You are correct and thirdly, I have never before heard of PropertyNow. Thanks for bringing this to the readerships attention. Just where do you languish?

Andrew Blachut
PropertyNow

I don’t entirely agree you have to be considered a major portal to charge for membership and offer limited trials.

One of my property portals gets just 40,000 visits per month, perhaps a tenth of what RealCommercial claim? Yet it offers a MAXIMUM 1month trial and users join happily. They don’t even get locked into a minimum term membership. Our biggest problem is getting lazy agents to actually make use of their free trial in order to experience the benefit. So it wouldn’t matter if the trial period was a month or a year.

Registered users pay up to $1000 per month for membership… why? Because the site gets considerably more response than any of the ‘major’ portals. The fact that it ISN’T a major portal actually means the audience is comprised of far more informed/serious buyers and not timewasters who just stumbled onto the site. Major portals have limitless development resources – so by ‘doing it better’ yet staying under the radar of majors ensures they can’t steal your concept and knock you out of the game until you’re big / strong enough to go them head-on.

I think the lesson for start-up portals is: Be inovative!!! Don’t do the same site RealEstate.com.au did in 1995 or you’ll fail. Target a narrow segment of the property industry, service it better than the ‘big guys’ THEN slowly widen your audience from here.

Snoop I cannot see any changes to domain, well nothing in the last month. What is it that you can see.

I agree that there is a lot of space on the domain site, perhaps sometimes I feel like things could be closer together and there could be more content.

Generally, if domain are making changes to create a better website then I am all for it. None of the rules listed require anything new for my business.

Did anyone else read the article on myhome in the financial review today?

A domain spokesman said that they had written legal letters regarding myhomes claim to the ‘number two’ position. It seems domain are starting to pick up their game.

E

There is a rumour going around that myhome has paid around $50 000 to Elders in recent days.

It is with interest that my local Elders outlet tells me their conference was earlier this year and there are no events coming up.

Which leaves me asking the question as to what this payment is all about?

If myhome are about to start paying people to advertise on the site I may well sign up.

E

Whilst we are talking about the New Rules of Engagement for New Portals, perhaps we should be telling the existing portals what to do as well.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/web/nontechnical-glitch-shuts-down-real-estate-site/2007/06/26/1182623860210.html

It seems someone at domain forgot to pay an $83.00 bill from company with an over zealous finance department, who in turn turned off commercialrealestate.

I agree with the article that turning off the site was a harsh reaction, still, not paying a bill to keep your site up? When you are a portal?

Perhaps a new category for your site Peter, the ‘Biggest Bloopers of 2007′.

E