Making Information Free

Hi Vanessa,

Is “Content King”, or is it the “Monetization of Content” that is “King”? In either case, it starts with quality, accurate (data integrity), detailed content that is clear, conspicuous, comprehensive, and comprehendable (just like all advertising needs to be).

I think one, small contributing factor to the N.Y. Times going “open source” vs. “paid subscription may have been http://www.bugmenot.com/. But, in any case, as more and more “Baby Boomers” increase their participation usage of the Internet, the priciples of the Cluetrain Manifesto will prove dominant. By that I mean that quality “User Generated Content” will be preferable to “Corporate Speak”, which is fairly easy to detect.

That said, here is my “hidden agenda” suggestion to help you, Zillow.com, as part of my comment (big smiley face!). I recently sent to CNNMOney.com to forward to Les Christie who wrote “”Old realtors vs. young Web threat” my idea that Zillow could use to increase seller/buyer participation through quality “User Generated Content”, and therefore increase advertising revenue:

“The Internet is a tool that can help both Realtor and buyer/seller. I am now trying to sell my house (See my 60 + photo “House Blog” = http://www.greenmagination.com ). I’m asking if CNN Money could forward the “story line” information below to Les Christie (if you think it “news worthy”), which would give my home’s detailed custom features/benefits information to many potential buyers all over the U.S. if the story were to be published by CNN Money. It is also a very timely piece with all the talk about the tough Real Estate market. My idea for “tough sellers” is to be more proactive vs. just relying on Realtors to sell their homes. It also helps buyers preview more “warm” details and photos with informational copy about a listed home vs. the “cold” MLS data ( http://tinyurl.com/2gkw35 ). This way the buyer’s agent, the buyer, and the home seller may save some time if the home’s colors, etc. are not to the buyer’s liking. After all, “Time is Money”!

I just got my RE/MAX agent (with my help in calling his webmaster ) to put a hyperlink near the bottom of my RE/MAX listing page’s “Property Description” = http://tinyurl.com/yodxtb . This will now be spread to most of RE/MAX’s online “Distribution Partners” like Google Housing and Yahoo Real Estate. When my tracking software picks up the length of the “views”, what town/state they came from, what search words they used to find my “house blog”, what website referred them, and all the exact “outbound links” that they clicked on like my Architectural Plan , I will be gathering some great marketing information, while reaching nationwide buyers.

My suggested “story line” is this: “When the Going Gets Tough for Home Sellers, Some Tough Sellers Get Going with a Quality “House Blog”. With this concept, everybody wins (the listing/buyer’s agent, the buyer, and the seller). If the idea catches on and works well like it already has for me (on a limited scale), it may even help the current “housing market depression”! The challenge has been for me to convince my North Texas MLS service (NTREIS) to put a link to my “house blog” on my MLS listing. It appears that even though they link out to sometimes misleading mapping information that is covered by their overall disclaimer “Information herein deemed reliable but not guaranteed”, they now have a firm rule of not linking out to anything else :-\ . Maybe a national story on this very subject would have some influence on the decision makers of all MLS’s? That way, the R.E. Agents could preview the quality “house blogs” first, and get better and more information to compare with the buyer’s requirements before driving their buyers around town to see the homes in person.”

Maybe you, Vanessa, can convince Zillow.com to have a linked section for seller’s to place a link to their quality (a quick review before posting by Zillow.com may be appropriate) “House Blog” which would add to the quality content of Zillow.com, and therefore increase usership and advertising revenue.

You were recently quoted in Seattle24X7 as saying: “What would be really nice is to say to agents, “You’re going to use Zillow to market a house. Let us put together individualized reports that you could send out to your clients that say ‘Here’s the activity on your house. Here’s the number of times your ad was shown. Here’s how many people posted a question about your house.’” Really giving useful tools to agents, and becoming a very valuable resource.” So why not give sellers/buyers a “very valuable resource” by providing links to quality “house blogs”?

Just so you know a little about me, here is my seomoz.org member profile:
http://www.seomoz.org/users/view/14052

Thanks, and all the best at Zillow.com

Hey Zillow people. Since your blog is just a wordpress blog, have you thought about installing the WordPress do follow pluggin?

http://kimmo.suominen.com/sw/dofollow/

It is easy, fair, and likely will further prompt those in the know to read and comment on your blogs.

You are spot on with your analysis. Pay content can only work if you have exclusive information…something that a mainstream news agency rarely has, and even then, only for a few moments before it is spread all throughout the ether of the net.

I’d wager that most of the $10M in revenue the times *did* see was from those wealthy enough that the subscription price was approaching 0% of their income, making it effectively “free”.

In retrospect…very interesting blog.

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