After 23 years in sales and marketing for a major corporation, my father began a career in real estate. In his almost 20 years of listing and selling homes and property, there have been dramatic changes in the marketing of homes, particularly in the past 5 years.

In the early years of selling homes, real estate agents all seemed to use similar marketing techniques. Place a sign in the front yard, enter the listing into the Multiple Listing Service, advertise the home in the local newspaper (on a rotating basis with other office listings), host a Realtor® tour, and sit at an open house (catching up on paperwork or reading.) Since agents were doing the same things, it really didn’t matter if your aunt Lucy, your brother-in-law, or the neighbor who just got her license had your listing. About the only variable in the marketing plan might be the frequency of print advertising.

Some agents started getting more aggressive in their marketing with the advent of the color copier. Producing colorful brochures of homes for sale became more affordable for agents and made them look very pro-active in the eyes of their sellers! As simple as it may sound, this began to separate the passive marketer from the more active, aggressive, result-oriented one.

Then times changed dramatically as the visionary Realtor® recognized the power of technology…the Internet! The Internet has changed the way the world does business and has had a huge effect on the real estate industry, providing a global showcase for every home or piece of property for sale.

The advances in technology have changed the way real estate agents do (or do not do) business. Those who have embraced this technology are far ahead of the pack. The advantage to the seller is it is much easier to evaluate which Realtor® to use by surfing the web and checking out different agent’s sites. The seller gets a good picture of the agent’s professionalism, statistics about an agent’s sales volume, a snapshot of how the agent presents homes for sale, and more. Today’s real estate marketing plan should include the use of technology and other more active techniques, such as those shown below.

What about newspaper advertising, you ask? While statistics indicate print ads are responsible for less than one percent of real estate sales, we DO continue to advertise in the newspapers. Internet marketing and advertising far surpasses newspaper advertising with outstanding results.

If you are listing your house today, you need a Realtor® with a proven track record in marketing not only by today’s standards, but looking into the future, as well. If your Realtor’s® total marketing plan is an open house, Realtor tours and newspaper ads, you are dealing with a yesterday Realtor®.

There is a definite difference in Realtors® today. Do your research. Select the Realtor® with the experience, the knowledge and the vision it takes to sell a home in today’s market.

Kris Kombrink
http://www.articlesbase.com/real-estate-articles/all-realtorsreg-are-not-created-equal-70783.html

Duration : 0:2:24

Technorati Tags: 3228c, 3235C, 3245c, Color, copiers, gestetner, lanier, Printer, Ricoh, savin, Scanner

I would like to do it with out any soft ware, but if i have to the technology budget is almost empty so free would be best. Also we use novel iprint on all of our printers this shouldn’t affect any software suggestions.
I can NOT create accounts using Windows we use Novell to login, it MIGHT work the same be I’m not sure. Do you know?

You can set user permissions for the printers over the network, but trying to limit local logins is very difficult, I have never found a successful method.

Peering down at the page of our books or newspapers or thumbing through glossy color ads that arrive at our homes, we tend to overlook an essential part of these media creations. Ink is the real medium that ‘illuminates’ the printed page. Without it, there would be no carefully scripted letters or bright, lively images, no smiling faces promoting new and improved products.

Still, ink has been getting more attention lately as the market for household ink becomes more and more competitive. Changes in the way ink is marketed and distributed have led consumers to take another look at the process in order to find ways to purchase affordable inks.

The old inks of ancient history were simple and natural constructions, made from such elements as vegetable acids, animal products and nut oils. Today’s inks are different. Chemists have created super-durable inks with technical additives and engineered these products to provide the smoothest results from use in commercial or home machines. The only problem is that ink has become in some cases extremely expensive as the market for ink shifts. Therefore, people are looking to get the most out of their dollar when it comes to refilling the printer or copier machine.

A growing number of buyers are resorting to an array of complex options for buying ink. Some search for bargains in sale catalogues or buy ink bulk; some even buy a new printer advertised at a lower retail rate than the required ink cartridge! Another option is to refill your old cartridges at a local ink distributor. This has become popular due to the way the cartridges work. It is not uncommon for a cartridge to not dispense all of the available ink, and so refills of a cartridge have turned out to be an efficient purchase.

Buyers can also explore the use of ‘alternative inks’ like soy based products, which are available from some print shops as environmentally friendly products that aid in the recycling of printed matter. These are useful in home projects that don’t involve the high-speed name-brand printer; issues of compatibility might mean that these alternative inks are not for everybody. But for those interested in long-term environmental effects, printing experts can advise them on how to use more natural ink products.

With all of these available choices, it’s getting harder and harder to figure out the best way to get affordable ink products. Consumers can look to product reports in office magazines or to the clamoring web pages where cheap ink is advertised, but in the end, the only solution is thorough research. Buyers need to be able to deduce which products deliver a high volume of ink at a low price, and which ones are just rip-offs.

Also, one doesn’t want to end up with a pile of waste products, plastic cartridges of whole machines marching into obsolescence. Overall, it pays to shop around when looking for the next bottle of that magical stuff that makes the pages of our print media come alive.

Jason Roberts
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/just-how-important-is-ink-55635.html

Duration : 0:2:35

Technorati Tags: 3228c, 3235C, 3245c, C2824, Color, copiers, lanier, ld328c, ld335c, ld345c, mpc2500, mpc3000, mpc4500, printers, Ricoh, savin, scanners

Thanks.

Check out the reviews on PCworld.com. Also, I have a link for Newegg.com to do some comparison shopping.