Beginning a brand new year of real estate, I want to pause and personally thank you for following my blog, participating in our mastermind calls, for reading, commenting, and all the things you do to help us help the agent community. Many of your calls and emails have also been very encouraging to me. I truly appreciate all you do.

This past year, our blog readership has been the best ever and our blog community has risen to being on the radar screen of NAR, Inman News and many other prominent media outlets. Again, thank you. When we took on the NAR over the dues increase, you jumped in with an outpouring of emails and hundreds of blog comments that got their attention, although they ultimately didn’t care what we thought. Maybe if we were a bigger force, they would have cared.

That brings me to the second purpose of my email — to ask you for a favor. I’d like you to invite your agent friends to join our free blog community. I know it is a hassle to stop for a minute and send a few emails, so I made it simple. I’ve built a site that lets you simply put in their email addresses, and it will send an email to them, inviting them to become one of our readers.

If you will simply invite ten friends to join us, I will give you any one of my ten books as a thank you for taking the time. Oh, and check this out: After ten friends accept your invitation I’ll give you all ten of my books, absolutely free, as my way of thanking you for helping us grow our community.

This is the year for us to have a bigger impact on the real estate industry. This is the year for our voice to be heard. And this is the year to help thousands of struggling agents turn the corner and begin prospering. Let’s make 2012 the best year ever in this the best of all businesses — real estate!

Click here to invite your friends to join us. >>

I Hate Technology!

Do you ever get the idea that an entire cottage industry exists for the sole purpose of fleecing agents out of their hard-earned commission dollars? Ever feel like a new technology company springs up every 15 minutes with the latest, greatest new clever idea? And all the pitches are the same: a room full of drones on phones, calling agents from the NAR membership list, promising great success! Read more >>

Matt Jones is the founder and CEO of FavoriteAgent.com, nationally syndicated columnist, broker, and best selling author of LCM: The Secret to Success in the New Age of Real Estate, The Ultimate Listing Presentation, Traffic: How to Sell Fast and Net More, Becoming a Mega-Producer, The Science of Online Marketing, 10 Steps to Real Estate Success, 20 Questions: Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Real Estate but Were Afraid to Ask, The Virtual Office Model, Max-Bang!, and The NEW Ultimate Listing Presentation. Jones' North Carolina-based company has been profiled by major media outlets as an innovator and a pioneer in the industry, and CNN's Pulse on America claimed FavoriteAgent.com is "changing the way real estate is being done in America." This article is cross-posted in the following locations: BlogMattBlog.com, RealBlogging.com, NewsGeni.us, TheCommissionCheck.com, RevampedAgent.com, and now Amazon Kindle.