We recently added the real estate marketplace CyberHomes as a syndication partner site, which means that real estate for sale listings can now be automatically submitted there! This is great news, as this website is a rising stars in the world of online real estate marketplaces. CyberHomes (which is the exclusive provider of real estate listings to AOL) offers detailed information and statistics on homes for sale, neighborhoods, and metro areas around the country as well as market trends. It also provides useful reference material for buyers and sellers of homes. Be sure to update and republish listings to take advantage of this new service benefit.

We recently completed an extensive review of all the widgets we offer and made a number of changes and fixes that improve the look and performance of the Flash version of those widgets. The Flash version (as opposed to the Javascript version, which we also generate for each widget) is the one most compatible with the largest number of websites. Changes we made include a streamlining of the contact information and photo and logos on Basic Gallery and Basic Flyer widgets; the removal of Price and Location labels when those fields have no values in them; a better display of summary information for each listing; improved alignment of the widget title and flyer titles on the vertical Recent Listings widget; and improvement of the scrolling function on the premium Sliding Gallery widget. Here are a few examples:

Widgets are an effective and (best of all) easy way to create more exposure of your listings because you can easily embed the HTML code for the widget in your website, blog, and/or social network profile.  These improvements we made should give vFlyer users all the more incentive to configure widgets and put them on those sites!

Many of you have probably noticed changes to your vFlyer account homepage since Thursday morning. We did an overhaul of the account homepage and made it into a dashboard where you can access the Craigslist HTML for any of your flyers, email and print any of your flyers, access the HTML for any widgets you’ve created, and more. You can think of your account homepage as a kind of “mission control” for your vFlyer account, which is how it should be! Now you no longer need to go through multiple steps to get the Craigslist HTML for a flyer, track the activity of a flyer, or do other flyer-related tasks - it’s all right in front of you when you log in to your account.

We hope this makes using vFlyer even easier. If you have feedback for us on the new dashboard, let us know.

If you’ve ever had your unsaved work on a flyer lost because your session expired while you were writing a long description, then you know how frustrating it can be. That’s why we recently introduced an autosave feature in the Flyer Editor and Photo Editor that automatically saves any work you’ve done on a flyer after 29 minutes of inactivity (or activity only in the description field). It’s still a good idea to click the Save Draft button every ten minutes or so in case you encounter a network problem or some other error, but the autosave feature provides added security against losing work you’ve done. 

Note: The autosave feature only applies to the Flyer Editor and Photo Editor.

Here is a great marketing idea that involves images enhanced with Watermark Plus and flyers: Creating a set of before and after images and including them in your vFlyers as an effective way to show-off your business skills.

A growing number of small business owners are using vFlyer to promote their businesses. Whether you are in the construction, home staging, health care, landscaping or provide other professional services to consumers or business, using before and after pictures helps communicate qualities that are otherwise difficult to “illustrate”, things like attention to detail, quality of work and the ability to deliver great results to prospective customers – try it today.

Tags: small+business, marketing, watermarks

vFlyer now automatically syndicates to partner Backpage.com. In the past, users could cut and page HTML templates directly into Backpage.com, but now, thanks to a new a partnership with Backpage.com, the process is automated!

Now flyers in the real estate, vehicles, services, general merchandise, and jobs listings can automatically be syndicated to Backpage.com.

Simply click the Enable Partner Sites link in Automatic Submissions section of Edit Flyer to enable Backpage syndication.

This week’s Watermark Plus image of the week comes from John Baker of the Lithia Internet Sales Center. Like other Internet-savvy auto dealership marketers, John uses Watermark Plus to add sales information to images that could help take them off the lot! It’s no surprise that Watermark Plus is so popular with auto dealers! Image merchandising has been used by auto dealers in automotive classified advertising magazines such as AutoTrader, Trade Magazine, Dupont Registry and Zoom Photo Ads. Watermark Plus takes the process online and allows car dealers to merchandise photos for free in a few simple clicks and then use them in online classifieds!

Some real estate agents have put Watermark Plus to particularly good use! By simply combining the photo of their property being listed with their own personal photo and an eye-catching message (Just Listed, Price Reduced, i.e.), they can make their property photos really stand out!

Many of you asked for a better way to manage the contact requests that you receive from vFlyer. As I mentioned in my previous post on email and privacy, vFlyer gives you ability to receive contact requests as an alternative, or in addition, to direct email correspondence!

Some of you may have noticed that we now allow you to access contact requests from the Home page (once you have logged in). This feature is actually very important for accounts that are actively managed by more than one person! Since the new collaborative features of vFlyer give subscribers multi-user and multi-account support, more and more accounts now are being accessed by multiple user!

I did a post a couple of days ago about the continued growth of single property sites powered by vFlyer but forgot to mention the number of small business also using Domain Plus to create primary of secondary sites that link to their vFlyer galleries and flyers. Here is a short list of recent examples:

• PrimeMediaDistribution.com (Media)
• SteveTessitore.com (Flooring)
• CreaturoAndAssociates.com (Real Estate)
• StephanieStagings.com (Staging)
• LandmarkByron.com (Real Estate)
• AcrossThePondForSail.com (Gallery)
• CommercialMiami.com (Commercial)

I always like to remind users about the many different services vFlyer has to offer to online sellers and real estate professionals. While most people know about our distribution platform that pushes listings and flyers to leading online marketplaces, some are unaware of the many of the other complementing services available including Watermark Plus (image enhancement), Domain Plus (single property websites), vFlyer Team and Agency (collaboration and sharing), Mobile and SMS (mobile distribution) and Widgets.

One of the goals of our blog is to continually remind and educate users on how they can make the most of our marketing and distribution platform to more successfully promote their listings, products and services.

It’s always encouraging to see users put some of this information into practice! For example, a couple of weeks ago we talked about using Watermark Plus to enhance photos of yourself and as a result a growing number of real estate professionals are using Watermark Plus for just that purpose!

I would encourage all vFlyer users to check out the vFlyer Blogregularly to find out how to get the most out of our platform, to learn and capitalize on online selling trends and technologies (such as podcasting), and to better market their listings, products or services!

Need another vFlyer account? As I mentioned in my previous posts on vFlyer Team and Agency, it is possible now possible to have and manage multiple accounts without logging in and out.

Adding Another Account:
Perhaps you use vFlyer for business but would like to sell items in other product categories or for personal use. Perhaps you run two businesses and need an account for each. There are also sales organizations and virtual assistants that manage vFlyer accounts for multiple clients and would prefer to access them from a single account. Thanks to the new collaborative features in vFlyer, adding another account to your existing account is a few simple clicks away!

How it Works:
You will notice a Settings link at the top right of the page, click on the Accounts tab and go to the Create a New Account section to add a second account to your existing one. You can only have one free (vFlyer Personal) account in your account network, so subscribers can add one free account or multiple subscriber accounts to their account network.

I have spent the last two days talking about how individuals, team leaders, brokers and companies can use vFlyer Team and vFlyer Agency to create collaborative environments when it comes to creating, promoting and distributing online listing and flyers. The real power and flexibility of vFlyer’s collaboration services, however, is the ability to combine and customize these services to create a custom collaborative network of vFlyer accounts that meets your organization’s specific needs or requirements. Here are some examples of what can be accomplished by combining collaborative features and services:

• With vFlyer Agency, master accounts can support a network of multiple accounts. These can include any number of “sub accounts” created by administrators, or “sister accounts” created independently as part of a single vFlyer Collaboration Network
• With vFlyer Team, “sub accounts” can extend your collaboration network by allowing additional team members further down-stream to share accounts, the same applies with “sister accounts”
• Administrators have the ability to choose the types of accounts their network can support as well as put limits and policies in place. They can determine the number of assistants who can share an account and control other aspects of their network

Even if you don’t fully understand the inner working of the vFlyer Collaboration Network, hopefully you understand that vFlyer Team and vFlyer Agency provide the basic building blocks that enable us to create a simple or custom solution for your or your organization. Teams and organization all have different operating and reporting structures. Some are flat and open, while other are hierarchical and administered. Whatever the structure of your sales organization, the flexibility of our collaborative services allows us to design a solution that works for you. Contact sales@vflyer.com for more information.

Yesterday I talked about using vFlyer Team to share access to your vFlyer account with other team members. Another exciting new service available in the vFlyer collaborative release is vFlyer Agency, the ability for companies, brokers, team leaders, or your IT organization to centrally create, manage and delegate vFlyer “sub accounts”.

Here are some of the things that are possible using vFlyer Agency:

• The administrator/owner can create multiple accounts or invite team members to create their own accounts
• The administrator can choose centralized billing for their sub accounts or to have each team members be financially responsible for their own account
• Centralized billing payment options are flexible and include both credit card or monthly invoicing on a purchase order (corporate accounts)
• vFlyer Agency can supports both subscription (Basic, Premium, i.e.) and free (Personal) accounts
• The administrator can access any account using a drop down menu at the top of each page
• The administrator can terminate or reassign accounts at any time

As I mentioned previously, one of the beauties of vFlyer Agency is the ability for the administrator to access all of their accounts at any time! For example, as an administrator you can jump from one account to the other to view a list of flyers, widgets, reports, or images by simply selected that account from a drop down list of available account in the upper right hand of each page.

Both vFlyer Team and vFlyer Agency are some of the services available both both individual and corporate users (I touched on our corporate account pricing and discounts in the past). If you or your company is interested in vFlyer Agency please contact our sale and support group at: sales@vflyer.com

Related Posts and Resources:

• Blog: vFlyer Team, Corporate Plans and Discounts
• Wiki: vFlyer Collaboration Platform
• Screenshots: vFlyer Team and Agency
• More…

Technorati Tags: Collaboration, vFlyerrealtorReal Estatepostletszillowremaxprudentialcoldwellcentury21