z57 was a joke…and so are most real estate web site developer service sites
These may be “fightin words…”, but it’s relatively true. O.K., maybe z57, the real estate web site developer service isn’t a total joke, but maybe the agents who buy the service are a joke? Well, regardless, they’re selling very basic services packaged in what appears to be great products or at least they would like you to believe they are. They’ll even admit it if you get them to honestly tell you what they’re selling. Then again, maybe it’s the fault of the agents who don’t figure out what they did a while back…
So, when I was in the real estate business, I didn’t really know who could help me with my website. After I did all my homework, I thought I would have to pay a web developer that would cost me $1000 or more and probably pay some search engine marketing service thousands of dollars to get it into one of the valuable search engine results pages (a.k.a. SERPs). I got the spiel constantly from search engine marketers who are making tens of thousands of dollars from what I’m learning these days just requires a bunch of online research and a little luck in who you meet.
I wish I knew what I now know…there are tools out there that you can literally use for dollars in a month, a little bit of work that I was already doing like the “link exchanges” that z57 made me constantly acquire — all that manual work for a bunch of links to my site which honestly were sometimes hurting me because they were links from other sites who had bad page ranks. Regardless, their “consultants” who were basically experimenting themselves on a constant basis trying to figure out what worked best were giving me tips on things that seemed to work. Now, I know I don’t need them, but all I need are one of a few tools online now that are available for free and just a little bit of work.
The link exchanges are good if you can get someone with a good Page Rank to place a link to you, but it’s better to get a few of those higher quality ones vs. the many that some seem to believe may help your website. Not only did they do very little to help me beyond what I should of already figured out by doing a little reading (that most real estate agents don’t have the time to do), but they charged me close to a thousand dollars on a website that now I know I can find someone in a 3rd world country can help me make for a $100 or so. If interested, let me know & I’ll help you with this…well, maybe for a few bucks, I’ll help you. 
Brandon, I want your help with having someone design my website. Let me know what I need to do. This is a great Blog… V.
I have reviewed thousands of real estate websites.
The z57 package is easy to impliment and use for many agents. I have also found what I think is the best webpage program for $300/yr. I have spent over $5000/year for what this allows me to do at $300. If you can type, you can use this. It has everything from soup to nuts: domain name research and registration, keyword optimization, traffic tracking, link exchange, blog, video, page traffic ranking,… and the list goes on. If I had found this a few years earlier, REindex.com, The Site Engine(sm) might be designed differently.
For $300 a year, I could get you 10-30 websites that can produce even better results than z57. z57 takes advantage of agent’s lack of knowledge and tries to add a bunch of other things — why not? They are trying to rape you for as much as they can.
Their goons will do everything they can to make as much money off of you. It’s not $300, but more like closer to $1000 if you want something that’s reasonable.
Anyhoo, I’m not saying it’s the worst, but in general, I’m think the z57 and all the real estate online marketing services actually don’t do much for the agent — they weren’t designed to do that — they were designed to give you minimal effect & keep you paying.
You need a more personalized solution. I know…it’s the only one that works well enough to sustain a strong business.