Marketing for Realtors

Lessons from a Successful Blogger

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:02:26 -0500

This is not Matt Mullenweg

Matt Mullenweg is one of the most successful bloggers on the web. He is one of PC World’s Top 50 People on the Web, Inc.com’s 30 under 30, and Business Week’s 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

His blog is at http://ma.tt - Yes, that's right, it is not a .com and it is very easy to remember. The blog itself has been called various things over the years - PhotoMatt, The World of Matt Mullenweg, and now (apparently) The World of Matt, and it is currently a PR8.

Matt's analysis of his blogging activity 2002-2009 is informative. Here are some points worth noting:

1. Of his Top 10 posts for 2009, 4 were photo "galleries". Conclusion: people like to see photos in blog posts. (Yes, I know, he's a photography guy, so you would expect that.)

2. Number of posts for 2004-2009: 1,108, 703, 340, 360, 314, 182. Conclusion: post often, but once you're established frequency is probably not as important.

3. Average number of words in his posts (2004-2009) - 49, 43, 65, 56, 48, 80. Matt concludes from the increase in length in 2009 (80 words) that his posts are getting "meatier". Conclusion: At least one successful blogger writes pretty short posts. So why do the rest of us think we have to write a 500 word essay every time we make a blog post?

4. In the same time period his average number of comments/post have steadily gone up from 5 to 23.

5. He has a core of very faithful readers (including "Mom") who he corresponds with by email every 1-3 days. As he says, "Email is my most frequently used social network." Conclusion: Online social interaction, as well as blog readership can be greatly enhanced by regular communication with key individuals.

There's more, but this post is already way too long.

Exploiting the SEO Power of Feeds

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 08:05:33 -0500

One of the often overlooked features of blogs is their ability to create an RSS feed that you can add to another web page or blog. This applies to AR blogs, as well as others such as Wordpress, Blogger, etc.

For example, if you have a Wordpress blog the blog itself automatically creates a "feed" which lists your last few posts. You can then take the simple code for that feed from Blog A and put it in the sidebar of Blog B.

That creates links pointing from Blog B back to Blog A. For example, here's a page where I have added three feeds - one of them my AR feed.

Why would you want to do that?

As always with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) there are two reasons. First, it gives your blog content exposure to more potential readers. If Blog B gets more traffic than Blog A, this might be a way to drive some traffic to Blog A.

The other advantage is that it creates more search engine exposure. I have always been impressed by the way Google picks up links in the sidebar of Wordpress blogs. This is probably because they assume the sidebar content is more attention-worthy since it appears on every page of your blog.

This was reinforced by a post I did last night about a new product we are just developing for real estate blogs called "BlogEasy SuperLinks". I created a short description of the program last night around 10pm, and posted it in four different blogs.

This morning at 8 am I checked Google to see if they had spidered any of these posts. I did a search for "BlogEasy SuperLink" - a term which did not exist until about 10pm last night.

Sure enough, Google had spidered four different entries and had picked up a fifth too - in less than 12 hours. It was the fifth entry that was most interesting. It was from the sidebar on another blog running the RSS feed from one of the original posts.

This may not seem like a big deal to most people. But the fact is, every little bit helps, and this technique is surprisingly simple.

Giving Green Tips to Your Readers

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:01:53 -0500

A couple of months ago I was listening to a radio phone in show about landscaping and gardening. Many callers wanted to know how to deal with dandelions, weeds and grubs in their lawns now that many municipalities in our region have banned chemical pesticides and herbicides.

The guru suggested turning the grass under, raking out the weeds, and planting clover instead of grass. The advantages of clover, he said, are that it smothers out the weeds, takes much less water to grow, doesn’t have to be cut more than two or three times in a season. And on top of that, white grubs don’t like it.

Now that’s a “green” solution if I’ve ever heard one.

A few days ago I was sent a link to an article about tankless water heaters. If you’ve ever listened to the hype surrounding these things you know a lot is made of the energy lost while the hot water sits in the tank between uses.

But this article referred to a number of studies that show these tankless units require more maintenance, and cause delays in the actual delivery of hot water to your tap.

Also, if you have a second story bathroom or live in a cold climate you will probably spend more on wasted water than you save on energy. That is because the water in the pipes cools down much more than in a conventional system and you have to run that cold water out of the pipes before you have warm water again.

This kind of “green” information is everywhere out there, and people are hungry to hear it. So why not make a point of focusing on green advice for homeowners? It is perfect content if you send a regular newsletter to your clients or publish a blog.

Interesting tidbits of helpful “green” advice are easy to find, and will be welcomed by your readers.

Here are some free ones...

Getting Feedback from Other Agents

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 14:37:22 -0500

We're in the business of providing local business people - especially real estate agents - with web-based promotional tools. So a few months ago when the importance (and difficulty) of gathering feedback was brought to my attention we decided to develop an online program that would make gathering feedback as simple and automatic as possible. Today that program is called AgentMapIt Feedback.

We got to work with the initial development and once it was functional we enlisted the help of a number of our real estate agent clients to test and tweak it and basically put it throught its paces. What we wanted was a straightforward but powerful program for making the collection of feedback as brain dead simple as possible.

That was the number one objective - make it simple and effective. Most online programs try to do too many things. Just setting them up - getting past step 1 - can take hours or even days of configuring, fiddling and testing. We wanted to avoid that if possible.

The number two objective was to make it easy for both ends of the process - easy for the listing agent, and easy for the showing agent. We like to think of it as a "Simple Two Step System".

For the listing agent the system involves just two steps - entering the listing (step 1), and then confirming showing requests (step 2) as they come in. That's it. The system does the rest. It automatically sends out requests for feedback and then logs the feedback responses as they come in. It is completely automatic.

For the showing agent booking a showing and responding with feedback also involves just two steps - filling out a request for a showing, and then later after the showing has happened, responding to a request for feedback. That's it. Just two simple steps.

It even works from your Blackberry or iPhone. And, get this - it even communicates with your seller and gives them access to the feedback log so they can see what people are saying about their property. I don't have to tell you how important that can be when it comes to convincing them to "get real" about their listing.

If you think you need a service like this, have a look at AgentMapIt Feedback. We recommend trying our one month free membership. That will give you plenty of time to see how it works and decide if it is as simple, powerful and effective as we think it is.

Building Your Contact List With Free Downloads

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:41:01 -0500

One of the most commonly used techniques in web marketing is the use of a giveaway to entice people to subscribe to your email contact list. If you are considering doing this, here is some advice on creating a "list building system".

A "list building system" consists of several components:

Component1: The GiveAway Item(s) - Most online marketers use a free "report", free video (or set of videos), or even a free piece of software. Real Estate promotion lends itself nicely to the free report. The report is usually on some "hot" topic of the moment - something that your target market wants to know about.

The giveaway item does not have to be something original (that you wrote). It can be a report purchased from a service you subscribe to, an organization you belong to, etc. But if you use something created by someone else, be sure to give the original writer or creator credit where required. Don't just steal stuff from other people without explicit permission to use it.

Component 1: Your list - This is usually just a list of contacts with names, email addresses, and other relevant information such as phone numbers and addresses. Where you keep your list is the important question. In order to "build" your list you will need to keep it in some kind of database - normally in an autoresponder. If you don't know what an autoresponder is, read on.

Component 2: Your Database - A "database" (db) is simply a file containing information in table form - arranged in columns and rows. Most of us are familiar with Microsoft Excel - you've probably seen the ubiquitous "Excel spreadsheet" on a few occasions.

The advantage of keeping your contact information in a spreadsheet like Excel is that it can be easily updated and exported. For example, if you are using Outlook to do your mailing, you can export your file from your database program, and then import it into Outlook. It comes in with all the information neatly arranged so you can use it immediately. You don't have to enter everything manually.

If you don't own MS Excel (and even if you do) a good alternative is Google Docs. Google Docs is free and contains a spreadsheet program that does 99.9% of what you will need it to do. See my blog post about Google Docs for more information.

Component 3: Your Autoresponder - Once you learn how to use an autoresponder you will consider it the heart of your list building system. Most good autoresponders do a number of things:

Sends out emails to your list.
Contains your list in database form. That means you can import lists into it. (See below for importing limitations.)
Lets you create a subscription form that can be placed on a web page. When someone fills in the form their information is added to your list.
Sends an automatic email response to subscribers when they sign up.

The significance of this last point (#4) can easily be missed if you are not familiar with what autoresponders do. Imagine that you have set up a giveaway, offering a free report download. Someone signs up from your website. Their contact information is automatically "captured" in your db (if you have it set up to work this way). And then... what?

What you want to happen is to have your subscribers directed to the download page. The easiest and most effective way to do this is to use an autoresponse. When they subscribe your autoresponder immediately sends them an email message saying: "Thanks for signing up. You can find your download at LINK."

The fact is, once you have your "system" set up your autoresponder takes care of the rest. It collects the contact information, stores it in a special database, and sends out responses directing your subscribers to the download page.

You can even set up most autoresponders to send out a series of messages at timed intervals. Say, for example, your giveaway is a "course" in "What to Look for in Your Dream Home". Of course you can put all this information into one report. But why not stretch it out over a series of email messages. Turn it into 5 or 6 shorter "lessons", and send them out over 5 days (1 each day) or 10 days (1 every 2 days). This puts your name in front of them 5 times rather than once.

In many cases autoresponder functions will be built into standard contact management programs - the sort of thing you may already be using. Check it out before you go looking for another program to master.

If you don't already have autoresponder capabilities, then you will need to find the best and easiest solution for you. There are two basic types: hosted (by the provider) and self-hosted.

Self-hosting requires that you have access to a web server (usually where your website is hosted), and know something about setting up scripts on the server. It is not difficult once you know how to do it, but can be baffling when you don't. The easiest self-hosted autoresponder I've found is called ListMailPro.

Hosted autoresponder services are set up on the provider's server and you are given access to your own account for a monthly fee. By far the most popular is called AWeber. I wrote an overview of the AWeber system a couple of years ago.

I used hosted services for quite a few years before changing over to self-hosted ones. The biggest advantages of a hosted service are first, that you don't have to worry about the technical stuff gong on in the background. Second, the system is (supposedly) set up in a "user friendly" way to help you get things done.

I say "supposedly" user friendly because after trying two or three different systems over the course of about 5 years I concluded they had just too many options and getting little things done involved too much wading through of stuff I had no interest in.

The other disadvantage of a hosted system like AWeber is that they will not just let you import your contact list into their system. They do this to protect themselves against spammer abuse. If they just let everybody load their lists into the system, many would go out and buy a list of 50 or 100,000 "targeted consumers" and start spamming people using the hosted system.

You can load your list into the system, but they force you to send an opt-in message to everyone. And they have to approve the message.

Component 4: The Capture Page - Internet marketers often call this a "squeeze page" because it is intended to "squeeze" your website visitors down to a form where they fill in their name and email address.

Basically your capture page is a web page that contains a signup form. It often contains a "pitch" as well - to get people to sign up. But the important component on this page is the form that captures the information. Usually this is generated by your autoresponder program. When you set up your list in the autoresponder there will be an option called something like "Create Subscribe Form". Clicking on that will give you some code that you then integrate into your web page.

Obviously if you don't know anything about web pages this will be a challenge. But it should be a piece of cake for you web designer.

Here is an example of a capture page integrated with a list in ListMailPro:

Free Blogs That Work Report - filling in this form will generate an email response that gives you the address of the free download.

Here is an example of a capture page integrated with access to a membership site:

Free Green Tips Membership (yes it's free!)

Either of these pages can serve as a template for a signup page. Just have a look at the source code (View/Source) to see how it is done.

Boosting Your Google Ranking with Citations

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 08:10:53 -0500

If you start investigating local web search and Google Local Business Center (GLBC), you'll find that "citations" are important to your ability to rank in Google local search. If you're not familiar with Google Local Search, see my previous post called Getting Found in Google Local Search.

In fact "citations" along with inbound links are generally considered the second most important ranking factor after the actual content of your GLBC listing. Some local search specialists consider citations and links the most important factor - outweighing even the contents of your actual GLBC listing.

A "citation" is not the same as a link. It is a "web reference' found on some site other than your own which contains information about your business. According to David Mihm , a citation "always contains your business address and/or phone number."

The most important places to get citations are major directories such as

- Online Yellow Pages
- SuperPages
- Local.com
and many others, as well as well recognized local directories and websites specific to your local area.

To find out which directories and sites Google considers important for citations, do a local search for the keyword you want to rank in (for example, "Kitchener Real Estate" or "Toledo Realtors" and then look at the current "more info" tab of your highest ranking competitors to get an idea of what resources are referring to them. Then try to get yourself listed there too.

Having a consistent business description (address, phone number, website, email address, description) is important. An effective way to spread your standard business listing information to a large number of online directories is to use the submission service available from Universal Business Listings ($30).

StumbleUpon A Good Source Of Blogging Ideas

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:40:06 -0500

Coming up with interesting stuff to write about is one of the ongoing challenges for bloggers. A blog is only useful if it is regularly updated, and is targeted to the group of readers you're most interested in.

I'm not just talking about those of us obsessed with our own little realm of interest - in this case, real estate. This applies whether you're writing for an Active Rain blog or one focusing on dog training or politics or bird watching.

Stumbleupon (SU) is an interesting way to find ideas. SU is also a good way to generate a quick hit of traffic to your own blog posts.

Anybody who has used Stumbleupon knows it can generate gobs of traffic in big bursts. You do a Stumpleupon review of a page (one of your blog posts, for example) and that page is then likely to get a serious spike of traffic for at least a day. That's because other Stumblers will hit onto your site if they are interested in that general category. In the end it may not be very useful, but it's good for the ego, and at least it gets eyeballs looking at your material.

But I'm not really talking about the traffic building potential of Stumbleupon. I'm talking about its ability to show you many different websites in your areas of interest. Those websites can in turn provide lots of fodder for blog posts.

As you may know when you use Stumbleupon you establish a pattern of viewing and reviewing, and then you are presented with pages about those things as you "stumble" along. You click the "Stumble" button (you need the Stumbleupon tool bar to do it properly), and you're presented with web pages in your areas of interest.

For instance, one of my areas of interest is guitar playing. There are some fantastic guitar playing websites out there and most of the ones I've found have been through SU.

Another interest I have is political philosophy. And believe it or not, there are actually some very interesting philosophy websites out there. I don't think I would have taken the time to find or look at any of them if it weren't for SU. As it is, it's one source of ideas for my own philosopy blog.

To get back to my point... If you're a blogger, enter your preferences into Stumbleupon, and then Stumble on a regular basis. You won't have a shortage of on-topic things to write about ever again.

Google Local Search - Simple Steps to Improve Your Results

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 11:06:20 -0500

If you are lucky, just getting yourself listed in Google's Local Business Center will help you "get on the map" as far as local searches are concerned. As I mentioned in my previous post about Google local search, if you are not listed in Local Business Center chances are pretty good you will not show up on the local search map when people search for, for example, "Punkiedoodles Corners Realtors".

But the fact is, just getting your listing in Google LBC will probably not be enough either - especially as things get more competitive. Unfortunately you need to tweak your listing so it gives you the results you want.

According to the "experts", the three most important factors that determine the ranking of your listing are:

The actual content of your listing (what it says)
Authoratative localation-based inbound links to your web site
Citations in the major directories

Let's talk briefly about #1 above. I will discuss #2 and #3 in future posts.

So how should you write your GLBC listing?

First, be accurate and consistent. Include the same basic description of your business that can (or should) be found on your website. Business name, address, phone number. Make sure these are accurate and make sure they are the same wherever they are found, otherwise Google will be confused about your business identity (and we certainly wouldn't want that).

Make sure your description includes your most important keywords. If you want to be found for "Toledo", then make sure you say it. If you want to be found for "Toledo condos" then make sure you say it. The people at Google may be very smart, but they still can't read your mind, and they can't possibly know your specialization unless you tell them in words.

Second, enter the correct categories. They give you 5 so use them. The categories you enter (like the keywords mentioned above) help Google determine which searches your site is relevant to.

Third, wherever possible enter content and detail. For example, they give you the chance to include photos and videos. Include as many as you can.

Here are some additional sources on information on the topic of Local Business Search. Most of these are blog posts written by local search SEO specialists. Try not to get bogged down in the technical details.

The bottom line, generally, is to make your Google Local Business Center listing as detailed and as "optimized" as possible. Inbound links and citations (reviews) are next in importance.

David Mihm's Local Search Ranking Factors - May, 2009

Anatomy of a Local Search Listing - Chris Silver Smith

How to Launch that Small Business Website" - Lisa Barone

10 Likely Elements of Google's Local Search Algorithm - Matt McGee

Local vs. Traditional SEO: Why Citation Is the New Link - David Mihm

Local Landing Page Best Practices

Google local ranking factors - Andy Corp

Google local Ranking Excel file - Andy Corp

Getting Found in Google Local Search

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 08:05:40 -0500

I hve recently been researching the changes Google (and the other search engines) are making to local search. The SEs have been hammering away at local search for a few years now. Their objective is to essentially put the old paper-based Yellow Pages out of business - to become the default "go to" source for local business information.

So that makes Local Search very important for businesses targeting a local market. Real estate agents are obviously one of the most important business segments who should be up to speed on local business search.

Google's local business search strategy is based on Google Maps. When you think of it, this is probably Google's most important potential revenue source for Google Maps. As GMaps based local search becomes more dominant, it will become an important source of ad revenue.

If you use Google Maps to do a search you are using their local search system. For example, I did a search for "Waterloo Realtors" from Google.com (not the toolbar), and this is what I got:

Notice that the sponsored (paid) links are at the very top. But right under those are the "local business results". This is what we're talking about here. Google has elevated the importance of local search results so that, for location based searches, they come up ahead of the normal results we are used to.

The bottom line is that if you want to score well for location based searches you have to get into the local search game.

There is some helpful information at the link below describing how to get started...

Getting Listed in Google Local Business Center

Making Your Blog the Center of Your Marketing Strategy

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 02:23:28 -0500

When we look back on the development of blogging over the last 5 or 10 years we can see that blogs were an important step in the “socializing” of the web. Unlike traditional static websites that were more or less just online brochures, blogs were built as personal publishing platforms with a major dose of interactivity.

In other words, they encourage one on one interaction. Bloggers express their opinions, as well as connect to other bloggers and web resources, and readers respond by expressing their opinions in the form of “comments”.

This interaction is what “social networking” is all about – with the most glaring examples being platforms like Facebook and Twitter. They provide you the opportunity to interact with an ever-broadening network of people who share your interests, or are interested in what you have to say.

Those of us interested in using these social networking sites as marketing tools can find it a bit overwhelming. Keeping up with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, ActiveRain, and many others is difficult and time-consuming. And if there is no comprehensive strategy for our social networking it will eventually become tiresome and of questionable value.

As part of a sensible online social networking strategy, most “experts” agree it is important to have your blog at the centre of things. Your blog is where you can express yourself in greater depth, and without worrying that you are being too pushy or sales-oriented.

Generally speaking, your friends and followers on sites like Facebook or Twitter do not like to be bombarded with a sales pitch whenever they read your entries. But using your tweets and Facebook entries to point them to interesting stories, articles, videos, or special offers is perfectly acceptable. The easiest place to point them is your own blog.

This strategy is no mystery and it has been discussed many times by marketing experts: use your blog to build your online identity, publish your opinions, and present your special products and offers. Use the other social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to drive traffic to your blog.

In other words, as I said above, your blog should be at the center of your marketing strategy. Looking at it this way may encourage you to reconfigure your whole online marketing strategy. But that is probably a good thing.

Finding Interesting Content for Your Blog

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:42:55 -0500

One of the biggest problems that beginning bloggers have is knowing what to blog about. Either they think they can’t write very well, or they just don’t have very many ideas. Well if you’re in that boat, here’s a tip you may find helpful.

Try writing about what other people are saying about your topic or niche. Find two or three other blogs in your niche…read what they have to say…and if you find an interesting post, write about it. I call this blog skimming.

Say your blog is about real estate in your local community. A typical blog skimming post will read something like this:

I found this great post over in The Real Estate Blog called “When Will Real Estate Values Begin to Appreciate Again?” by Aubrey Clark. Aubrey claims that the current slump is forcing us to return to values held by our parents’ generation.

In his opinion the cheap credit of the last decade actually devalued our homes by making it much too easy to get into home ownership. As he says, “I cannot predict when the real estate market will bounce back, but I can tell you what needs to happen before it does. America needs to reinvest in herself by getting back to solid buying and selling principles.”

In other words, we need to start caring about the value we ourselves have invested in our homes, and less about how much we can make by flipping them.

This sounds like very sound advice to me.

See how easy it is to come up with great content for your blog? Your readers will appreciate this kind of post. The blogger who you are quoting will appreciate the reference because you will be sending traffic his way. And you will have learned something in the process too.

Just make sure to give credit where credit is due. Give a direct link to the posts you are skimming. The other bloggers will very likely return the favor some day. And don’t just lift the content. Include a short summary, a quotation, a link to the original, and then add a comment or two of your own. There’s no easier way to create really interesting and useful content for your blog.

Google Docs is a Great Tool for Group Projects

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 21:38:56 -0500

About a year ago we started using Google Docs in our office for collaborating on projects that involve more than one contributor - anything that requires team work. We provide promotional services for a lot of different types of companies, and each company often needs several different components- blog posts, press releases, articles, videos, etc. - and different tasks are usually assigned to different individuals.

Having shared documents makes it much easier to coordinate everyone's activities. With Google Docs you create one master document and then give different people access to it (you "share" it with them.) At each step of the process the master document is the one that everyone refers to. The coordinator of a project can write an outline for, say, a press release. Then the writer of the release can access that outline and right there within the same document write the finished script.

Of course this is all done online. You can access your Google Docs account from any computer with an internet connection and a browser. That means you don't have to carefully pack up your work and take it with you whenever you're away from the computer you use for such tasks.

This works well with complicated projects as well as simple ones. With this approach you can see how much easier it would be to organize and delegate specific jobs. For example, for any project where you have created a project outline you can farm out any aspect to other people. Just give them access to the outlines and away they go.

You can do this with spreadsheets in Google Docs too. For example, say you want to make a list of all the condo developments in your service area, with relevant information about each development. Just create a Google Docs spreadsheet, set up your columns and start entering information.

If you want to off-load part of the task to a partner, your assistant, your spouse, or a virtual assistant in India or Timbuktu, just give them access to the doc and they're in business. You don't have to send them a copy of the doc. They just access it online.

There are too many features of Google Docs to cover here, but this gives you a fairly good idea of its flexibility and ease of use.

And, oh yeh, I forgot to mention. Google Docs is free.

My Most Valuable Computer Upgrade - A Second Monitor

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 12:14:49 -0500

I got my first computer back in the early 1980s. It wasn't until just a couple of months ago that the advantages of having my computer desktop stretched across dual monitors dawned on me.

This is pretty amazing when I think of it. For years I ran a computer graphics business with other members of my family. One of my jobs was to design the network and keep the computers running. We had lots of them, and we were completely dependent on them. We had probably 30 or 40 at any given time. Many of our staff worked on very large, complex projects that required detailed work on books, magazines, newspapers, full colour brochures...

I can't remember once ever thinking, "Hey it might be easier for Andy or Jeff or Dave or Johanna to work on these projects if they had an extended work surface. It didn't occur to me, and it didn't occur to them either, as far as I can remember.

We had big 21 inch monitors of course. But that's not what I'm talking about. I mean hooking up two monitors to the same computer and using the "extended desktop" feature built into Windows. As far as I know that feature has been part of Windows almost from the beginning. I'm sure the same goes for the Mac.

I first gave this feature a serious tryout about three months ago when I started using my laptop because my main "production" machine started having a virus problem. Even though I have a great notebook, it is still relatively hard to work with in a production setting. It's got that dinky keyboard and a limited screen space, so I needed a solution.

In our office we write articles, create blogs, work on websites, and create videos for clients. It was the video stuff that was most annoying when working with the small screen. You're constantly moving windows around, bringing stuff to the front, moving stuff to the back, closing and opening windows. The same things goes for accounting. All those windows with nowhere to put them.

Then it dawned on me. Why not hook another monitor up and create an extended desktop? To tell you the truth, I wasn't even sure if this would work the way I wanted it to. What I hoped it would do was keep the left screen for active jobs, and move inactive windows - like my email program - over to the screen on the right. Or when I was creating videos, move the video preview window over to the right so I didn't have to keep moving things around to get at the timeline.

Surprise, surprise... getting the two monitor thing to work turned out to be easier than I expected. And the split desktop has turned out to be more useful than I anticipated. Now there's no way I will be setting up another serious "workstation" for myself or anybody else in our office without two monitors.

For anybody who uses a computer a lot, or has a staff member who is expected to do multiple jobs at once, this is probably the most useful upgrade going.

Saving the World With Tankless Water Heaters

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 10:46:10 -0500

When I first heard of "tankless" water heaters my first reaction was "too good to be true". What a tankless system claims to do is cut your energy costs. It does this by eliminating the tank and therefore the necessity to keep reheating the water in the tank because of inevitable heat loss. No tank, no heat loss, no wasted energy.

Sounds good, but like I said, almost too good to be true.

Nevertheless the tankless idea has a certain appeal. Like most homeowners I am interested in anything that might save money. But maybe even more important, the tankless water heater has a certain "gadget appeal". Most guys are impressed with gadgets and I am no exception. The gadget in this case is the heating unit that can actually pull off this miracle. You send cold water in one end, and out the other end comes hot water. Now that's a gadget worth considering.

Whether or not this particular gadget actually works, you have to admit that the big old water tank heater is completely lacking in gadget appeal. These things have been around for, what, 50, 75, 100 years, and are basically the same as when you first saw one. They're not really the kind of thing you brag about to your buddies - "Hey come on down and have a look at my new 75 gallon water heater..."

So that in itself is a good reason to consider installing a new whiz bang high tech tankless heater.

But do tankless water heaters actually deliver what they claim? Can they actually provide enough hot water for your requirements? Will they use less energy? Will you save money over the medium or long term? Or is this just another one of those green technologies that costs more than it's worth.

Tankless water heaters have a couple of advantages. They may save you money in the long run because they actually do use less energy than traditional heaters. They also have a smaller physical "footprint" so you don't need a basement area or closet dedicated to that big honkin tank. Sometimes that is important. You normally hang these units on the wall.

But the disadvantages are significant. First, they cost more. A lot more. According to a Consumer Report of October 2008, the typical cost of a tankless system is between $800 and $1200, compared to about $300 to $500 for a tanker. That's at least $500 more up front.

Then there's the cost of installation. According to the same report, a tankless system costs about $1200 to install, as compared to about $300 for the tanker. That's another $900 up front.

Then there's maintenance. A traditional system should be de-calcified every few years, depending on the hardness of your water. But with a tankless system this is a constant concern. Scale build-up is much more of an issue because it is deposited on the inside of relatively small valves and connectors within the system.

If you gum up a tankless system it will stop working efficiently and you will have to replace expensive parts. So regular maintenance is required every year, again, depending on the hardness of your water. And in order to keep it running properly you may be forced to install a water softener. Add at least another $50-$100 per year.

Suddenly the projected savings from a tankless system start to disappear. Consumer Reports estimates the raw energy savings at about 22% a year, which translates into much less than $100 per year (actually they put it at between $70 and $80 per year), depending on your usage.

According to their estimates, once you factor in additional maintenance costs it would take about 22 years to break even on a tankless system. That's longer than the life expectancy of the system. With new advancements in technology you'll probably be replacing it well before that.

Of course money isn't everything. Most home owners routinely drop thousands of dollars on things that have no (or very little) economic payback at all - swimming pools, hot tubs, expensive furniture, big screen TVs, landscaping... you name it.

So if you think installing a tankless hot water heater will help you do your bit to "save the world", then go for it. Just don't be surprised if you realize one day that you probably could have done more to save the world by simply using less hot water.

Be Careful What You Flush Down Your Toilet

Rick Hendershot (BlogEasy for Real Estate Agents) — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 08:10:54 -0500

Many areas outside of our major cities do not have a municipal sewer system, and instead rely on individual septic systems to drain and treat their waste water. In some ways a septic tank is a pretty "green" system. But not if it is mistreated.

Of course not everybody knows how a septic tank works. They think it is a magical place where you can dump just any old thing and expect it to be "taken care of". This is typical of an uninformed attitude towards the environment.

The truth is, septic systems don't use magic to get rid of solid and semi-solid waste material. They use bacteria to break down waste matter - mostly human feces and certain types of bio-degradable paper - and they do an admirable job of it most of the time. But there are some things that the bacterial action in a septic tank will simply not break down.

In my childhood I lived in a small town near Niagara Falls where most of the houses in town were built within a short distance of a creek. From one end of town to the other sewer pipes and a good number of open sewer ditches connected the homes to the creek. Talk about an environmentally challenged system!

Some of these ditches carried the runoff from septic tanks. But in other cases the ditches were connected right up to the drain pipes from homes with no septic tank between the toilet and the ditch.

The result was pretty disgusting - raw sewage running in open ditches. This "system" was not all bad because the ditches themselves tended to act as cleansing agents. The solid matter in the sewage from the houses would settle on the bottom of the ditch and eventually break down into a black foul-smelling ooze. The liquid would either evaporate or run along the ditch and eventually flow into the creek. That is more or less what happens with a septic tank.

But not all was well with the ditch system. When I was a young boy of about 10 or 12 my friends and I spent a good deal of our time exploring the creek. Like good CSI agents we could not help but notice that stuff floating in the open ditches, and it often gave us clues about the lives of the people living in those houses.

You can use your imagination to picture what those people might have been flushing down their toilets. Some were made of heavy-duty absorbent paper materials. Others were made of rubber or vinyl. Some of them may still be floating in the Atlantic Ocean after flowing down the Niagara River, down the St. Lawrence and out to the sea.

This experience taught me at least two important things about life in a town with open ditches, and both of them can be summed up in the aphorism: "Be careful what you flush down your toilet."

While it's true that things have changed a lot since those days, the dynamics of sewage drains and septic tanks is still pretty much the same. Which means the next time you're tempted to flush some greasy gooey stuff, or something made of cardboard or rubber or plastic or vinyl down your toilet, think of those open ditches with all that tell-tale stuff floating in them.

That's exactly the way those things will look in your septic tank. Except they're not going to float away into the river or settle to the bottom of the ditch. They'll stay there until your tank stops working. And in some cases they'll get into your weeping bed and plug that up too.

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