After my response to the "secret agent" I received another email from her about a week later. Here's what it said:

I remember it like it was yesterday: my first December in real estate.  I’d been working very hard and my business was finally starting to take off.  I had four closings scheduled for the month, and believe me, I needed the money.  After a lean six months in a new career, we were going to have a normal Christmas again, and I was thrilled.  Don’t get me wrong — I’m not materialistic and my family has cheerfully endured good times and bad, but let’s face it, more is better than less.

First I’d like to commend you for sticking with me through the previous six installments.  We’ve covered a lot of ground, and hopefully you’ve been able to take something of value away from each article.  Now we finally come to the end.  We’ve discussed lots of topics, from technology to advertising.  From theory to practical application.  Now it’s time to help you assemble your own online marketing plan and what specific steps you need to take to put your newly formed strategy into action.  So let’s get started.

In the last installment, I discussed website basics.  I intentionally left off one part of the typical website: the capture mechanism or gateway.  Some call it the form or registration page, but whatever you call it, it is the most important part of your site.  As far as I’m concerned, it is more important than the website itself.  Yes, I really said that.  Let me repeat myself: It is more important than the website.

Ok, so we’ve talked about advertising — the value proposition in the ad, the call to action, the advertising key words, as well as sources of Internet traffic.  We discussed pay-per-click (or pay-per-visitor) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO).  Now it’s time to talk about the actual website.  What do the customers see once they have clicked on your Internet advertisement?  In this segment we will be discussing everything about your website, from the website’s landing page, to the content, to the value propositions, to graphic appeal and finally to keeping those customers on your site for as long as possible, or to minimizing abandonment.

In this Part we’ll examine the subject of online advertising.  I am probably going to use some terminology that is new to you, but I will attempt to either keep it simple or provide explanations as I go so even the most un-tech-savvy agent should have no problem taking something of value away from this article.  I need you to forget everything you’ve ever heard about advertising while you read and I want you to turn on your common sense — not very common these days — and see if this doesn’t resonate with you down deep inside.  I believe it will, and I believe it will result in your changing the way you look at advertising, and particularly online advertising forever.

I have opened the recruiting flood gates!  I believe I have stumbled upon the cure for all recruiting and retention woes.  I am a genius and will forever go down in history for saving our industry from demise.....

By now I think we’ve come to understand that there actually is a science to online lead capture, and we’ve identified the methodology where we can actually test and measure resulting in the ability to produce much more bang for our Internet marketing buck.  From here we will examine and discuss at great length a number of different crucial elements of the online lead capture process.

It Could!!!   Do you realize that any online property marketing tool has the potential to link out to your competition in 2-4 clicks?  You pay for a nice property website or visual tour with all the great fancy links to area information and fun stuff that are very engaging to buyers. Buyers love your site so much that they click and click until they are so far away from the original listing they were viewing that they may even end up on your local competitor's website searching for more properties and filling out information inquiries....How does this happen? (link to example below)

In June 2002 I got my real estate license and embarked on a brand  new career — selling houses!  I was excited.  I studied everything I could find.  I took classes.  I read dozens of books on real estate practice.  I couldn’t wait… and then nothing happened.  Don’t get me wrong — I did all the things that all the experts said I should do, but my results were very limited at best.