Agent Success

HomeGain's First Agent to Reach $1MM in Lifetime Commissions

Real estate agent has reached a $1 million mark in lifetime commissions with the HomeGain AgentEvaluator^™ program

BusinessWire press release - FEBRUARY 13, 2007 - HomeGain, a leading provider of online real estate solutions that connect agents and brokers with consumers, today announced that real estate agent, Eric Pakulla, RE/MAX in Maryland, is the first member of HomeGain’s AgentEvaluator™ program to reach $1 million in gross closed lifetime commissions, earned by closing transactions with HomeGain buyers and sellers.

"Over the years HomeGain has proven to be an essential part of my business,” said Eric Pakulla, RE/MAX of Maryland. “We have a mutually beneficial partnership – we make a great team! HomeGain is an innovator in this industry, and I know that as HomeGain changes and grows, my business will also grow. I see our relationship lasting for many more successful years.”

Named earlier this year as HomeGain’s 2006 Nationwide Top Performing Agent by total commissions earned, and as HomeGain’s top agent in the Eastern Region, Pakulla is also HomeGain’s all-time top-producing agent.

“This is an important marker in HomeGain history, and real evidence of the value of our AgentEvaluator program,” stated Louis Cammarosano, General Manager at HomeGain. “We are thrilled for Eric, and extremely pleased that HomeGain played a key role in helping him reach such a high level of achievement.”

Eric, a life-long Maryland resident, brings over 10 years of experience and positive energy to his team, making it the #1 RE/MAX team in all of Maryland and ranked in the top 50 worldwide. He has been presented with the most coveted awards from RE/MAX International: The Chairman's Club and Lifetime Achievement. Eric is an active member of numerous professional real estate organizations on the County, State and National levels including the Maryland Association of Realtors.

To learn more about HomeGain’s AgentEvaluator solution, visit: http://agentevaluator.com.

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5 Ways to Pull People to Your Site…For Free

Peggy Boehm, HomeGain Director of Client Services
Licensed Real Estate Broker, CA and WA

Dear Agents,

From one real estate professional to another, we know that today’s standard practice for most consumers is to start their home buying and selling research online. Well, that means you need to get your website to capture visitors better than any other agent in your market! Making your website an effective website that delivers the search results you need is imperative to capture potential buyers and sellers.

How? Maximizing your search results will increase visitor registrations from buyers and sellers whom you eventually will be able to close. I’ve enclosed five things a website owner can do to improve ranking in natural search results. Good luck!

Peggy Boehm, Director, Client Services

Include relevant keywords - I nclude lots of keywords that will pull search engines in automatically. Be as relevant and specific as possible. Don’t repeat keywords too many times or it could be perceived as duplicate content, and you could be penalized in rankings. Rather, sprinkle in a healthy amount of keywords specific to your niche market. “Vacation homes in Hilton Head Island” is a good example.

Place important content near the top - Put important content near the top of the page. Search engines are like people in that they assume content near the front of the page is more important. Include your address and especially your ZIP code to attract any geographically based searches. Consider a brief description of your business that includes as many relevant keywords if possible.

Get relevant sites to link to your site - See if you can arrange “back links” in which other relevant sites put a link to you on their own websites. The more relevant sites that link to you, the higher your placement in the search rankings. Some relevant sites might include your local chamber of commerce, visitor’s bureau, mortgage brokers or other non-competing REALTORS ® . These sites may want to list you anyway for the benefit of their visitors. The measure of links into your site is known as Link Popularity. You can see your Link Popularity here: http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

Develop robust website tracking of leads by source - Create a system for tracking your free and pay-for-click leads separately so you can see how they convert to more serious prospects. Knowing the lead and transaction breakdown between free and paid traffic will help you determine whether your paid traffic bids are too high or too low.

Optimize locally for geographically based searches - Cover your website with local references to attract geographically-based searches. In addition to your local address at the top of the page, include lots of references to local neighborhoods and attractions and be sure that each MLS listing has a geographical address in its ALT tag as well as on the page.

BONUS TIP - Another way to increase traffic to your website is using BuyerLink^™. Connect with homebuyers in your neighborhood, your ZIP code, your city, your state, and beyond. Find out more by visiting: www.homegain.com/buyerlink

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Did you know? HomeGain received over 5 million unique visitors in January 2007.

Ask HomeGain

Dear HomeGain,
I just purchased a new website and I have the opportunity to have an introduction movie presented in “flash”. Will visitors on my site like this feature?

--Dean Keaton, New York, NY

Dean,
Movies presented in Flash can be both an exciting and unique addition to your website. It is an extremely user-friendly software with an estimated 90% of computers already having built in software to play it. While it might be an attractive option for you, will your customers find value? A strong majority of your customers are looking for listing information and will most likely skip over your presentation. Additionally, not all of your visitors may have a high-speed connection that can handle the presentation and may leave after your site does not load within the first few seconds due to the large size of the file.

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Dear HomeGain,
I am a member of the AgentEvaluator program and have noticed some of the new leads are not in my area. I service the Atlanta area, but gets lead as far away as Florida and South Carolina. How do I turn these leads off and just get leads in my area?

--Todd Hockney, Atlanta, GA

Todd,
This is a very common question we receive regarding Agent Evaluator. The leads outside of your market area are the result of our bonus leads program. Within your control center, there is an option to receive “bonus leads outside of your area” which can be toggled on and off with ease. Many of our agents enjoy this feature as it gives them access to consumers outside of their pre-selected zipcodes. We assign these particular leads based on a geographic radius, which can unfortunately, be sometimes out of your service area. We are always working to improve this feature, and invite you to disable the program if it continues to deliver leads you can service.

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Agent Success

HomeGain's First Agent to Reach $1MM in Lifetime Commissions

5 Ways to Pull People to Your Site…For Free

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