For those of you that haven’t heard the news, Active Rain has a new membership plan. As an owner of WannaNetwork.com I can totally relate to Active Rain’s reasoning for charging new members a monthly fee. It takes a lot of time, resources and money to operate a real estate social network and provide the most value for the members. There is no question that Active Rain has been a leader in the real estate industry and has provided an incredible resource for real estate industry professionals including myself.
According to Brad Andersohn, “The New ActiveRain Membership (For New Members ONLY) will cost $29.00 per month, and will include an Outside ActiveBlog along with a unique domain name that allows them the ability to post content that will be visible to both consumers and search engines.“ New members can join the community and network with other real estate industry professionals for FREE but will not be able to connect with the 2 million visitors that frequent the site. New members that blog on Active Rain and chose the FREE account will only have their blog posts read and viewed by other Active Rain members.
So according to Brad, new members are paying $29.00 a month to connect with their 2 million visitors. I would say that equates to equal value. But after reading the new sign up page on Active Rain, “Google. First page. 30 days. Harness the power of your ActiveRain Profile…“ This statement indicates that if you create a “Rain Maker” account, which is $29.00 a month, you will be on the first page of Google in 30 days? So is Active Rain charging new members for search engine placement in Google?
Maybe I am just reading too much into it? But then, I was reading a post by Aaron Auxier, MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook are free for new members – How come ActiveRain is not? One of Aaron’s main points was, “MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook don’t charge anyone for anything. Why does AR have to?“ Rich Jacobson, an employee of Active Rain, stated, “Hey, Aaron! Well, the last time I checked nothing I’ve ever posted on MySpace, Facebook, or Twitter ever pulled up in organic search results.“ Again this raised a question, are new members paying to have their blog articles found in the organic search results or are they paying to have their article seen by the 2 million visitors that frequent Active Rain?
Is this a bad thing? Maybe or Maybe not but I am sure Google frowns upon sites that openly state “Google. First page. 30 days.” and charge a fee for it.
Maybe Brad Andersohn’s article should have said, “Active Rain Now Sells Google Ranking” or “Great Google Rankings Now for Sale at Active Rain – Signup Today!”
Either way, I think it’s a bad idea to charge new members to use the main feature of a site. I am sure Active Rain could have come up with a better idea to generate revenue that would have no effect on future growth. It will be interesting to watch how this plays out for Active Rain.
On a seperate note, did anyone read the article on Inman that stated HouseValues has first right of refusal to purchase the rest of the shares of Active Rain?
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Considering that Active Rain has over 132,000 members, there had to be a give back. My business has increased huge amounts from my blogging on Active Rain and it is free to me and post directly to localism.com. I also chose to have an outside blog for $19 a month after my free months that they gave me ends. I get a free one because I have over 100,000 points.
I can relate with AR as I operate WannaNetwork.com but charging for your core feature is crazy to me. I really believe this will hurt AR as a whole as new user registrations will drop off and the community will have to rely on its current member base to keep adding fresh and unique content to draw visitors.
I could see charging for upgraded features or something along those lines but why charge for your core feature?
What a rediculous idea. Why would any pay AR and then give them content that helps the build the AR site. In my opinion you can get just as good rankings using a Word Press blog for free. Word Press has tons more visitors and I find Word Press blogs on the first page of Google more often then AR blogs.
The power to ranking on the first page of Google lays within constantly updated content, whether it be a blog a website or a forumn.
Kim,
I have 4 questions about your increase:
How Do You Know It Is From Your Blogs On Active Rain? Could it be a combined effort?
Does active really Have over 132,000 members? it just jumped 10,000 over nite? I think they do
I have been very active on a large number of networking sites the main problem I see is people do not understand networking. I belong to the local chamber and I have offered my site free to use for fund raisers (auctions, trades, classifids) only to be told they can’t promote business at the chamber? Hmmmm that’s what every business joined for is the promote business by networking at a local level. Now on the networking sites for about two years I have offered my site to all with plenty of free stuff like stores, 45 day free classifieds, trades, etc. Please remember everyone on this site is here to sell services, products, or any other items. My name ties very well with Tony’s wannanetwork it is iwannatrade.com so name is good, google search is very high, news media coverage good, and very few have taken advantage of my offers. I think if people would support the people who are here they will see major increases in the products, services they offer.
One time I did a blog that hit numder 1&2 out over 14 billion did a 1 hour wn radio about the changes in real estate not one person joined or asked questions. I did not offer to bring them to to top google search just my site. Just some things I have noticed hope everybody understands networking is something that has been free and should be free.
We currently have 1 Outside Blog with ActiveRain which is also $19/mo. It came with a free domain, and has excellent listings on Google.
Although our blog on the ActiveRain website itself, also does quite well.
What I am really amazed in is our new blog on WannaNetwork. I created it yesterday and it’s indexing quite well. I’ll be posting on that numerous times a day now.
You are all nuts! I would pay for Activerain over any other website company out there. PERIOD. You all must not be real bloggers if you are squacking about one buck per day. GO AR!
Dusty,
“You all must not be real bloggers if you are squacking about one buck per day”? To be a real blogger, you should spend money? My Las Vegas Real Estate Blog out ranks any Active Rain Blog in Las Vegas. Am I not a real blogger?
I’m not discounting the fact that AR is a powerful platform to blog on, just questioning your comment about having to spend money to blog.