The common feeling across the real estate industry is that 2008 is going to be a very important year for most Real Estate agents and brokers. As mentioned in last month’s Blueprint, although many REALTORS® are feeling the crunch, new opportunities are appearing for those ready to take them. Every year iHOUSE Web Solutions conducts a Real Estate Marketing Benchmark Survey designed to take a look at what REALTORS® are doing and plan to be doing with their marketing efforts to get more business. Take Our Survey and as our Thank You for your participation receive a Spotlight Single Property Website at no cost (just pay $9.98 for your domain name)! You will receive the promo code once you complete the survey. We will also enter your name in a drawing to win one of four $50 Amazon.com gift certificates! Results of the survey will be published in next month’s issue of Blueprint. Take the Survey Now!

iHOUSE Web Solutions has lowered the Spotlight® Activation Price by 50%:
The price for Spotlight Single Property Website Activations has been dramatically reduced to $49.98 each from $99. Spotlight Websites are a hit at listing presentations and inspire seller confidence. As always, real estate agents can create unlimited Spotlight preview sites at no cost and now they go live for just $49.98 each. Try Spotlight for your next listing.

Update Released for the ListingLaunch™ Listing Promotion Tool
On Jan 17th, iHOUSE Websites released an update to the iHOUSE ListingLaunch listing promotion tool. iHOUSE customers can now post their listings to Craigslist and Backpage.com and further changes have been made to make ListingLaunch even easier to use.

Log into your website here and Add or Edit a listing to see the new ListingLaunch.

This month’s Customer Close Up features “Downtown Darryl” Hunt and his website www.downtowndaryl.com.

“Real Estate is way too much fun to call it a job!” says “Downtown Darryl” Hunt. “Downtown Darryl” is a RE/MAX® agent in Orlando, FL who loves what he does. “I don't view it as a job. I have way too much fun in my business to even call it a job. Seriously I do!” “Downtown Darryl” has been a real estate agent for 11 years now and he is also licensed as a mortgage broker. Darryl has established himself in Orlando with a brand and niche that is recognized by many people in Orlando and his office even mentions his website in their recruitment interviews. “They ask, ‘Have you heard of Downtown Darryl?’ Pretty much 8 times out of 10 they say yes.” More…

When taking digital photos for your website, the photo quality should not exceed 96 dpi (dots per inch). Current computer screens do not go higher than that. Photos of higher quality will just be bigger files that will take up more space on your computer and take longer to upload. Higher dpi settings are currently only useful for print photos. Click here for more Photo help.

In last month’s Poll we asked, “What was your most effective marketing tactic in 2007?” The number one answer was, “Building relationships with your existing contact base” and the number two answer was “Online visibility using a personal website and online marketing.”

In this issue, instead of doing our monthly poll, we are doing our Annual Real Estate Marketing Benchmark Survey. Respondents will receive a Spotlight Single Property website at no cost (pay just $9.98 for the domain name) AND get entered to win one of four $50 gift certificates to Amazon.com!

Take the Annual Real Estate Marketing Benchmark Survey Now!