Joseph G. Ferrara and Rudolph D. Bachraty III, The Founders of Sellsius°

I had the pleasure of  "interviewing" the gentlemen and founders of SellsiusRealEstate.    There are alot of blogs that I read daily but there is one that continiously steps outside of the box.  They are responsible for the Top Ten Female Bloggers (which by the way was an honor), the 101 Blogging Challenge and inventing the word "UnZillowable".  I suspect that there will be more to come because they have alot of imagination between the two of them. 

So... without further ado.. (Drum roll please...)

Joseph G. Ferrara and Rudolph D. Bachraty III, The Founders of Sellsius°

1.)  You both have done so much with your blog - you have as far as I am concerned, you have become the kings of blogging - What Inspired you to start blogging?   

We are flattered.  We have been fortunate that people like something about us or our writing.  We don't know what it is, though we'd love to know.   

We started blogging in January after the Inman NYC Connect where we were Silver Sponsors and received a very warm welcome in anticipation of our upcoming idea for a community website.  The theme of the show was upcoming innovations in real estate and blogging was one of  them.  We had been reading blogs for sometime---Property Grunt, Inman, Matrix, Curbed and Rain City Guide.  In fact, all these blogs had given us valuable press.  (Glenn Roberts at Inman News did a piece on Sellsius back in November of last year.)  All this inspired us to start a blog of our own.  We had no expectations. It was an outlet to express our love of real estate while we were waiting for our website to be built. Over time we learned the ropes, we met some influential bloggers, caught a couple of breaks, and luckily some of our posts got good airplay.  What has been the most rewarding though is meeting new bloggers.  We remember how hard it was, and still is, to get noticed, to get visitors, comments & links.  The property grunt, an A-list blogger, wrote about us often and gave us so much positive press, even though we were complete unknowns.  It was his generosity of spirit which encouraged us to reach out to new bloggers and get them some needed attention.  It is something we will continue when we start our own community.

2.)  You have many posts - out of all of them, which one(s) would you say are your favorites?

• Top 10 Women Real Estate Bloggers--because we were able to help other bloggers get noticed. This has been our most rewarding post. 
• Sellsius° 101 Blog Post Challenge--for the same reason -we could help other bloggers.  Also, it was great fun and a unique community event
• All our Bell Lab posts---because we we able to participate in blog proactivism. We also got the opportunity to know Ryan Block of Engadget.
• Unzillowable, To Coin a Phrase: we got to invent a word and it got into the mainstream. Unzillowable is now googleable.  We get to leave a small mark
• Mary Kay Gallagher Story: we felt like reporters interviewing a living legend in Brooklyn real estate.  She is known as the Queen of Victorians.  An 86 year old delight. 
• Sellsius° Dialogue with Craigslist: NYC Real Estate---how often do you get a chance to dialogue with Craig Newmark.
• Craiglist Videos: NYC agents want me to charge them---it got alot of comments which felt really good
• Redfin does not own Registered Trademark Real Estate 2.0---because we we're able to help a new blogger in a time of need. It was also news.
• How to Overthrow a Tyrant: Fighting a Co-op Borad  Rejection---as NYC brokers we had to deal with co-op Boards. 

Which one drove in the most traffic?

5 Ways to Market Yourself as an Expert.  It has gotten over 30,000 unique visitors since we posted it in May. Maybe it was the way to get a free cruise that got all the attention.

3.) What tools or websites do you use to inspire your posts?

• We feed our Bloglines feedreader well and it rewards us with topics. 
• We have a lot of non-real estate blogs & unknown blogs & websites flying well under the radar. 
• We like marketing and advertising blogs since real estate is a business & needs to be aware of new marketing techniques. 
• We read websites from other countries & find the foreign perspectivve very inspiring.
• We have used Stumbleupon- -- it's great fun too.
• We visit the social bookmarking sites.
• The wire services -- AP, UPI and Reuters.
• Here's a great tip -- put a search term in any search engine & then get the feed---everytime that topic is discussed, you know about it.
• Newpapers, magazines, our past experiences --- we just keep our eyes & ears open.  As a blogoholic, you filter everything as a future blog post.
• Many times we pick up on a topic raised by another blog and just try to find a new angle or give it the sellsius° spin as we call it.

4.) Being the leader in the blogospere - which blogs do you frequent?

• There is no leader. Nor should there be. We advocate that everyone blaze their own trail. When we started there were too many rules for us anyway.
• All the real estate blogs in our blogroll are in our feeder & we try to visit them all -- it's getting harder esp. since PHD put out a list of 500. Dang!
• As far as non-realestate blogs:
• Copyblogger ---we have a great relationship with Brian Clark, who is also an attorney.
• Guy Kawasaki's blog --- another A-lister who gave us the time of day and is humble enough to email us.
• Lifehacker -- -we love learning new tech tricks so long as they're easy.
• Techcrunch -- since we're on the net we want to see who else is out there with us.  We might learn something.
• MicroPersuasion -- -fantastic blog -- we don't know how Steve does it.
• EnglishRussia - we (Joe) has a Russian fetish.

5.)  I notice that you have "big news" soon - is there anything that you can share with us now?

• We and Blogging Systems are going to announce a new fun tool for blogs which may get you more page views and make your blog a little stickier.  It's a wordpress plug-in.
• We also plan to announce a new community blog event -- something other blogs can do in the future, something along the lines of the Carnival of Real Estate.
• Oh yeah, by the way, we might decide to launch our site soon :)

6.)  In the next 3 years, blogging will go through some growing pains - what do you think will be the biggest change that the blogs will face?

Commercialization and oversaturation.

7.) SellsiusRealEstate.com is becoming a household name as a real estate related blog.  I am curious, do you guys sell real estate?

Household name? You're the first to tell us that. Thanks.

We used to sell real estate in New York City a few moons ago.

8.)  I know that SellsiusRealEstate.com is for a listing tool - but that has not taken off as of yet... howcome?

We ask ourselves the same question everyday.  Actually, Sellsius will be a grassroots real estate community people can trust to get information, advice, guidance, in additon to seeing listings.  Of course people can always use a new venue for advertising listings online but we do not want to be looked upon as strictly a listing site. We hope to introduce new search methods to improve the process.  Everyone is searching for different things and one search method does not fit all.  We are two real estate guys with ideas on how to promote individual real estate agents, their businesses and their listings. We are not programmers and have been at the mercy of our web developer. We're still waiting for them to finalize the site. We are using our own money to build sellsius° because we want to answer only to our members' needs rather than investors' which have approached us.

9.) Who does most of the blogging, Rudolph or Joseph?

Most of the time we write our own posts but we often get the other's opinion and input.  In the beginning, every post was written side by side.  Can you tell who is writing the posts?  The reason we dont take individual credit on the posts is because we want to promote the sellsius° brand.

10.) Will you be at the Inman Connect this January?

We hope to be.

Comments

[jf.sellsius]

Thank you Christine for the honor. Of all our interviews, yours was by far the most enjoyable.

[Christine]

Sellsius - Thank you once again for the opprotunity to interview you. I have to admit - this was my first and I enjoyed it. Much luck to you always.

[Michael Daly]

Nice going Christine! Joe and Rudy have been a real inspiration to me, here in the Hamptons.md

[Condo Blog]

We found Sellsius Blog a few months back and are avid readers. Love the blog, content & flow (humor). We can only hope that one day our blog can bring similar energy to the 'digital' real estate community! Our recent entrance into the New York markets (starting yesterday)...will hopefully allow us to build closer relationships to many of you. Chat soon!!!

[Christine]

Micheal Daly - I am with you.. When you are right.. you are right..

CondoBlog - Congratulations and best wishes as well. I was over at your blog and it looks good.

[AltaGid]

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