Realtor Blogging | Active Rain or WordPress | Review & Compare

Title Image for a blog post about the comparison between WordPress and Active Rain
Founder of InboundREM an inbound marketing lead generation company focused on SEO. Blogger. Real Estate SEO expert. Real Estate Lead Generation expert. Real estate online marketing fanatic. Podcaster. Occasional public speaker and frequent vlogger.

Table of Contents

Comparison of Active Rain and WordPress for Real Estate Blogging(with a video review)

Realtor blogging is a necessity to generate leads online. It’s the only option for a realtor with a minimal budget and a desire to generate leads online. For Real Estate Brokers targeting entire cities, it’s the ONE good way to beat Trulia,Realtor.com and Zillow.

Active Rain: Real Estate Blogging platform. 293,556 real estate professionals.

WordPress: CMS designed for blogging 51% of the TOP ONE MILLION websites in the world use WordPressReal Estate Website providers build websites on WordPress and ALL the good IDX companies build WordPress compatible plugins.

Content Management System Graph
Content Management Systems by install base. Note WordPress at 51%

Active Rain and WordPress | Why Compare the two?

When agents or brokers discuss Realtor Blogging they are going to hear “Active Rain” or “WordPress” repeatedly. Oddly both these realtor blogging platforms shouldn’t be compared but should be carefully scrutinized through the lens of your need. Real Estate bloggers use the two services for different reasons. I created a video that explores the uses for both blogging platforms.

 

Active Rain | Wordpress Video Review

Active Rain for Realtor Blogging | How to maximize your Active Rain Blogging

Active Rain is best used for:

  • Getting or giving real estate referrals – Referral Exchange section –> LINK
  • Reviews on Real Estate Technology. Active Rain Reviews are done by Realtors for Realtors with no motivation except education. Real Estate Lead Generation review –> LINK
  • Learning marketing, digital and pre-digital, sales tactics, processes, operational tips. Vendor recommendations.
  • Realtor Blogging – Active Rain blog posts are read by other Realtors.

 

Active Rain Blog statistics
From Mid January 2017 Through July I Received 12000 views
  • Search Engine Optimization 

Active Rain provides referral traffic.

Active Rain Referral Traffic Screen Capture
Active Rain provided 98 visitors and THREE new customers from January of 2017 to August of 2017

 

Active Rain provides high-quality backlinks

Active Rain provides high-quality NICHE SPECIFIC real estate back links. FOUR of my top TEN referring content pages are from Active Rain.

 

Image shows how Active Rain Back links are referenced as top referring content for inboundREM.

 

Active Rain Price | Membership Levels

FREE membership. It ONLY ALLOWS other active rain members to view your blog posts which would be fine EXCEPT they also don’t allow DO FOLLOW backlinks.

PAID membership is $199.00 per year. If DOES allow do follow backlinks and non-members can read your blog posts. It was one of my very first investments for inboundREM

WordPress for Real Estate Blogging | Why Successful Real Estate Bloggers use Wordpress.

Wordpress is open source. Here is how “Open source” works. You or your developer download a free copy of Wordpress. You sign some terms and conditions in exchange for a lifetime license. You know OWN your content management system. That means you OWN the content you put into the CMS. The best Real Estate Bloggers know it’s better to control their content as opposed to using a website is owned and controlled by interests that are not their own.

Matt Mullenweg created WordPress(with help) and has reportedly turned down hundreds of millions for Wordpress’s parent company Automattic. Good thing too Automattic was valued at 1.16 billion in 2014.   That’s pretty cool. Here are some other cool WordPress statistics.

Graph of WordPress usage statistics
This graph is outdated in 2017 26% of the Internet is using WordPress as a content management system.

One more WordPress Statistic. WordPress has hired 118 people in 13 years. 106 still work there. Of all the technology bets you can make in your real estate career building your Real Estate Blog or Real estate website using WordPress is one of the better ones.

More Developers make PlugIn’s for Wordpress than any other CMS by A LARGE MARGIN. A Plugin is a small program that adds’s functionality to WordPress effectively allowing you to CUSTOMIZE your WordPress website. For instance, I use the following plugin’s to CUSTOMIZE every single Real Estate Website/Blog that I build.

       inboundREM’s Real Estate Blog WORDPRESS Plug-In List  

 

There are more plugins that are situational.  But the ones I listed above go on every Wordpress Real Estate Blog that I build. Still not sure which blogging platform is the best idea? Or maybe you need some help strategizing how to use both simultaneously? I might be able/willing to help. Leave your contact info and make sure you specify which blog article you were reading.

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7 Comments

  1. Pam Dent

    Excellent analysis on how to support your personal website with Active Rain.

    1. Robert Newman

      Thanks, Pam. That’s a heck of a compliment from one of the most experienced real estate bloggers I know!

  2. Pam Hart

    I am a active rain member and have recently started to work on my Wordpress blogging skills. I appreciate the analysis of the two. Just confirmed my conclusion. hanks for sharing.

    1. Robert Newman

      Pam,

      It was my pleasure. Which platform are you using as your main blogging platform?

  3. this

    An outstanding share! I hae just forwarded this onto a friend who hass been conducting a little
    research on this. And he in fact ordered me lunch due to
    the fwct that I stumbled upon it for him… lol.

    So allow me to reword this…. Thanks for the meal!!
    But yeah, thanx forr spending time tto taok about this subject here on your web page.

  4. Scott Ferguson

    Hey Robert,

    Hope you get this from me!

    Excellent post.

    My question is I do have a wordpress site http://www.agentferguson.com and also am a ‘Rainmaker’ at Activerain. I want to start blogging on my WP site. Can I cut and paste the same content on AR…OR…should I write a quick blog on AR and paste the URL back to my website? Hope this is not too confusing.

    ANY help is greatly appreciated! And many thanks for all you!

    Scott Ferguson

    1. Robert Newman

      Scott, as with most technical SEO questions there is more than one strategy. The BEST solution is to post unique content on both active rain and your wordpress website with a link from the Active Rain post to the wordpress site. Email me at robert@inboundrem.com if you want more info.

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