Advertise On Facebook For Free...But Hurry Before The Offer Goes Pfffft!

Yep, you read that headline right. You can advertise for free using the world's largest social networking site, Facebook.

A bit on Facebook advertising
For those still new on social network advertising (like me), you can post ads targeted to Facebook members using the network's database of 400 Million members (including mine and yours if you have an account). What makes this medium so powerful in my view is that you can choose both demographics (age, sex, location, educational level, job description, etc.) as well as psychographics (lifestyles, likes, dislikes, etc.) and even their membership in the different groups.

I have launched my first ever ad with Facebook the other day and I have no complaints so far with the results. I got 15 clicks in just 2 days, which is not bad given given that I had only 20,000 impressions (I chose the CPM per thousand of impressions instead of pay per click). Now that may seem too low for you but if you used a budget of only get this ---- $1.30/day...now that's a very high return as I am promoting the site builder I wrote about - yes, I am a believer now, so much so that I signed up as an affiliate. ( I will post more on the progress of my site using the Ezprofitresults system)

Btw, here's what my ad looked like:

Realtors and real estate agents who want to launch targeted ads should try this and evaluate if it is worth it.

Free stuff
Ok so here's the free stuff. Occasionally, Facebook and its partner sponsors give out free advertisement coupons / codes to the public as part of their promotions. Well, it so happened I stumbled on this blog: www.seoflexmedia.com last night and it gave away a $50 ad coupon for Facebook. So I tried the code and you know what...it worked!! I now have an extra $50 ad credits I can use to promote my stuff and properties.

Since I am so happy with my find, I am paying it forward...the free stuff and hope all of you benefit from it the same way as I did.

So here's the code:           FB-SES-NY

Remember you need to create your Facebook advertisement first and put in your credit card details (you will be deduct something like a $1.00 for registration and space purposes) before you can activate your ad and use the promo code.

Don't worry, if you redeem the promo code for your ad placement, Facebook will not deduct it from your credit card (you may use a debit card as well as long as the issuers are Visa, Mastercard, Discovery or American Express).

Please do give it try and let me know the results. The advert code does have an expiry (mine is about 60 days) and you can only use that to place ads in Facebook.

Happy Selling!!

Powerful Website Builder

Last week I wrote about the free trial website online business builder software called the Ezprofitresults I am using to build my CNP Properties site. Although I am no programmer, I found it easy to put in content such as images, text and even embed videos to the site.

In case you want to see the functionality and features of the system, here's a video describing the what you can do with it.



As you can see, the Ezprofitresults system has a lot of applications for a whole range of businesses. For real estate it be a powerful tool although again, these are just that - tools.

Real estate still remains and will also be people business and unless your site touches & mean a lot (being very relevant to their needs) to people, it won't be successful at all.

Good News For A Change: BBC Fast Track Visits Cebu

My Florida-based cousin Bitoy (who is an accomplished photographer- check out his blog & portfolio here aside from being a top notch medical technologist) posted a recent BBC video on Philippine tourism link on his Facebook profile. You can view the video by clicking on the photo below(sorry no embed feature):

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/8569932.stm

Though the video exclusively showcases Cebu, I believe we should have more of these features and information to promote other exciting destinations. As one American expat resort operator said, we need more publicity not more ads to counter the usual negative stories circulating about the Philippines. Tourism Secretary Ace Durano (incidentally a Cebuano himself) also revealed a basic marketing tactic to draw more tourists: focus more on the destination than the country itself. The Philippines seems to have a bad rep that it smarter to promote Bohol or Cam Sur as a stand alone product. Cebu has been very successful with that tactic during the late 1980s to the early 1990s where its tagline was: Cebu - an island in the Pacific. It's was an ingenious marketing move, to position the destination away from the negative publicity especially during that time when coups, disasters, typhoons and violence were synonymous with the Philippines.

Ultimately, in the age of web 2.0 its not the ads that will draw people to come and visit but its the stories, user experiences and other media shared by people who are happy and satisfied with what they have seen and tried. The government should capitalize on social media to spread the word by mouth...or in this case by Facebook, Twitter and other tools.

Real Estate Site Building Progress Using The Free Trial

Here's some screenshots I took as I went about editing and playing around with Ezprofitresults, online business platform which gives you the tools to create not just a site but also forums, blogs, e commerce, perform email marketing and many more.

Here's a cool feature...you can edit the entire site using a very easy WYSIWYG interface. Just click on the region you want to edit or update, then you are good to go. Very intuitive if you ask me.

  How do you like this theme for a real estate agency?

How To Build Your Own Online Real Estate Business Without Programming Knowledge Part 1

I'm trying out a free 30-day trial service from a site called ezprofitresults which allows me to create a fully functional web site for my real estate agency CNP Properties though from its features, it can be called a total online business as it not only creates a site but also other funcationalities needed conduct moden online business transactions such as blogs, forums, e-commerce and a host of other cool stuff.

What I really like about this service so far is that I was able to choose from a lot great templates they have on stock and build the site from ground up. And although I have yet to try the other features of the service, I am attracted to the ease of use, something similar to like creating posts for a blog.

Here's what the template I choose looked like:

Old School Web
I started to use the internet to promote real estate back in the 1990s using the Geocities.com free service. I named the site, Visayas Property Link. At that time I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) Geocities was already part of the Yahoo network which made it convenient for me to just sign in using my yahoo id, which btw I still use until now.

At that time, the purpose for that site was to post pictures, content and other data on Manville Royale and other Bacolod properties for sale. I didn't want to put up that site but I got so tired attaching those files to my client emails (it was all dial up then) which prompted me to post all the infos.

The one thing I really liked about geocities was that it was so easy to use. It was like using Word or Power Point where you just compose your message, add photos, links and you have a brochure-type site running in no time. If you want to add new pages, you just click add a new page and do the usual stuff and link it to the main page or index. Btw, the screen shot on the left shows that my geocities site looked like as I retrieved it from archives.org.

That site really helped & got me regular monthly streams of leads and sales. Back when everybody was trying to learn email and discover the internet, I was already spending hours and hours a day developing and posting content to the site so much as that it ranked high up in yahoo's search engines (no, google then in the late 90s and early 2000s). As time passed, I added more and more pages for Iloilo and Cebu properties which got me more sales from the leads generated. Many of those buyers who bought their propeties from me ended up being my life long friends who I still communicate to this very day

Of course, there are a lot of downsides. First, you cannot expect your site to be really professional looking  with just the simple functions and options unless you really take time (which I don't have as I am busy selling houses and other properties) to learn tricks and other neat stuff. Second, there are the usual problems with free sites. You remain at the mercy of the owner who might one day give up the service and bring down your entire internet business down crashing.

Which is what happened to geocities. When geocities decided to fold up, along with it my valuable data and as well as my steady stream of leads and property inquiries.

Although geocities made the announcement months before the scheduled closing, I hardly had time to prepare on what to do as I was already getting ready to move and strike out on my own.

To keep my online presence, I tried new property website advert sites starting to profilerate around the web and so far, the results have been fairly ok. I would personally recommend sites such as : Sulit.com.ph, Bahay.ph, iproperty.com and Ahyer.com.

New generation sites: web 2.0 for real estate

However, despite effectivity of these free advert sites, it doesn't change the fact that its about time I needed a real deal site and not just any website. With the presence of so many web services that allow people to share information and particpate in forming new information on real estate, I knew I have to come up with something that would allow me to:

1. access analytics data (no. of visitors, from where, etc.)
2. keep track of my leads that come in through my web site inquiry form
3. launch email marketing campaigns
4. create a blog
5. build a forum for discussions
6. manage and update my site easily without going to a webmaster or developer to do it for me.

Thus I scoured the web for services that allow me to do so and there are a lot of those available. You have applications such as Wix, google sites among others but again, what I needed was a more updated system that would allow me to converse with customers and house my daily selling activities such as emails, monitor my agents output and inputs, etc.

Ezprofitresults looks promising but I will still test it further and post more updates very soon.