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MyHouseDeals.com Grants Free Access to All Property Listings

In a bold move, MyHouseDeals.com makes its property listings available for free to all real estate investors; previously, listings were only available for a monthly fee

HOUSTON, Jan. 13, 2010 -- MyHouseDeals.com went live with a radically different website and business model in early January. There were dozens of changes, but visitors will most likely notice that the listings are now free to view instead of $39.80 per month as they had been.

When asked why MyHouseDeals.com moved from a paid access to a free access model, Doug Smith, president of MyHouseDeals.com, responded, "Our primary goal is to maximize the number of investors who view - and profit from
- our listings."

Mr. Smith continued, "While hundreds of investors have profited from our site in the past, thousands have missed out. The main reason is that they were unwilling to submit their billing information to an unfamiliar website. This huge barrier has been removed, and we now gladly welcome the skeptics.

"We also think now is the perfect time to remove that barrier. 2010 provides an ideal buying opportunity for real estate investors. Homes are highly undervalued and interest rates are at historical lows. So we want to equip as many investors as possible with the listings they need to buy now."

But Mr. Smith doesn't see investors as the only ones who benefit from this change. "Most of the sellers on our site are motivated to sell quickly due to financial problems caused by the recession. Serious buyers are harder to come by these days, so they need all the exposure they can get.
Making the listings free should double or even triple that exposure."

If things go as planned, MyHouseDeals.com also stands to gain. "We believe that the free listings will generate an enormous buzz amongst real estate investors. And this buzz should dramatically increase traffic." And according to Mr.
Smith, that increased traffic can lead to substantial revenues.

"Once investors are involved on the site and profiting from our free listings, we're confident that a substantial number will upgrade to our Premium service, which gives them unrestricted access to all deals. Plus, they'll gain access to the deals fourteen days early, which gives them a huge leg up."

Just a few days after going live with the free listings, MyHouseDeals.com is already seeing a positive impact. Prior to the change, their data showed that only 36% of visitors remained on the site for an extended period of time. Based on data from the new site, an average of 65% of visitors are staying, an 81% improvement over prior performance. These figures bode well for visitors returning to the new site on a regular basis and generating the desired buzz.

When asked if he had any concerns about granting free access to the listings, Mr. Smith responded, "I think it's normal to have concerns or to second-guess oneself. But at the end of the day, it can't hurt to be in alignment with the mantra of Internet pioneers: 'Information wants to be free.'"

To gain free access to the listings, just go to MyHouseDeals.com, click into your city, and create a free account.

About MyHouseDeals.com:

MyHouseDeals.com provides a listing of discounted investment property in fifteen of the nation's largest metro areas.
Residential real estate investors use the site to purchase properties at up to 50% off fair market value. Since its inception in 2005, MyHouseDeals.com has provided information on 42,700 bargain-priced properties containing $2.7 billion in total equity.

Contact:

Alex Soares, business manager
MyHouseDeals.com
(713) 942-0703
http://www.myhousedeals.com

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing

The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant
Web Marketing Today, February 1, 2005. Originally published 2/1/2000
 

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I admit it. The term "viral marketing" is offensive. Call yourself a Viral Marketer and people will take two steps back. I would. "Do they have a vaccine for that yet?" you wonder. A sinister thing, the simple virus is fraught with doom, not quite dead yet not fully alive, it exists in that nether genre somewhere between disaster movies and horror flicks.

But you have to admire the virus. He has a way of living in secrecy until he is so numerous that he wins by sheer weight of numbers. He piggybacks on other hosts and uses their resources to increase his tribe. And in the right environment, he grows exponentially. A virus doesn't even have to mate -- he just replicates, again and again with geometrically increasing power, doubling with each iteration:

1
11
1111
11111111
1111111111111111
11111111111111111111111111111111
1111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111

In a few short generations, a virus population can explode.

Viral Marketing Defined

What does a virus have to do with marketing? Viral marketing describes any strategy that encourages individuals to pass on a marketing message to others, creating the potential for exponential growth in the message's exposure and influence. Like viruses, such strategies take advantage of rapid multiplication to explode the message to thousands, to millions.

Off the Internet, viral marketing has been referred to as "word-of-mouth," "creating a buzz," "leveraging the media," "network marketing." But on the Internet, for better or worse, it's called "viral marketing." While others smarter than I have attempted to rename it, to somehow domesticate and tame it, I won't try. The term "viral marketing" has stuck.

The Classic Hotmail.com Example

The classic example of viral marketing is Hotmail.com, one of the first free Web-based e-mail services. The strategy is simple:

1. Give away free e-mail addresses and services,
2. Attach a simple tag at the bottom of every free message sent out: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com" and,
3. Then stand back while people e-mail to their own network of friends and associates,
4. Who see the message,
5. Sign up for their own free e-mail service, and then
6. Propel the message still wider to their own ever-increasing circles of friends and associates.

Like tiny waves spreading ever farther from a single pebble dropped into a pond, a carefully designed viral marketing strategy ripples outward extremely rapidly.

Elements of a Viral Marketing Strategy

Accept this fact. Some viral marketing strategies work better than others, and few work as well as the simple Hotmail.com strategy. But below are the six basic elements you hope to include in your strategy. A viral marketing strategy need not contain ALL these elements, but the more elements it embraces, the more powerful the results are likely to be. An effective viral marketing strategy:

1. Gives away products or services
2. Provides for effortless transfer to others
3. Scales easily from small to very large
4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors
5. Utilizes existing communication networks
6. Takes advantage of others' resources

Let's examine at each of these elements briefly.

1. Gives away valuable products or services

"Free" is the most powerful word in a marketer's vocabulary. Most viral marketing programs give away valuable products or services to attract attention. Free e-mail services, free information, free "cool" buttons, free software programs that perform powerful functions but not as much as you get in the "pro" version. Wilson's Second Law of Web Marketing is "The Law of Giving and Selling" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmta/basic-principles.htm). "Cheap" or "inexpensive" may generate a wave of interest, but "free" will usually do it much faster. Viral marketers practice delayed gratification. They may not profit today, or tomorrow, but if they can generate a groundswell of interest from something free, they know they will profit "soon and for the rest of their lives" (with apologies to "Casablanca"). Patience, my friends. Free attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs then see other desirable things that you are selling, and, presto! you earn money. Eyeballs bring valuable e-mail addresses, advertising revenue, and e-commerce sales opportunities. Give away something, sell something.

2. Provides for effortless transfer to others

Public health nurses offer sage advice at flu season: stay away from people who cough, wash your hands often, and don't touch your eyes, nose, or mouth. Viruses only spread when they're easy to transmit. The medium that carries your marketing message must be easy to transfer and replicate: e-mail, website, graphic, software download. Viral marketing works famously on the Internet because instant communication has become so easy and inexpensive. Digital format make copying simple. From a marketing standpoint, you must simplify your marketing message so it can be transmitted easily and without degradation. Short is better. The classic is: "Get your private, free email at http://www.hotmail.com." The message is compelling, compressed, and copied at the bottom of every free e-mail message.

3. Scales easily from small to very large

To spread like wildfire the transmission method must be rapidly scalable from small to very large. The weakness of the Hotmail model is that a free e-mail service requires its own mailservers to transmit the message. If the strategy is wildly successful, mailservers must be added very quickly or the rapid growth will bog down and die. If the virus multiplies only to kill the host before spreading, nothing is accomplished. So long as you have planned ahead of time how you can add mailservers rapidly you're okay. You must build in scalability to your viral model.

4. Exploits common motivations and behaviors

Clever viral marketing plans take advantage of common human motivations. What proliferated "Netscape Now" buttons in the early days of the Web? The desire to be cool. Greed drives people. So does the hunger to be popular, loved, and understood. The resulting urge to communicate produces millions of websites and billions of e-mail messages. Design a marketing strategy that builds on common motivations and behaviors for its transmission, and you have a winner.

5. Utilizes existing communication networks

Most people are social. Nerdy, basement-dwelling computer science grad students are the exception. Social scientists tell us that each person has a network of 8 to 12 people in their close network of friends, family, and associates. A person's broader network may consist of scores, hundreds, or thousands of people, depending upon her position in society. A waitress, for example, may communicate regularly with hundreds of customers in a given week. Network marketers have long understood the power of these human networks, both the strong, close networks as well as the weaker networked relationships. People on the Internet develop networks of relationships, too. They collect e-mail addresses and favorite website URLs. Affiliate programs exploit such networks, as do permission e-mail lists. Learn to place your message into existing communications between people, and you rapidly multiply its dispersion.

6. Takes advantage of others' resources

The most creative viral marketing plans use others' resources to get the word out. Affiliate programs, for example, place text or graphic links on others' websites. Authors who give away free articles, seek to position their articles on others' webpages. A news release can be picked up by hundreds of periodicals and form the basis of articles seen by hundreds of thousands of readers. Now someone else's newsprint or webpage is relaying your marketing message. Someone else's resources are depleted rather than your own.

Put into practice

Viral marketing is (fairly) easy to define, but very difficult to accomplish successfully. MarketingSherpa's How to Viral Market toolkit is the best book available on the nuts and bolts of developing a successful viral marketing campaign. Strongly recommended for serious marketers. Dr. Wilson's review Buy the book.

I grant permission for every reader to reproduce on your website the article you are now reading -- "The Six Simple Principles of Viral Marketing" (see http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-principles-clean.htm for an HTML version you can copy). But copy this article ONLY, without any alteration whatsoever. Include the copyright statement, too, please. If you have a marketing or small business website, it'll provide great content and help your visitors learn important strategies. (NOTE: I am giving permission to host on your website this article AND NO OTHERS. Reprinting or hosting my articles without express written permission is illegal, immoral, and a violation of my copyright.)

When I first offered this to my readers in February 2000, many took me up on it. Six months later a received a phone call:

"I want to speak to the King of Viral Marketing!"

"Well, I'm not the King," I demurred. "I wrote an article about viral marketing a few months ago, but that's all."

"I've searched all over the Internet about viral marketing," he said, "and your name keeps showing up. You must be the King!."

It worked! Even five years later this webpage is ranked #1 for "viral marketing."

To one degree or another, all successful viral marketing strategies use most of the six principles outlined above. In the next article in this series, "Viral Marketing Techniques the Typical Business Website Can Deploy Now" (http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt5/viral-deploy.htm), we'll move from theory to practice. But first learn these six foundational principles of viral marketing. Master them and wealth will flow your direction.

"Copyright © 2000, 2005, Ralph F. Wilson, E-Mail Marketing and Online Marketing editor, Web Marketing Today. All rights reserved. Permission granted to reprint this article on your website without alteration if you include this copyright statement and leave the hyperlinks live and in place."

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Read additional articles from Web Marketing Today, Issue 70, February 1, 2000

Don't Ever Apologize for Your Small Business!

 

by Dr. Ralph F. Wilson, E-Commerce Consultant

"We're just a small business," you mumble apologetically. In this world where big seems better, small business owners have developed a strangely distorted self-image. Small feels ... well, inadequate. But small business is great business, and I'll tell you why. I want to lead a grand cheer for small business owners and employees. You, my friends, are the salt of the earth.

Now I don't want to downplay the role of big corporations. We need their economies of scale to build efficient automobiles, commercial aircraft, and a communications infrastructure. But sometimes we overlook the fact that huge businesses have serious weaknesses in areas where small businesses shine.

Small Businesses Are the Backbone of the Economy

The US Small Business Administration says that small businesses create two of every three new jobs, produce 39% of the gross national product, and invent more than half the nation's technological innovation. And this kind of statistic could be repeated in country after country around the world. Just because you work for or run a small company doesn't mean you are unimportant. Your contribution to your country's economy is huge.

Small Businesses Demonstrate the Essence of Political Freedom

The ability to develop and conduct your own small business is a wonderful expression of your freedom as a citizen. You may complain about government regulations, but the fact is that small businesses are less regulated than large firms. This gives small businesses the freedom to focus on what is really important -- caring for customers.

Small Businesses Provide Better Customer Care

I'm sure you've noticed that the larger a company grows, the harder it becomes to provide good customer service. Just try to find the right person to help you on the phone in a huge corporation -- it'll drive you batty. But when you ask for the owner of a small business, chances are you'll be speaking to her or him within a few minutes. Marketers toss around buzzwords like "Customer Relationship Management (CRM)," but it's the small business not the megacorp that really excels at it. Small businesses know that their livelihood is based on their customers. Small is great for customers.

Small Businesses Encourage the Passion Needed to Succeed

Apathy doesn't breed nearly as well in small businesses as it does in big business. Small business owners and their workers are focused and immensely proud of what they do. Small business owners are passionate about their businesses. How many employees in bureaucratic organizations can say the same?

Small Businesses Owners Are Highly Skilled

In a small business, you have to excel at a lot of things to succeed. Small business owners and their key employees are masters of dozens of disciplines and perform their intricate balancing act like pros. So what if they wear more than one hat? Whom should we admire more -- the corporate manager or the jack-of-all-trades small business owner, whose skill-set is sharpened to a razor's edge, and who survives and succeeds and serves? My vote is with the latter.

Small Businesses Allow Owners the Freedom to Innovate

Small business owners learn to be risk takers and innovators. Corporate employees, on the other hand, too often interpret their prime directive as keeping their jobs. Risk-taking can get in the way of career-building. Innovative small businesses are prize targets of larger corporations that often find it more cost-effective to acquire than to innovate on their own.

Small Businesses Can Change Course Rapidly

Large corporations can be adverse to change, while small businesses know that their ability to make rapid decisions and implement course corrections is their key to success. In the ocean of business, mega-corporations turn like tankers, while small businesses can zip around them with the agility of a speedboat.

Small Businesses Can Be Quite Profitable

Small business is not a synonym for small earnings. In fact, many small businesses are extremely profitable. Their advantages of leanness, maneuverability, innovation, and customer focus mold them into steady enterprises that earn a significant return on investment year after year after year.

Being big isn't a worthy goal. But delivering top customer service, a passion for excellence, a willingness to dream and create, and the freedom to make timely decisions -- these are worthy of acclaim.

Small businessperson, I salute you for your dedication, your intelligence, your business acumen, and your contribution to society. Be proud of your small business. Stand tall, free, ... and unapologetic. Don't offer excuses for the size of your business. Small businesses make the very biggest impact of all!

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Copyright © 2002, by Ralph F. Wilson, http://www.wilsonweb.com All rights reserved.

Dr. Ralph F. Wilson is one of the world's top Web marketing and e-business authorities and author of Planning Your Internet Marketing Strategy (Wiley, 2002). He is founding editor of Web Marketing Today and recipient of the Tenagra Award for Internet Marketing Excellence.

 

Mortgage Aps Flood Banks

 US banks are getting a surge of mortgage applicationsbecause of dramatically lower interest rates, after record loan defaults and thousands of job cuts have stretched mortgage industry resources to the limit.

Applications for home loans more than doubled in the two weeks after the Federal Reserve said it would buy mortgage bonds to help stabilise the market, prompting mortgage rates to fall by more than three-quarters of a percentage point.

There Giving Mortgage Loans Away for Nuthin!

Freddie Mac says mortgage rates at 37-year low, spurring historic refinancing opportunity  

 Rates on 30-year-fixed mortgages dropped this week to their lowest levels in at least 37 years, as the Federal Reserve pledged to pour money into the mortgage market in an effort to spur the moribund U.S. housing market.   Freddie Mac, the mortgage company, reported Thursday that average rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages dropped to 5.19 percent, down from the year's previous low of 5.47 percent, set last week. The rate is the lowest since Freddie Mac's weekly mortgage rate survey began in April 1971.

How the Daily News Stole the Empire State Building

In one of the biggest heists in American history, the Daily News "stole" the $2 billion Empire State Building. And it wasn't that hard. The News swiped the 102-story Art Deco skyscraper by drawing up a batch of bogus documents, making a fake notary stamp and filing paperwork with the city to transfer the deed to the property. more

Farmland: The Hottest Property in America

Farmland is hot hot hot up 9 percent year over year. Iowa has seen 18% and South Dakota is up 21%. All because of rising protits form the Ag insustry and a demand for corn fuel (ethanol).   
The Christian Science Monitor, Richard Mertens

Where Are The Home Sales?

Belfair is a private golf course community located near Hilton Head, SC offering two Fazio golf courses, real estate homes for sale. This gated community is doing well despite negative housing stories across the country. "People with money are buying second homes" in this quaint community.

Google's Ocean

Let's see Google wants to move their data offshore. The idea is to save energy as datacenters consume over 1% of the Worlds energy. Not a very green thing this internet. Anyway, the idea is to get the energy from alternative methods and the water will act as a nice cooling mechanism.

Question, what happens when the pirates (we call those guys terrorists these days) come a knocking on Google's unprotected waters?

More  Google