ActiveRain Anniversary- What does 6 years in the Rain do for us?
My how time flies when you are blogging in the rain! I suddenly realized that our ActiveRain anniversary was upon us. We joined ActiveRain in June of 2007.
Why would we still be here after 6 years and what benefits have we received?
There are too many to list in one post so we will address just a few of the many benefits that AR has to offer when you actually blog.
1. Referrals from other agents and other professionals who we have made connections with.
The very first transaction we received was a referral for a buyer from a mortgage broker who no longer is on ActiveRain. But at that time he was very active. He was located in our community but we did not know him off of ActiveRain. This buyer came at a time when the real estate market was totally broken. The bust was upon us. No one was buying. No one was selling. Tough times were upon here in South Florida.
2. Listings beyond the norm pushing us into the top 3% of our MLS during the real estate bust!
We started to blog about short sales. There was not even one agent in our market who was doing short sales. In fact, there was only one or two agents even on ActiveRain that were even blogging about short sales. They are no longer on AR and we are still here. This catupulted us to the top of the search engines and sellers were finding us!
3. Money in our pockets while other agents were leaving the business in droves.
While other agents quit the business we were getting 30, 40, 50 listings and there were many times during those bust years that we were getting 4 listings per week just from AR blogging about short sales! Attorneys listed their homes with us as short sales, real estate agents around the state of Florida listed their homes and their customer's homes with us. We were getting referrals from those we connected with here on AR. It was such a great time for us! This was before HAFA, before HAMP, those were the good ol' days of short sales. We had a closing ratio of nearly 100%.
4. Friends we can call upon when we need help in a different state or city.
When we shared the story of fighting for our land in Latvia support came in droves from AR community members. I lived in Hawaii at one point in my life. I was married there. During our court procedings in Latvia the court needed to have my marriage certificate from Hawaii apostliled. Sally Cheeseman came to the rescue. She drove from her home to downtown Honolulu in the traffic and then stayed there until the entire apostlile was completed. That was a very time consuming task because in Hawaii only the Lt governor had the authority to complete the official “sewing” of the apostile.
5. Support when going through rough spots in personal lives.
How many times has something you need to vent about been supported here in the rain. Once in a while we all need to host a pity party and it is great when you have the choir attending. Then we go get our big girl and boy panties on and get back to work with a smile on our face and a warm feeling in our hearts knowing that we have a community of like minded individuals taking our back. When times get tough, a shoulder to lean on is something you can count on here in ActiveRain.
6. Credibility in the online real estate corner of the universe.
ActiveRain has given us the platform to gain credibility online and within our markets with the ever famous words, “just google me”. ActiveRain was the springboard for many agents but for us it has been even more than that. ActiveRain catapulted our credibility for online marketing and getting listings through blogging. Not only that, ActiveRain gave me the platform and the opportunity to pay it forward which came back to me as an invitation to be a speaker at ActiveRain camps. This afforded me the opportunity to be invited to many different real estate venues throughout the country to speak which is one of my passions.
7. Points and more points! Carrots dangling in front of us…
Ah, in the good ol' days of yonder years in the rain when Broker Bryant was blogging his Bertha:) and TLW's whip was adorning the featured pages in the rain along with so many other fun memories… one of my funnest times was making fun on the way we loved to get the points and featured posts. I wrote this post about how to get featured and it was featured:). The comments will have you rolling on the ground laughing. Paying it forward first helped us to gain trust in our readership which propelled us up the ladder of most subscribed to blogs on ActiveRain. We are the most subscribed to blog on ActiveRain outside of the staff blogs and AR main blog. There are over 2000 posts we have written and many of those add value to your businesses.
8. The opportunity to change lives beyond closed business.
Many of you know Todd Clark. He is a wonderful father and husband and broker. We connected on ActiveRain through our connection with homeschool. There was a group of us early on in 2007 that all homeschooled and so we had that connection. He noticed that I did not work on Sundays. He then noticed that I was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He was married to a member but he was not a member. He reached out to me to ask me how I was able to do real estate not working on Sundays. From there, he decided to surprise his wife with his being baptized into the church on their wedding anniversary. It was the funnest surprise ever. They have since gone to the temple to be sealed to each other along with their children. This awesome missionary experience would not have happened without ActiveRain. To be a part of something this meaningful to us- is beyond what I can describe in words. It is written upon my very soul. We had the awesome blessing of meeting Todd in person and spending time with him.
9. The blessing of saving a life because of a post I wrote on AR.
One day I felt so inspired to write about the domestic violence of my previous marriage. I shared this post. There was a young girl who was about to commit suicide because her boyfriend kept beating her. She had a small baby. Right before she was to do her final act, something told her to go to her computer. She did and suddenly she does not know how, my post was in front of her. She read it and wept. She printed out the post and taped it to her baby's crib and chose to live that night because I told her in my post that she was a child of God and that God loves her no matter what is happening to her. That is worth more than any amount of money I could make from ActiveRain. A life saved is much more precious than gold.
10. Changing my lifestyle and in doing so motivated countless others to do the same!
Sharing my cancer scare with my ActiveRain friends and asking for prayers from everyone here helped me through that ordeal. At the same time that happened there was the ActiveRain health challenge which I took part in. My challenge became losing weight and changing my lifestyle. Thus I began my juicing journey. So far I have lost 43 pounds since January 5th. I am healthy and the joy of juicing radiates in my skin glowing but more than that it radiated towards others. I get numerous private Facebook messages from many REALTORS® who want to lose weight or get well from disorders and illnesses. To know that my juicing journey has inspired others to better health- well, that is priceless, isn't it!