Mark Owens

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woops typo... click www.archive.org

Jay... Jay obviously you have a very loyal following and preaching to the choir is always more pleasant then preaching to the "non-believers". My challenge with "Print is Dead" was that as Mark Twain said "The reports of print's death are greatly exaggerated." Saying Print is Dead was a bit over the top. And you reinforce my point in the above post...."But to dismiss potentially valid business methods seems a little short-sighted." Oh well..have a terrific weekend. -Mark PS For the fun of it..go to www.archive.com Type in the web address: www. ADDRESSCLICKS.com It is there that you will see that in October of 2001 the firm that I founded was producing "single property" web sites. That was over 8 years ago when most people did not even know what a "single property" website was. Now there are many many firms on that bandwagon including a firm curently using that domain name. You see Jay, I am far from being closed minded to tech...I am actually an innovator and early adaptor, I just refuse to kick a very effective medium like print under the bus.

-Print is dead. Wow that sounds pretty convincing, however print is alive and thriving...If print is dead why are consumers eagerly devouring millions of "Homes and Land" magazines each year? What do you think the publishers are doing with the magazines...throwing them away? Give us a break…The statistics are clear, nearly 65% of web traffic is driven there by off line media. Have you considered that "print is dead" is just your experience? Have you considered that your problem with print is that you write ads that consumers are not responding to? Jay, don't give up on print it is a gold mine! -Open houses rarely sell the home. Wow again..another puzzling declaration. Open houses have always been a great way for us to sell homes at our office. I'm settling on a home tomorrow at 11:00 AM that I sold at my open house. Three to five sides a year from opens is good enough for me.(I'm not greedy) By chance, do you struggle with face to face interactions and are you more comfortable behind your Mac? Maybe send someone on your staff who is a little more outgoing to your open houses. These are great revenue generators. -"Virtual brokerages" are not encumbered by the costs of maintaining a "brick and mortar" presence. Here we go again...Did you happen to notice that homes are mostly made of bricks and mortar? I'm curious, do your clients come over to your "Virtual office" in your home or do you meet them at the Starbucks or the "Waffle House"? Isn't that a little awkward? Virtual offices just seem very here today gone tomorrow. I'm proud to say, our 30,000 square foot state of the art office building is a beacon of strength and a safe harbor for consumers in our community. This building is the literal 6th man off the bench for us. In this market clients just get a sense of peace and security when they walk through our beautiful front door into our spacious lobby. Its a beautiful high tech, sun drenched, very secure fortress. Today's consumers know that with identiy theft and all the nonsense going on that their transaction is safe and secure with us. They know where to find us! One of the real showpieces in our building is our 150 seat "Multi-media" education center. We hold educational seminars for our agents there and we encourage the community to utilize the space for their events also. This professional "bricks and mortar" presence is just another of the main factors that causes our office to produce 1 in every 3 sales in our market. We compete against over 50 other offices. Unfortunately, it seems like prolific bloggers will have a very difficult chance competing for market share at a high level... blogging is very time consuming. I'm sure the craft of blogging must takes hours and hours of research and writing. When is there time to show houses and secure listings? It must be very difficult to be consumer-centric when you are always writing. I'm sure some day you will figure out how to capitalize on your obvious writing gifts and monetize your prolific blogging habit...however your goal of dominating the Phoenix real estate market with a virtual office seems like it is going to be quite a challenge. To acheive this dream, you might have to go cold turkey as it relates to your extensive blogging habit. Hopefully it works out for you. Good luck, and keep blogging...I'm sure the other brokerages in Phoenix hope so also.