A profitable website must have the foresight of strategic planning and several key components to be successful. The effectiveness of each of the components and how well they are employed work will be the determinate of whether a website will be profitable or a failure in the long term.

When the correct elements are integrated in your branded web marketing, your closed sales should be the confirmation of your vision of success for your real estate website. In other words, if you plan for success realistically, it will come! Please keep in mind that you are competing with three main items that have changed dramatically in the past few years:

1. Increased competition from competing agents and third party websites

2. Dwindling resources. (more competition = less profit and more cost)

3. Changing consumer attitudes of your role as agents (they want you for information only)

The reason we must re-evaluate our web marketing efforts is obvious. Internal and external changes within our industry have forced us to refocus our efforts. These forces are numerous. They may start with increased numbers of agents' competition, less listings, fewer buyers, diminished relocation traffic, higher prices, lower commissions etc., but they end with less closed deals and money in your own pocket.

The National Association of Realtors' members have swollen from 750,000 in 2001 to almost 1.2 million Realtors today! The numbers are too big to ignore! So this is a bottom line problem! However, we have several choices at this juncture. Throw money at it and assume nothing has changed or review where we are and make some fundamental changes!

Brainstorming will allow us to refocus our core internet business, and streamline our marking costs. That alone can increase the bottom line substantially! We can accomplish this by channeling our efforts and resources into the areas or niches on the web that we deem will have the greatest return. We must build on the obvious! Profitable websites all share some common elements. They are designed well, that have a targeted audience, they are user friendly, easy to navigate, offer a useful utility to the viewer, they are easily found on a search on the Internet, and are cost efficient and profitable.

Successful websites are:

1. easily found on an Internet search -- match consumer searches and needs

2. load quickly -- avoid flash, music, heavy graphics, slow-loading pages

3. content-rich -- real estate, IDX, education, community information, local link

4. user-friendly -- easy to navigate, avoid pop-ups, lengthy forms, annoyances.

5. converts leads -- buyer, seller, relocation (not just offer free information)

6. cost efficient

Before we reach this stage it is obvious that we should first re-assess our goals, review costs, choose or refine focus, and strategize on how to achieve our goals, and implementation.

Notice the solution I offer is not to buying a website! There is no strategy in impulse buying. As I've said before profit is a planned event! Since profit is what is gained after accounting for all operating expenses, what we spend to create that profit must be considered as a component to profitability. We must consider all aspects of expenses. Are expenses fixed costs, recurring charges, one-time fees, or so on? Then we must compare current operating or marketing expenses to a revised marketing budget.

An example of this: renew domain names more economically instead of paying $25 a year and pay only $8.95 a year. Or reduce hosting charges per domain from $25/month to $5/month.) We can only realize the "big picture" if we play out the entire undertaking from conception to inception, and be totally accountable for our actions and expenses along the way. Guesstimates are not good enough! That is what keeps pulling us lower in our profit streams. If we can acknowledge that leaner days are ahead, it is smarter and easier to take the initiative before the competition does.

We must first determine our exact expenses to accomplish the goal: hosting, domains, advertising, link building, site maintenance, and web promotion, pay-per-click, ad words, search engine placement, etc. Where can costs be saved, consolidated, eliminated or fine tuned?

It is amazing to see where we spend excess marketing dollars! Once we start this exercise, we can immediately start seeing the benefits of our actions. This exercise allows us to form a new marketing budget that allows us to accomplish our goals and to remain more profitable. It also is a lot less stressful in the long run because we consolidate most of our operations, such as a central source for domains, marketing, webhosting, etc. We are now on the road to being cost-effective. It is now easy to see that increased efficiency and lower operating cost also increase profit margins.

In order to survive in real estate we must move beyond the attitudes of those that do not stay in real estate. We must realize it isn't the "next deal" that will pay for this.

This is the juncture at which we must also decide will you also continue to use traditional marketing -- newspaper ads, classifieds, tabloids, real estate books, mailings, etc., or move your marketing base more to Internet marketing. It is a tough decision to make, and a leap of faith for sure, but the cost savings may well be worth it!

I analyzed a typical budget for traditional market to be about $32,500 vs. a normal Internet budget of $8,600! That is a very big difference considering the fact that the Internet is much more efficient and your marketing dollars work globally 365-24-7!

So when do you start the process? How long for full implementation from inception? It is a smart idea to acquire the habit of reviewing goals, expenses, efficiency and cost effectiveness of your business.

The only certainty in life is change!

For a comprehensive Internet review and successful strategy planning, ask yourself:

1. Have you purchased and used the most effective domain names that identify your target market.

2. What we are trying to accomplish? (What is your niche? Define it! Buyers, sellers, resort properties, relocation business, golf property, etc)

3. Who are you trying to reach? Define your target market?

4. How will you reach that market? (domain names, websites)

5. What are the total marketing costs you will allocate to achieve your goals?

6. What is your budget? Where can expenses be trimmed? (hosting, domains…etc)

7. How will you convert inquires into leads into closed sales?

8. Can you accomplish your goals with one website?

9. How will you measure your return? Will the cost be worth it?

10. Are your pages search engine optimized to be found?

11. Is your website search engine optimized? Meta tags, title, description?

12. Are your site graphics optimized? Slow loading sites are left behind!

13. Do you employing the right content on website (IDX, local info, etc)

14. What is your website's Page Rank? (Page rankings of P3 or higher are easily found.)

15. What is your site's link popularity?

16. Do you have a link building plan for reciprocal links: outbound/inbound?

17. Reliable and affordable hosting -- what are monthly hosting and maintenance fees?

These are the new basic principles for Internet success.

Published: August 31, 2005

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Jim Crawford, ABR, e-PRO 500 is currently licensed as a Broker Associate with RE/MAX Greater Atlanta in Atlanta Georgia, and as Broker Associate with Distinctive Realty Inc. in McLean Virginia. Jim and his wife Ellen work as a husband and wife team in the northern Atlanta suburbs. As the team's rainmaker, Jim is a self-taught webmaster and designer, and he relies exclusively on the Internet for marketing. He is considered an expert on marketing, nationwide relocation, cutting edge technology, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for real estate, and Internet marketing. Jim's seminars, online contributions, and technology ideas assist real estate agents to maximize their business results, and raise the industry's professional service level skills. His common sense marketing ideas have been published and quoted regularly in trade publications. He has also consulted and advised NAR offices regarding Internet issues, and Internet ethics for Realtors. In between sales, Jim is a popular speaker at national and regional real estate seminars, and retreats. He is also an online real estate coach, with a self-tutorial coaching site for real estate professionals. Jim was a featured speaker at the November 2004 National Association of REALTORS® convention in Orlando, and has spoken at the several REALTORS® conventions both in the United States and Canada. Visit his website at RealEstateTechCoach.com, or e-mail him at .