In the second installment of Lives of the Realtors we hear from Ryan Ward a successful Realtor in Atlanta Georgia.

In Lives of the Realtors, Ryan talks about his transition from Restauant Manager to Realtor.

Ryan has had some road bumps along the way, including his wife's battle with cancer. He talks about his sources of inspiration.

Please check out Ryan Ward's story in Lives of the Realtors.

 On HomeGain Radio, Mike Farmer,HomeGain AgentView and Agent Evaluator customer goes in depth on how to work with buyers.

Mike discusses with HomeGain's Peter McCullough some of the ways to work with buyers to make sure your are not wasting your time.

Mike works in Savannah Georgia and focuses on three types of buyers:

-the first time homeowner,

-the out of town buyer, and

-people who value the services of a realtor and are willing to pay for it.

Mike discusses how to find these types of buyers and how to avoid the lookie loos and to focus only on serious buyers.

There are some great tips here for working with buyers, including home inspections, negotiating warrantees and working with lenders.

You can listen to Mike Farmer's interview by clicking here.

Mike is also featured in HomeGain's August Agent Success Newsletter

Back issues of the HomeGain Agent Sucess Newsletter are available here.

Was listening to real estate radio usa tonight and they were talking about how Broker Bryant had 'Gone Fishing"    and recommended that perhaps bloggers should go back and like rock stars republish their back catalogues.

So I've taken Bryant up on his suggestion.

Here are three posts (not originally posted on Active Rain) I made on the homegain blog that got THOUSANDS of visitors and hundreds of comments.

 1.

The Case Against Blogging

http://blog.homegain.com/case-against-blogging

You can probably guess why that one annoyed a blogger or two!

2.

 HomeGain Cries Flattery On Zillow

http://blog.homegain.com/homegain-cries-flattery-zillow

In this one I pointed out that it was HomeGain, NOT zillow who pioneered the web based instant homevaluation tool and a few other little known facts..... 

3.

The Failed Promise of Web 2.0 for Real Estate

http://blog.homegain.com/failed-promise-Real-Estate-2-0

In this one I asked web 2.0 adherents to "show me the money"

	Welcome to HomeGain Blog School

One of the features of AgentView is ,not just that it comes with a blog that can be tied into your profile and listings on the HomeGain Agent Blogging Network, but also that you get free blogging training at the HomeGain blog school.

Classes are conducted weekly by Homegain Blog school professor Joseph Ferrara.

A sample HomeGain blog school lesson is provided at this link.

Mitch Ribak is the first Realtor that we are covering on the HomeGain blog. His post went live this morning.

Mitch starts out:

"It's been an interesting road I have had so far in my life. My goal was always to be successful and I have been. I have also lost just a little more than I have made in my lifetime. I was thinking about that today.

Then I started thinking about the past 8 years in Real Estate and how it has all come to where I am currently. I started thinking about when I decided to get my license and really had no idea what to expect. I know it seemed like one of the easiest things in the world. Yeah right!

Click here to read the rest of "Mitch Ribak Before Real Estate"

Max, the HomeGain Gorilla upon his return for Paris has signed up for AgentView in Emeryville, California.

Max also signed up for the  HomeGain's Blog school that comes with his AgentView subscription.

As you can see by Max's listings, he specializes in tree houses.

Any tips for Max?

Starting this week HomeGain will starting a new series "Lives of the Realtors". Many Realtors had different jobs in their past lives and interesting experiences which help shape how they conduct business today.

The past life of Mitch Ribak will be our first feature post.

Click here for more details

In a recent blog post on the HomeGain blog, Brian Kinkade, HomeGain member, talks about the value of professional networking.

With all the work that Realtors do setting up their systems, customizing lead capture pages, optimizing for SEO etc, we sometimes lose sight of the fact that perhaps one of the best thing Realtors can do for their business is seek the assistance of other Realtors.

This can be done by attending conferences, twitter, active rain and other online fora.

And of course it can also be done through HomeGain,  who has thousands of real estate professional using our products.

Through Brian's HomeGain membership, he become aware of Mitch Ribak, another HomeGain member  through HomeGain's winning agent call program.

Both gentlemen are also members of HomeGain Nation, an invitation only beta social networking site for HomeGain customers.

In Brian's blog post "The Value of Professional Networking"

he talks about his business, and his excitement over the launch of Mitch's eHomes Realty Network.

Without  professional networking, Brian would not have found out about the eHomes Realty Network!

Please take a look at Brian's blog post and check out the eHomes Realty Network.

Every few days or so I come across a blog article on Home Staging.

Inevitably there is a mention to one of two HomeGain surveys (the 2003 and 2007 surveys) that indicates that home staging provides one of the best pre-sale ROI's.

The HomeGain survey is even cited the the book "Home Staging for Dummies" and a couple of pages dedicated to it.

While most people cite the study, they've never seen the nifty online tool, HomeSaleMaximizer that goes along with it!

HomeSaleMaximizer cites about a dozen other home improvement projects that can pay off.

There is also a handsome PDF and a desktop HomeSaleMaximizer that you can request for free from HomeGain.

To try HomeSaleMaximizer, click here.

At the bottom of the page are links to the PDF and HomeSaleMaximizer free request guide.

And when you are done with HomeSaleMaximizer, the tool prompts you to get a free instant home valuation estimate from HomeGain's original (pre Zillow, yes HomeGain pioneered the concept of the instant homevaluation tool back in 1999-2000-read here for more) automated home valuation tool.

Home Sale Maximizer™ by HomeGain

Most of us have seemed to have mastered the knack of adding video to our blogs.

But how about music?

free.napster.com makes it easy to add music to your blog.

At HomeGain we held an internal launch party for Agent View.

When we unveiled Agent View to the 'Gainers (see post below) we played a few bars from Aerosmith's "Walk this Way".

Click here to see that blog post with the music added.

Follow these simple instructions to add music to your blog.

Go to http://free.napster.com and then click on "share" and follow the instructions.

Or just start here!

By the way, Napster offers this service as  a teaser to get  potential subscribers to their unlimited subscription music service.

The way it works, the subscriber pays about $10 a month and can select to play any song from the 6 million available on Napster. The songs can be saved to playlists and replayed as many times as the subscriber wishes.

With a Napster subscription the songs can also be downloaded for use on up to three portable mp3 players or the songs can be purchased in mp3 format for play on any mp3 player or an ipod.