Marlene Sheffer sent me an email with the following question:

"OK, I am LOVING listingdomains.com. I think that RES provides a better show, though. I need to know how to do a RES show, and get a website address that is specific to that home, and do it quickly and easily for less than about $40 per listing. I have absolutely NO knowledge of html or code, except to know that I don't know it."

Well, in this day and age, you can register a domain name just about anywhere for less than $10, so the cost will not be an issue. I use Names Direct. Each domain name costs $8.95. But you can find them cheaper if you look hard.

Here's the term you need to know: URL Forwarding.

URL Forwarding is free with every domain registration service. So, that means you can point any domain you register to any other existing web page without any additional cost. All you need to know how to do is copy and paste the URL of the existing page into the right place. So, you will need to find the URL Forwarding edit field at your registrar. Typically you can choose standard forwarding or stealth forwarding. Stealth forwarding will retain your domain name when you land on the page, but the contents of the page will be hidden from the search engines. Standard URL forwarding simply redirects and doesn't hide the existing page's URL. I usually choose standard, since there is little SEO benefit from a single property domain name and the main objective is to make the URL easier to remember.

I'm going to show you how to do this using a Real Estate Shows Flyer. (But this will work with any URL) I registered 1234 Turner Road (http://www.1234turnerroad.com) this morning and forwarded the URL to this flyer page: http://www.realestateshows.com/flyer.php?id=0000001965.

Here's how I did it.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Warning: This ActiveRain Video Tutorial May Create More Questions Than Answers! Watch At Your Own Risk.

Why? Because it's not possible to cover this topic in one quick how to video. There and so many different ways to create custom graphics, that an entire video tutorial series could be created just on this topic. Key to which method you use is the graphic you start out with. If you've chosen a photo (raster graphic) you may want to go a completely different direction than if you've chosen a vector graphic. Raster graphics are also known as "bitmap" graphics. (Vector vs. Bitmap)

Raster graphics are resolution dependent and can look blurry when scaled or distorted. For best results, you should always edit a high resolution image. Vector graphics are resolutions independent, meaning they can be scaled as large as you wish and will retail their image quality.

For this video, I am using a vector graphic from Shutterstock.com.

I like Shutterstock.com because I can choose to search on vector or raster images, depending on what I'm trying to do with the images. If I know I want to edit an image to become a custom graphic, like the one to the right, then I will typically start my search for a vector graphic. These are downloaded in Adobe Illustrator EPS format.

This video will give you a sense of how I edited the graphic on the right. It is not meant to be a step by step guide!

Online Videos by Veoh.com

I will do a specific tutorial post on how to use free online editing tools to create custom graphics from stock photos at a later date.

How Do Your Create Image Links In Your Blog Posts?

This is a commonly asked question, with a very simple answer. You create image links the same way you create text links. Simply select the image, then click on the chain icon in the menu bar. Input the url you wish to link to and you're done.

Here is an image that is not linked.

Here is an image that is linked.

And here is the video that show how I did it.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Next on the list? How To Add Individual Blog Posts To Different Groups.

I've been a neglecting the video tutorial list for the past few weeks, so I thought I'd just make my way down the request list and see how far I got this morning... before the kids start asking to go play football outside! First up is, "how to add blog posts to groups." This is perhaps the simplest of all the tutorials, and probably doesn't require a video, but since it was requested, you're getting it.

The first thing you have to do to post to a group is actually join a group. There is no limit to the number of groups you can join, as you can see in my video, but there is a limit to the number of groups any single blog can be posted to. It's five (5). This was instituted after folks started putting every post into every group they were a member of... which defeated the entire point of groups. :)

I did not cover posting directly to groups in this video. You do that by going to the group you are a part of and clicking on the "post to group" link. You should be aware that this will give you no points.

Here's the video. Enjoy.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Things That Don't Get Measured, Don't Get Changed.

I don't know who said it first, but it's a truth that can't be denied. I'm reminded of it every time I ask someone what advertising vehicle they are using is bringing them the most business. The most common response I hear is, "I don't know. We don't really have a good way of tracking that information." So, since it doesn't get measured, it doesn't get changed. Businesses continue to do things they've always done, whether they're effective or not.

Flickr Steps Up To The Stats Plate

So, I was pleased to see Flickr launch their new Stats page. Why? Because if I want to drive as much traffic to my online presence as possible, no matter where it is, I need to know whether I'm achieving my objective. And how.

I want to be able to see if there is a commonality among the photos that have received the most visits in any given time period. I want to take more of the kind that get visits and less of the kind that don't. This is not brain surgery, but it's hard work to figure out which are which when stats aren't available or aren't presented in an easy to analyze format.

Simple To Set Up, But There are limitations.

Setting up the stats is a one click process. That's good, but right now the stats feature doesn't allow you to massage the data very much. For example, you can't see if photos that are geotagged get viewed more on average than those are not. If I knew they did, I'd be sure to spend more time geotagging. And Flickr's stats don't allow you to set your own time frames. But they do give you the ability to see if a photo you thought was interesting yesterday, actually was interesting to anyone. I can see from the stats below that some of mine were not. :)

I'm sure they will be improving on this tool. And I'm sure I'll be trying to improve on my photos.

Flickr is also telling me where the visits came from.

This is at as important, if not more important. If you look at the graph below you'll see I'm not getting much natural search traffic. I have not concentrated on doing a good job with my tags and descriptions. So I'm not surprised by the numbers. But I'm glad I haven't to date. This gives me a chance to play with changing the way I tag and describe the photos and to use them in different ways.

This post is an example. It will be interesting to see the numbers tomorrow, after this post. This is the first time I've ever used flickr to "host" the images that appear in a blog post here on AR. So, it will be interesting to see how many of you click on the photos... especially since I've just alerted you to. :) We'll see how the changes I make impact my numbers.

Knowledge is power. What will you do with the knowledge you gain from your Flickr Photo stats?

Jeff Turner's Photos On Flickr 

There are some know ActiveRain ebedding problems that do not exist when embedding in other blog platforms. As you can see above, you can embed the greeting, but you should be aware of the following issues:

1. Font styles on the bottom are not accurate. We know the cause and will have it fixed soon.

2. If you paste the html for this into the html editor, save, then come back and use the wysiwyg editor, even if you don't change anything, it will break the embed code. Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do about this.

The best way to send these greetings is via email with a link to the greeting. That said, if you have html email capabilities, via ConstantContact, iContact and applications similar to those, you can use the email embed code in your account to send to your contact list.

Please let us know if you encounter any problems!

And Happy Holidays!

I Happened On An Interesting Comment A Few Moments Ago

I was searching for the term "real estate" in Terraminds, which is a Twitter search tool, and found the following "tweet."

"YEAH, my real estate agent Angie joined twitter! We love our house btw Angie!"

The statement was made by discorax, whose bio says he is in WebDev Design. Here's a consumer who is obviously tech savvy and as you can see by his expression on Twitter above, he likes the fact that his real estate agent is connected to him in the way he wants to be connected with.

The real estate agent, Angie Bondurant, signed up for her Twitter account less than one day ago and is only following discorax. That's not the point. I don't know if she'll ever follow anyone else. I also have no idea if she understood what she was signing up for, but it appears she certainly understood one thing... how to communicate with her client in the way he wanted to be communicated with.

If Angie is smart, she'll continue communicating with him that way.

Jeff Turner On Twitter