In Australia we have two Real Estate portals who maintain a duopoly on internet real estate listings.
Both of these Portals need Real estate Listings to remain valid. Without this Content, they would be nothing.
Both of these Portal’s majority interests, between them, control the vast majority of Australia’s print media, the traditional advertising platform of the Real estate Industry.
When they were just Print publications, they relied on sourcing their own content at their own expense (news and other articles) to keep their publications Valid. Real estate took advantage of this by buying Ad spaces in their weekly real estate sections.
Now their real estate sections have gone to the web. The listings have become the content, the content that keeps their sites Valid. But it is no longer at their expense, it is at the expense of the content providers- The Real Estate Agents.
The News Papers, The Television Stations and Other Publishers Pay for Content. The major Real Estate Portals in Australia country Charge for Content.
From the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) Executive Summary for 2010, Advertising Revenues on the web in Australia have exceeded 2 Billion dollars, with the Real Estate again being the leading category for classified advertising.
So my question is…Is the Real Estate Agents Listings Content included in this figure, the figure that makes the category so high on the list. Are the Listings, which mean everything to a subscription based Portal to be Valid, Advertisements or Content?
Because if they weren’t there, there would be no website.
I ask this because it’s the content of a site that brings visitors. Time and time again I ask people-Why do you only go to these Portals to search Real Estate? The answer is, always, because they believe they have all the listings.
And they have all the listings because they have traditionally had control of the market place through their old system.
Like the Gaddaffi’s and Mubarak’s of the industry, they stay in power because the people that make them powerful, for now, know of no other way. That is until someone asks the question.
If you don’t want to support an old paradigm, stop complaining about it and look outside the cave. Like the energy from the sun, the internet is free and it thrives on Content to be Valid. If everybody had to pay to put stuff on it, it wouldn’t be there.
By the way, these thoughts and words are purely my own and in no way reflect or are endorsed by any other person or entity but myself, because I, too, am free.
