HomeGain is 10 years old. If HomeGain were a dog, it would be 62 years 
old. I don’t know how to calculate gorilla years, which would be a more fitting comparison given that Max the gorilla is HomeGain’s mascot. But what’s important is that in INTERNET YEARS, 10 years is an eternity.
To put this into perspective, 10 years ago Alta Vista and Lycos got more unique visitors than Google, who was the awkward new kid on the block in the search engine realm. Anyone still use Alta Vista and Lycos today?
Now just because you’re old doesn’t mean you’re good, but there is something to be said when a business model can survive 10 years in a sector as volatile and brutal as Real Estate, and real estate online marketing in particular.
How many entrepreneurial ideas that were hyped up to be revolutionary and
industry-shaping actually materialized through the dot.com bust? How many supposedly life-changing online services that were being conceptualized, funded, and released in audaciously rapid succession actually delivered more than a cheap, temporary IPO stock rally?
10 years ago, Brad Inman founded HomeGain.com claiming that it will change the way homes are sold. He evangelized that it will dramatically cut down on the time and expense of selling a home, and will save real estate agents valuable time and energy, allowing them to get back to the business of selling homes. Well, Brad sold enough venture capitalists to get out their check books and bankroll his idea to make www.homegain.com a reality.
And HomeGain has been delivering on this promise for 10 consecutive years, while adding Buyer-centric marketing tools such as HomeGain’s Buyerlink and a slew of other marketing services for Realtors to connect with prospective homebuyers and sellers.
HomeGain may not be a media darling and get the kind of fanfare that Trulia or Zillow has garnered over the past couple of years, but they’re fine with quietly posting profits year after year and providingdemonstrable return on investment to their clients for 10 straight years.
So kudos to you HomeGain for delivering on your promise 10 years ago to change the way Real Estate transactions are made, and in honor of this commendable acheivement, here is a Yims Blog Top Ten Facts about HomeGain…Drum Roll Please:
10) HomeGain released the 1st ever instant home valuation tool in 2000. 
Yes, even before Zillow turned it into a circus and allowed people to find the value of Bill Gates’ house.
9) HomeGain receives 4-5 million unique visitors per month
8. HomeGain surveyed over 2,000 real estate agents nationwide and configured a list of the top 10 moderately priced home improvements that will benefit sellers most when they sell their homes and released this return on investment calculator to the public as HomeSale Maximizer tool.
7) HomeGain released the first virtual blogging school where Realtors can receive free 
blogging lessons for their Agentview Blog platform from “blog professor” Joseph Ferrara of Sellsius Real Estate Blog, a veteran in real estate blogging.
6) HomeGain has 5,000+ real estate agents and brokers in its clientele. This is paying clientele mind you. I’m not sure Trulia nor Zillow can say the same, although their Weight Watchers and Netflix ads provide very entertaining distractions to consumers searching for homes (please take note of the sarcasm, it’s very purposeful)
5) HomeGain launched a Green Real Estate Campaign on Earth Day 2009 to 
promote green real estate practices and give a platform for this movement.
4) HomeGain has produced 50,000+ real estate transactions representing over $10 Billion in home sales in the past 10 years.
3) Over 800 real estate agents have earned in excess of $50,000 in commissions from HomeGain’s Agent Evaluator program.
2) HomeGain announced 2 real estate agents who have earned over $1 million in real estate commissions using the Agent Evaluator program.
1) HomeGain redesigned HomeGain.com in the 4th quarter of 2008, and good thing because the old site was plain ugly.
Before:
After:
Social media platforms are proliferating at such a dizzying pace that even 
internet yuppies like myself are having trouble keeping up. Tweet this, Facebook that, LinkedIn this, Digg that, and the list goes on and on and on.
This world is so hyper connected that it’s almost impossible to be “unavailable”. Remember those days when you could just screen your calls on your cellphone and use a lame excuse like, “Oh, I had no reception in the area?” and you received immunity from annoyed friends and family? You try that tactic now and you’ll hear crazy
things like, “I called you twice, left you a message, texted you, instant messaged you, emailed, twittered, facebook poked you! Where were you?!” You could reply back, “well obviously you didn’t get the message that I was trying to send you by not replying back!” but you might lose some friends that way.
As with any technological advance in the social realm, the medium inevitably encroaches into the business sector and the lines between “social” and “business” become blurred in a hurry. An entire industry has arisen out of social media marketing, and I have to admit, at first I was quite skeptical.
I hated the idea of businesses on facebook creating profiles and fan pages, or companies twittering news about their products because it seemed to defeat 
the purpose of what these social mediums aimed to create: a way to stay connected with friends and family. But where there is a new concept of communication there is always a buck to be made, and if there is a buck to be made, there will be 1000 vendors trying to make that buck. So instead of folding my arms from the sidelines in stubborn resistance, I’ve decided to embrace the undeniable and wrap my head around this new social marketing beast.
I shouldn’t be so surprised after all. Things have always been this way. Radio and Television advertisements have become so embedded into our social 
lives that we don’t bat an eye when a Geico ad interrupts our favorite prime time episodes or morning commute talk radio segment. I can’t even watch Youtube clips of Susan Boyle’s jaw-dropping performance without seeing an advertisement pop up in the window. So the question isn’t whether Social Marketing platforms are a viable way for real estate agents to reach prospective clients in non-traditional ways, but rather, how can it be done in a fun, creative, personalized manner.
Realtors, please mark my words. Putting up a link to your MLS listing on your facebook status or twittering an announcement of an open house for your listing is not creative, definitely not fun, impersonal, and does not fall in line with the normal user experience of the people using the social medium.
If you walk away with anything from this post, just hone in on this one point
and commit it to memory. People use facebook to connect with friends and family by looking at photos, videos, reading little blurbs about their friend’s mental musings. Thus, your social marketing efforts must seamlessly interface with the most common user experiences of your facebook users or else they will be utterly ignored and in some cases harshly received.
In my next post, I will attempt to demonstrate a way of marketing yourself as a Realtor to your facebook-using prospects in the context of their social mingling norms, utilizing features that these uers have come to love and become addicted to. Stay tuned!
Green Real Estate is Contagious – Join the Bandwagon
April 24, 2009
Come jump on the green real estate bandwagon while you can! It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what “going green” really means. It’s come to a point where green lifestyle has influenced business practices, so don’t be late on this realtors!
As I wrote in my last post, promoting yourself as a green real estate agent is imperative in setting yourself apart from your competition. Of course, there’s the whole doing good for the earth component as well, for those of you who actually care.
HomeGain jumped on the Green Real Estate bandwagon this past week and has even created a whole new page dedicated to raising green awareness in the community and real estate industry as a whole. The bandwagon is big enough for all of you real estate agents, so jump on!
