Technology can be a fantastic aide throughout your home buying or selling process when used correctly. But, if the information provided by the technology isn’t fully understood, you run the risk of making serious errors or adding unrealistic expectations to your experience. The area I see this most prevalent in deals with evaluating the worth of a home. Sites like Zillow.com and Cyberhomes are two of the more popular examples that I most often hear clients refer to. Both of these sites discuss the short-comings of their estimations - if you use either, it is in your best interest to understand they provide nothing more than a ballpark guess at what the selling price of a home should be. Zillow’s explanation can be found on their Data Coverage and Zestimate® Accuracy page. Cyberhomes explanation can be found amongst their Question and Answer section titled Are Cyberhomes valuations the same as an appraisal prepared by a licensed professional appraiser?

Three weeks ago, I defined how I plan to assess the successfulness of my website, www.SPARRproperties.com. If you didn’t get a chance to read the short article, you can find it here. Throughout this past week, I’ve made small changes to the website in an effort to increase the focus on Walnut Creek. In addition to that, I changed the layout on one of my marketing campaigns to try and increase the number of trend requests.

Without further ado, here is how the site performed over the past week:

Two weeks ago, I defined how I plan to assess the successfulness of my website, www.SPARRproperties.com. If you didn’t get a chance to read the short article, you can find it here. Throughout this past week, I’ve done very little to improve the site … I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m having great difficulty in getting Google to index the site. In addition to that, I missed the Saturday morning deadline for one of my marketing campaigns. It was not a good week!

Without further ado, here is how the site performed over the past week:

Last week, I defined how I plan to assess the successfulness of my website, www.SPARRproperties.com. If you didn’t get a chance to read the short article, you can find it here. Throughout this past week, I’ve modified the structure of the HTML and the content on the site … all in hopes of generating more SEO traffic and repeat visitors. In addition, I’ve started two separate marketing campaigns for the site that have already started to show promise!

Without further ado, here is how the site performed over the past week:

I created an Active Rain account last week and had to laugh at the email I received immediately following the first comment I left on another person’s blog entry. This reminded me of my days working at PayPal:

You’ve received a contact message from your Contact Form on the ActiveRain network.

Message details:
From: oscar_venance@myway.com
Email: oscar_venance@myway.com
Subject: oscar_venance@myway.com

oscar_venance@myway.com

A CALL FOR AN URGENT ASSISTANCE

From Oscar Venance

My dear,

I am Oscar Venance and I inherited an important sum of money from my late father who died in a recent crisis in Cote d’Ivoire. I wish to request for your assistance in investing this money in a lucrative venture under your directives and guidance in your country. I want you to assist me for the transfer of this sum of Eight million, five hundred thousand United State Dollars ($8.500,000) to your account designate hence I will give you the contact of the bank where the money is so that you can contact them immediately and discuss with them since I do not know much about financial issues. I will give you some resonable percentage from the total sum for your assistance while I pray that you do not betray me at last. Please it is important you contact me immediately for more clarifications on the next step hence it is my wish to relocate to your country as soon as this transaction is concluded.
Awaiting your immediate response.

God bless you.

Oscar Venance.

——————————————————————————–
Email sent from IP: 196.201.74.145

I shouldn’t say that I “laughed” at this because it really isn’t a laughing matter. The sad thing is that there are people out there who still fall for this type of scam. Hopefully the Active Rain community is onto Oscar’s little ploy…