Here is another in my series of eZine articles demonstrating the type of material that you could also produce in article of your own. As homestagers you are likely able to come up with your own list of the five biggest don’t do’s you have encountered or heard about in your career. Write them down in 300 to 600 words or so and put them on eZine articles and other article directories. Include a reference box at the bottom that links back to your web site. This will give you “Google Juice” and start establishing you as an expert article writer, and home stager. The article below was written by Teri B Clark, and while she is a professional writer, I bet you could have written the article below, and maybe an even better one, what do you think?
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Home Staging and Renovations – The 5 Don’ts
By Teri B Clark

It is time to sell your home. You take a good hard look and realize that there are a few things you need to do to make your home a showcase. But now you wonder…..what things are the best? You certainly don’t want to fix your home in a way that doesn’t get you any return on your investment. Why waste money, right?

Here are five things you don’t want to do:

1. Adding high-end appliances to a modest home. Unless you live in an area where every home on the block has high-end appliances and a granite countertop, don’t add them to yours! You will spend a lot of money and see none of it in return. If you need new appliances or countertops, consider refinishing either or buying nice but less costly versions.

2. Adding hand painted tiles in the bath or kitchen. Sure, they look lovely. And, if you were planning to live there for years, you might want to do that for your own enjoyment. But adding a hand painted tile reflects YOUR tastes and you are trying to sell the home to others. If they want hand painted tile, they will add it!

3. Adding a central vacuum. These are a great feature. But, once again, only do this if you plan to live there and enjoy it yourself!

4. Replacing windows with newer models. Windows are very expensive and will not increase the value of your home at all. People expect a home to have windows and they don’t expect to pay more for a house just because they have them!

5. Adding a swimming pool. This is true even if people in your neighborhood do have them. It is true that a homebuyer likes the idea of a pool, but they are not willing to pay more to get it.

Just be sure that you check to see if a permit is needed before starting any new project. Many departments require permits, even for things as simple as changing a dishwasher.

There are other projects that are often part of home staging, such as replacing old or worn carpeting, painting the walls, refreshing the kitchen with new cabinet or freshly painted cabinet doors, or even putting in a new kitchen floor will give your home added value. That is what home staging is all about – adding value so that you can sell your home faster and for more money!

Teri B Clark is a professional writer and published author. Her most recent book, 301 Simple Things You Can Do To Sell Your Home NOW and For More Money Than You Thought, explains these tips in more detail and offers many, many others. To learn more about Teri’s latest book, visit http://staging-your-home.blogspot.com or sign up for a free newsletter

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Teri_B_Clark
http://EzineArticles.com/?Home-Staging-and-Renovations—The-5-Donts&id=501421

Technorati Tags: Article writing, Home Staging

Why Market Maker? Podcast

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The Market Maker program is now live and available for Home Stagers interested in getting more business from their existing web pages.

I did a survey of home stagers last year. One of the things many expressed disappointment in was how little new business they got from their web pages.

Since then, I have held a tele-seminar, and written dozens of articles on how to turn that around. Yet relatively few home stagers have applied the secrets well known and taught in professional internet marketing circles.

I recognize the problem in myself. I often know what to do, but doing it is often another story.

Properly setting up your web page to get customers isn’t about nicer and fancier before and after pictures. It’s about attracting people potentially interested in home staging from YOUR market place, and getting them to identify themselves, so you can directly market your services to them.

The steps required include: changing some techie things about your web site; adding an opt-in box, which used to mean you needed to redo the front page of your web site; writing a special report; and then a long series of email marketing pieces.

Now none of these are too difficult, if you know how to do them, and seemingly impossible if you don’t.

And so, most people didn’t.

That’s why I developed Market Maker. Market maker will do all this for you. Develop new Meta Tags for your web site that will help more people from your town find your web site. Create an opt in form that doesn’t require you to redo your existing web site. It provides a great “ethical bribe” that will encourage people that visit your site to let you know they were there. Let you know they are interested in home staging and most importantly giving you permission to tell them more about you and your services.

Market Maker will dramatically boost your business.

Market Maker improves your marketing in two ways.

First it helps your home staging company stand out among your competitors. You will be the one that catches and keeps your prospects attention. This will get you a larger percentage of the existing business in your community.

Secondly, not everyone who thinks about using a home stager ends up doing so. With Market Maker, a larger percentage of them will, and when they do decide to use a home stager, it’s highly likely they will pick you.

To get more information go to Market Maker

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, home staging marketing, Market Maker, marketing

Listen to the Pod Cast

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There are many ways to market ones home staging business. Most of them are enhanced by having a good web site where you can refer interested people to learn more about you and your business.

That way, when you give a talk to a church group or Chamber of Commerce luncheon you can give people a web page to visit.

But you can also get a lot of free traffic from people surfing the web for information on home staging, if your site is properly set up so it can be found.

Unfortunately, most home staging web sites are not easy to find, because they have not been optimized for search engine traffic. About 85% or all web traffic results from searches on search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and a myriad of others.

If you were to enter the words “home staging” into Google today you would get over 6 million responses. The top 10 names on the page get the vast majority of actual page views, the others 6 million don’t, and that includes your page.

That means that 85% of the people searching for a home stager are unlikely to see your page at all. That’s lost business. Business you could have a shot at…if your web pages were properly optimized to get the search engines attention.

There is an entire industry devoted to Search Engine Optimization or “SEO.”

But there are some simple steps anyone can do, if you are willing to take action and make your web site more attractive to the search engines. If you do, you will get more traffic to your page. And that’s the first step. What you do with that traffic is another issue. But first things first.

In the next week I will be posting a series of articles on SEO. This is a prelude to the release of a major new product. The exact release date and time is being held under wraps for now.

The new product is called Market Maker. Not everyone that wants to will be allowed to join when it releases. I encourage you to sign up for additional information at
http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Today, I want to let you know how easy it is to begin to find keywords that apply to your business and website. In later articles I will tell you how to use these keywords, for that’s where the magic of SEO takes place.

There are a lot of expensive paid keyword tools, but the best free tool is Google’s.
Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
In the middle of the page, you will see a blank box with directions to enter a single word or phrase. Type in the word “Home Staging.”

Make sure the box that says synonyms is checked.

Then you will need to enter the letters from the Captcha code that is there. This is to confirm you are a person and not a computer or robot.

Then click get keyword ideas.

When I did this recently I got 127 keywords related to Home Staging and another 73 related terms. Not all of these are appropriate for a home stager looking to find customers. But many are. This is because different people will use different terms to search for you. If your web site is only set up to attract some of these keywords, you won’t stand a chance of showing up in the results the search engines return at all.

There is a lot more to say about all this, and it does matter. If your web site is properly optimized to get traffic from all the relevant keywords and your competitor across town isn’t you will get more business.

If your competitor’s website is properly optimized and yours isn’t you will loose out on business you could be getting.

If you’re not turning away customers today because you are too busy, you may want to consider making the effort to understand keywords and how they apply to your web site.

More on this tomorrow. And don’t forget to sign up for information on Market Maker.

It is designed to put your web marketing on auto pilot and to pay for itself!

Go to http://homestagingbusinesstips.com/MarketMaker/ComingSoon.html

Best wishes,

Earl Netwal
www.HomestagingBusinessTips.com

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, homestaging, Homestagingbusinesstips, Market Maker, SEO

Listen to this Audio Post on Why People Aren’t calling you to stage their homes.

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Last week, internet marketing expert Frank Kern launched a new product that sold for $2,000 each. In less than 24 hours he sold 2,000 units.  That’s $4,000,000 in one day.  Not too shabby.

Who would have thought you could sell such an expensive product to so many people so fast in today’s economy? How did he do it?  Well, that is actually the information Frank was selling.  How to sell goods and services on the internet.

Part of Frank’s success stems from his willingness to share a good deal of valuable information with his prospects before he launches his product, and I am going to share one of the key tidbits he  offered with you today.

Frank would say there are just three reasons people aren’t buying your home staging services today.

• They Don’t Want It
• No Money
• Don’t Trust or Believe you

They Don’t Want It.

Some never will want your services. And while others just need to be educated a little, it’s a mistake according to Frank to be spending too much time on people who don’t want your services.  Instead look for ways to market to people who do.

No Money

Frank makes a more important point here. While no money may mean no money, it usually means that they don’t want it badly enough.  If people are telling you they don’t have the money, you haven’t yet found a way to increase their desire.   You may need to focus more of your marketing efforts on what’s in it for them.

For your home owner, it may be a higher sales price, or a quicker sales, but it also may be just getting help doing everything that needs to be done to get ready for the big move.

Make sure you are clear on the real motivations of those you have already worked with, and then share these with those you hope to work with.

Don’t Trust/Believe You.

Your prospect needs to not only believe that your services will benefit them, they need to trust that you are someone they can work with.  Someone they like.

While credentials may help, social proof is far more effective. A list of past homes staged, testimonials from happy customers are powerful tools to help bridge the trust gap.  These should be part of your standard presentation.

But in addition, you should find ways to reach out to your prospects and share. Provide them with good useful information, and keep in touch over time.

Little gifts in the form of useful information on how to prepare for a move, provided via luncheon talks to a local church group or social group not only give you visibility and credibility, it offers value.

Little gestures along this line, activate a sense of reciprocity, in which the recipient begins to feel a bit of an obligation to return the favor.  This can lead to you at least getting a chance to bid a project.

I recommend that home stagers web sites offer a free gift that viewers can download, and then follow up with over time with a series of additional tips. This helps build that reciprocity response, and more importantly helps build a sense of friendship. And we tend to trust our friends.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging marketing tips, Internet marketing, marketing

If you read my home staging survey analysis, or listened in on the tele-seminar I conducted last year on how to make web pages better, you will know that I think most Home Stagers are not setting up their web sites properly.

I am not a web page designer. So I am not interested in revamping them, but I do have two suggestions that apply to most home stagers, in fact they apply to most small business web pages period.

Today, I am making a special recession fighting offer to help you resolve the easiest of the two. But first let me explain why this problem exists, even on web sites you may have paid someone thousands to develop.

Most web designers are great at the techie end of the game. They may even be good at graphics and have a sense of design. But while they may be good at those things, few of them understand marketing. I suspect if you’ve been in the home staging game a while, you know people who may be great at home staging but not so great at marketing. (Maybe you are one of them.)

In the hidden code that’s behind each of your web site pages, there is code that the search engines see, that no one else does. In the past two weeks, I have randomly checked about a dozen home stagers web sites and found that almost all of them had opportunities for improvement, – but not all.

Another reason many techies don’t pay attention to this is that Google no longer looks at some of this code when they rank web pages. However most search engines still do, including Yahoo and all the other major players. Since you have no control over the search engines your prospective customers use, it’s a real mistake to ignore this very sizable source of business.

So for the month of January I will, on a time available basis, examine your home staging web page free of charge. All you need do is send me an eMail with a link to your web site. I will check to see whether or not your web site would benefit from a “tweak.”

If it does, I will let you know and send you a very brief questionnaire to fill in. If you decide to proceed, I will prepare the appropriate code for just $35 rather than the $75 minimum I normally charge. You save $40 and get more traffic to your web page for years to come. If any one of them uses your services, you’re sitting pretty.

Now the fly in the ointment is that I cannot make the actual change for you. I will compile the code and email it to you, but you will need to post it to the site yourself, and/or have your Web site person do so. This shouldn’t cost you anything, as it’s a very simple process to upload it, but it does require having access to your web site host and your passwords.

The tweak I am proposing won’t change anything about the way your page looks, but it will ensure that more people find <strong>your page </strong>when they are looking for a home staging professional in your market.

I am willing to do this for other small businesses as well, if I have time. Drop me and email and I will do my best to include you.

This offer expires no later than the end of January, but I may pull it earlier. It costs you nothing for the free look see on my part, so drop me an email today.

Email to enetwal@gmail.com and put “Free Tweak Peek” in the subject line.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home Staging Web pages, Meta Tag Fix, Meta Tag Review, Meta Tag Tweak, Meta Tags

Many but not all web hosting services utilize C-Panel for their user interface.

You can find out if your hosting service does by typing in your URL in your browser and adding /cpanel to the end. Example: http://www.yoururl.com/cpanel

If your web hosting service uses cpanel, it will pop up. That’s good. It means you have control of your web site. With a little knowledge can take charge of it. But you need to know how.

Discovering how to control my C-panel was the most significant bit of learning I’ve done to date on the internet.

Controlling your own internet presence is critical. Even if you decide to let someone else have the keys to your internet presence, it’s wise to understand what’s involved. (Particularly, how easy it is.)

I took a video course from Bob the Teacher called Discover C Panel. In a series of short videos I learned in just over an hour how to take control of my internet destiny.

I highly recommend this program. DiscoverCPanel.com – Step-By-Step Video Tutorials

Having a Cpanel interface makes it easy to set up a Wordpress Blog, to upload files to your web site without needed an FTP Program and much more.

Technorati Tags: C Panel, Home Staging, Home staging survey

Over half of the 123 Home Staging Professionals who answered my survey question on the “Climate of Competition” in their markets rated it as “Mild, we are all friends.” Only one rated it as “Hostile, we are fighting for every advantage”

That said, those with 2-4 years experience were the least likely to claim competition as Mild. My guess is after two years of business, they were more likely to have run into competition and not necessarily come out ahead in every case.

The “Top Dog” category in the survey seemed to share this attitude, although a few seem to have arrived at the point where they had developed strong relationships with Realtors which was providing them with a steady stream of new business. For them the competition was less relevant. In in many cases it may have been seen as asset as it provided an overflow valve when they were too busy.

The unasked question I refer to in the subtitle, was the “Null Set.”

The biggest competitor Home Stagers face is the number of Realtors and Home Owners who decide to not stage at all. Or who never consider the possibility.

While a few markets report large percentages of homes being staged, that is not true in most markets.

When you think about competition in that light, I think most markets could accurately list competition a

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing

One of the more surprising aspects was the fact that over half of the survey respondents reported calling fewer than five Realtors in the past three months as part of their marketing efforts.

This floored me. In the survey report, I break out seven different categories of respondents, and it turns out in this case that those with more experience are far more active in contacting Realtors, than are the newer stagers.

The new guys should, in my opinion, be burning up the telephone lines to get their businesses in front of as many Realtors as possible. How else are they going to get those initial jobs to develop their portfolios and referral business?

One anecdotal comment captured in the many essay questions on my survey suggested that they were calling a lot more than the three Realtors they were advised to contact in their training course.

I have to believe this was a misinterpretation of a comment that maybe all they needed was three regular Realtors to build their business with regular referrals. At any rate if this is being taught, I have to wonder about the wisdom of the instructor and the school employing them.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, marketing, Realtors

If you are a Home Stager, or considering joining the ranks of Home Stagers, you should be interested in what you can learn about the business from others in it.

In May and June of 2008, I conducted a series of personal interviews with several home stagers and gathered some initial information about the industry.

From there, I developed an internet survey which I presented to over 600 home stagers from around the US and Canada. I got responses from over 180. These I analyzed and broke the data into eight different categories, the first being all responses, then those who had less than two years experience in the field, those with two to four years, and those with four or more years.

I also asked how many actual homes respondents personally staged in the prior three months. Some had quite a few, with two reporting over 120. Many however are far more part time and so I split all the responses into two groups, those who did 9 or fewer in the prior three months and those who did more.

I also pulled a group out who were clearly Realtors in addition to being Home Stagers as I saw these as a distinct group.

And finally, I used a set of criteria to pull out what I referred to as the Top Dogs.

These multiple groupings allowed me to observe differences in the responses by various groups. This provided insight into the differences between new stagers and those with more experience.

The differences were significant in many cases, and
should be useful to those trying to emulate those more successful in the business.

This Blog will discuss some of the survey results and collect comments from those who have a copy of the report.

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, Home staging survey, Survey