Find a Red Realtor On Mars

I got a call yesterday from a telemarketer trying to sell me Internet advertising. Having owned and managed a half dozen real estate related web sites over the past 5 years, I have some idea about web traffic, search engine optimization, and "Who's Who" in real estate directories, portals and destinations, Realtor.com being one of the most obvious. This gal proceeded to tell me that a web site geared towards Realtors that I have never heard of was getting 2 million hits per month. A pretty amazing feat considering some of the biggest and best known websites in real estate don't get a whole lot more traffic than that. But as I am always willing to learn and grow, I decided to let this telemarketer explain Internet marketing to me and how I needed to act today to take advantage of the great special she was only offering until the end of the day.

When I checked out the site my first impression is that I am under-whelmed. The site looked cheap and more like one of those domain names that cyber-squatters use to sell Google ads. When I asked her how people found her site she told me through search engines like Google, (she even asked me if I had heard of Google which I thought was cute) and a few other far more obscure search engines that many of us have never heard of. She did however inform me that these other search engines were the up and coming search engines of the younger generation so I should care. ( she was referring to dogpile, ask, and metacrawler, which have been around forever.)

When I asked her what keywords or phrases would bring her site up, she told me "find a realtor". Little did she know, I spend many hours a week doing keyword research, and I can tell you with great certainty that the phrase "find a realtor" does not get typed in 2 million times per month. Anyway, in an effort to really impress me she suggested I typed in "find a red Realtor on Mars", which I did and in fact the site she was promoting did come up on top. Impressive I told her, how much for the Mars territory I asked. She wasn't sure but she thought it would be very expensive. I think she was being facetious.

Bottom line is she wanted me to dole out $799 for a platinum listing in one city, and she would give me a one line listing in 3 other cities. I asked her what happens if someone else wants to advertise in the same city to which she replied they would appear under your listing. How many Realtors would you sell the same city too, I asked. She said as many as wanted to buy into it. But surely I said that an agent buying in at the 10th place wasn't going to be charged the same $799 as the agent who got the first place. Oh yes she said, everyone pays the same price after which she told me that they currently have 4000 agents signed up.

Two things came to mind as we concluded our call, number one, I thought that was a little pricey since I know there are far higher ranked sites offering premium placement for 5 cities and unlimited property listings for $29.99/month, and two, it couldn't be possible that there are 4000 Realtors or people in any other profession dumb enough to think this was a good deal.

So beware if you get a call from a telemarketer telling you to search Google for the phrase "find a red Realtor on Mars", odds are you could find a better place to spend your internet advertising dollars.