That’s my point. We don’t know her (or him). They’re blogging in St Louis or Harrisburg, kicking ass and taking names. There’s a young man in San Diego that pulls more business from Myspace than anyone I know doing it from blogging (he closed about $15MM last year, generating well into the mid six figures…from MYSPACE!!!) Along those lines, check out Kal Wayman on YouTube. Tasteless but effective use of Web 2.0

“I once heard a smart lady say that blogging is a form of prospecting. If that’s so, shouldn’t you understand if the time you put in is worth the effort?”

Of course. I self-promote all the time. Doing less would be a waste of effort. If I saw no results I’d stop.

I don’t want to take away from the success many of us have had this year blogging but I really think there is somewhere doing it bigger and better than any of us. We’ll find out who they are one day.

That’s why we do not particularly like rules or what art form is best, etc.— we would never presume to tell anyone how to write their blog. In fact, when I read someone had an online blog how-to book of sorts (and in it had a post knocking others’ blogging styles), I wrote a “Non-guide to blogging” (somewhat tongue-in-cheek).

Comment: Perhaps bloggers interested in knowing the economics of blogging may consider, if they haven’t already, devising a “blog ROI” in some fashion (for themselves). Maybe they keep a tally on the clients or leads they get, how they got them (was it based on a particular post, a long time (or short) reader, the about you page, a google hit, whatever. The point is– if you choose to measure, how do you measure & what are you measuring against?

-jf

from my comment on active rain:

hi ardell!

quoted from my post:

“Success is measured in many ways.

For our purposes, let’s keep it simple. The real estate agent that has closed the most transactions resulting from clients and customers obtained directly via their blog would be the winner.”

for the purposes of the post, i defined how success was to be measured based on the most transactions closed. is this my definition of success? of course not. not even close.

-rudy.sellsius°

p.s. i’m not a real estate agent, i’m a licensed real estate associate broker

hi christina!

thanks for commenting - twice

i really don’t know how it could be known or ranked either. where’s an algorithm when you need one? i was just curious. maybe one day, i’ll jump back in the ring myself and learn first hand so i don’t have to ask these ridiculous questions.

when you asked someone who is the best basketball player off all time, can we really know the answer? i think not. it’s subjective. everyone has their own opinions. that’s what makes the conversation fun and informative. who’s the greatest boxer of all time? whether true or not, somehow we can all answer that question.

maybe you’re right. a more concrete question would have been:
which real estate agent/broker blogger has closed the highest number of transactions from clients and customers obtained from their blog?

maybe my question was inappropriate, i don’t know. i was just curious.

hi sandy!

maybe i should have just asked, what’s your blog roi? this way, people could define it themselves.

i agree with you that many are still really trying to figure out what their blog is or what type of blogger they are. that’s a good thing. we should all reflect upon what we are doing and what it means to us to be a real estate blogger. for me, it changes every once in awhile but that’s ok.

whether or not you close 1 deal or 20 from your blogging efforts really doesn’t determine how “successful” you are. you determine what makes you successful.

blog on!

My first reaction to your question was negative (‘here comes the bragging’) but in looking at the thread I see a typically Sellsius success: lots of discussion prompted by (not necessarily ‘answering’) the question.

Ardell rings up $$$$$$. Teresa does marketing she enjoys doing and avoids doing things she does not like to do.

So far no one has cited either specific dollars-and-cents or specific closed transactions – thankfully, as that would get us into an unseemly mess, methinks. ROI is important (especially compared to other expenses of promotion / marketing).

I am still struggling with figuring out what my blog *is*, without yet having discernible dollars-in-pocket from the blog. It is (vaguely) part of my general promotion of my expertise, part of my storehouse of commentary to refer prospective clients to, part of my continued focus on staying on top of my market, even parts of my internal talk therapy, keeping me sane (I hope).

The (few) people who have reached out to me because of my blog have been pretty easy to identify. I suspect that will continue; I hope more people reach out. I hope I keep learning … THX to all.

This is an interesting exercise, but I do think it probably is futile. As someone else said, many agents aren’t willing to share their volumes. Perhaps it should be changed from ‘most successful’ to ‘top income producing’ or ‘highest number of transactions’ which is more easily ranked than the ambiguous ‘most successful’ (as others have already pointed out).