December 2009 saw the demise of Editor & Publisher Magazine, which had been around since 1854. It lays claim to being the chief chronicler of the American newspaper industry and has presided over the business for 125 years and is a clear signal that an era is rapidly drawing to a close.

NEWSPAPERS

Daily newspapers have been losing between 2% and 5% per year of their circulation base during the last 10 years. In 1940 there were 1,878 newspapers in the U.S. with a total circulation of 32.4 million. …

The last installment was more geared toward brokers and team leaders so I will make this one for agents.  I’ll warn you: This strategy will not make you friends, but it will make you money.  If you are like most agents today, you are struggling for sales opportunities.  You know what to do when you find a new customer, and hopefully, you do a great job.  The problem is finding enough customers.
Here’s a great way to find new customers, and it costs almost nothing.  It works best if you have …

First impressions are almost always irreversible and can make or break your connection in a matter of seconds, and how you connect on and offline will make determine if you will win or lose!
What can you do differently than you have been doing?  Are you relying on the same old things, systems, and habits…. or even more concerning, doing the same things your competitors are doing?
Today’s savvy consumer knows what they want, and are not willing to pay for services that do not meet their need. The largest buying segment …

Too many luxury real estate marketing professionals have become mesmerized by the mechanics of online social networks and have all but forgotten the phone call as being a vitally important component of professional networking.

Okay… The holidays are over and we are at the half way point of the first quarter of a new year…..So the question is…What has changed in how you are doing (or not doing) your business to make real money?
We are all prisoners of our habits, and especially after a certain age, it is tough to “change”. It’s been said, that if we keep on doing what we’ve always done, we’ll keep on getting what we have always gotten….but that is not true anymore! In today’s competitive marketplace we may …

Identify & Obliterate Six Barriers to Your Success!
It’s the beginning of yet another year, and as many of us sit with pencil in hand we might be thinking…”Should I even bother to set new goals again this year…and if so… will it even make a difference?
At the beginning of every year we all start out at zero….and it seems daunting to look at next December and wonder how we are going to “get there”! Will we beat this year’s numbers? Will this be the first year that you will really …

One of your primary jobs as a real estate agent is to assess the value of property for your clients. Arriving at an ideal price is hardly an outcome of guesswork. Skilled agents recommend purchase or sales prices only after a carefully considered review of the property’s condition, location, structure, amenities, and functionality, all tempered by the realities of regional competition and the economic environment.
 
The best agents follow a structured process as they evaluate properties and render pricing opinions, systematically balancing the features and benefits of the home against …

If you think it’s been a tough year, bad market and find yourself thinking from a scarcity point of view, you might find yourself believing that there is little you can do to get more business…Think again!
Before you go with “scarcity thinking”, expert Harvey MacKay gives us 66 creative and meaningful ways to connect with even the most elusive prospects.
MacKay is the bestselling author of “Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive”. He says, “Anyone can get the order if he’s willing to stretch the truth far enough. Whether …

In answering this question, I realize that many of you who read it will likely never read another thing I write.  Nevertheless, I think it’s important that somebody tell the emperor about his new clothes, and I guess I will have to be “that guy”.
I believe that the social media fad, as a marketing tool, is “the great distraction”.  What do I mean by that?  I mean today agents are spending — no wasting — far more time playing on Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, all the while telling themselves that …

Question:  Was the jump in existing home sales in September encouraging, misleading, or ho-hum?
The answer is yes. It is ho-hum because the pending sales index predicted the jump. So there is nothing new happening in the housing market. It was encouraging because it was more good news about a housing market that is in real recovery. The coming months will display a consistent positive movement in real estate. It was misleading because the additional sales were “borrowed” from 2010 because of the expiration deadline of the first time buyer tax credit. We will …