Random thoughts…

I don’t know if I should be happy or said. Some agents from Century 21 Consolidated in Las Vegas registered domain name based on our company name. Is that a compliment? I have very small company and certainly not many people know the name MillionSaver, but Paul and Michelle Francis probably felt it will increase their business when using domain name MILLIONSAVERS.com for their website.

I had my office manager Ken give them call on Friday and they promised to take it down, but nothing happened as of this afternoon. This is really bad example how some agents think they will win the online marketing game. And this is one of the most stupid way how to do it. Register bunch of domain names similar as to other real estate companies and direct them to your website.

Even if you don’t get such companies going after you for trademark infringement, it will not help to have multiple domain names going to the same content.

I was really laughing when I found this…. Info how to get credit card companies stop send you junk mail with applications.

There are two types of junk mail that everyone gets: coupons for stupid bullshit that you don’t want, and credit card applications for credit to buy stupid bullshit that you don’t need. Here’s how to take care of all your junk mail in one fell swoop: use the postage-paid envelope that credit card companies send you with their applications to send them the OTHER junk mail you receive. It’s just that simple. Imagine the frustration of credit card companies when they have to spend millions of dollars every year on first-class postage just to open up an envelope and find Pizza Hut coupons inside. The envelopes are intended to be used for “BUSINESS REPLY MAIL,” and so use them for their intended purpose. You’re sending them valuable money-saving coupons which could mean big savings to credit card companies, and it makes good business sense to use them. Consider it a reply to their business proposition with a business proposition of your own: 35 cents off a large, one-topping pizza. In fact, they should be thanking you for giving them these money-saving opportunities. Or how about sending them credit card applications from other credit card companies? Be creative.

Read the whole article here.

Read this article from Jeremy Zawodny experience with Dell’s customer support in India. Jeremy was trying to return broker computer monitor and it took him several phone calls and total time of 62 minutes.

I never understood why someone might think that outsourcing customer support for U.S. customers to India might be good idea. Saving money? Did it save money to Dell when such trivial transaction took 62 minutes? The same think could be done 10-20 times faster on the phone or even faster and cheaper online.

I think the companies outsourcing are missing the point. If they change the way they do business they might do bigger savings and have less piss off customers, who write to their blogs, and these blogs are read by thousands of people, who write to their blogs, and then hundreds of thousands of people read that and can make next buying decision based on that information.

Pictures I took recently when on plane to Las Vegas. The skyline is changing rapidly in this city. Couple of new hotel towers, Wynn Las Vegas opened recently and now all the highrise condos are being build.

Interesting article about working from home for some of the Internet companies…

In my last two and a half years at EarthLink and Yahoo!, I’ve learned that most companies aren’t set up for this. They don’t have the decentralized network. They don’t have a culture who understands what it’s like for the person on the other end of the phone who can’t see the whiteboard. They don’t understand that during a 3 hour planning meeting, the person working from home without a speaker phone is getting a very sore ear and a tired arm from holding their handset. If you’re the only person telecommuting, you’re also the only person missing out on hallway conversations, technical talks, fun lunches and more. You miss an entire half of the work experience. Read the whole story…

About 50% of our company workforce is located in one centralized office in Las Vegas, NV. The rest is working with us over Internet, ICQ, Skype and telephones. We are very small company (up to 20 people total), but I cannot imagine accomplish the results without the mix of people working from homes and in the office. We couldn’t work as only traditional company or only telecommuting company. The mix is bringing advantages, which make the whole company very competitive. But we don’t have problems described in the article. It seems to me that problems arise when trying to take brick and mortar business model and apply it to telecommuting workers. Instead of spending hours on teleconference hours there must be different way of communication through web based project management, emails or ICQ. If the work requires to be in the office, then such worker should be in the office. If the work can be rather independent then such worker can easily work from home. It also depends how the works is organized, but solution doesn’t have to be costly.

I have few good real estate websites and I totally believe that Internet is the place where the real estate business is heading. I just have hard time to deal with  all the B.S. in real estate business.

 It is one of the most cut throat business I ever saw. Some agents get the idea and close substantial amount of business from few leads. Sooner or later such agents leave and set up their own companies or teams trying to copy the system as much as possible. Some don’t get it and blame their unsuccess on everybody else. Unfortunately majority of agents is in the second group.

 So what is happening there are customers interested in real estate, but agents are too lazy to call and deal with them. I know it is tough job. People are hard to reach on the phone. Not many people are responding to voice mail messages. There is too many agents in the business, but still there should be way how to make this all work much better than it is working now.

I see that real estate business is really screwed up. There is huge mistrust from customers towards real estate agents and at the same time too many incompetent agents. I came as an outsider not knowing what I am getting into. I didn’t believe myself how this business works after I was too much in it to go back.

I am doing small experiment by changing title on our website to see how quickly it can influence position on Google.com

Original title:
Las Vegas Real Estate. Search all new and resale homes for sale in Las Vegas and Henderson, Nevada. All new homes builders and MLS search. Houses for sale and real estate in Nevada

Google position for keyword: las vegas homes is #4 from 10,900,000 results on 12-22-2005 at 8.09 PM.
#13 for keyword: las vegas real estate.

New title:
Las Vegas Homes | Real Estate

Google position for keyword: las vegas homes is #3 (going up one position in 4 days) on 12-26-2005 at 8.47 PM. And to #11 for keyword las vegas real estate.

I did similar experiments with other sites and it really works so fast. You can do change in title and you will see change in position on google within days. Maybe even shorter for websites which are crawled more often. I noticed the homepage is crawled by google about every 3 days. This is definitively something different then I was used to in the past.

When I started my real estate website MillionSaver.com I was hesitating if I should spent about $60 per year for hosting. I hosted in on free web hosting and it seemed as enough at that time. I was extremely careful with expenses, and took the whole project as experiment. If someone told me that this websites will bring almost one million in deals (GCC - grossed closed commissions) to real estate agents in 2005 I wouldn’t believe that. Internet is very powerful tool to start great businesses with minimum investment. It allows anyone to be very creative and accomplish a lot without a lot of money and keep the freedom of doing the things they way you like it without venture capitalists breathing at your neck. I think there are endless options how to use open source or very creative programming to bring solutions to old problems. Creative thinking and small investment can achieve huge results, without too much hard work. That’s the way I like to do business and want to continue in 2006. The key is to work with like minded people and it is one of the reasons I started to write this blog. I hope that some of the new projects next year will be done with some of the smart people coming to read these pages.

Windows Live Local. Interesting application. I like the way it works with MSN and can show address of businesses. For example our company office in Las Vegas :

Add Pushpin - interesting feature for adding notes and pushpins on the map. Check it out here www.local.live.com

Isn’t it beautiful? 2 cups water, 4 cups flower, water, salt and yeast… that’s it and it tastes as well too.