Another in my series of articles that almost any home stager could write.   Although this one uses some quotes and references.  When you get into writing your own, you should keep on alert for authority figures and quotes you can use. They help make an article sound more authoritative and thus more likely to get reprinted in someone else’s blog, just as this one did.

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Why Houses That Smell Better, Sell Better
By Jolanta Dougherty

If you are planning to sell your house today in a SLOW paced real estate market you will already come to know that the competition is much higher than a year ago. This can be one of the more stressful aspects of having your home on the market, because in a slow or “buyers” real estate market, your house is just one of many for sale in your neighborhood. Many agents may be advising the only way to sell your home is to drop your price. But in most cases, this is not always the solution, there are other ways to sell house at the highest price no matter how slow the market is.

Once you have done your homework and picked up an effective real estate agent you should prepare your house for open day…which means you have to get rid of clutter; clean, clean, clean; ensure cupboards open and shut and that no taps are dripping, pack your personal house accessories (e.g. pictures, children drawings) and the list goes on…But one of most essential thing you must to do before you put your house on the market is get rid of any odors that are lingering in your home, especially if it’s not pleasant.

There is nothing worse than walking into a stuffy house or one that smells of smoke and pet odors…

Doctor David Lewis is adamant: “Bad smells get up your nose – literally,” he says. “They have a negative effect on your brain. Pleasant smells have a positive effect and so it pays to have these in your house, especially if you are trying to sell it to a complete stranger.”

“Quite often you cannot smell your own home because you are so used to it. It’s the same as if you live next to a railway line or under the flight path of an airport. You get used to the trains and planes and you don’t hear them. And when you move, your odor hangs around like a ghost for a while, particularly in odd corners, until the new owners become established.”

Scientists recently confirmed that everyone’s home has a unique smell. Kind of like a fingerprint, only with odor. Craig Warren is a PhD who’s logged over thirty years in the “smell business”. He says that all homes have an “occupancy odor”. What causes your special smell? Some of the culprits are what you cook, pets, smoking and how you clean. A recent study found that there are a lot of places in your home for these odors to hide. Your couch, pillows, and drapes have a way of capturing smells that aren’t easy to remove. And a house with wood floors will have a different smell than a carpeted home.

When you are selling your house make sure that you done everything you can to get the best price and to sell your house as fast as you can. It will save you time, money and emotional stress…

Get my Free Report to find out tips and advice what to do when you need to get rid of cigarette smell, dog and cat urine smell, bad food and house smell and much more…visit http://www.thehomestagingservices.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jolanta_Dougherty
http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-Houses-That-Smell-Better,-Sell-Better&id=2222191

Technorati Tags: articles, eZine Articles, Smell

Home stagers interested in attracting more clients and buidling their web presence are wise to post on active rain.  They get a couple of beneifts. First Active Rain is a relatively high ranking site in terms of Google Page Rank and backlinks from Active Rain to your website carry greater weight. This is good in terms of your ability to rise in the Google Listings.

The second advantage of active rain is that it exposes you to Realtors in your market who may also use active rain.

What Active Rain is less good at is reaching beyond the Active Rain community and into the home selling market at large. That’s an area where traditional article marketing has some potential.  I’ve written before about eZine Articles.  They are probably the biggest article directory online, but there are hundreds of others. A post on one of these directories has a chance of being picked up by any of thousands of other blogs and ezines around the world.

Such an article has a far better chance of doing some good missionary work on behalf of home staging than an article on Active Rain.  There are far more people who don’t know about home staging than do out there. And article marketing is one of the best ways to slowly reach out to tell the home staging story.

Beyond prosletizing, while a backlink from Active rain is positive to your google Ranking, after the second or third time the “Google Juice” it provides diminshes rapidly.  Google would rather see you get incoming links from a variety of sources and not just one.

This is where article marketing shines. Many of the article directories also have high page rankings, and just putting an article on their site can do as much as a post from Active Rain.  And when one of your articles is picked up by a number of other users, it multiples the effect. And that’s what Google wants to see.  Not one or two sources linking to you, but first tens and then ultimately hundreds of sites. When you do that, you will virtually lock yourself into top ranking in your market.

In the process you will be building the national and international market for home staging. And while that may be hard to quantify, in the long run it will come back and benefit you as well as everyone else.

Now the big secret here is that you can often use the same material and articles you write for Active Rain and post them on the article directories.

One of the best educations you can get on article marketing is Understanding Article Marketing by Doug Champigny.  While written to address the article marketing needs of online internet marketers, the lessons he teaches are directly applicable to home stagers and most any small business.

Don’t get mesmerized by the hunt for points and ranking on Active Rain. While it matters some, in the long run you will do yourself and the home staging industry more good on the mainstream article directories.

Technorati Tags: Active Rain, Article Marketing, eZine Articles

Here is another article written by a home stager on a topic that most anyone of you could write about.

In addition to encouraging you to write articles on your own, you too can borrow articles like this to share with people on your mailing list. What, you don’t have an email list to mail to? If that’s the case, you really need to sign up for Market Maker. Actually, you eventually should develop two lists. One of prospective clients who could use you home staging services and a second of area Realtors who could be using you to help build their careers. At any rate, as long as you include the resource box at the bottom, you can use these articles, which means you don’t have to write each and everyone yourself.

This article is by Katie Mudd of Fredericksburg, Virginia Discusses Curb Appeal.

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Did you know that a buyer has developed an opinion of your property within 15 seconds? I have pulled up to many homes with clients who did not want to consider a property simply because the exterior needed some attention. The following ideas will help your homes exterior make a great first impression:

* Make sure the street and, sidewalk, walkway and porch are free from litter and debris
* Reseal a worn or stained driveway and repair cracks in the walkway
* Re-Paint the Shudders and front door
* Apply new door hardware and a brass kick plate
* Replace the house numbers
* Put a flower box with seasonal flowers alongside the door
* Install a new front light fixture and check that all exterior lights are in working order
* Have a cleaning service wash the siding
* Clean windows and replace any cracked or broken glass
* Replace any missing or broken shingles on the roof/If the roof is very old consider having it replaced prior to showing the property
* Make sure the gutters and downspouts are in good repair
* Mow the grass weekly and keep weeds under control
* De-clutter the deck or patio

Creating a cheerful, clean, neat entrance is one of the best investments of time, money and effort you will ever make. Don’t let a potential buyer slip through the giant crack in your walkway! Fix the crack and keep the buyer! I hope these tips for preparing the exterior of your home are helpful and I will post some interior home tips in a future article.

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Katie Mudd, Realtor/CSP Visit http://www.katiemudd.com to find out your home’s value, obtain a free list of foreclosure or affordable luxury homes or conduct a property search
Katie Mudd is a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Elite located at 5444 Jefferson Davis Hwy in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Licensed in the commonwealth of Virginia. Each office is independently owned and operated Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Katie_Mudd

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Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, blogging, eZine Articles, Homestaging Tips

Writing a good article is an excellent way to demonstrate your expertise and showcase your business in a local newspaper or online.  An article in a local paper of course will bring you some immediate attention in your home market and that is a powerful way to build your business.

The benefits of online article marketing may not be as clear nor as immediate, but it too can be a powerful way to market your business.  Each article posted online can contain backlinks to your web site. These backlinks are one of the factors Google and others use to decide where your web page appears when someone searches for a home stager in your community.  The more back links you have, the more likely you are to get top billing. And you want top billing.

A lot of articles will also make it more likely that the local media in your community will find you and seek you out, when an editor decides to do an article or newscast on home staging.  If a newspaper article is good for business, a minute or so of exposure on local TV is golden.

Article writing comes naturally for some and less so for others. But whatever your situation, it’s worth doing. But once done, there is no reason why you should submit it to only one venue.

The article is yours, and if you post it to Active Rain that’s great. But if you have gone to the trouble of writing the article why not get double and/or triple duty out of it?

Actually you can do a lot better than triple duty. Let me explain.

There are tons of people writing newsletter, blogs and ezines on the internet. Some write all their content themselves, but this gets to be time consuming and a royal pain for most. So, rather than writing everything themselves, they will go to one of hundreds of different article directories that exist and find suitable articles they can use for their publications.

These directories are always looking for fresh content to offer to these bloggers and editors. So they are willing to take your article and post it on their site so newsletter editors can find it.  To make it worth your while, they stipulate that anyone who uses your material must include your resource page.

Your resource page is a brief statement at the bottom of you article that you write that says who you are, and allows you to include usually two links to your web site and or other site you want people to go to.

When I write articles I might include a link to one of my blogs and maybe another to an eBook I am selling.

The article directories make money on the advertising on their site, the people using your article get fresh content to use in their publications.  It’s a classic win-win-win situation.

The Granddaddy of all article directories is www.ezinearticles.com. If there were just one place you wanted to post you article it would be there.  It is free to sign up as an author.  And almost everyone I know who is serious about internet marketing uses them. But as I said earlier, there are hundreds of similar article directories.

Now understand that each of these has their own set of rules, and it can be a bit frustrating at first to understand their different editorial requirements. But If you are capable of writing an article a week or even just an article a month, but are able to commit to doing so on a regular basis, it will be well worth your while to learn your way around these sites.

One of the biggest shortcuts out there are some of the article directory submitters. These are services that will take your article and submit it to multiple directories at once.  Some of these are pretty pricey for occasional users.  I use a service developed by Brad Callen called Article Submitter.

It too is designed for the professional.  It’s top level service the platinum allows you to submit your article to over 250 directories with the click of a single button. That’s a big time saver compared to going to each site and copying and pasting your article, title, resource box, and other items like keywords directory by directory.

But I don’t use the platinum version myself.  Frankly I started out with his Free version and later upgraded to the Gold. These take a little more effort, but once you have the basics down you can upload the same article to a lot of different directories. I usually submit to about 25 different directories for each article I write.

That gives me a lot more chances that my articles will be picked up by different newsletters and bloggers. Now this may be especially valuable to home stagers.  That’s because a lot of Realtors use newsletters to keep in touch with their farms or prospect list. (Home stagers should as well – that’s why you need something like market maker to build your own lists)

Since home staging topics will be relevant to many of these newsletters, I would guess that you would have a good chance of getting relevant article picked up. And while most will be from markets outside your market area, each will include a link back to your web site and do you some good.  And sooner or later, you will find a local Realtor or two using them in your own market, with any luck at all.

Article marketing is a powerful, if slow working tool to build a significant marketing advantage in your local area.  Article marketing is one of the topics that will be part of the monthly marketing calls we will be doing as part of the Market Maker Program.

PS: if you are interested in the free version of the Article Submitter,  look for the four tabs at the top of the page and click on article submitter.  That will take you to the free version.  If you can afford it, and plan on becoming a regular article writer, the Gold or Platimum versions are more powerful.

Which ever you use, once you have taken the time to write an article it make sense to distribute it as widely as you can.  The more directories you post on the more editors that will see your work and the more likely it will get published. It multiplies the benefits of your efforts.  Check out Article Submitter.

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, article submitter, eZine Articles, Market Maker

I published part 1 of this the other day, so I will follow up with part 2 today. Normally I would show case another home stager’s articles. Debra Gould doesn’t need a lot of extra promoting because she does it so well herself. But then again, this is one of the ways she does it. And that’s just one of the lessons I am trying to share with you.

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Home Staging Marketing Tactics That Will Put You Out of Business – Part 2

Many design-oriented individuals decide to become home stagers without any kind of business training or marketing knowledge. While they mean well, they often stumble into some terrible marketing tactics that will likely put them out of business faster than you can say, “What were they thinking?”

In part one of this article series, I discussed why using sex appeal and inappropriate humor are awful ideas for home stagers trying to build their businesses and be taken seriously.Today I’ll share another marketing tactic that will probably put your home staging business under:

Offering a guaranteed sale

It’s surprising how many ways home stagers can find to bankrupt their businesses. I recently heard that some home stagers are now guaranteeing the sales of their clients’ homes.

In a tough economy and slow real estate market, one can guess why a home seller would want a guarantee when they’re investing in home staging services, and one can see why a home stager would be tempted to provide it, knowing how effective staging is in getting a quicker sale and wanting to do anything to attract new business. But, if a stager is in business for the long run, they really have to explore the business rationale behind providing a sales guarantee.

I am against home stagers making any guarantee of a real estate sale from their staging because of the numerous factors involved that the stager has no control over. No matter how well a home is staged, there are several factors that will help determine whether a home sells or not.

For example:

* Is the house being listed in the right season? (Christmas and Spring Break are known for being poor times for real estate sales)
* Is the house priced correctly for its location, size and market conditions?
* Does the house have the features buyers are looking for in that area? If it’s a one bedroom home in a family neighborhood, it’s going to be a tough sell no matter how well it’s staged.
* Will the agent do an effective job of marketing the property?
* Will the home seller maintain the home in showing-ready condition 100% of the time?
* Is the home seller going to make it easy to show by not requiring lengthy notice, preventing showings during certain times, etc.?
* Will the home seller keep the house sparking clean and odor free during all showings?
* How are the agent and home seller going to handle offers they receive? Negotiations break down all the time for different reasons.
* Will the home seller accept any offer? More goes into an offer than the price.
* Will the home pass inspections?
* What if the buyer doesn’t get financing and the deal doesn’t close?
* What if there’s a natural disaster, political or economic event that interferes with the real estate market when the house is listed?

A home stager can guarantee that a house will show better when it’s staged, but they can’t guarantee a sale unless they’re prepared to buy the property themselves! It’s a much better business practice to gather statistics from past clients about the average amount of time properties remain on the market after you stage them and how that compares to similar properties in that price range at the time.

Collect testimonials and be prepared to share your track record and show off your knowledge of the local real estate market, but don’t guarantee a home sale.

In the third and final installment in this article series, I’ll discuss why giving away free advice can sink your home staging business.

Students of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program learn how to operate a profitable home staging business. Creator and expert home stager, Debra Gould, has been an entrepreneur for 20 years. She has taught more than 1000 people from across the world how to start and professionally market their home staging businesses

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Debra_Gould

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Learn how to use article marketing to build traffic to your web site and build your reputation in the home staging universe. Get a copy of the Beginners Key to Understanding Article Marketing by Doug Champigny.

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