What other FSBO sites allow you to post as many high resolution photos as you want ? Really…no limit. ChoiceA.com will host your listing… and if you want we’ll even host your images that you post on your Craigslist listing too.   It’s as simple as posting a listing on ChoiceA.com and then right clicking the images on your listing, selecting properties and finding the ChoiceA URL to use in your Craigslist HTML posting.  More listing tips to come.

Now your listing can be viewed in more places on the Internet.   We automatically push the listing out to Google, Oodle, Backpage and Vast, and we provide you the clean HTML that will allow you to cross-post your listing to Craigslist on www.choicea.com .  Simply copy and paste the code we provide you to the Listing Description box on Craigslist.   This will allow you to use the ChoiceA format to make a clean HTML-based posting on Craigslist while allowing those viewing your property to see as many photos as you put on ChoiceA.  By default Craigslist lets you put 4 images…but if you want to show 20 photos of your home simply post on ChoiceA and then use the Craigslist cross-posting code that we provide to you at the conclusion of your listing.  With this, you’ll also get stats on how many people are viewing your listing on your management page that is easily accessed via the link that we provide to you when you list with us.   As always, any questions just ask info@choicea.com

 There are a few things we’re working on here at ChoiceA that may be of interest to users.   First, you can now cross-post your ChoiceA listings to Craigslist or Backpage.  We give you the HTML code and it’s as simple as copying the code from your ChoiceA management page, and the pasting it into the description box on your Craigslist posting.   The benefits are that you can now post an unlimited number of your FSBO photos (even if they’re high-resolution) on both ChoiceA and Craigslist, versus the four images you are allowed to upload to Craigslist as a default.   Also, you get our snazzy overlay where all of your ChoiceA information is now listed on Craigslist too. As most people re-post to Craigslist weekly, this copy/paste method saves time while offering the ability to post more photos.  This service is available now, to use it simply click on the link that we sent you via email when you posted your listing on ChoiceA.

In the near future we will begin to distribute your listing to multiple channels.  We already make it easy for you to cross-post to Craigslist and Backpage, but soon we’ll push your listings out to millions of more potential buyers by syndicating to sites like Oodle, Vast and other relevant third-party sites.  You will not need to take any action, we will do this for you, and if you edit or delete your listing at ChoiceA it will be edited or deleted on the distribution sites as well within 24 hours.   Further, your individual listings are ‘indexable’ by Google and other search engines.  This means that Google crawls (finds  & records) your individual listing, and dependent on input search criteria your listing shows up in individual search results.  We are also building an analytics offering, where you’ll ultimately be able to see how many people have viewed your listing, and from where.  This will allow you to know how much visibility you’re getting.  We are working on these things and many more offerings that will allow us to continue to knock down the obstacles to being a FSBO.  Any questions, just ask.

So, we’re in the giving mood at ChoiceA this season.  We are now farther along with the For Sale signs, if you’d like to get a free sign shipped to you then please email us with your listing ID after you’ve posted your property on our site.   We offered this before to those in Portland (of which many of you took advantage) but are now at the point where we’d like to give this option to other users.  As our base is still in the Pacific NW, that means you, Seattle.   Just let us know if you’d like a sign.  We may not offer this long-term, but for now we’re happy to do it for the FSBO’s out there in need of one.

You may notice that the results from your searches are now returned by distance.  So, a search for “Seattle, WA” will now show results moving out concentrically from Seattle.  You can still sort by clicking the column headings to group price, zip codes, cities etc. together either ascending or descending or alphabetically, but the default results are now shown by distance from your input city or zip code.  We should soon have mileage indicators in the search results also.  Just one of the things we updated this week.   If you have feedback, please let us know.

A user wrote to us recently suggesting that we might be to real estate what open source is to software.  Although we hadn’t thought of it quite that way, and the parallels are indirect, it is a similar type of movement that we’re trying to initiate; simply, another choice for those not wanting to pay large commissions.  So, if we are to real estate what open source was to software, I guess that’s not a bad thing.  We’re all about busting down walls, and with enough of a following we’ll do just that.  

Do we plan to make money at this for sale by owner thing? …you bet! Whoever creates an alternative and reorganizes the FSBO market with any sort of critical mass is going to make a lot of money, we just won’t do it by taking a big cut of the sale price. We have other ideas in mind and they’re in-the-works. Ultimately it’s hard to imagine that the traditional model is not going to experience a true direct competitor and that’s where our model plans to carve niche. Please keep the listings and feedback coming, and we’ll continue to build more tools for you to use

We were getting quite a few emails on this topic so we decided to post something here.  Yard signs are coming. They will not be the big, bulky wooden signs that require post hole digger installations.  Rather, they’ll be something a bit more basic such as the picture to the left. After all, we are a web-centric company where we hope the Internet will provide the primary method of locating your property that is for sale.  We think that something like this will be cost effective (for you and for us), and will still allow you to get noticed by those driving through your neighborhood.  We haven’t come up with final pricing yet but we’re trying to keep them as inexpensive as possible.  We’re not quite ready to start shipping them yet, but will be pretty soon.  Send us an email if you live in Portland or Seattle and would like one - we can work something out.  We hope to have these available on our site in the near future.  Thank you for all the continued interest in what we’re doing.  Please keep the listings coming.  http://choicea.com

We’re not sure how many of you have found us already, but we’re happy you did.   We have been live for less than a week and quite a few of you have posted with us – mostly in Portland and Seattle.  We appreciate the early users of our site. We had initially just sent a few emails to friends and family to test things out.  One person told another (and one of you posted a nice note on a forum, thanks) and soon we had a bunch of listings. We still have a few bugs, but once we iron out the bugs, we will then have flat bugs

Please continue to email us with feedback on your experiences, we read all of them.

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