

 

newspaper ads maybe one way you should try it

 

I have tried the email list I have an email list of around 5,000 realtors and did not get ONE listing from it. The craiglist thing did well for me tho contacting people who are listing properties who said they could be contacted as a few did put their properties onto my site but that is going to be a long road doing that every day but hey anything that is worth it takes hard work and i will continue to find ways...got a meeting tomorow with a big internet marketer to learn some tricks

 

Try calling them on the phone or stop by their office. Email is a waste of time until they know who you are or have already heard of you.

Most brokers have weekly all-hands agent meetings and they often invite marketing oriented speakers to address their agents.

Join the local Chamber of Commerce.

If there is a small real estate magazine in your area approach them about working together. Also, Realtors read those magazines to see what their competition is up to and its a good place to advertise.

Real estate is not an easy vertical - especially given the current slowdown - but once you get a foot-hold in a market you should be able to leverage that into more areas.

 

Pick up the phone! I looked briefly but it looks like it may be a site for just Florida or is it all over the US? Call for sale by owners man and tell them they can list their house on your site for free with free exposure. Real Estate in Florida is hurting bad. Homeowners will take all the exposure they can get right now and anyone that doesnt want to simply won't sell their home. Someone mentioned craigslist, that was good. Also, try to find other FSBO sites and forums and make some posts or emails. my 2 cents...