Thank You FamousAgents.com and Especially Our Users

I would personally like to extend my most sincere gratitude to Jim Messenger of FamousAgents.com for all his help and support when assisting me in constructing our new real estate blogsite.

I would also like to thank all of you out there that use our website and because of all you we hit an all time high in traffic in August 2007. In the month,the first fully month the site was live, the blogsite did an astounding 127,368 hits, 4,108 average hits per day which translates into an increase of approximately 100k hits. It was incredibly exciting to see those stastics come in and I almost did not believe it but September’s is looking just as promising so I will take it.

The site is on its way to ranking number #1 on Google for all its major search terms; that is my goal anyways. My biggest fear was that somehow the site would loose the search engine rankings that I worked 2 years to achieve after the change over. In those two years I managed to get the site ranking #1 for Marysville real estate, which we still hold, but no others; that has now changed and I will spare you the boredom of a ranking report.

Choosing to redesign the website into a blogsite has been something I have pondered for roughly a year before making the decision to do it. Starting from scratch, with content, layout and functionality, gave me the opportunity to get of the runt which I was in with the other site. One of my favorite areas of the site is the Featured Communities section in the right hand navigation bar. Why? Because of the approach I took; I used the each City’s comprehensive plans to construct the pages.

No, I did not copy & paste or plagiarized; it took me two months to write those pages and are the meat of the site. Taking that approach enabled me to learn more about Snohomish County cities, and more importantly, while learning the future plans for the cities

An excellent example is Monroe. It is shifting towards an active, sports and recreation city because of its close proximity to the Cascade Mountains. That is information I would not have normally come across by research and has allowed me to better understand the city as a whole and not just from a real estate perspective.

On another note why I like this so much more is the interaction it is creating. On many rentals posts there are comments and questions regarding availability not on our listings though which is kind of a bummer, but ah well. Also some of the blog postings have been picked up by some big real estate sites and currently the most trafficked blog posting is on P. Bush’s Government Refinancing Assistance plan with it having 18 excellent and well thought out questions, opinions and information.

This site is my baby, so to say, and I try to monitor as close as I can but sometimes other duties take me away. But I try and login at least a few times through the evening to see what is happening, sometimes there is nothing happening and other times it blows up with comments. With that said I try and follow up ASAP but if I am at home and there are items I need in the office or if it is late I will follow up the following day.

All you guys rock and thanks for chatting with me through this site and if anyone would like to meet in person I am generally in the office from 9-5 M-F, depending if there are meetings outside the office or I am lunch. Stop in and say, I am the guy sitting at the receptionist desk on the left as you walk through the front door.

Yes, I am the receptionist as well as the webmaster and the Business Development Manager, accountant, project manager and so on. In my profile picture I look older than I do in person: I am 29 but could pass for much younger. Stay on topic Toby, I wear many hats in the company but would not have it any other way.

Being on the ground level and doing everything from answering the phones to developing and implementing core business strategies has given me a lot of business experience as well as test my entrepreneurial skills. Studying business in college gave me the fever; not greed or lusting for the all mighty dollar but the fever that likes business.

It is hard to explain, and is why I am probably rambling, I enjoy getting up and going to work because my broker gives me freedom to grow, test and retest strategies in a real environment. If I think up an idea, when presented, if it makes sense, I then get to build and implement the idea. That is excellent experience but I will quit now.

Again thanks to Jim Messenger and all you who make this blogsite so exciting and for giving me the motivation to push on. I have been blogging personnally since April 2005 when I signed up for an MSN Space and now professionally since July of 2006. I have met excellent people and let me send them some thanks as well.

Thank You: Ken Smith, Arlington Heights and Chicago real estate expert, Charles Richey, real estate SEO for his wife Jacqulyn, a Las Vegas real estate pro, and Glenn Ginsburg, a Naples real estate condo pro for your guidance and wisdom you have shared with this kid from the small town of Marysville, WA.