Christian Real Estate Blog

Teri Isner Reaches 100k Points on Active Rain - A Real Estate Industry Benchmark

If you are active in the online real estate community these days, you have probably heard of a networking community called Active Rain. It is a wonderful group of real estate professionals from around the country that meet online and network together through blogging on the Active Rain website. Still in the early stages, it is primarily used for agent to agent networking and referrals, but in the future, if it grows the way the founders want it to, it will evolve into a great place for the consumer to find real estate professionals around the country.

The viral growth of AR within the real estate community is outstanding... In only a few short months, the membership has grown to over 8,000. Part of the reason is the ingenious point system that the creators of AR have implemented from the beginning. Each member is awarded points for certain tasks completed on the site. Some tasks are as simple as adding more of a description to your profile page, or adding your picture.

In a brilliant move by AR, each member that is referred to the network by another member receives 25 free points, and 10% of that members points thereafter. This alone has been a huge reason for the exponential viral growth within the AR community. Besides referrals, the two primary ways to score points on AR are through blogging, and commenting on blogs. Without a doubt, this has been the number one reason AR is valuable to the real estate community.

I viewed an interview of Matt Heaton and Caleb Mardini (2 of the founders of AR) that really opened my eyes to one of the primary goals of AR... and that is teaching real estate agents how to market themselves through blogging, with a point reward system. Each point earned within the AR community has a deeper purpose behind it: teaching the member how to blog effectively, and learn healthy online networking habits.

Points are scored for posting up to 10 posts per week to your blog: a very healthy pace for any real estate professional to shoot for. And each member can be awarded points for commenting on up to 10 blog posts per day belonging to other members... again promoting the networking aspect of blogging... Put together, all of these practices are a must for any web savvy real estate professional, and the point system is just a great way to teach people how to best use their time online effectively.

This is obviously not the only reason AR exists, but as one of it's primary functions, I thought it would be an important topic to blog about. The timing also happens to be appropriate because a benchmark has been reached within the AR community. And to fullfill my promise, I wanted to write a special post to congratulate the member that was the first to reach 100,000 points...


Teri Isner

I first noticed Teri as a very active blogger on the AR network over a month ago. She was consistently posting 3+ posts per day, and was rated as the #1 Active Rain member for number of points.

Later I was able to run over to her 2 websites: Orlando Real Estate Listings & Orlando Real Estate I especially liked the first because it uses a custom made monopoly board as a navigation tool on the site, and was very original with extremely good content. It seemed fitting that the number one AR member would have such a cool website. I was also very impressed to see that she had her very own monthly real estate podcast, which is something you don't see very often on a real estate agent's website. She also had a very good Orlando Real Estate Blog that, as far as I can tell, is completely separate from her AR blog.

I don't know Teri personally, but her online presence is very attractive. I just want to offer one more congratulations to her for being the first member to reach 100,000 points. I look forward to many more of her posts on the AR network, and will watch her career with anticipation...

I am also really looking forward to the future growth of Active Rain. Here's hoping the Network will continue to flourish and be a great place for real estate professionals and consumers alike.

posted by Justin Smith @ 10/29/2006 10:59:00 PM