Is it me? Or my screen resolution? Perhaps… but I am tired with the trend to popular sites. It basically comes down too who’s site is designed for “down on knees, servicing google’s SEO” wins the battle…

ActiveRain, and other sites, have the SEO links, and the clutter, but no where near the extend of Trulia.com, which in my eyes, makes me feel as though Trulia.com is nothing but a infomercial / QVC… they really don’t care as long as thye can use you to generate more traffic… it all feels very sell-out-ish… I don’t get that from ActiveRain. Homegain, and other sites…

Is it me? Or my screen resolution? Perhaps… but I am tired with the trend to popular sites. It basically comes down too who’s site is designed for “down on knees, servicing google’s SEO” wins the battle…

ActiveRain, and other sites, have the SEO links, and the clutter, but no where near the extend of Trulia.com, which in my eyes, makes me feel as though Trulia.com is nothing but a infomercial / QVC… they really don’t care as long as thye can use you to generate more traffic… it all feels very sell-out-ish… I don’t get that from ActiveRain. Homegain, and other sites…

Great meeting you this past week…..your “notorious” online reputation did not disappoint in real life.

Although each company is different – a very interesting comparison nonetheless. Using third party sites to analyze growth is not the most accurate method, but he trending is fairly close.

Although Trulia started with real estate listings, the natural evolution is to offer consumers and agents a much more rich user experience. We get roughly 5 million uniques per month – and it’s growing. Generally speaking, repeat usage on Trulia is up. Voices Q&A contributions are up. Agents and consumers are really connecting on with each other Trulia Voices. We’re always interesting in learning more about these types of success stories and encourage people to let us know when they do happen.

Our Voices blog platform, which is in beta, is an extension of our already popular Voices Q&A community. Our community feedback led us to create this new functionality for them. We’re excited to see how real estate professionals and home buyers and home sellers utilize our new platform. Will home buyers and sellers blog? I don’t know but I can’t wait to find out…….

That being said, agents and consumers will frequent a multitude of sites for various reasons. Consumers are searching for answers to their questions or for information that can help them make better informed real estate decisions. Agents are looking for ways to showcase their expertise to a targeted audience and to hopefully make a connection with a home buyer or seller. We are passionate about facilitating this experience for them. At the end of the day, it’s these two groups of users that will determine a sites staying power….

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia

Great meeting you this past week…..your “notorious” online reputation did not disappoint in real life.

Although each company is different – a very interesting comparison nonetheless. Using third party sites to analyze growth is not the most accurate method, but he trending is fairly close.

Although Trulia started with real estate listings, the natural evolution is to offer consumers and agents a much more rich user experience. We get roughly 5 million uniques per month – and it’s growing. Generally speaking, repeat usage on Trulia is up. Voices Q&A contributions are up. Agents and consumers are really connecting on with each other Trulia Voices. We’re always interesting in learning more about these types of success stories and encourage people to let us know when they do happen.

Our Voices blog platform, which is in beta, is an extension of our already popular Voices Q&A community. Our community feedback led us to create this new functionality for them. We’re excited to see how real estate professionals and home buyers and home sellers utilize our new platform. Will home buyers and sellers blog? I don’t know but I can’t wait to find out…….

That being said, agents and consumers will frequent a multitude of sites for various reasons. Consumers are searching for answers to their questions or for information that can help them make better informed real estate decisions. Agents are looking for ways to showcase their expertise to a targeted audience and to hopefully make a connection with a home buyer or seller. We are passionate about facilitating this experience for them. At the end of the day, it’s these two groups of users that will determine a sites staying power….

Rudy
Social Media Guru at Trulia

But one point you made is almost correct : “additional traffic is worthless traffic”
Almost but not quite. Additional traffic that does not go to one of our realtors in one form or the other ends up in advertising which has a rate of return far lower than if we send a Reator the visit.

But one point you made is almost correct : “additional traffic is worthless traffic”
Almost but not quite. Additional traffic that does not go to one of our realtors in one form or the other ends up in advertising which has a rate of return far lower than if we send a Reator the visit.

Thanks gents — this is what makes blogging worthwhile, when one can learn something useful while debating and discussing.

Louis – specifically to you, because your detailed answer raises a very interesting question… as a non-ad site that is based on referral fees, have you guys plotted the revenue vs. total traffic numbers historically?

Meaning, for some reason, I have a bell curve in my head thinking about your business model. If you have 100% conversion, but not one visitor, your revenues are nil; on the other side of the equation, if you have hundreds of millions of visitors but zero conversion rate, then your revenues are nil.

Presumably, there’s an inflection point somewhere, some sort of a point where you see no increase in actual number of conversions (in fact, the conversion rate would decline, as additional traffic is worthless traffic) no matter how much more traffic you’d get. To an advertising-supported company, all of that is just additional inventory to sell; for a referral-based company, not necessarily so. Think of it as something like an efficient frontier.

In any event, I’ll drop you an email soon.

-rsh

Thanks gents — this is what makes blogging worthwhile, when one can learn something useful while debating and discussing.

Louis – specifically to you, because your detailed answer raises a very interesting question… as a non-ad site that is based on referral fees, have you guys plotted the revenue vs. total traffic numbers historically?

Meaning, for some reason, I have a bell curve in my head thinking about your business model. If you have 100% conversion, but not one visitor, your revenues are nil; on the other side of the equation, if you have hundreds of millions of visitors but zero conversion rate, then your revenues are nil.

Presumably, there’s an inflection point somewhere, some sort of a point where you see no increase in actual number of conversions (in fact, the conversion rate would decline, as additional traffic is worthless traffic) no matter how much more traffic you’d get. To an advertising-supported company, all of that is just additional inventory to sell; for a referral-based company, not necessarily so. Think of it as something like an efficient frontier.

In any event, I’ll drop you an email soon.

-rsh