Andrew Maury over at MauryProperties.com — his San Fran Real Estate blog — has offered to pony up a buck for every comment he gets on THIS POST. 

It's all for a great cause 

So for Pete's sake, get over there and leave a comment! Break Andrew's piggy bank and help fight Parkinson's Disease.

Technorati Tags: Parkinson's Disease, Parkinson's Research

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If you live in or around Phoenix and pay any attention what-so-ever to Phoenix real estate, you've heard the name or voice, or seen the face of one Russell Shaw. The man sells real estate by the boatload. Know any other real estate agent with a farm area of 40,000 homes? Yeah, me neither.

Greg and Cathleen over at Bloodhound, where Russell contributes, have set up a second Russell Shaw Sales Success Seminar. The first one was great. I've no doubt the second will be as well.

What's the point? Greg and team are in the process of putting together a a sales training curriculum and use bits and pieces of these seminars as such. 

What's in it for you? Some (I for one) enjoy seeing things like Greg's vision/plan grow, develop and morph into whatever it may become. If that's not your cup of tea, no problem. Come to hear Russell speak. Learn to sell more real estate in Phoenix, or anywhere on the planet. The man is pure genius. Engaging speaker, compelling subject matter, passionate presentation. You'll get all that and more.

Trust me. Just go.

Here are the particulars:

Tuesday, April 17, 2007, at the offices of North American Title, 3200 East Camelback Road, Suite #150, Phoenix, AZ 85018. The event will run from 6:30 PM to approximately 9:30 PM, and refreshments will be served. There is no charge to attend. Here's a PDF file with details and directions — I'll just link to Greg's shiny new server and let him cough up the bandwidth…

[tags]Russell Shaw, Phoenix Real Estate Seminar[/tag] 

Meet Buzz. One of two furry felines in the Thompson household. Early this morning, we were woken by a horrific crashing sound in the family room. I knew immediately that one of three things had happened — either we were in the midst of a home invasion, a meteor had crashed through the roof, or most likely, one of the cats was up to no good. And the odds were overwhelming that in the case of the latter, it would be Buzz wrecking havoc.

Immediately upon entering the family room, it was difficult to miss one of my Bose 10.2 floor standing tower speakers lying horizontal on the floor. (Incidentally, these are great speakers. Long discontinued, they were the last solid wood speakers made by Bose. I bought them 20 years ago and they still sound great.)

Buzz was nowhere to be seen. 

I figured he was cowering behind the TV, knowing he'd screwed up.

We went back to bed and woke up at a more normal time a couple of hours later. There was Buzz, sprawled out in typical fashion across the floor. Normally he bolts straight for the food bowl in the morning, crying like he hasn't eaten in a week. Today though he comes hobbling in, barely able to walk…

Apparently the numbskull cat couldn't get away from the falling speaker. 

So off we go to see our friend and vet, Dr. Greg Cromer, DVM at Tri-City East Veterinary Hospital in Mesa.

Greg does his thing and determines our floundering feline has broken 3 of 4 long bones in his back foot. (#19 on this skeletal model if you're really curious.) 

Cost of this little misadventure? X-rays, sedation to set the fractures, casting and pain meds - $400. Plan on a couple of follow up visits, new x-rays and cast changes, another $200.

I'm sitting there looking at the little bastard with his green cast (complete with little paw prints) and thinking, "600 bucks… 600 bucks…" 

And I'd have spent twice that if that's what it would have taken. In few weeks, the cast will come off and Buzz will be back to his old self, eating, chasing Fluffy, tormenting the dogs and fetching — yep, the cat will play fetch all day long with foam balls and little stuffed animals. He likes to climb ladders too. 

If you happen to live in the East Valley and need a great vet, you can't go wrong with Dr's Cromer and/or Clack at Tri-City East Vet Hospital. They and their staff are *top notch*. Tri-City is located at 4331 East Broadway Road, Mesa, AZ 85206. Phone (480) 830-2873.

Technorati Tags: vet bills, east valley veterinarian, clumsy cat

Born just last Saturday afternoon, the little PhoenixMLSSearch.info site has been crawled and indexed by Mother Google. As you can see above, it ranks #4 for the term "search phoenix MLS no registration required".

Granted that's a pretty specific term, but it does get used. Of that I can assure you (note the #1 and #2 results. We get hits for this search often). Hey, at least it's in there. Baby steps folks….

It's coming in at #5 on Yahoo! for the same term. Curiously, it's nowhere to be found on MSN, which most SEO people will tell you is usually the first and easiest search engine to get in to. But MSN has been acting really goofy lately, with some sites flying all about the SERPs for reasons unknown or decipherable by any. Oh well, given their search market share, who cares?

Technically, little PMLSS has averaged 54 hits and 228 page views a day. But that's all from this blog and a couple of forums I post on.  We anxiously await our first real visitor.

Given that the site was up on a test server for the first day, and then on a domain that I had to switch name servers on, it's inclusion into Google was remarkably swift. It could be found on Google within 31 hours from the time I could first access it on its own domain. Of course it remains to be seen if it decides to turn around and go play in the sandbox at the Googleplex.

I also secured a screen snip showing proof positive the ALT tag in the photo was crawled by Google. Some SEO experts have opined that ALT tags no longer have relevance and are not even looked at. Those guys can put a sock in it. For a site whose homepage has less than 150 visible words, every byte counts. I'd write more about this, but it appeals to only the dweebiest of RE blog readers and it's 2:55 in the morning. 

I played around a lot with the CSS today, stuffed a few more keywords in there, a little nip here a tuck there. We'll see what that does.  

G'night… 

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Technorati Tags: Minimalist website, real estate SEO

Ran across this little gem out there in the blogiverse today:

Improving Your Blog Karma

Here's the short list. You can (and should) read the article for the details…

1. Be real.  
2. Respond to emails. 
3. Offer exclusives. 
4. Make connections. 
5. Join networks. 
6. Avoid snark. 
7. Forgive mistakes. 
8. Post to contact.
9. Comment and participate.
10. Show gratitude.

Sage advice.

Apply these ten things to your real estate business and watch it grow.

What the heck, apply these to your life too… teach it to your kids. (assuming they aren't teenagers. Is there some genetic code that shuts down a kid's ears/brain when they turn 15?)

Hat tip to The Web Marketing Blog. 

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Technorati Tags: blog karma