In today’s housing market, it can be tough to sell your home. You need every advantage that you can get to stand above the rest of the crowd. Home buyer’s consistently site the quality and quantity of photos and available video as reasons for considering one house over another when doing their research online. And with 84% of all home buyers starting their home search online, it is important to not only have a presence there, but to do it effectively. There are four free Internet tools that you can use to help you stand out from the rest of your competition.

1. Postlets.com

The first free site to visit and take a look at it Postlets.com. Postlets is an online syndicator. They syndicate your house listing to 40+ sites online with the push of a button. With postlets, you can publish your house listing to social media sites, like Facebook and Twitter. Your listing will also be sent to sites like Zillow, Trulia, Google Base, Hotpads and FrontDoor among many others. This greatly enhances the exposure that your listing will receive across a wide demographic. You can also get HTNL code for your listing and post it on Craigslist. Don’t let the word HTML scare you. It’s a simple cut and paste scenario that everyone should be able to handle. They have a free membership that allows for an unlimited number of listings, but they only allow 6 photos per listing and no embeddable video. The PRO version allows for video and up to 18 photos per listing. The PRO version costs as little as $5 per month.

2. vFlyer.com

vFlyer.com is another online site that will syndicate your listing to numerous websites. According to the vFlyer website, “vFlyer was designed for non-technical and non-designers to create professional marketing content to promote residential homes, apartments, vacation rentals, autos, and services listings. The fill-in-the blank template approach used by vFlyer has enabled tens of thousands of people to create marketing content without any assistance”. vFlyer is our preferred provider for our house listing at LAISellshomes.com. vFlyer has a free program that will allow you up to two listings and each listing allows 8 pictures. The free membership at postlets.com only allows 6 photos. The starter plan is just $12.95 per month and allows for up to 10 listings, 26 photos per listing, embeddable video, a large selection of Craigslist layouts, and the ability to print out professional looking flyers for the listing. vFlyer has a nice Activity section that gives you the number of visits to your listing, as well as the source of that traffic.

3. Animoto

Animoto.com is a great site for creating videos from existing photos set to music that you choose. From their site… “Turn your photos & videos into pure amazing. Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy.” This is a great site that enables you to harness the power of video without video production knowledge. The FREE membership allows for a 30 second video. The upgraded version allows you to create unlimited full-length videos, each licensed for commercial use with no Animoto branding. You can also download your video and burn them to a disc to hand out to potential buyers. If you are a Realtor, imagine the surprise on the buyer’s face when you hand them a professionally edited DVD of the house that you just showed them. Who do you think that buyer is going to remember? The Realtor that handed them a traditional paper flyer, or you and your amazing video that you created? The business plan is $249 for a year, or $39 per month. Use Animoto.com to send a video of your house to a potential buyer or post it to social media sites. Or, upgrade to the business plan, download the video and embed in your postlets.com or vFlyer.com account.

4. Craigslist

Craigslist.org is a great site to advertise your house. It generates a huge volume of traffic, which translates to great exposure for your property. The easiest way to harness the power of craigslist is through either postlets or vFlyer. They both have the ability to provide HTML code that you can cut and paste into craigslist. You will then have a beautiful, professional looking brochure display of your listing on craigslist. All you have to do then is add the price and a captivating headline to get people to click through to the craiglist ad and you are in business. Here is a great tip not many people know about. Re-post your listing every 3 days. Craigslist allows you to post the same ad only once every 48 hours. By re-posting your ad every 3 days you increase the listing’s exposure by keeping the ad at the top of the listings. If you do not re-post your ad it will continue to get pushed down the craigslist ad board where people begin their search.

All four of these sites are excellent ways to increase the exposure of the house you have for sale. You will be amazed at the results you will get when you combine either a postlets or vFlyer account with an animoto video and post it to craigslist. These are great tips for Realtors as well.