For the first time in years revenues are dropping, even with rising $ rates classified advertising is on the wane. Just look at Jobs, Cars and Houses, these are all covered perfectly online and instead of a few lines of text and maybe a photo for $400, you can get allot of photos, unlimited descriptions and the ad lasts more than 1 day!

The great thing about it is that it did not take a competitor to do this and did not take money, it took the Internet!

You will see in the future newspapers given away for free just to keep demand up and advertisers happy.

A great example of this is magazines in the states. You can subscribe to many of the most popular magazines for $9.95 a Year delivered right to your door! Why? Because the companies that own these magazines need readership and high subscriptions to charge the rates to advertisers so they can make money.

Within 2 years there will be a huge change in newspaper distribution here in Australia, first will be massive cost cutting and then massive price drops!

Of course all in my humble opinion!

Print advertising is just about finished from a consumer perspective, it is good for branding and chest thumping but it is money wasted. More and more vendors will ask just to be listed online and not in print.

ELIZABETH
Yes I did mention this and I was told it makes up such a minuscule revenue base that it should not be a problem.

Agents must clearly be able to identify why a seller should use them rather than list privately. This will be a growing problem going forward. However I have a site that private advertisers list on and I can tell you there are a number of factors that limits their success.

1. Being able to negotiate – so many private sellers have no idea how to negotiate a sale.

2. Marketing Reach – Agents can list on realestate.com.au and domain. Private advertisers can list on domain but it is expensive and ads only last for 30 days.

3. Pricing Properties – If you look at the majority of private ads they are well overpriced. The thinking is get them to enquire and you can come down, but I remember a guy in Tasmania listing his 1 bedroom unit for $270,000 and when I asked him what he would sell for he said $130,00.

His reasoning was that he would get interstate buyers and they pay allot more!!!

4. Legal – Many of the Private sellers do not have the correct paperwork prepared and this could lead to legal problems down the road.

However you will find that many private sellers will end up selling through an agency.

What you have to understand is that many more will also try. I estimate the private selling market to be about 2% of advertised sales properties but this will grow in the coming years to over 10% and even more if agents cannot clearly demonstrate why they should sell through an agency!

Why would potential buyers register how great a listing is, only to have more people recognise it and out bid them at Auction.

If ‘DoPLAIN’ want to get greater interactivity on their site – they should stop looking at sites like http://www.amiuglyorwhat.com

Seriously? Voting for listings?

Maybe this is geared towards all the private sellers they have on their site.

Peter, what did the domain guy have to say about Private Sellers and what appears to be DoPLAINs current push to get more from that market?

Voting for a particular listing proves nothing, people, if they vote at all, will vote for a property they like, not nessessarily the listing that presents the best. It’s a waste of time and a diversion from the core task of the site. People looking for houses won’t bother with it nor should they be expected to.

The reference to age was that voting, except in elections, is the passtime of minors in the main, look at the NineMSN web site and the inane questions that appear in their polls, only a child or young person would even bother to respond. They know their audience and target the questions at those who will use the feature.

If this was to be included in any of the major portals they would get a lop sided result because only a certain type of user would vote. The people that matter, the serious user wouldn’t bother.

Just look in the UK where propertyfinder.com purchased print publisher London Property news just to drive traffic to its site.

Or look in this week’s Classified Intelligence Report. On page 9 there is news that in Germany the jobs classifieds site Jobware.de has launched a quarterly print magazine to drive draffic to its site, too.

I still love to read a newspaper or magazine, but when I want to find info of some sort, I always reach for the laptop. So, I think Peter’s right.

Blocking multiple votes by IP address won’t work, some property owners have a wide range of friends.

AND if agent A is getting 10 leads a month from 600 listings he’s an idiot and should be made to pay double anyway for clogging the portal with useless rubbish that no one is interested in.

There are fairly simple ways to get around that, such as only counting one vote per property per IP address.

“Searchers aren

In relation to voting on listings – I am not joking. Try to vote on my article, you can only do it once per day. I am sure agencies will not have the time to do this. I think you should have placed a few more questions marks at the end of your comment for more effect.!!!!!!!!

As for pay per listings, these have been discussed before and I think this may be the way of the future.

however, if I think will happen – happens and Google, Yahoo and MSN all get into a dedicated real estate site then within 6 – 18 months all listings will be free on all portals.

Thanks for your comments, keep them coming.