This week’s custom theme comes to us from Otto Calta with Coldwell Banker Terrequity Realty in Toronto. What I really like about this theme is that it demonstrates how easy it can be to create a great-looking branded theme by taking a logo, uploading it as a header image, and then matching the header background color to the logo (see the second image below). The green/white/gray palette of the theme is really well-integrated with the look of the ThinkTorontoHomes.com logo.

For a fantastic example of a broker website, you should also check out ThinkTorontoHomes.com, the website of Otto and his team.

I also wanted to use this opportunity again to point out that vFlyer now supports Canadian listings. If you are an agent or broker in Canada, you can include the full address of your listings as well as the price in Canadian dollars.

I can’t stress enough the importance of getting your brand out there on the web. It’s the one thing that will distinguish your ads from your competitors’, and it lends a high degree of professionalism to your online listings. So create a vFlyer custom theme this weekend! For a useful introduction, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

We’ll be back next Friday with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you’ve created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

Yesterday we made two additions to our arsenal of vFlyer Listing Widgets: a 100-pixel wide and a 200-pixel wide auto-scrolling multi-item Widget. Unfortunately, these images are not animated.

The two new Widgets give our users more and better options for integrating their vFlyer content into their websites, blogs, and social networks. The new Widgets are especially useful in blogs, where often the sidebar is the default location of widgets and other components. In particular, bloggers on ActiveRain should find the new narrow scrolling Widgets quite valuable.

Also, the new Widgets don’t include vFlyer branding on them, which makes it even better to incorporate them into your website, social network profile or blog.

The new Widgets are part of our line of Premium Widgets available only to vFlyer business subscribers. If you have a vFlyer Personal account and are interested in upgrading your account to take advantage of the new Widgets, you can do so by clicking here.

To preview these widgets, click to the vFlyer Widget Library.  Scroll down to the Scrolling 100px and Scrolling 200px widgets.

On a related note, we will be adding a new series of short video tutorials on vFlyer Widgets soon. We hope that with the introduction of the scrolling sidebar Widgets and new video tutorials, we see lots of fantastic vFlyer Widgets out there this summer!

This week’s custom theme comes to us from Vranas Properties in Chicago. They did a fantastic job integrating their logo into the theme, and I love the color palette they use. It looks as though it were created by a professional web designer! That’s what’s so great about vFlyer’s Theme Editor: it makes it very easy for any vFlyer member to create professional, branded marketing content without having to hire a designer to do it for you. (Although I should mention we have seen some amazing custom themes created for our members by graphic designers.)

Any vFlyer business subscriber can create a branded custom theme and use it in his or her Flyers and Account Profile. If you haven’t created a custom theme yet, now’s the time to try it! For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

We’ll be back next Friday with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you’ve created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

As the nation is preoccupied by the continuing economic crisis, the nomination of the first Hispanic U.S. Supreme Court justice, and the (diminishing) prospect of a LeBron-Kobe matchup in the NBA Finals, I wanted take a moment to fill you in on an exciting new development at vFlyer: the automatic posting of U.S. listings to Kijiji.com for vFlyer business subscribers. Now when you publish a Flyer in a real estate, rentals, or autos category, you can have it posted to Kijiji automatically. The best part is, this happens almost instantly in the case of Housing. In other words, in the time it takes you to go from your vFlyer account after you’ve published a Flyer to Kijiji, it will probably be posted there already. (Note: we’ve noticed a delay for auto listings, so it may take up to 24 hours for vehicles. Some delays may occur for real estate or rentals.)

This is great news for vFlyer members as Kijiji is fast becoming one of the leading classifieds websites in the country. Kijiji (which means “village” in Swahili) is owned by eBay and has already established itself as the top classifieds site in Canada; it’s now looking to do the same in the U.S. We’re thrilled to be one of the first syndication providers to offer automatic submission to Kijiji and look forward to helping the site grow even faster. And our business subscribers will benefit most from having their listings reach an even wider audience. So everybody wins!

If you are a vFlyer business subscriber, you can enable automatic submission of your real estate, rentals, and auto listings to Kijiji by clicking the Update Syndication Settings link on your account homepage, checking the box labeled Kijiji, and clicking Update. For Flyers that you’ve already published, you will need to re-publish them in order to have them posted to Kijiji.

Again, we’re thrilled to add this feature to the vFlyer service. If you have questions or feedback for us about it, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com!

Update: Monday, June 8, 2009 – This marketplace partnership is referenced in our recent service announcement.

Earlier this week, we implemented the vFlyer Account Scoring System that shows you how well you are utilizing the wide range of features and capabilities in your vFlyer account.

You’ll now see a percentage in the top right section of your account homepage; this is your Account Score. Clicking the link labeled Improve your Account Score allows you to see which capabilities you are taking advantage and which ones you’re not. This provides a guide for taking advantage of more capabilities and thus improving the effectiveness of your marketing.

Our hope is that the new scoring system helps our members get even better results. We want to see lots of 100% scores! If you get your score up to 100%, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.

I also wanted to share that we introduce a new marketing page that provides some of the benefits of the Agency Edition of the vFlyer service. Please take a look when you have time.

We want to announce the launch of a new feature of the vFlyer service called vFlyer Backpack. It’s a “bookmarklet” that can be stored in your web browser as a bookmark or hyperlink. vFlyer Backpack allows you to “carry” your marketing content with you wherever you go on the web. For instance, if you’re posting a Flyer to ActiveRain, now you can just go to ActiveRain and, once you’re on the blog posting page, open vFlyer Backpack from your browser, select the flyer and then drag and drop (or copy and paste) the HTML to the posting form. It is much easier than having two browser windows open.

vFlyer Backpack is also valuable for posting Flyers to Craigslist, Backpage, eBay, blog sites, and other websites.

Here’s a link to some instructions and demos for installing and using vFlyer Backpack: Click here.

We’re very excited about this new feature and hope it helps you post your marketing content on the web more quickly and easily. If you have questions or feedback about vFlyer Backpack, contact us at support@vflyer.com.

We were excited this morning to learn that Sally Forster Jones of Coldwell Banker Previews International in Beverly Hills was selected as the co-listing agent for late television producer Aaron Spelling’s mansion in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Beverly Hills. This is significant because Mr. Spelling’s house is currently the most expensive on the U.S. market, up for grabs at a whopping $150 million! According to the Associated Press, it’s the largest home in Los Angeles County at 56,500 square feet and sits on a more than 4.6-acre lot. It’s estimated that there are over 100 bedrooms in the house.

Apparently Mr. Spelling’s widow used her dog Madison to help her pick the best real estate agent for the task of selling the house. She had the dog brought into the room each time she met a candidate agent and watched how the dog reacted. According to reports, if Madison didn’t like an agent, Spelling crossed the agent off the list. Sounds like Jones passed the Madison test with flying colors!

Sally Forster Jones is a top producer for Coldwell Banker with over 30 years of experience in the business. At one time or another she has been involved in just about every aspect of real estate sales, from property management to development to owning her own brokerage. She is listed in Who’s Who in American Real Estate, representing the top 1% of the top 1% of all agents nationally. And on top of all that, she has created a very nice branded theme using the vFlyer Theme Editor!

On a related note, as my name is Aaron Sperling, occasionally people confuse me with Aaron Spelling, so I feel an extra special connection to this listing. Now if I just had that $150 million…

We’re proud to have a vFlyer member gain such a prestigious listing. Congratulations Sally!

Alain Pinel may not be the biggest brokerage, but their agents apparently believe in the value of branded marketing content. They have recently catapulted into the lead in terms of using one of the vFlyer Custom Broker themes for their online marketing content. Rounding out the top 3 are RE/MAX and Allen Tate.

Many agents are going one step further. They are uploading custom header and background images and then updating the colors to match their header image. These are not only producing stunning results, but also they often match the branding on our member’s website.

I am very excited to be attending and exhibiting at the Triple Play Real Estate Conference in Atlantic City, NJ on December 9-10, 2008. This provides a great opportunity to meet members of the vFlyer community.  I hope that you will stop by our booth, #1043, and say hello. We look forward to hearing from you on how we can better support your marketing efforts in 2009 and beyond. Also, we will be highlighting several terrific design themes created by our members with the new vFlyer Theme Editor. One of my current favorites is a Climb Real Estate Group theme.

We’ve gotten a number of requests from our members over the last few months for information about vFlyer Agency Edition, so I wanted to write a post that explains what vFlyer Agency Edition is and how it can benefit vFlyer users.

vFlyer Agency Edition is an account configuration that allows real estate agencies, property management companies, marketing firms, and other organizations that require multiple accounts to create and assign sub-accounts, which are essentially normal vFlyer accounts that are under the management of a main account. The manager and any assistants of the main account can access all sub-accounts via a drop-down list and have the power to assign these sub-accounts to to others so that they can create, edit, and publish content in them. Those assigned to sub-accounts will only have access to the sub-account to which they are assigned.

The main benefits of vFlyer Agency Edition in these scenarios are:

1. You can assign sub-accounts to your employees, team members, or clients for less than what it would cost to set up stand-alone vFlyer accounts for each of them.

2. As the account manager, you have the ability to coordinate and oversee the content in each sub-account so that, for instance, you could have all the sub-accounts use a custom branded Flyer theme you created in the main account to maintain consistency across your company’s or organization’s listings.

vFlyer Agency Edition is ideal for:

1. Real Estate Agencies and Broker Offices
2. Auto Dealership Groups
3. Property Management Companies
4. Mortgage Brokers advertising Realtor listings
5. Marketing and Graphic Design Firms

vFlyer Agency Edition is also a great tool for individual vFlyer members and small companies who have different categories of listings that they want to keep separate from each other. For instance, if you are a Realtor marketing properties in different locations, or properties both for sale and for rent, you could create a sub-account for each that you could access from your main account. Not only does this allow you to manage your listings more easily, it also gives you a separate Account Profile for each sub-account so that viewers of each Account Profile only see the listings you want them to see.

vFlyer Agency Edition is available to vFlyer Premium and vFlyer Professional members.

There is no additional charge for unassigned sub-accounts, which share the Flyer allocation of the main account. In other words, if you have a vFlyer Professional account and you create four sub-accounts, those four sub-accounts as well as the main account all pull from the same allocation of 125 available Active Flyers.

Assigned sub-accounts, on the other hand, have their own allocation of Flyers and are charged based on this allocation. The main account manager can specify the subscription plan associate with each sub-account. Typically, the sub-accounts are discounted at 20% off the normal subscription price. The manager of the main account can specify whether the main account is billed for assigned sub-accounts or the individual sub-account user is billed directly for his or her sub-account.

To learn more about vFlyer Agency Edition, send us an email at sales@vflyer.com.

We’re excited to announce that you can now search for Flyers in your vFlyer account by title, price, street address, city, state, and zip code! This new search feature will hopefully make locating individual Flyers much easier, especially for those of you with dozens of listings to manage.

On your Flyers page, you’ll now see a Search Options link. Clicking this link will bring up a search field and a drop-down menu where you can select the search criteria (whether you want to search by title, price, etc.). You can also specify whether you want to search all of your listings or just active, draft, or expired listings.

Happy Searching!

As in many industries, increasing numbers of auto shoppers are beginning their searches online instead of at the lot. What this means for auto dealers (particularly independent dealers who don’t have all the resources of a dealership group) is 1) you better have a website, and 2) you better be marketing your vehicles effectively on your website. An obvious way to do this is to put your vehicle inventory on your website so that visitors to the site can view photos and get information about each vehicle you are selling. There are companies sprouting up every year whose sole function is to provide auto dealers with an inventory of their vehicles for their websites. If you’re a vFlyer member, however, you should know that you already have an inventory built into your vFlyer account! Your vFlyer Account Profile effectively serves as a vehicle inventory website as it displays all your active listings, with a link to each Flyer, a thumbnail photo, and summary information about each vehicle.

If you haven’t set up your vFlyer Account Profile, you should do that right now (or at least immediately after you finish reading this post). Your Account Profile is a valuable marketing tool where you can display your contact information, a description of your business, your photo and logo, and (if you are a vFlyer business subscriber) links to other relevant websites. Also, if you’re a business subscriber, you can choose from a number of design themes for your Account Profile (including custom Flyer themes that you’ve created). So you see, if you are an auto dealer, simply by having a vFlyer account, publishing Flyers in it, and setting up your Account Profile, you have a vehicle inventory to utilize on your website!

vFlyer member Elton Rosales of KD Auto Sales in New Braunfels, Texas utilized his vFlyer Account Profile as a vehicle inventory on his website. Click here to see.

To put your Account Profile on your website, you (or whoever manages the website) will need to use an iframe to do so. An iframe is an HTML tag that inserts one web page into another and displays it in a frame. To embed your Account Profile using an iframe, follow these steps:

1. Copy the URL of your Account Profile. You can access the URL by clicking the Post Flyer tab from the Flyer Editor or the Post your Flyer quickly & easily link from your Flyer Dashboard. The URL will be labeled “Link to your Gallery.”

2. Open the HTML file for your website.

3. Copy and paste this code:

<iframe src=”Account Profile URL&Prime height=”1000&Prime width=”900&Prime></iframe>

Where Account Profile URL is, replace the text inside the quotation marks with the URL of your Account Profile (and leave the quotation marks). Paste this tag where you want the Account Profile to appear on the page. Depending on how large you want the Account Profile to appear on the page, you can adjust the height and width dimensions accordingly. You can also set the height and width by percentages instead of pixelage (e.g., “90%”).

If you use your vFlyer Account Profile as a vehicle inventory on your website, send a link to the page to support@vflyer.com. We would love to see it!

We’re very excited to be exhibiting at Inman News Real Estate Connect 2008 here in San Francisco this week. We had a great time there last year and are looking forward to “RE-connecting” (sorry, I couldn’t resist) with our partners, our friends at Inman News, and our members! We’ll have a booth set up in the main exhibition hall on Wednesday and Thursday - if you are at the show, stop by and say hello! Or, if you are going to be around but don’t think you’ll make it to our booth, send an email to inmanconnect@vflyer.com letting us know and perhaps we can figure out a time to chat.

For more news and information on Inman Real Estate Connect 2008, visit Inman Connect.

If you’ve ever had your unsaved work on a flyer lost because your session expired while you were writing a long description, then you know how frustrating it can be. That’s why we recently introduced an autosave feature in the Flyer Editor and Photo Editor that automatically saves any work you’ve done on a flyer after 29 minutes of inactivity (or activity only in the description field). It’s still a good idea to click the Save Draft button every ten minutes or so in case you encounter a network problem or some other error, but the autosave feature provides added security against losing work you’ve done. 

Note: The autosave feature only applies to the Flyer Editor and Photo Editor.

As many of the readers of our blog know, vFlyer launched its beta back in Oct 2006. What many of you may not know is that we opened our private beta in July 2006. One of our earliest users of the service was Eppie AhKiong of Palazzo Realty in Long Beach, CA. Eppie was using the vFlyer service to create Craigslist postings. Over the first few months, we received not only suggestions but also great feedback from her usage of the vFlyer service.  Yesterday, we received a beautiful and tasty fruit basket form the Palazzo Realty crew with a note saying that the basket was from vFlyer’s #1 Fans.

After enjoying fresh pineapple and strawberries (some of which were chocolate coated), we took a vote for our #1 Fan.  We would like to take this opportunity to thank the community that utilizes the vFlyer service. We love the feedback and suggestions. We try to choose the suggestions that are going to benefit the overall community the most and implement those first. Please keep the suggestions coming.