Years ago, the tools used to sell a home were a yard sign, an information sheet, and an open house. Today, those traditional methods are still very effective, but they’re not the only means of marketing your home. Now there is the whole realm of Internet, or online, marketing available to home sellers.

Although the high-tech nature of online selling may scare some folks off, the good news is that you don’t need much in the way of computer skills to be successful here. There are plenty of services that are more than willing to handle the entire process of marketing your home on the web, for a small fee. But if you like working on the computer, you may enjoy the challenge of setting up your own web page.

As we’ve said before, 70 percent of home buyers start their search for a home on the web. That means, odds are, the person or family who ultimately buys your home is also going to turn to the Internet to find possible homes for purchase early on.

If you’re not on the web, they may not find you—ever. Of course, they can still find your home through your other marketing tools, such as your yard sign and flyers, but that may only occur if they don’t find a home they like during their initial search of properties online. Marketing your home online significantly increases the number of potential buyers who will hear about it.

Making information about your home available online can help get your home in front of a prospective buyer. It’s that simple. Fortunately, it doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, and the added exposure is generally well worth it.

If you’ve already made the decision to market your home online, you now have several approaches to consider:

All else being equal, it makes the most sense to work with a company, or website, that will both help you create your own site and market it to potential buyers. After your site is developed, the service’s sole purpose is to market and sell your home. Of course, cost usually plays a role in the decision-making, so you’ll need to take that into account as you survey your options.

The most expensive way to go may be to sign on with a FSBO program that includes a website listing as part of the service (see the following figure). Make sure you get a website listing as well as yard, directional, and open house signs as part of your package. In the long run, this can turn out to be your least expensive option, but in terms of total dollars expended up front for a web presence, it probably leads the list.

The second most expensive option will usually, but not always, be a local service for FSBOs or homesellers. The amount of help in preparing your website or web page will vary, and your listing will generally be included with other homes in your area, rather than homes nationwide. But because buyers typically focus on a particular locale for their search, this shouldn’t be a deterrent.

Using a company or service that helps you create and host your own site can cost as little as $30 or $40 up front, which is great as long as you can get help in making the site visible to buyers looking for a home. That $40, plus hosting fees of a few dollars a month, will go to waste if you create a site that no one ever sees.

Creating your own site using software and templates available online may cost you nothing out-of-pocket, but your challenge of alerting buyers to the existence of your site is even greater. You may need to do some research to identify local home selling websites to link to, which may cost you some cash.

Setting up your own website may save you a little money if you use a free web template and free web hosting service, but you’ll still want to have your home page look like a lot of the other homepages that feature homes for sale.

A few of the better-known websites for free or low cost web design and hosting are:

When building and designing your site (see the following figure), some of the basic information you’ll want to be sure you feature front and center includes:

Other information you may want to mention, if you have the capability, includes:

If you decide you don’t have the interest or inclination to set up your own website to market your home, there are still some web-based services that can help you make a sale.

For those of you who want to check out some of the larger, national sites, here are some biggies to visit:

Many MLS systems now offer homesellers the opportunity to add a “virtual home tour” to their listing, which provides potential buyers with several photos of the home’s interior. These tours generally consist of several exterior and interior photographs of a home to give potential buyers a clearer picture of what’s inside and around the back.

Fortunately, it isn’t necessary to have an MLS listing to set up a virtual tour of your home. There are a number of services more than willing to give you the tools to create one, or to do the work for you, for around $100.

Some of the providers currently on the market are:

If a buyer likes the looks of the front of your home, being able to immediately see attractive photos of the inside can move the buying process along quickly. They may love the brick exterior of your place, and when they see the fireplace, large kitchen, and beautiful backyard, they’ll really be sold. But without additional online photos, buyers need to schedule an appointment for an in-person tour, which may take a few days to coordinate and schedule—days during which they may be looking at other homes.

Virtual tours provide more information instantaneously, which is a big plus in the information age.

E-mail can be a very effective marketing tool, as long as you don’t spam anyone.

You can approach e-mail marketing in a number of ways. The first step is to decide what information is most interesting, or relevant, for buyers. Does your home have an unusual architectural feature, such as leaded glass windows? Or does it sport a very private backyard? Is it in a very popular neighborhood or school district?

After you’ve decided what single piece of information is likely to catch the attention of potential buyers in your area, you should start to write up a brief subject header to lead off your message. Then draft an email message introducing yourself and alerting the recipients to the fact that your home is for sale. Strive to get all the information to fit on one computer screen, so readers don’t have to scroll down for more information, but hit on several of your home’s advantages here, within the body of the message.

And then include a link to your home’s web page or listing on a website, so recipients can immediately check it out.

Your next task is to determine the most effective source for names of buyers. In many cases, you won’t be able to get the e-mail addresses of all the people currently in the market for a home in your area, so you have to broaden your search a bit and seek people who may have contact with such buyers.

Some of the people you may want to contact via e-mail with this information include:

Like mailing out your flyers, e-mail is one more way to let people know that your home is for sale. And where they may throw out a lot of their printed mail, they may open your e-mail—or vice versa.

If you’ve already done a mailing of your flyers, you can also use e-mail as a follow-up mechanism to remind people the home is still available and to point out something you didn’t mention in your earlier message—like the fact that taxes are lowest in the region, or your kitchen has all new appliances, for instance.

In addition to national real estate websites, there are many websites that specialize in a particular geographic area, which is helpful both to buyers and sellers who may not want to wade through thousands of listings to find those specifically in Memphis, Tennessee, for example.

Although national websites can be useful because they often get more traffic, the local sites generally cost less to advertise on and will appeal more to the people who are looking in and around your zip code.

A few of the localized websites you may want to investigate are:

In addition to these localized sites, there are also websites like www.craigslist.org that are not real estate-specific, but function more like an online community bulletin board. People can search for items they want to buy, such as a house in a particular town, or a computer, or a used car, as well as listing items they want to sell. The traffic at this site is huge.

The reality is that the best website program for you will vary depending on where you live. You can use a number of companies or websites to prepare a web page with information about your home, but where you post that information will differ by region of the country.

Some areas have excellent local or regional FSBO sites, others don’t. You may have access to local real estate sites in conjunction with your newspaper in some parts of the country, but not in all. In some places, the free alternative newsweeklies and community pennysavers have corresponding websites that are less expensive, but just as popular, as the major daily newspaper, and are worth exploring as an online marketing tool. And in some locales, networking via e-mail may be a better bet than uploading information about your home.

However, no matter where you live, you can be virtually guaranteed that buyers will go to the web for information about homes available in your neighborhood.

The Least You Need to Know