After 23 years as an agent and after spending the last 10 years as a broker, Diana Russell realized her career was facing its end in November of 2007. The sub-prime mortgage mess, a suddenly bad marketplace and a type of concern bordering on consumer hysteria among home buyers had exhausted her financially, emotionally and physically. Her once robust brokerage had no closings but expenses kept coming. After depleting her reserves and trying all sorts of traditional measures Russell suddenly saw the handwriting on the wall: it seemed that everything she had spent learning over the previous 23 years no longer worked. Reluctantly, she started calling her vendors, cutting back her overhead to near zero, and was planning to close shop with no idea of what she would do or where she would go.“Real estate is all I know,” she said at the time.

Russell has had a website since 1998 and her Web experience brought her nothing but expense. She gradually migrated from one website provider to another and kept searching for professional assistance to make her site work for her, finally ending up with good professionals who put her on a one particular platform and did a total customization of her site.Although it was a great tool when Russell made listing presentations, it didn’t provide a steady stream of leads or buyers; in fact, it hardly ever provided either. It wasn’t like she didn’t keep trying-she tried SEO (Search Engine Optimizatin) and IDX and all sorts of things-but as far as she was concerned, the Internet hadn’t shown her much.

In mid-2007 Russell decided to try using the CompassSearch subscription to see if that would produce anything in the way of sales and leads. On this particular November day, however, she wrote them to cancel her subscription-she just couldn’t afford it anymore.

To her surprise, however, they offered to continue to work with her in the hopes that all the work she and they had done would kick in. To Russell’s gratitude, in December of 2007, results really started kicking in-leads, escrows and sales started appearing on her computer screen. In January of 2008, she closed on four properties and was back in business. When she wrote to tell us this, we were delighted for her and asked if she would sit for an interview in the hopes that what she had to say could help others and us.

“As of today, I seem to be more of a buyer’s agent than a listing agent,” Diana said. “It can be more labor intensive and I would like to work with more listings this year.” We found that interesting as most agents we talk to who are struggling seem to have far more listings than buyers, yet Diana is succeeding with buyers. Was this because of where her leads come from?

“People from all over the world are finding my website,” Diana said. “They’re looking for property to buy in Utah on the Internet. I get far more buying inquiries than listing inquiries from my site. One of my goals for 2008 is to use the power of my site to gain more listings, primarily by letting prospective sellers know that when they list with me, people from all over the world looking for real estate in Utah will see their property. It opens up a whole new world of buyers: a universe not defined by the local Salt Lake City area, because Internet buyers come from everywhere and anywhere.”

“I can tell the actual place that Internet buyers who visit my site came from with my WebReporterTool (part of the CompassSearch subscription),” Russell continued, “and I also see exactly what they entered on a search engine to find me. I can see what they looked at, how long they looked at it, if they were referred by another site (such as an advertiser or place where I have a banner) and if they are a returning visitor. I had 4,699 page views in December, for example, Russell said, “and 40% of them went directly to ‘Our listings’ or ‘Search the Utah MLS.’ I averaged 130 page views a day and I had 1575 unique visitors. Only 1,298 of my page views were from Utah! I am now receiving leads from and selling properties to people from California and other states—Illinois, Florida, Colorado and Texas buyers have visited me in December—-something that could only happen on the Internet. I had visitors from 21 different countries in December alone.”

She continued: “I went from facing financial ruin and contemplating closing up to closing many homes in recent months,” Russell said.

“I went from having no one to sell to, to having all my leads come from my website. In my new success pattern, about 60% of the leads I receive from my website have converted to closings. I am not concerned with the number of leads I get as much as I am concerned with the quality of them, and I have to say that these leads from my own site are the best I have ever received as to their quality and interest.”

Diana also discussed her plans for 2008: First, to sell or list 50 properties; second, to appeal to international and distant national buyers.

“People are visiting my site from all over the world,” Russell says, “to them, our product is cheap and their money is stronger than it has ever been in terms of purchasing power. My positioning is great online; people looking for ski properties, ranch properties, all sorts of properties in the mountains suddenly end up finding me and Real Estate Utah. Whether they are looking for ‘The Greatest Snow on Earth,” 4×4-ing in Moab, rafting down Cataract Canyon or rock climbing and hiking, Utah has it all, and when they think ‘Utah’ and go online to look, they find me. I’m number one organically on Google, on the first pages of MSN and AOL and that means people come to my site. When they get there, they like it. It gives me a chance to earn their business.”

In one way, that goal has partially been met: just two weeks ago, Russell reported that she had seen a visitor from Australia visiting her site regularly. “Could this be a mistake or someone else’s statistics?” she asked. A few days later, she answered her own question. “I found out about that Australia traffic,” she noted. “A lady called me from Australia today and made an offer on a condo in Ogden, [Utah].”

I guess that’s what we mean by “expanding your neighborhood.”

Russell offered advice to any real estate professional facing dire circumstances: “First, I strongly recommend that agents commit to doing real estate as a full-time occupation; that they get a great website and real SEO technology up and running and have the necessary accessories to exploit Internet leads.”

She defined those as Magellan (or equivalent), a cell phone, voice mail, Bluetooth, a laptop with a wireless card and a camera with a wide angle lens to shoot photos of a property to post on the listing.

“It is essential that when you receive an inquiry from your website that you follow up on it immediately. I have all Web leads sent to my cell phone and what a difference in response time that makes. These people are often seriously ready to start buying a home and if you don’t get back to them within an hour or two, they may move down to the next agent on the search results and leave you behind.”

Russell wrapped up her comments with this: “When I subscribed to the search program, I was a skeptic; I’d been burned before and I thought I knew it all about how the Web was a waste of my time and effort. I know differently now and it is so great to not have to be spending hours doing my own SEO and trying every new trick that comes along on a blog: I just leave all that to my professionals, now. I owe my very existence to the reality that if buyers can find your website, it has a fighting chance to be that asset for you that you always hoped it would be: a place that generates real leads and sales on a regular basis. People are still buying and selling homes; it’s just that more and more, they are doing the groundwork on the Internet. If you’re not there because your site couldn’t be found when they went looking, you’re not going to have a chance at the business. It’s that simple.”