Rather than give you a top 10 reasons for this or that, I’m going to give Brian at Zolve.com the Top 5 Things to adjust on Zolve.com to get real professional interest in his network.
Last night I wrote a flippant review of Zolve.com and honestly, I had to take it down. Everything inside of me wanted to yell at the screen when I saw the price and I saw what you could (and even worse, what you could not) do with Zolve.com. I read the back story on Brian, how he is a successful real estate Broker just back from Iraq. I also read how the site was built while he was in Iraq, and he’s home in time to launch it- thank God for that.
I’ve opted to write something positive because this is someone in real estate (just one of us so-called “stupid Realtors”) who had the balls to actually DO something for the profession- and with some tweaking, he is in a position to steal the show. The question is, will he do it? Time will tell. I ask everyone who would dare complain about the site to take a deep breath and dive into their own blogs and comments where they challenged other industry leaders to lead- Brian should be celebrated, not beaten up- although I find no way to really disagree with many complaints of the site.
I promised Brian 30 days to knock out the wrinkles in Zolve.com’s threading and hope you will too. So without further ado here are my Top 5 Constructive Suggestions to Zolve.com
- Reduce the price to $99 first year, $ 249 the second year (if you really must charge at all) and remove the money back guarantee completely.
- Remove the beautiful lady on the front page, making her an option to the visitor.
- Remove subjective ratings completely- a referral is a referral, the rating isn’t necessary.
Now, those were just the Top 3 ‘duh’ suggestions, here’s the money shot:
- Leave blogging as an option- but build community wikis – sell area codes if you want, or hey- do it Zillow style for free. You have 100s of writers on Zillow communities answering questions to draw Zillow business simply because Realtors really have no where else to participate (besides Trulia). Give Realtors credit for participation if you wish- let their participation be their ranking so long as they’re participating in only their pre-chosen zip codes.
- Discussion Forums for Real Estate & Lending. Why leave this to outsiders?
*BONUS* Charge Realtors for advertising space & leave the profiles and direct referrals to the Lenders; these are the big corporate budgets you seek.
I give Brian Wilson the credit he deserves for taking a shot at the influx of venture capital companies invading real estate. As I said, he had the cajones to stand up and be counted. We as a profession should get behind ideas and make them Great Ideas.
Lani Anglin
October 11, 2007 at 1:18 am
I really appreciate that you keep true to form by adding valuable suggestions instead of ranting- I’m sure Brian appreciates it too. 🙂
Benn Rosales
October 11, 2007 at 1:22 am
Brian seems dug in over at zolve, you have to log in to comment or trackback on the new blog. If his blog is true and correct, he has approx. 2200 users already which would give him nearly $900k reasons to simply ignore any feedback. so we’ll see…
Jonathan Dalton
October 11, 2007 at 4:11 pm
If it’s free, it’s for me. Outside of that, I don’t see a value proposition worth the cash.
I don’t need to be on Zolve to get referrals. I’m even getting referrals from cross-town agents just by virtue of the blogging.
Take away the fee and I’d consider it.
parul
October 16, 2007 at 7:28 am
Honestly after spending much time on the site over the last few weeks, I have eventually noticed so many distinct features that I am sure not many real estate websites offer these days.
This is to a lot of people who think Zolve is yet another real estate websites, I would want to clarify here that Brain had made just the appropriate approach to the industry.
For more read my blog on
Parul Bindra
Brand Manager
Vinfotech
Joshua Dorkin
August 21, 2012 at 12:36 pm
Looks like this one is no longer around…