An agent has resigned from the Digital Property Group’s website after being told that his subscription would rise 700%.
Graham Tickner, who runs Rand Lettings in Carshalton, Surrey, has cancelled his monthly payment in protest and asked for his properties to be removed from the Digital websites immediately.
He had been paying £49.50 but was told the account was out of date. He admits it was a good rate, but he was baffled by the rise demanded, to £399 a month.
He said he was called by Digital and told of the new rate card. Because of the huge increase, it would be phased in at £119.40, rising to £399 a month – a 700% increase.
Tickner, who runs his lettings business within a Bairstow Eves office which settles its accounts centrally, said: “We are a very small letting agency and only have 10 to 15 properties on the web at any time. I am astounded that DPG can suggest an increase of this level. Rightmove charge us £175 plus VAT which is high enough, but £399 is just ridiculous.”
Jon Notley, Digital sales director, said: “The Digital Property Group rate card was created to provide a fair and transparent reflection of the value we deliver; it takes into account the agent’s location as well as the number of properties listed and their average cost.
“By advertising on each of the DPG portals, agents benefit from inquiries across all levels of home-buyer and renter as well as profit from the positive brand association with our portals – especially important when attracting new instructions. Our subscribers also benefit from innovations such as Insight and the FindaProperty iPhone search app.
“We cannot comment on specific cases but I would be very happy to speak to any customers on an individual basis and demonstrate our value to their business.”
Digital, whose websites include FindaProperty and Primelocation, recently acquired a 50% stake in the free Globrix. Last week, using figures from ComScore, it claimed that combined traffic to its websites is now close to that of Rightmove.
However, ComScore is currently running two different ways of measuring traffic and does not allow its clients to compare its latest monitoring figures with those of its older method.
Rightmove has not yet agreed to the new method but Digital has. When Rightmove signs up to the new measuring system, it is likely that the gap will widen, since every website that has gone on to the new tracking system has recorded higher traffic.
Comments
When you are looking at leads from the portals are you looking at emails and phone leads? I guess one lead that converts is worth the £600 or so. In any conversation with a media owner be it newspaper or portal if you know exactly how many leads you get then you are in the position of power to negotiate. I've even done lead-only advertising deals with newspapers because let's face it, local newspapers would almost go out of business without agents advertising! But if anyone is struggling measuring phone leads I am happy to provide a trackable 0844 phone number to a few agents so you can measure leads by phone. No charge, (don't want to be accused of spamming on here.)
Trevor, Property Insider, is correct and knows this stuff. I use my own site the as property insider suggests and now exactly what works and what doesn't.
Biffa, the key to a business partnership is that both parites are on the same page. TDPG value the service that they provide to you at £629. If you don't value the service at that amount, then you've done the right thing. It's not the total cost that is the issue here, forget that. What will I gain from investing £629 per month in TDPG? Thats the question that should be the deciding factor. Yes, I see fully how you may feel its cheeky, but the service and unique visitors to TDPG have both improved even further. However, agents fees, mark up from HIPs and pressure cross selling at every opportunity are also extremely "cheeky" actions from many EAs in today's market. If Jo Public evaluated these, they may not feel that the services are worth the charge they are expected to pay.
So if it means that it will be so great, we don't need to upload to RM anymore, we are all going to go 'tits up' because who needs an agent when you have google and you can sell yourself.
There's no need to doubt , categorically Google will be accepting private vendors listings
People who think google will deliver loads of results are crazy, the property listings will be drenched in adverts and it will use those crappy maps that take about 20 clicks to view a property. To suggest that they will deliver leads and you will be able to stop listing on the major portals is dreaming, google will not charge because they know its all about advertising revenue, not everything google does it great. How will the emails be screened? You will receive a load of old c*ap about viagra and the royal kingdom of Nigeria wanting to pay a check to buy now, or maybe google will employ some poor lass to verify the 2 million leads a day. Rightmove as far as im concerned do wonders for my business and i will not be leaving them!
Thank you gentlemen for your advice beneath. Simon Thornton's boobs I can handle, but Agency Insider's are a bit beyond my grasp. Either way are you saying I'm about to go bust? Big T
Trevor - I think what he is saying is add the word "boobs" to your site and the hits will go crazy.
Trevor, depending on how your 'hit counter' is configured, it is probably measuring page loads - ie the number of different pages a visitor looks at each time they are on your site. If this is the case, each visitor will be counted multiple times - so your actual number of visitors will be a lot less than you think. Also, a Google search for 'homes for sale Gerrards Cross' doesn't have you on the first 5 pages. This is probably because your site is not built with search engines in mind - most of the content on the home page are graphics not text so Google sees none of it (neither do visually impaired users by the way). Your site also has no 'meta data' so Google cannot fall back on this to establish what your site is about. I only point this out because it's all very well taking a 'stuff the portals' approach but only if your own site meets the minimum standard for being 'found' which at the moment yours does not. The Google result listing for your site has the description 'Site Meter' - this can easily be changed by adding a 'description' meta tag. Hope you don't mind me pointing this out - replacing some of the images with text and adding a meaningful description should bring you more visitors. You may also want to have someone install Google Analytics which is free and will give you accurate information on your users. Cheers.
Boyd is right as an agent I have to decide where I can best spend my marketing budget.I have recently invested in a portal with lots of other agents in the South West.We are building our own portal, which I joined in November when it launched, when I looked this morning we now have over 350 of us on the site already. My issue with your comment Boyd is, if I only support the sites that are giving me leads I would end up coming off all of them except RM (as I don't really get anything from others). If I and all other agents did come off all other portals RM will have it all their own way and then how much will they start charging us. We should all be very aware of the future and the fact that the internet is the future for property search.That is why I have joined Radarhomes.co.uk our own agent owned website. We need to build for the future! Say what you like but if you don't fear RM (however good it is) you are naive and foolish.
As for Google great, but if it works in the same way as the one in Australia people will still want to search for property in one place, not having to go in and out of different agents websites, think about it, they can already do that now.My worry with Google is the potential for private sales!
Further to Trevor Kents comment, we have a number of clients who are now only on free portals (PropertyLive, Globrix and will be on the new Google Property search as soon as it goes live). As 2 of these three send traffic straight to your own website, there is a continuing gradual decrease in the need to be on paid portals. Having said that, all of our most successful clients (by market share and average fee) tend to be advertising on all the portals. It is part of their marketing pitch that they list their properties "everywhere", the added cost of which is offset by their higher average fees gained. As an impartial party as far as portals are concerned, there does seem to be a trend that small agents trying to make a living seem to focus more on keeping costs down that increasing fees, whereas the ambitious (but still independent) agents who want to be market leaders in their field, find the paid portals an essential and valuable part of their strategy. The new Google property search is definitely great for agents, but is not going to spell the end of the paid portals, at least not yet.
As I'm sure some readers will remember I'm not on any paid-for portals any more. I have a hit counter on my own site and last week for instance I was averaging 828 a day (I only have one branch). I have no means of telling whether this is good or bad; has anyone figures they would be prepared to release either publically on here or privately to trevor@agentsnotonrightmove.com so I can go compare (simples)? Cheers, Big T
Not really news - clearly anyone on "historic" or "introductory" fees are going to see what, prima facie, appears to be an enormous hike when their renewal comes up.
My view is that agents should analyse the cost vs benefits of any and all of their marketing spend and take decisions accordingly. TDPG prices may actually represent excellent value.
My site hits have more than doubled just by adding one key word.
It's good making decisions on marketing, as long as they are right. I've worked with an agent on comparing all portals and measuring telephone leads and their content, the agent has dropped one portal based on the fact it's not delivering, (and reinvested the money elsewhere). You've got to know what the portals are delivering in volume/quality to be able to make a judgement. The smaller you are the easier it is to do this by instinct. But if you are using more than one or two ways of marketing, start measuring it closely because when someone puts your prices up, or you want to stop marketing you'll know where to do it. It's a great feeling to tell an advertising rep you know exactly where his portal stands in comparison to others (because they cannot tell you these facts on leads).PS, 8% of calls to agents are missed!
Typo - Google
The sooner google starts it's property search page and we all stop paying these portals, who bite the hand that feeds them, the better. If we're all on ggole, who needs rightmove, DPG etc?