Where did I go?

If anyone’s been following this blog, first of all, let me say, thank you for following this blog.  I didn’t know you were, though if I thought about it I could guess since that’s after all where most of this site’s traffic comes from.

Secondly, let me apologize, to wit:  I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up much lately.

By way of explanation, first of all I’ve been focusing maybe 75% of my work life (or more) on actually selling real estate, rather than trying to grow my web site reach.  Business has been great out in the Sacramento area, and this site for the Oakland area has so far garnered lots of visitors but failed to produce any revenue from them.

What’s up with that?

Finally, since I’ve been busy with my Sacramento business and this site’s not making any money, I’ve been dedicating any time I do have to my Sacramento blog, and my newly launched El Dorado and Amador County Real Estate Blog.  Gosh, that name’s a little long winded, isn’t it?  Maybe I should have called it Baco-Bits.

No, Baco-Bits isn’t quite right.  Though it’s located in the heart of Republican territory (I’m sorry to say), it’s actually pork free.

So anyway, that’s what’s up with me.  This blog has some pretty strong fundamentals so it stands to make money soon.  (Hint hint, you Oakland area agents.  Come work for me or buy this blog).  But meantime till it gets a sponsor I’m off playing in the near East.

Oakland and Berkeley Realtors®

I just had a really nice chat with Kim Cleghorn, manager of RE/MAX Executive’s Oakland and Berkeley Offices. Oakland-Homes-for-Sale.com will be working with Kim and her agents going forward, not only to help you with your real estate needs, but also to help me try to bring more local real estate information and listings to this site.

Kim also was good enough to tell me about the great work two of her Berkeley agents area doing. Ira and Carol Serkes are breaking new ground by doing real estate podcasting on their highly successful Berkeley Homes for Sale site.

That’s just too cool. It’s like “Radio Free REMAX”. I’m downloading ITunes now so I can hear what it sounds like.

More About Oakland-Homes-for-Sale.com

Well, the site’s new — a few days old at best. Barely a hatchling of a site. So here’s a good place to discuss what will happen going forward, and what the context is.

The context, of course, is John Lockwood’s developing another web site for fun and profit. I’m a California Realtor®, currently working for REMAX Gold in Cameron Park, which isn’t all that close to Oakland.

You wouldn’t want to commute it.

So far, then, my real estate business is a pretty local operation, in that I’m one of the founding members of the Real Estate PLUS Team, under the friendly auspices of REMAX Gold in the Sacramento area.

But as it happens, given my background in software, I enjoy presenting real estate information to buyers and sellers in a user friendly way, thus creating business for my colleagues. My license is California wide. And the server for this site is over in Kentucky.

Small world.

What I’m about now is growing my referral network outside of the Sacramento area — i.e., in a sense, growing my “extended team”. So to my colleagues in Oakland, greetings — if you’re interested in doing business I should have a “Referral Network” sign up form before too long, but you don’t have to wait for that. The contact form works well — I just tested it! (Hatchling, indeed…)

Open for Business

Well, by golly, that went pretty quickly. A couple of days ago I was evaluating web log software and working on finding a new domain host, and here I am in production already.

Thanks to the good people of Wordpress for having a very nice, very installable, product at the right Internet price! You guys rock!

Those of you seeing these early posts may get a good chuckle out of the fact that this is going to be the number one web site for Oakland real estate before too long.

We don’t even have home listings up yet. What kind of a real estate web site is this? What demon-spawned son of a Craig Proctor form-fest and a geek-friendly CSS-driven Gnu Public Library can this be, who boasts predominance in a market full of hungry Realtors®? Well, it’ll take a few months, to be sure, but if I’m ever going to move to Coos Bay, I’d best get typing.