| How To Get Your Web Page and E-mail For Free Perhaps you’ve looked into the price of having a web page made for you
and found that the cost is more than you want to pay right now. High quality corporate web
sites today average more than $2,000 per page. But the average "relatively good"
Realtor® web page likely costs from $170 to $300, and usually much less.
Too much money? Well, then get your pages made for free.
There are several ways. One is to make the page yourself using someone else’s
page-making software program such as Microsoft Front Page. But if you’re not computer
savvy, forget it. You’ll go nuts trying to figure it out.
Did you know that you already have a free web page in
the big web site of the California Association of Realtors? Just go to their site at
http://www.car.org, get a password, find your blank page, then fill in the blanks with
whatever data you choose. For an example of a completed CAR free web page, see:
http://car.mediafax.com/Member.main/Member36952.html
Another route is to sweet talk that nerdy nephew of yours
into making you a web site. Because he likely spends too much time on the Internet anyway,
he’ll have a good feel for what items your web page should contain. Of course if you don’t
like what he does, you risk creating family bad feelings. Still, a new pair of Nikes could
easily smooth things over.
Free web page and email offers are growing more frequent
today as a means for major web sites to draw traffic to their pages. The more visitors
they get to their sites, the more they can charge firms who advertise with them.
Here’s how to get a free web page. Go to the home or
office of a friend who’s already online. Get him to take you to one (or more) of the
"main domains" of the sites I’ve listed below. (Don’t worry—your
friend will know what "main domains" means) Have him help you fill in the blanks
that you’ll find in the "Make a Free Web Page" or "Get Free
Email" sections.
Using this method, you can make your very own web page in
about a half hour or less. What you end up with is your very own web page with its own
distinct URL (Internet address). And your own email address. Then you can immediately
begin putting these addresses on all your promotional materials for buyers and sellers to
use in contacting you.
When you want to visit your free site, or to get and send
email, you simply go to the site that gave you the free items. (See how the big sites
build traffic for themselves this way?)
Now, the pre-formatted free site you end up with will not win
any design awards, but they do the job. They mostly consist of your input placed into
headlines, bulleted items and copy blocks. Some even allow you to insert
graphics—either graphics offered by the site itself or ones that you upload or mail
to the site’s webmaster. (See http://angelfire.com)
To see a free web page that a local Realtor made in 20
minutes, go to: http://members.tripod.com/~deb4re/index.html.
Another is at: http://www.find-a-house.com/ca/agent/Searchthe.html.
Free page sources include: http://www.angelfire.com
and http://www.geocities.com.
Want a free on-line ad that elaborately shows your listings?
Go to: http://www.interking.com/placead/index.html.
Interking even lets you copy and insert property photos from their MLS locations in
http://www.homeseekers.com. Yahoo! at http://www.yahoo.com offers free email as does http://www.altaVista.com, http://www.hotmail.com/, http://www.freemail.com/, http://www.juno.com/ and dozens more.
What do I think is the best bargain of all for Realtor
web pages and email? Homeseekers. For as low as $169 per year, you get email and a
pretty good web page from which people can view your MLS property listings. Call
Homeseekers (http://www.homeseekers.com) at: 993-4295 or 800-841-0537 to sign up.
© William Koelzer, 1999 |
