Demystifying real estate blog readership
The readership of real estate blogs is mysterious. Last month, I noticed how the fine mortgage blog Blown Mortgage became the recipient of a huge traffic jump that corresponded with the credit crisis. Readers discovered Blown Mortgage and other mortgage related blogs in their search for content to explain the sequence of crises.
What's the secret sauce to building traffic to a blog? In general, top blogs chronicle their industries, whether it's tech, politics or news, on a "breaking news" basis, just like a newspaper or a social news service like Digg or Reddit.
- Engadget Technology
-
Boing Boing
Technology
-
Gizmodo, the Gadget Guide
Technology
-
Techcrunch
Technology
-
Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post
Political
The top ten real estate blogs according to Blogflux (aka Blogtopsites) all post consistently throughout the day... I also monitor them for timely news stories.
- Home Inspiration, Furniture, Products, Gadgets and More for a Better House - Consumer
- Housing Panic - Bubble
- Housingdoom - Bubble
- Dr. Housing Bubble - Bubble
- Lansner on Real Estate - Newspaper columnist
- Irvine Housing Blog - Bubble
- Gardening Tips 'n' Ideas - Consumer
- Real Estate Investing - Bigger Pockets - Investing
- Inman News Blog - General
- The Real Estate Bloggers - General
There aren't hard statistics to back up who the real estate blog readers are, so I'll just conjecture - different perspectives welcome! Traffic into real estate blogs seems to come from four major sources:
Housing "pessimists"
Housing
bubble blogs rank high in traffic because they are emotionally
compelling as they update their readers on the biggest economic story
of the year - the flailing housing market.
If you peruse the comments of bubble blogs like Patrick.net, the readers seem different than those of an agent authored blog. They don't sign off with a web or blog site address and hide anonymously behind pseudonyms, so it's assumed they are the general public - an amorphous mass of readers that we don't know much about. And like the general public, they tend to share a negative view of real estate agents... that's the reason why the bubble blog readers and the readers of agent-authored blogs seem completely separate.
If you peruse the comments of bubble blogs like Patrick.net, the readers seem different than those of an agent authored blog. They don't sign off with a web or blog site address and hide anonymously behind pseudonyms, so it's assumed they are the general public - an amorphous mass of readers that we don't know much about. And like the general public, they tend to share a negative view of real estate agents... that's the reason why the bubble blog readers and the readers of agent-authored blogs seem completely separate.
Bloggers
Bloggers
themselves read each other, mostly to monitor the blogosphere and to
search for new ideas and insights for their blogs. The popularity of Active Rain is proof that bloggers find this club-like community emotionally and intellectually satisfying.
Real estate professionals (non-bloggers)
I've
asked groups of agents in workshops whether they read blogs... half now
say they do, but very few can actually name a real estate blog.
Nevertheless, I do receive many blog comments from real estate pros and
must assume that they start reading blogs out of curiosity but later
value the fresh and useful topical content.
Potential clients
Home
buyers and sellers have to be out there. No study has demonstrated how
many actual live clients are out there looking at the real estate
blogs... I'd like to see a study on this.
Referral traffic
How do the readers get to your blog? Many come through various feedreaders - Google, Bloglines, MyYahoo, etc. - and between 35-45% of traffic on Transparent is referred by Google and the search engines. Here's a quick and dirty Venn diagram that attempts to chart blog traffic... note that I think there's very little intersection among the four reader groups.
related articles:
Real estate blogosphere reaching a ceiling
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate blogs, housing bubble, active rain
Thanks for your timely thoughts. I have been blogging for awhile now but am just getting focused on readership. I tend to agree with your breakdown of reader types. As bad as the real estate market has been, homes in our area are selling and it is still a good time to buy. I hope the housing pessimists can find the whole truth online and avoid some of the constant media gloom and doom spin!
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Por lo general, usted tiene que demostrar que la discapacidad continuará durante 3 años con el fin de utilizar los ingresos que le ayudará a calificar para la hipoteca.
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