Am I bitting off more that I can chew or leaving a lot on the table ?

[Mr Cracker]

Hello everyone

I've been designing and coding for over a month now my real estate site and creating a blog from scratch to go along with it and get a nice SEO ranking.

I'm having trouble deciding the scope of my business:

A) should I focus first on my local area (travelling by car I can cover this area in 5 to 7 min travelling at 35 mph... Just to give you an idea of its size ) and then escalate it from there? <-- this area is full of real estate agencies and it's growing a lot (opportunity ). I'm not a real estate agency so I'm not afraid of commoditization, I'm building a brand

Or

B) make it city wide (can get from one end to the other in 25 min doing 65 mph)

I have pretty much no money to invest. So in the beginning I'll be using SEO to attract my first customers.

My domain as it is now is www.housein"mytown".com but I've been hesitating whether I should change it to www.housein"mycity".com to reach more people. (common sense tells me there's more people googling for houses in my city than houses in my local area )

Can you share your thoughts on this?

Thanks I appreciate it.

 

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[Tom.V]

Really, exact match domains don't play as much importance to SEO as they once did. In almost every instance I can think of, if you are geotargeting always go for the area with the most potential search volume, or population. Get on Google Adwords keyword tool and take a look at what the results tell you.

With this said, if you are ONLY planning on staying local, you can leave it as is. If you are planning to eventually expand to a larger area, I would get a broader domain name. Either way, you can rank for local results(not just the town name in your domain name) with relative ease, depending upon the competition in your area. Anything real estate related will inherently have stiff competition, so good luck!

 

[DeletedUser2]

stop coding,

and go validate the need

is there other sites that do this? what do they suck at? what could they do better at?

I have been in real estate sine 1996, investor, home buyer, apartments, notes. etc.

what does your site do that about 100 others dont?

Z

 

[Mr Cracker]

With this said, if you are ONLY planning on staying local, you can leave it as is.

So it might be a good idea to rename the whole project? I'm planning to start locally and then escalate it from there. I haven't launched it yet so I can change the logo and get another domain, the functionality of the site would not be affected by this.

 

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[1PercentStreet]

So it might be a good idea to rename the whole project? I'm planning to start locally and then escalate it from there. I haven't launched it yet so I can change the logo and get another domain, the functionality of the site would not be affected by this.

 

[Mr Cracker]

is there other sites that do this? what do they suck at? what could they do better at?
what does your site do that about 100 others dont?

Z

All other sites are poorly designed and maintained. and hardly ever updated. I can update the site very quickly. All other real estate agencies don't have a clue about coding/designing so they have to go through all the process of hiring someone, defining what changes they want done etc... All real estate sites around here work the same way: People fill in a bunch of blanks(location, price, etc...) and get an enormous list of all the properties from that specific real estate agency, and they can filter them by price, location blah blah, ...you get the idea.

So If you contact Real estate agency A they try to sell you their Properties even if Real estate agency B has exactly what you are looking for.

My approach is much cleaner and simpler. People describe exactly what they are looking for on the site , in their own words. in return they get a few options (no matter from what real estate agency the property is , if any) specifically targeted to what they are looking for. As soon as they describe what they are looking for on the site, they will get a phone call to let them know who is going to attend and follow their specific case.

I want to focus heavily on making things simple , clean and offering great customer support.

 

[Bigguns50]

When you say "...describe exactly what they are looking for on the site", how is that done ? Would I write a paragraph and your site looks at key, pertinent words and searches for me ? I just want to understand clearly.

 

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[Mr Cracker]

When you say "...describe exactly what they are looking for on the site", how is that done ? Would I write a paragraph and your site looks at key, pertinent words and searches for me ? I just want to understand clearly.

Yes that's correct. You get a small list of relevant properties from any relevant real estate site nearby

 

[DeletedUser2]

so,

here is someone I mentored

Canadian Startup Live or List Wants to Pull Real Estate Listings out of the Stone Age - Techvibes.com

he put this up last year. I suggest you look at what they are doing, and contact them.

Z

 

[Mr Cracker]

so,

here is someone I mentored

Canadian Startup Live or List Wants to Pull Real Estate Listings out of the Stone Age - Techvibes.com

he put this up last year. I suggest you look at what they are doing, and contact them.

Z

Thanks it looks very interesting.

 

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