Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog » Blogging

Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog gets a new home

Steve Belt — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 01:45:03 +0000

I have a few colleagues that know that this little real estate blog is actually hosted on a server within the confines of my own office. Having a blog on your own server is called “self hosted”, which for a real estate blog is actually quite rare (I might be slightly insane). I built and maintain the server for better and sometimes for worse. The better part is that I have complete and total control (I have issues with the word “no”). There isn’t anything that I can’t decide I want to put on the server, or allow the server to do. The worse part is that if there is ever a problem, the problem is always my fault or mine to fix. The buck starts and stops right here.

Last Thursday morning, at about 5am, APS decided to take the power down for my office building. We were told this would happen Tuesday night, but apparently I didn’t get the memo with the revised date. Of course, the server has a UPS (uninterrupted power supply), but it will only run so long, and unfortunately it wasn’t quite long enough for all of the servers and network equipment I have running in the office. As a result, the blog was offline for a couple of hours early Thursday morning.

Since there was some down time, I decided Thursday morning was as good a time as any to move the server to a better location. It had been housed in the server room at my office off Loop 101 & Bell Road in North Scottsdale. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that spot, but we only have a T1 network connection there, and at peak times, with the 20+ computer users surfing the web simultaneously, the server sometimes delivered pages a little slower than I would have liked.

My wife, Dr. Jan Belt, actually owns and runs Oxford Learning with locations in Scottsdale and Fountain Hills. The Fountain Hills location has a faster internet connection than my office, with the additional advantage that it has fewer computers there. Thus, overall, that location is vastly superior to this one in terms of available network bandwidth. Accordingly, it’s been a low priority, “wish list” task to move the blog server there one day. Given the unexpected down time, Thursday turned out to be that day.

Here’s the server in it’s new location:

As you can see, wire management isn’t one of my strengths. If you are curious, at this location, we also have a Windows Small Business 2003 server (the black box under the keyboard), which is the firewall to the center, handles email, security, and file storage/backup.

The Linux server (where this blog resides) is in that silver case in the foreground. For those super geeky among you, it’s a Xenon powered, fully redundant, rack mountable server, with 3 power supplies, hot swapping raid drives, and all the other cool things your mother warned you to stay away from. (You can look, just don’t touch.)

You’ll note this server room also houses various paints, copy paper, and tons of other things typically found in a storage closet.

With any luck, the server will be happy for a long time in its new home. FYI, my UPS at this location told me there was a short (5 second) outage Friday night. It also told me there had been 8 similar outages over the last 6 months. A UPS can handle 5-10 seconds just fine. Or even 15 minutes. It’s those 2+ hour power outages that are a killer…

Real Estate BarCamp Phoenix 2009: You don’t want to miss it

Steve Belt — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:07:30 +0000

Every once in a while, you get involved in something that is bigger than any one person, or even any one team of people, and just being a part of it, being able to say, “I was there when …”, is worth 100x the cost of admission. For example, I was at Game 7 of the world series when the Diamondbacks defeated the New York Yankees in 2001. It’s still cool to think about it.

I have a feeling, that this is what RE BarCamp Phoenix 2009 is going to be like. Ok, perhaps not quite as cool as the 2001 World Series, but pretty cool. If you aren’t there, and are remotely interested in social media as it relates to real estate, I think you’ll wish you were. Already, in just the first 24 hours, with only a few notices on Twitter and Facebook, we have over 50 confirmed attendees, with another 35+ that are on the fence. We know the venue (Scottsdale Stadium) can easily accommodate 250 attendees. We may be able to handle 400 people. We aren’t sure about more. Will you be in attendance? Will you be able to say, “I was there when…”

What is Real Estate BarCamp Phoenix?

Wait, you don’t know what Real Estate BarCamp Phoenix is? It’s a conference, except that it’s not a conference. Attendance will be free. The agenda will be fluid. Most of the presentations will be scheduled that morning (we will invite speakers to create a blog post describing their proposed topic, prior to the event). The information sharing will be phenomenal. The topics will primarily center around the use of social media as it relates to the real estate industry, but social media junkies will find plenty of value as they relate it to their industry.

This past year, Virginia, Seattle and New York have had BarCamps. They were each very successful. Like Phoenix, Portland and Los Angeles have BarCamps scheduled in April. Word is spreading that these un-conferences are cool, and packed with more information than your typical real estate conference, but with a side benefit that it’s free to attend. Let me repeat that last part in case you missed it the last 2 times: It’s free to attend.

What types of topics might you hear talked about at this conference? Things like:

Using Twitter as a vehicle to promote your business successfully
Using Facebook to do the same
Using Linked In
Advertising on Facebook
Effective advertising via Google Adwords
Blogging 101: Introduction to blogging
Blogging 201: You have a blog, what are tips and tricks to successful blogging?
Blogging 401: SEO concepts & link building?
Podcasting and video blogging
Social media etiquette: Business versus personal voice
How-To: Integrating plug-ins & IDX feeds into your blog
Marketing with Statistics
Is print media dead?

If you think you might attend, please visit the Facebook event page and RSVP as a maybe. If you will definitely attend, please say YES on Facebook (which lets everyone know you are attending), and also RSVP at the RE BarCamp web site. RSVP at the web site will reserve a shirt for you, and it will be the official count. If we have to close registration, due to capacity, we’ll use the RE BarCamp web site to determine who is in or out.

Combating spam: comments closed on older posts

Steve Belt — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 16:30:49 +0000

Two weeks ago I made a difficult decision to turn off comments on older posts in an attempt to thwart the amount of comment spam I’m receiving. What is comment spam? It’s a comment left on my blog, with the sole purpose that the commenter gets a link back to their site, often with keywords about their product in the link. Nearly every time these are links back to porn, pills, and/or other inhospitable sites. My blog is not a vehicle to advertise these sites, and it’s a gross abuse of the comment system that these businesses attempt to use my blog to gain such an advantage.

Fortunately very few of these comments ever see the live blog, but rather get wrapped up in the spam filters. I prefer that leaving a comment is absolutely as easy to do as I can make it, but at the same time, abusing this system simply cannot be tolerated.

Two weeks ago, my spam totals were getting out of hand. To handle the volume, it was becoming nearly a daily task to sift through the spam to determine if there was anything of worth that was inadvertently marked as spam, lest the task be something large enough I had to find an open slot in my calendar to schedule it.

Accordingly, I painstakingly went to every post that had been written longer than 3 months ago and marked the post as comment/pingback closed. Thus, for these older posts, it is now impossible for anyone to leave a comment. I regret doing this, but the past two weeks data cannot be ignored. Comment spam is down 75%. And honestly, very, very few legitimate comments are left on posts over 3 months old. Sure, they have happened, but it has been exceedingly rare.

I apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you in the future, but I hope you understand. And as always, I encourage everyone that is reading the blog to comment on anything we’ve shared here. Agree or not, your thoughts are always welcome. FYI, I do have a comment policy, in case you are wondering how I determine what is or is not spam.

I’m a LOSER – just not the biggest loser

Steve Belt — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:11:28 +0000

On December 6, 2008, Phoenix real estate blogger extraordinaire Jay Thompson threw down the gauntlet and announced an RE Biggest Loser contest. Members of the RE.NET (as well as anyone else that wished to join the fray), each agreed to put $50 on the line for the charity of the biggest loser’s naming to see who could lose the most weight in a 7 week period.

The goal was simple. Lose more weight than anyone else, as a percentage of your starting weight, and earn the title BIGGEST LOSER. That loser would get to name a charity and each of the other participants would donate $50 to that charity. With over 50 people joining in, some lucky charity was set to get $2500.

I put together a simple wiki for people to track their progress, create a diary, and even do a little smack talk. The wiki was for however folks wanted to use it. Almost no one had been involved in creating the content for a wiki, but in my estimation, the group embraced it fabulously.

So how did I do?

On December 6, I weighed in at 215 lbs. By the end of December I was down to 210, with Christmas and the holidays making it difficult to keep on track, but still not a bad result. Yesterday, I weighed in at 202.5:

How did I lose 12.5 lbs? Most importantly I cut out all soda and all Starbucks (aside from maybe a half dozen trips to get a drip coffee). And eating french fries was extremely rare. Salad for lunch was commonplace. Being a little hungry: also rather common. Not super hungry, but a little hungry. And of course, I drank a lot of water.

On top of eating better, I exercised about the same as usual, which meant karate twice a week and riding my bike twice a week. I was hoping to exercise a bit more, but the bustle of the season didn’t allow me to get in the extra days I originally targeted it.

My final result: 5.81% weight loss. A couple of the bigger losers lost nearly 10%, so I wasn’t the biggest loser, but my result honestly shocked me, because I thought I was rather fit already. In fact, the pounds came off so fast and easily, I had to revise me original target weight of 209 in early January down to 205. And then yesterday I did a little dehydration ride, and blew past 205 to 202.5. From a practical standpoint, I’m now 205, right where I wanted to be.

Best of all–for me–I think I lost the weight the right way, in a manner that I can keep it off, and better yet, continue to lose more weight. I expect to be under 200 by the end of February, and then my goal is to stay below 200 for the rest of the year. As the year goes along, I’ll keep looking at it. Could I get down to 190? Or 180? Maybe cutting out soda and Starbucks will reveal a completely lost and forgotten Steve…like that one that was around in his 20′s!

To all of my fellow LOSERS, congratulations in achieving a wonderful thing for yourself. And to Jay, even though you’ve credited me a bit with getting this started, I want to thank you for giving shape to the idea and encouraging us all to set and achieve a truly meaning life goal. I’m just getting started on my new path.

2009: Looking ahead

Steve Belt — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:10:09 +0000

I don’t recall having ever written New Year’s resolutions. In fact, something about needing a New Year to begin changing your life has never made sense to me. If it needs changing, I’m not inclined to wait until January 1 to do it. And if it’s a nice-to-have kind of thing, then declaring to the world I will stop or start doing something also seems a little high and mighty. Plus, in all likelihood a you’d probably stop or start for a month or two, and that will be that, until perhaps trying again the next year.

Ok, now that I’ve completely killed the notion of why I should ever want to do New Year’s resolutions, there are things currently in the works that I’m either doing now, or want to do soon, and thus I’m throwing them out there as declarations of “permanent” changes I’m making:

As of December 6, 2008 I’ve drank my last soda. Well, I should say, probably. I haven’t had one since December 5, and don’t plan to have one today or tomorrow. It’s not hurting me, and I feel good. So barring the occasional gin and tonic (particularly when traveling Las Vegas), I’m going soda free. Orange juice and grapefruit juice are my daily substitute.
During 2009 I will step on a scale and see the number 1 as the first digit. That hasn’t happened in well over a decade, but I think I can do it. As well, during 2009, I will endeavor never to be over 210 lbs again (barring injury). As a sideways comment on this, I don’t know how low a healthier diet can take me, so if I get down to 190 or something (seemingly unheard of) like that, I’ll revise this number lower.
In 2009 I will write at least 150 blog posts for this blog. Add to that 50 or so posts at My Side Door and 50 more at TeamBelt, not to mention AZ Real Estate Blogging Network, and that adds up to a post five days a week. Lately I’ve been averaging around 2 posts per week, which isn’t quite enough. If I can’t do this, I’m hopeful it means that working with buyers and sellers is getting in the way of marketing. We can all dream, can’t we?!
In 2009 I will launch RealPhoenix.TV (this link isn’t really live right now). I don’t know anything about having a video blog, but I’m going to learn. Hopefully, I’ll find a few cool people to lean on, that will help me.
In 2009 I will make a blogging wager and win. I’m zero for my lifetime in blogging wagers, and if it takes betting on the outcome of the pro bowl, I’ll do it.
In 2009 I don’t want to evict another tenant. Of course, if I have to, I will. I just don’t want to do it again. In 2008, I evicted the first two tenants of my career, a trend I would greatly like to end.

Here’s a few things I might do:

In 2009, I might hire a licensed assistant. I already employ a full time office manager, Shannon, but she’s not licensed. Shannon does all of the back end stuff that makes it possible for me to be a full time property manager, and not completely lose my mind. Plus she does the majority of the things a virtual assistant would do. I prefer her to be in the office, so she can answer the phone and greet people that walk in when I’m not here, which means if I want to grow my business much further, I’ll be looking to bring in a new member to Team Belt.
Already, it looks like I’ll sell more homes in 2009 than I did in 2008. I’m once again working with motivated buyers for the first time in seemingly ages. This may be an indicator that the housing market is turning around in Phoenix. Or it’s just I’ve found the few motivated buyers that exist. It’s too soon to tell.
In 2009 I will permanently put an end to spam email. How you may ask? I really don’t know (yet). But I’m working on it.
Plus, as a bonus, I’m going to personally be responsible for gas going below $1/gallon. Again…you’ll just have to trust me on this one.

Photo credit: ME°°

Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog is upgraded behind the scenes

Steve Belt — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 03:52:44 +0000

I spent much of today (when I wasn’t managing two short sales that are in the process of being approved by their respective banks, showing a rental property, on a listing presentation, and/or meeting with a landlord that is moving to Dubai on Saturday), working under the covers of the blog. The incomparable Chris Pearson developed the theme Thesis, which this blog has been using since the release of version 1.1 in August. Chris has steadily improved the theme with the releases of versions 1.2, 1.3, and most recently 1.3.1. I haven’t kept up with the theme releases, because quite frankly, when nothing’s broken, I believe you don’t fix it.

Today, for some reason, I thought it would be a good idea to quickly throw Thesis 1.3.1 at the blog. I didn’t have a compelling reason to do so, but rather, it simply seemed like I was falling too far behind. So I did, and completely broke the blog. And not just a little…it was completely down and out. If you attempted to read the blog during parts of today, there’s a good chance you saw nothing. Or an error. Or partial content. If there was a menu bar, and you tried to navigate around, that probably didn’t yield any success either.

The problem stemmed from how I customized the theme under version 1.1. In that version, I had made a number of significant changes to the core theme files. And then Chris decided that changing the core theme files was a bad thing, so in 1.2, Chris implemented a way to separate customizations out of the theme files, so that anyone can easily upgrade the theme in the future, without breaking the customizations. Great stuff by Chris, but dang, did that mean I had to relearn, rethink, and redo every customization I had incorporated to the blog. It’s the little things, like the header image, the location of the menu bar, the search area, the avatar-style byline, the footer notes, the related posts, the MLS search page, etc. Minor things like that, which help make this blog feel like home to me.

Fortunately, I possess a few technical skills along with the guidance in the Thesis support forums that led me piece to the correct way to customize Thesis in version 1.3.1. That said, if you now notice anything that is odd, or looks broken, or lost, please, please, please, leave a comment, so I can set it right. This was honestly far more difficult an upgrade than I had budgeted for, and something in hindsight I wish I had done in my sandbox, rather than on the live blog. I mean, that’s why I have a sandbox after all, right?

Along the way, I also took the time (maybe 30 seconds) to upgrade WordPress to version 2.6.3. Long ago, I started using the Subversion checkout process for all of my blogs, and if that process is available to any of my fellow WordPress blog owners, let me say it is by far the easiest way to upgrade your blog. It’s not push button easy like upgrading plug-ins is today, but it’s the next closest thing.

Photo Credit: Paul Worthington on Flickr

Worst Real Estate Photo Contest: And the winner is

Steve Belt — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 18:45:40 +0000

The rules originally called for a 1 week voting process, but given the number of entrants (1), taking a week to vote seems a little pointless. And thus, without further ado, I declare that Leif Swanson has found the Worst Real Estate Photo, with his post, Don’t Be Gun Shy.

Clearly, running this type of contest during the current financial crisis and bailout wasn’t a very good idea…I just wish someone had told me about the crisis before I planned the contest.

Worst Real Estate Photo FAQ and Contestants Page

Steve Belt — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 19:08:28 +0000

Questions have started to come in regarding the contest, so I’ve created a simple contest FAQ page. On this page, for every question I get asked via the contact form, comments, twitter, or a direct email, I’ll post them there, along with answers.

As well, the same page will contain a list of all of the entrants, with your name, the name of your blog, and a direct link to your entry. Again, good luck.

Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog Gets a Makeover

Steve Belt — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:09:38 +0000

When I created the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog, I did a little bit of research regarding themes, but honestly, not that much. I happened upon Cutline, originally developed by Chris Pearson, fairly quickly, and determined it was more than “good enough for now”. It was a nice clean theme, and although I ended up customizing it significantly from the original, the bones of the theme were always visible.

Since the approach of the blog’s blogoversary, I’ve been on the lookout for a change. Not just for change’s sake, but to enable me to add the comment form that now appears in the sidebar. Cutline, with its two narrow sidebar columns just couldn’t accommodate the needs of that form. And then I saw what I was looking for…Thesis. Coincidentally, Thesis is also by Chris Pearson.

And then I saw what I was looking for…Thesis.

Chris recently released version 1.1, had special pricing through the end of August, along with the holiday weekend, provided everything I needed for me to pull the trigger and make the change.

FYI, this is the first time I’ve forced myself to fully widgetize my sidebar. Before, my sidebars were written into the Theme’s code, which worked just fine, but never allowed me to load up and look at other themes I might be considering. You need to be a bit of a WordPress geek to know what that means, so don’t worry if that made no sense to you…

So here it is. If you are reading this from your feed reader, please click on through and let me know what you think. Good or bad, I’d like to hear it. I’ve got some additional minor tweaking planned, but I need access to Photoshop, which is on my office computer, so that will have to wait a few days.

Happy Birthday Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog

Steve Belt — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 06:41:43 +0000

It has been exactly one year since the first post here at the Phoenix Area Real Estate Blog. To be honest, it feels like much longer than just 1 year. This blog started on somewhat of a whim. I was a bit bored, to be honest, as my normal marketing approach was to send printed newsletters out, which at one time resulted in approximately one new listing per month. That’s what had always worked in the past, but suddenly I had gone 6 months with 18,000 newsletters sent, and the phone had hardly rung, much less had I managed to secure a listing.

At the same time, my very lame “business card” web site (now defunct) had yet to result any type of measurable business, although there were occasional visits from readers of the newsletter. An article in REALTOR magazine regarding blogging intrigued me, and I thought, “what an interesting way to help boost my lame web site”. (Although at the time, I had yet to realize it was so lame). I didn’t actually know anything about blogging, but I had my own server, an internet connection, and figured, “your smart, you’ll figure it out quick enough”.

As has been the case throughout much of my life, I made good decisions when presented with choices, based on very little experience, knowledge, or even research. I call it intuition, combined with luck. I was lucky that I chose to use WordPress (the only blogging platform offered by Debian Linux). I was lucky that I chose Chris Pearson’s Cutline 3 theme (which was the first and currently only theme I’ve used, although I’m considering changing it to Chris Pearson’s Thesis). I was lucky that I linked out to other bloggers on my 2nd post, when I had no earthly idea that this could cause them to notice me (which they did), and offer to take me under their wings (for which I’m ever thankful). I was lucky to avoid egregious blunders, like finding the ire of those whom shall be left nameless, while befriending those who deserve far more than my thanks. And I was lucky that while I still don’t consider myself a writer, that I write well enough that a few people read this.

And so it is that the first year has passed. During that time, I managed to write 226 posts. Those posts attracted enough attention to garner 507 comments, for which I further thank each and every person that took the time to comment. These days the blog is averaging just over 100 visitors a day, which boggles my mind, quite frankly. As a real estate agent, if you were to consider talking to 100 people a day, as a prospecting activity, you just couldn’t do it. Yet this blog manages to do just that.

Over this last year, the #1 most read post isn’t a post at all, by a page on my property management services. It recently passed up the 4th of July post, which managed 1506 viewers in 3 days time. Short sale posts are also quite popular, as is this post about Dan Majerle’s new restaurant at Chandler Fashion Center. I now know it’s writing about Dan Majerle that keeps folks coming back for more. I really should do it more often.

By far, more people visited the blog as a result of Twitter than any other referral source. Although Trulia Voices and StumbleUpon certainly should be thanked as well.

I can’t ignore Google, as I consider whom to thank, so what do you figure the #1 search term used to find the blog was? Why Saguaro of course. That’s followed up by Dan Majerle, TPC Champions Course, and Smartphones. Variations of Phoenix Real Estate actually rank about the same as Saguaro…but that’s not as fun to mention.

In summary and in conclusion (to steal a line from Saturday Night Live), I’m not much into prognosticating for the next year, but here goes: I’ll try to write more often. I’ll try to link out more. I’ll always try to be relevant. Happy Birthday!