While TruZilla is celebrating it’s latest traffic numbers to entice more real estate agents to add free content they can then buy ads around, HomeGain is celebrating the making of another millionaire real estate agent using its Agent Evaluator program.
Says HomeGain GM, Louis Cammarosano, “Unlike our competitors who incessantly tout their traffic statistics, we choose instead to highlight the success of our real estate agents.”
And it’s a million dollar success story.
From the Press Release:
HomeGain today announced that Alan Shafran, Realtor® with The Alan Shafran Group of Prudential California Realty in La Costa, CA, and HomeGain AgentEvaluator® member, has reached one million dollars in gross lifetime commissions with HomeGain.
“HomeGain has been instrumental to building my online business,” stated Alan Shafran. “AgentEvaluator consistently puts me in touch with home buyers and sellers in my area. HomeGain is the secret sauce to growing my client list, to closing 20 percent additional homes per year, and to making me one of the top Realtors® in the U.S.”
Alan Shafran is the second real estate agent inducted into the HomeGain Million Dollar Club. Eric Pakulla of RE/MAX Advantage Realty in Maryland was the first AgentEvaluator member to reach one million dollars in 2007.
Alan is a heavy hitter. He is ranked in the top 10 percent of the nation’s real estate professionals.
Rather than the anecdotal testimonials published by TruZilla , each quarter HomeGain reports new agents added to its AgentEvaluator Silver Club ($50,000 in gross commissions from HomeGain leads), Gold Club ($75,000 in gross commissions) and Platinum Club ($125,000 in gross commissions) which now top 200, 250 and 300 members, respectively. (See the 2008 Club members (and their commissions) here.)
More about AgentEvaluator here.
My Take:
We’re a media company, we’re selling advertising ~ Pete Flint, CEO Truli (via)
The more I learn about HomeGain, the more I like the company (the fact that GM Louis Cammarosano is a fellow attorney may have something to do with it– it was Lou who understood that tools without teachers are useless).
HomeGain makes money from its real estate agents’ success, not from advertisers, like TruZilla– if agents don’t make money using Agent Evaluator, which is a pay-on-success referral fee model, either does HomeGain. TruZilla, on the other hand, is a self proclaimed media company– their model is based on getting free content from real estate agents and then selling ads around it– not bad for agents, (they think) because it costs them nothing but time (and link juice). But what they miss is the critical mass issue, where the ever increasing sea of free listings makes the “featured listings” an easy sell to agents to cut the line. (The piggy back agent spotlight ads are another story, better left for another day)
Besides, TruZilla is out to make their customer happy– the ADVERTISER. The agent is just needed for their Googleicious content, which TruZilla gets easily by dangling the ever enticing free carrot. The agent gets the carrot and TruZilla gets the juice. Consider, too, that advertiser success means buyers are pulled away from the agents’ listings to the advertisers’ sites. With Trulies courting Fortune 500 brands, you can bet the emphasis will be on their big brand happiness.
In this lad’s opinion, the end game for the Truli college science project is SELL and move on, ditto for Z’s ticketmaster RichBar. Hey, this is America and I have no complaints about it, but agents might be surprised when the new owners want to get paid from them too.
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