emongoo blog

swicki wicki what?...

There are  many new and exciting things coming out on the world wide web that will change the way the web is used on a daily basis.  From finding a home to finding a car, the web offers it all, but we are only getting started.

Need a new car?  Try Autotrader or MSN Autos.  Need a loan?  Try eloan.com or Lending Tree.  Need a home?  Well stay on emongoo.com.   (but you can also look at  propsmart.com or craigslist...those are two good sites, but don't forget emongoo!)

Just about everything you need is on the web or can be found through the web.  No more driving around just sit down and surf.  As the web begins to grow more and more will be found on the web, but the age old question is how do you find it? 

There is google and yahoo, free search engines that offer many useful tools for finding services on the web.  But sites like google and yahoo gather their information with bots or 'web crawlers'.  They count on web developers to place the appropriate keywords through-out the site and frankly there are a lot of good sites out there that don't have the best 'SEO' staff on hand to code sites for bots or crawlers.  So how do you find those sites? 

Sure your friends might mention something to you about one, but there has to be a better way.  There is and it is called Wikis. (Wikis are a type of website that allows users to add, remove, or otherwise edit and change most content very quickly and easily...)  Wikis are changing the way we search the web.  Now the web community can add sites and blogs that they find and share them with the world.  A very successful example of this is Wikipedia.  The webs largest collaboration of community driven searching. 

Now when you find something or someone else out there finds something you can share it with the world.  Businesses that venture on to the web can now control the searching just a little bit more.

I gave this a try and created a Wiki using Eurekster for for sale by owner related searches.  You can use it anytime on the right side of our blog or you can bookmark it with the site link below.

emongoo swicki

Just another tool the world wide web is giving us.  Use it, don't use it, but it is there.

Here is a great post about Wikis:

The Future of Real Estate Marketing

Technorati Tags: emongoo, real estate blogs, for sale by owner, real estate, FSBO, Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Blogging, Real Estate Blog, Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate, Web 2.0,  eurekster,  wikipedia,  The Future of Real Estate Marketing, google

web 2.0 is?

What is 'Web 2.0'?  Well here are two definitions:  Wikipedia & O'Reilly .  Basically web 2.0 is being classified as 'user or community driven' websites.  Letting the general public place information and ideas on your website or websites that gather information from the community.  Blogs are examples of the web 2.0 concepts. 

In looking over the web and blogs out there many websites that just have 'cool' things are classified as web 2.0.  Maps, tagging, blogs and etc. are all used to make up a web 2.0 website.  The race is on for websites to step out and come up with new features.

The issue I see is 'ease of use'.  So many sites are coming out with all the 'bells and whistle' but how easy are they to use?

That is a struggle emongoo faces every day.  We try to come up with new and exciting features for our users to use and at the same time keep them simple.  Please let us know if we are succeeding in this goal.

The newest feature is our 'property comments'.  We have decided to incorporate a new feature to our detail page ( the page where the info of the property is shown ) where anyone can make a comment about the property.  Why do this?  Well in the good faith of web 2.0 we are creating a 'community driven' experience on our site.  The comments can be used to let the owner know about photos, errors on the listing ( aka pricing ), spelling errors or to just share an opinion.  We came up with this because many of our members were getting 'feedback' emails.  This way buyers or lookers can just give feedback and others can see the comments and the owners replies. 

We will be monitoring this so please keep your feedback or comments appropriate.  Please no crude words or rude comments.  The purpose of the comments is to help the owner sell and for the buyer or looker to be able to voice a mature opinion.

Technorati Tags: emongoo, real estate blogs, for sale by owner, real estate, FSBO, Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Blogging, Real Estate Blog, Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate, Web 2.0

and the women have won...

Thank you to real estate marketing blog for telling us about the new Microsoft adCenter Lab.  It is a fun BETA tool.  Basically what it does it analysis your online or website users. 

I ran a query for emongoo.com.  Sellers look...Women rule the real estate world!

This shows us that 98% of all traffic to emongoo.com is female.  If you are a seller then make sure your property is showing what the women really want to see.  This is something we at emongoo have been saying for a long time to our clientele.  Women are the searches of online real estate.

The graph also shows that the largest age group on emongoo.com is 25 to 34, aka young families.

The below image is in regards to general online for sale by owner real estate traffic:

Now I used the key word 'for sale by owner real estate'.  The chart didn't change much at all when using just 'real estate' it did however when I used just the key word 'for sale by owner':

Women still win, but there is a spike in 'female' traffic when comparing 'for sale by owner' and just 'real estate'.

Now this is a BETA website and the results may vary, but it is a cool little tool.  We can say that for the data Microsoft pulled for emongoo.com they are very close.  We do have primarily women on the site, not sure if it is in the high 90% as Microsoft may say, but it is high.

Again the Microsoft BETA site can be found here:  http://adlab.microsoft.com/DPUI/DPUI.aspx

Technorati Tags: emongoo, real estate blogs, for sale by owner, real estate, FSBO, Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Blogging, Real Estate Blog, Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate, Web 2.0, Microsoft

link your site to emongoo.com!

Do you think emongoo.com is cool?  Even if you don't you should link to www.emongoo.com on your blog or website.

You may use either of the following images to link to emongoo.

Get the code to copy to your site.

Technorati Tags: emongoo, real estate blogs, for sale by owner, real estate, FSBO, Real Estate Marketing, Real Estate Blogging, Real Estate Blog, Real Estate Blogs, Real Estate, Web 2.0

spam...not in a can!

There are good things that come with growth and there are not so good things.  One of the signs of growth in the website industry is that of 'spammers'.  emongoo has experienced a 'spam' attack.  We are happy to report we have weathered the first attack and have put in place more security features to help protect our clients. 

If you have gotten a spam email, we are truly apologetic, but ensure you we do all we can to protect our clients and we are serious about it.  We will and do take all legal actions against spammers.  As an Internet user there are things you can do if you are spammed.  First you can report the email address to the email provider, like google.com, hotmail.com, msn.com, yahoo.com and so on.  Then you can fill out a form with the FBI at www.fbi.gov.  Don't fear spammers, just hit delete.

emongoo will and does report all spammers.  If you are a 'spammer', shame on you!  There is nothing you will get from emongoo or our clients.  As a client of emongoo.com understand that spammers have nothing to do with emongoo.com and we are doing all we can to stop them.  If you fill you have been spammed contact us, let us know and never hesitated to share the 'spam' with us.

On a final note 'spammers' are not just in email form.  Unwanted phone calls, letters, visits or etc. are all forms of 'spam'.  We have placed a 'Warning to Solicitors:  Complaints will be filed with the National Do Not Call Registry' on our site and have other protective statements for our clients in our TOS.

Again don't fear spam or the Internet.  The Internet is as safe as going to the mall.  Just know and understand your surroundings and you will be fine. 

If you feel you have been 'spammed' then contact us today.  contact us

what is in the future?

We have been asked several times what we think the internet can really do for the real estate industry.  The first thing the internet needs to do and will do, is make finding real estate easier.  It is a known fact that the technology that is out there needs to be incorporated into the online real estate world. But how and when? 

emongoo has taken another step towards creating a useful and informative real estate system.  Before I explain that, lets recap what emongoo has currently to help buyers and sellers connect: 

1.  Easy open text searching
2.  Map searching
3.  Advanced searching
4.  No personal information needs to be entered to get property information
5.  Detailed information about properties and map locations for each property
6.  Tools to better understand the real estate world ( Zillow, iLx Loans, etc. ) 
7.  Free listing option for sellers
8.  20 photos and an unlimited description.
9.  For Sale By Owner coaching to help in ALL aspects of selling your property

There may be a few I am missing, but that should illustrate the point.

Now there has been one thing that has been missing and we have been working on a solution for months.  Picture this, you are sitting at home at 2 am in the morning in your favortie PJs and you have a sudden urge to look at real estate ( don't try to deny it, we see the traffic on our site at 2:00 am ).  You find a property you like, you read the description, look at the photos,  look at all the property has to offer and then you watch the property's 'e-tour'.  Yes a video tour of the for sale by owner property.  You are able to walk through the property and see details of the property and even have the seller of the property tell you about it.  Why is this such a big deal?  Well besides the fact that you can do this at 2am in your PJs, emongoo has found a way to not only make the watching of the video easy, but also the adding of the video simple and fast.  Anyone can do it.  Any seller out there can create an 'e-tour' of their property and post it on emongoo.com. No need to buy anything or hire anyone.  If you don't have a camera emongoo will provide you with one, just call us! As a buyer you won't have to wait for 2 hours to download the video or have to install anything on your computer.  It is simple.  The key incorporating technology is to make it simple. 

What will this do for the real estate online world?  It is already proven that 'virtual tours' or home video tours help sell properties, but the problem has been how do you get a system of national properties all using a simple system?  Well we at emongoo feel we have the solutions.  Just another way we are truly helping buyers and sellers connect.

Below is an example of an 'e-tour':

Now this is just the start.  In the next few days and weeks there will be many upgrades to this system.  Stay tuned.

We're back!

We couldn't be happier with how smooth the upgrade went.  After hours of testing and debugging we hope that you have found the move smooth as well.  Please let us know if you run into any errors.

Browse the site and enjoy!

If by chance you find an error or something is just not working like it did then email us at support@emongoo.com

The time has come...

emongoo.com upgrade

Tomorrow night emongoo.com will be flipping the switch.   The switch is to a whole new set of hardware. 

Why are we doing this?

We are growing!  Growing so fast that our tiny little servers are no longer able to handle the web traffic that emongoo.com is getting.  We are hoping for a very very smooth move, but hey we work with computers so....

If for some reason you come to www.emongoo.com and there is no emongoo.com it will be back.  Please understand that we are working 24 hours a day for the next 3 days.  We will be sleeping in the closet and hoping for the best. 

The migration should be complete by Saturday morning if all goes well.

We will keep you posted on the progress through our blog…..so come back and read our blog.

map searching

The new map searching is now live!

Go to www.emongoo.com/map/ to search for properties accross the U.S.

To see a picture and a brief overview of the property click on the home icon.

To see further information click on the property name or the picture of the home. A window will popup with additional pictures, a description of the property, amenities, and tools.

How to find a property using the map searching.

Use the search options to the left of the map to find homes in a location.  A location is a state in the U.S. and as we add support for Canada (see below) it will include provinces.

Use the search options to narrow down the results by:

• cities
• price
• property type
• square feet
• bedrooms
• bathrooms

Where is my property?

Only properties for which we can find the latitude and longitude coordinates are searchable using the map.

All properties may still be found by using opentext searching or the advanced search.

Why can I not search for or find Canadian properties?

We do not currently have support for showing Canadian properties on the map.

To find properties in Canada please use the opentext searching or use the advanced search.

Tell us what you think.

We want to know what you think of the new mapping!

Tell us what you like, dislike, or problems you are having by adding a comment or by sending an email to beta@emongoo.com.

emongoo.com and web standards

emongoo.com uses web standards to ensure that our users enjoy the best browsing experience.  Whether you are using Firefox or Internet Explorer we want to enable everyone to sell or buy properties with ease.

The following are a few of the technologies we are using:

• xhtml
• css
• ajax
• web services (xml)
• xsl

If you don't know what they are, don't worry!  Know that emongoo is focused on using the best technologies.

In the coming months emongoo will launch several exciting new services and features using web 2.0 technologies.