Real Estate Agent Resources
About our recommendations:
We recommend only resources we think are top notch - ones we've used ourselves, or that come highly recommended by people we respect. Some of these are free, and we are affiliates for some of the companies whose products are for sale. Bottom line? If it's on this list, it's because we wholeheartedly believe it will help your real estate business. Enjoy and prosper!
Time Management and Organization
Backpack is an online organizer that lets you keep your to-dos, notes, ideas and schedule online. It's very user-friendly, like all the 37Signals software we've tried out. The base version is free, but we suggest
you try out the $5 a month version so you can get the calendar and have reminders emailed to you or sent to your phone.
(If you work with a team, try Basecamp instead.)
No B.S. Time Management for Entrepreneurs
One of the top books (maybe number 1) that we would recommend to any person who has ever started a business. There's way more than time management in here, and Dan Kennedy pretty much tells it like he sees it - not always in the gentlest of fashions, but in a very easy to read style, and the man knows his stuff. Every time I read this book I get something more out of it.
"How to Become an Early Riser" - article by Steve Pavlina
Mornings, especially early mornings, can be very productive. (Sometimes 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. is the only stretch of time when your phone won't ring - and when you won't be tempted to slither over to the TV and watch "America's Next Top Model" either.) You may find that you get twice as much done during those hours, and productivity expert Steve Pavlina's blog article on how to get up early actually works.
Other Steve Pavlina articles:
How to Become an Early Riser - Part II
How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off
Time Saving Tools
Want a contact form or questionnaire on your website or blog? Now it's easy! Formspring has an incredibly easy to use interface that will have even the least techie person creating a nice looking form in minutes. There's a free option, or you can pay for a few more features. Anything you can do to encourage prospects to contact you is smart (OK, within reason, obviously) so I highly recommend checking out this service.
A url is a website address. Sometimes these get extremely long and become non-functional when you paste them into emails to send to your clients. At the TinyUrl website you paste the long url into their form, click a button and presto - there's a much shorter (i.e., tiny) url that replaces the long one so you can easily send it in emails. The new url is permanent (we're not sure how, it's a mystery, but it's true) so you can use it without worry.
Legal Resources
Nolo is a highly respected source of information about all things related to the law. There's plenty of free information, and a wide array of products to help people with things from landlord-tenant law to writing a will.
Graphics
Need photos or art for your website or presentations? Dreamstime is our top pick right now. Charge is per photo, usually $1 for the lowest resolution. A good selection, and they tend to have a lot with white backgrounds (easier to use on websites.)
At Clipart you pay per week, month or year for unlimited use of images. A big selection, although overall the quality seems to be better at Dreamstime.
Snagit is a very easy to use screen capture software, so that you can create an image from any part of your computer screen, then convert it to a number of different formats including .gif, .jpg or .pdf. This is really helpful when creating presentations and tutorials for clients. You can even capture entire long web pages with its scrolling page feature. There's a lot more you can do with this software, and for around $40 it's seriously well-priced.
Blogging Resources
Active Rain is a free nationwide community of blogging real estate professionals. You can have a blog on here for free (it doesn't require any tech knowledge at all), and many agents have one on here and a separate one hosted under their own domain name. Your blog posts will get indexed quickly here, and you'll get lots of traffic and comments because this site is so active, so I'd rank this as highly important. Also, their Localism site allows you to answer questions from the public.
Thinking about getting your own blog that's hosted on your own domain? Wordpress is the premium blogging platform - you can download the software and get directions at the Wordpress.org site.
Tip: If you don't know what it means to have a self-hosted blog, get started with Active Rain or at Wordpress.com (not .org) - at those places you can have a blog up and running in minutes with virtually no tech expertise.
Website and Blog Design
This company did the primary design on our site (even though it's not a blog) and we're pretty impressed with them. They build user-friendly sites that are designed to accomplish a purpose rather than just look pretty. Their packages can also include branding and logo work, so they're definitely worth checking out. (They do prefer to do just blogs, however you can get a blog that looks like a website.)
I really like the website designs this company comes up with. They bill themselves as helping businesses in New Orleans but I believe they do work nationally, and if you're looking for a good website design I'd seriously check them out. They do logos and print design as well.
Domain Names
GoDaddy is simply the easiest and one of the least expensive places to get your domain name. Search for names, choose the one you want, and purchase it for around $9 per year. (Tip: Get the one you want sooner rather than later - why not check it out now?)
Outsourcing
On Odesk you can find virtual assistants, programmers, web designers and nearly any other online service provider you could ask for. There are other online work sources like this but I really like Odesk - the interface is user-friendly even for a novice, and the level of professionalism appears to be good.
A word of caution though about delegating to any source - you have to be super-specific about what you want, and occasionally you will still end up saying to yourself - "Are you kidding? My 85 year old mother could have done this better." Take it as part and parcel of delegating - read the reviews carefully and pick people with a good track record.
AskSunday is basically a concierge service. When you need to make a doctor's appointment, get hotel reservations or shop for and book a cheap airline ticket (and don't want to spend precious minutes on hold) you call them and they put a person on it. Their starter plan gives you 10 requests per month for a flat $19 per month fee.
Marketing Tools
Email Newsletters from ToolsForRealEstate.com
This is our highly regarded email newsletter service. Stay top of mind with past and current clients while positioning yourself effortlessly as their trusted expert with a monthly email newsletter chock full of the type of information homeowners love to receive. Each issue encourages your readers to interact with you and forward your newsletters on to others - it's like making your readers part of your own marketing team!
Best of all, this service is completely done for you. Never worry about your marketing again - just enjoy the results. Check out features and pricing here.
Xpressdocs Postcard and Printing Service
This is truly an amazing service - send your postcard order in by 4 pm CST and receive gorgeous, high quality cards the next day! We haven't used them yet for brochures or flyers, but the quality and dependability of service we've seen from this company is top notch. (Your company may already have an account with them - if not you can create your own.)
You can get all kinds of items imprinted with your contact information and logo for reasonable prices at Oriental Trading Company. They're kind of a quirky company (in a good way) with a huge array of products. So get your name out there!
Branding
Branding Expert Ann Convery Interview
This free audio of business branding expert Ann Convery being interviewed by marketing powerhouse Alexandria Brown is one of the most useful I've heard. Anne has a knack for hitting right at the heart of branding strategies with simple, yet brilliant insights, many of which are the kinds of things you can go years in business without hearing.
(Go to her website and you'll see the interview link on the main page.)
Ann Convery's "Speak Your Business in 30 Seconds or Less"
This is Anne's in depth branding strategy product, which goes into more detail about the topics she covers in the free audio. These are serious branding principles that no one should start a business without hearing first, but nearly everyone does. At around $30 it's a no-brainer!
Logos
Logoholik did our ToolsForRealEstate.com logo. I was impressed by the level of dedication to the final result being exactly what we wanted, and the designer definitely came up with ideas that were better than some other places we scouted out, including places that were more expensive. He's not the cheapest, but not unreasonable either - I'd highly recommend checking it out.
Logoworks puts a team of designers on your logo - how many you get depends on what package you choose. They have some cost effective packages and you'll see some nice logos in their portfolio. (Logoholik, above, is in my opinion more likely to provide you with a dependably good result.)
Copywriting
The Copywriter's Handbook - by Robert W. Bly
Isn't it crazy that most of us get into marketing (real estate and ourselves) without ever having had a stitch of learning in the art of how to make someone want to buy something? The Copywriter's Handbook is a must-have for anyone in our field.
Where does that apostrophe go again? And should it be 'who' or 'whom' in that sentence? Check Grammarbook to make sure your writing lives up to expectations.
Neighborhood Research
Research schools anywhere in the U.S.
Type in any address and pull up an aerial road map, with satellite, terrain and mixed view options.
Tip: You can instantly see locations of local amenities such as schools, shops, fire stations and more. Once you've pulled up an address, click the "My Maps" tab in the left hand column, then check the box next to "Places of Interest". Click the amenities you want to see and watch them pop up on the map. (Clicking the dots brings up detailed information.)
Search locations of registered sex offenders throughout the U.S.
National Clandestine Laboratory Registry
Find out where drug labs are know to have existed. (Methamphetamine production creates noxious chemicals that can seriously damage a home, so this is becoming more and more of a pertinent issue.)
Trend Watching
Follow high end home remodeling and interior decor trends here. Lots of photos, a great link to send to your clients who like this kind of thing.
National Association of Home Builders
Sign up for their free email newsletter so that you can stay current with housing economy trends and topics. They have some good remodeling and building trend articles also.
