Making Money Advertising

Most residential real estate agents don’t feel at home with the money-making potential of social media.

Only 26 percent of agents rank social media as an important source of business, according to a survey by Movoto.com. However, many agents are heavy users of social media. More than 90 percent of them reported having LinkedIn profiles, 45 percent said they’ve got Facebook pages and Twitter accounts, and 52 percent reported having Google+ accounts.

Of agents with Facebook pages, 69 percent had updated them within the past month, while 52 percent of Twitter users had tweeted in the past month.

“Even though agents are investing in social media,” Movoto.com said, “Facebook and other social sites are still not a major source of business for most agents.”

According to the survey, 81 percent of agents value web leads and 59 percent value online advertising for reaching home buyers and sellers. Ninety-seven percent of agents said they count on previous clients for customer referrals, and 68 percent said they value yard signs.

“Internet technologies are critical for agents,” Movoto.com said, “but old-school techniques of leveraging personal relationships and yard signs are probably still the most important business generation tools for real estate agents.”

Other findings of the survey include:

• 89 percent of real estate agents use smartphones, with iPhone and Android devices well ahead of other brands.

• 80 percent of agents have personal websites.

• 27 percent of agents maintain blogs.

Movoto.com connects home buyers and sellers with real estate agents and listings. For the survey, Movoto.com questioned the agents in its network.

When NewsCred relaunched in January, TechCrunch called it ”The Ning for Newspapers” as it allowed users to create a combination news aggregation and opinion site, like your very own The Huffington Post. NewsCred has had several pivots in its three years of existence, but now it’s solely focused on B2B licensing deals and tirelessly helping to connect the dots between brands and online publishers.

“We’ve completley pivoted the company around. Now, we’re launching our next generation newswire. We’re helping publishers and brands get access to amazing content. Right now, their only option is going to AP or Reuters. We want our service to disrupt the industry,” says NewsCred’s Founder and CEO Shafqat Islam.

Let’s say Coca-Cola wants to run a series about music. Through NewsCred, Coca-Cola would have access to sources like Billboard.com, MTV News, The L.A. Times and Chicago Tribune as well as smaller music blogs. Revenue from the Coca-Cola deal is then split amongst the news sources in that package. Content producers don’t have to pay for anything; they simply receive a check at the end of the month. Islam says providers are making 6 figures a year off of NewsCred’s service and the company is on track to pay a few million dollars in syndication fees in 2012. “Content creators produce amazing journalism and they’re looking for non-display revenue. It’s a nice source of additional, incremental revenue,” he says.

Through NewsCred, the publisher or the blog also gains exposure, distribution and the company gets paid. Another New York City based startup named Contently is solving similar problems by helping brands outsource high-quality content from individual writers. Contently wants to put an end to content farms like Demand Media. Check out our launch story on the company here.

For brands and publishers, NewsCred charges a monthly API licensing fee for access to its content. The fee is based on the volume of news stories as well as the sources licensed. Content is customized, tailored and monetized through new advertising opportunities making it sound like a win-win. For larger publishers with a high volume of pageviews, NewsCred guarantees revenues. It’s an opportunity for big brand companies to save money on hiring a full-blown marketing staff or in-house editorial team while still positioning themselves as thought leaders in an industry.

“We’ve created a single platform for the world’s best journalism. And in doing so, we’re delivering millions of dollars of revenue back into the news ecosystem, and helping an important industry find new models to not just survive, but thrive.”

-NewsCred’s Founder and CEO Shafqat Islam (pictured below)

NewsCred raised a $750K seed round in September 2010 from Floodgate, IA Ventures and Naval Ravikant followed by a $4M Series A round in October 2011, led by FirstMark, with participation from Lerer Ventures, AOL Ventures and Advancit Capital (Shari Redstone) and participation from existing investors.

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