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I have used online lead services many times. You can close several transactions, yes, but many people are unqualified, not motivated, feel no obligation to continues and it takes a lot of weeding to get to a quality client.

I agree with the author of the article.

I totally agree that spending time on my database is crucial to my success but I don’t think you’ve looked at all of the benefits of online leads. Productive Realtors wouldn’t keep paying for these leads if they didn’t work.

Linda Babin

This just my opinion from doing real estate for the past 17 years and watching how the industry has changed over time. I think that we as an industry fell asleep at the wheel when sites like Zillow came on board in 2006. They wanted to advertise our listing for us and we allowed it thinking that this was a great thing for us to get our listing in front of more people. Well now look. Now they did a better job at advertising our listings than we did and now agents that once got buyer leads from listings themselves now have to pay for them. Zillow now has instant offers that are doing the same exact thing that they did with the buyers. They are going after the sellers. If we are not careful, we will end up paying for leads for sellers too. The data right now points to the fact that we need to stay in front of our clients and nurture our referrals is something that we need to pay attention to. Don’t fall asleep at the wheel again and be complacent with just spending money on leads and forget that our sellers are coming from referrals and past clients RIGHT NOW. You are not going to beat Zillow but you can compete with Zillow at their own game and pay attention to marketing your listing organically to attract buyers. It’s more work than just paying Zillow to do it but in the long run, it’s better for the industry as a whole. We need to learn things about retargeting to people that visit our website, we need to pay attention to what buyers want and give them the information our selves, we need to learn marketing that captures buyers information through funnels in the buying process and how to automate the process of getting them to actual customers. We need to not be lazy about how we market the most valuable thing that Zillow can’t survive without. Our listings!!! New agents can borrow listings from other agents. Don’t feed the animals of Zillow or you will end up an employee of Zillow and getting paid a salary for opening doors. I am very new to Realvolve but I’m learning how to use it to automate my marketing so that once someone raises their hand, they will be in my system so that they will be getting valuable information and videos from me so that when they are ready to buy, they use me. Sorry for the long rant but it’s important.

Be prepared to pay for leads… $3,000+ per month

The cost of Zillow Premier Agent is determined by two major factors: The average home price in your chosen zip code and the number of other agents competing for space. Using Zillow Premier’s cost estimator for Michigan, for example, we found monthly ad budgets ranging from just shy of $150 to close to $1,000.

We used one of Zillow’s tools for helping agents determine where they want to advertise and how much they want to spend.