This may be more like Seven Reasons I’m Too Lazy To Blog, but we’ll work under the assumption I’ve just been busy. It might not look like it, but I’ve actually been busier than a one legged man playing Twister. There’s been a bunch of stuff happening in the background this week.

WP 3 I finally upgraded my poor blog to WordPress 3.0. Part of the reason is I like to let other people work out the bugs before I risk breaking my blog. I’m starting to be at the point where I get enough traffic and am lacking enough time such that if this thing goes down it’s a real pain in the butt. I’m happy to say that is was a painless experience.

Part of the reason I didn’t want to upgrade to WP 3.0 was I’d heard that there were some bugs between it and Thesis. I hasn’t upgraded from 1.6 to 1.7 yet, for the same lazy reasons as WP, and I really didn’t want to break my thesis installation. This was also pretty slick, although it still requires some FTP work. Anyways, I like it a lot, and even with the random GPL licensing legal conversation out there, Thesis is my preferred premium theme and is pretty fantastic for SEO.

1962 Stats I updated the ever popular Edmonton Real Estate Values Since 1962 spreadsheet with the must recent numbers. It goes up to June 2010 now, and I’ll give it till the fall and then recalculate the retrospective analysis. For now it’s all here if you want the data in a more accessible and useful format than the PDF’s you can get from the Edmonton Real Estate Board.

Housing Type Stats Since I was going through EREB stats anyways, I pulled the last few years worth of Edmonton’s average house prices by housing type into a spreadsheet and made a wee graph. Again, the data is here for you to enjoy and make use of.

Some have reminded me that I haven’t published the retirement savings post I mentioned in last week’s post about my generation being potentially screwed in retirement. I wanted to do more research into the actual numbers based on how old I am, when I want to retire, when my kids will go to University, etc. Stay tuned, it’ll come out this week.

It’s been a bit of a trend, but I’ve done more renos! Surprise! Actually, Leigh’s been the real rockstar of this project. Her role is much more that of a Project manager, since we’re using sub-trades for a lot of the work, but she’s still put a lot of sweat into this job.

And finally, I sent out two JV letters to friends who are interested in doing some real estate together. Unlike a lot of people in this industry, I don’t use this site to get people to invest with me. You can’t just throw me an email and then send me a cheque. I prefer to work with people I know reasonably well, have some shared interests and mutual friends. It keeps us both accountable and makes sure we’re both looking for the same things.

And actually, one more thing. I’m pretty stoked for the REIN fieldtrip and Multi Family weekend in August, although I’ll be at a wedding on the Saturday. Drop me a line if you’re going to be in town from somewhere far away, cause it’s always nice to meet new people. I get a kick when I bump into people who read my blog.

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To help investors in general and REIN members in particular, I’m going to be running a series of webinars and in-person workshops on internet marketing. The first will run for 1 hour this Sunday, November 29th at 6pm GMT. (1pm Toronto, 11am in Edmonton/Calgary, 10am in Vancouver).

This first workshop is completely free and is limited to 20 people to make sure we’re able to answer questions and due to the limitations of the software. Done! You can sign up to be notified of future webinars here.

We’ll start at the beginning, assuming you have no technical knowledge beyond sending an email or posting on myREINspace. The points I’m planning on covering are:

- Do I need a website?
- Pre-made, custom or something else?
- How people find your website
- How search engines work
- Isn’t Social Media a waste of time?
- Links and Paid Advertising
- Tracking your websites and customers
- Lead scoring (sorting your suspects and prospects)

Again, it’s a very intro level webinar, so I’ll touch on most of this, but it’ll be more of a familarization, rather than a discussion of strategy and tactics.

You can sign up here, and I’ll do what I can to make a recorded version available online afterwards. I’ll likely offer an intro-level webinar on a regular basis.

I’m also going to offer advanced webinars and in-person workshops in the future (which won’t all be free) on topics including:
- Advanced SEO (search engine optimization)
- Social Media
- Blogging and WordPress
- Analytics
- Lead Generation and Lead-Scoring

A bit about myself: I grew up in a family of investors and property managers, working in some capacity for Davies Management between age 12-25. After moving to Kelowna I landed a position with Enquiro Search Solutions becoming a SEO and Social Media expert. Our client list at Enquiro spanned the range from small B2B tech startups to huge Fortune 100 firms. In the summer of 2009 I moved to Ireland with my new wife and have been enjoying spending the last 3 months traveling around Ireland and into Europe. We will be returning to Canada just in time to spend Christmas with our families.

Photo Credit:

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Today’s February 11th, and that makes it my one year Enquiroversary. I tried to find a post from back then, but the only thing that makes any sense is a funny video about the subprime crisis.
Besides the admiration of my co-workers and a free lunch, I got a cool present. I had been asked to present (again) at CBD network, a group which helps professionals define their career paths and find employment in the Okanagan valley.

Here’s a copy of my slides, and I’ve put some links below.

Here are some of the links I mentioned during my presentation:

• The blogging software: WordPress
• Getting your own domain name (www.chrisdavies.ca): Netfirms or Godaddy. Both also have one-button installations of WordPress, which is simpler than trying to set it up yourself.
• Tracking your website: Google Analytics
• The super-cool book where those graphs came from was Indexed.

Enjoy!

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Google’s moving things around, so my RSS feeds are moving from FeedBurner’s own servers to become a Google service. 

If  you follow me via RSS, make sure your feeds point to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/chrisdavies/SZeK (the only difference is the “2″ at the front). If you’re following via email, there’ll be no changes (I hope!). 

If you’re not following via RSS or email, you can add me here. It’s a much easier way to stay up to date than having to go through your favorites menu every day.

If this all has just confused you, don’t worry about it, you probably won’t notice any change.

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After two great weeks off, I’m back on the blogging bandwagon. I managed a week in Edmonton, three days up skiing at Big White, and my very first proper shift as a Ski Patrol.

I’ve been reflecting on the past year, and a 2008 Year in Review will follow shortly. In 2008 this blog went from nothing to 7,679 visits, generating 17,660 views, from 63 countries. Based on the average, that’s just over 305 hours of time on site. 

Enough of the random analytics…here’s a 4×4 of my most popular posts. Why 4×4? Try driving up to Big White in a snow storm with out it….actually it’s four posts for four types of popularity.

The Four Posts with the Most Comments

• Edmonton Real Estate Prices Since 1962 (16)
• Six Steps to Finding Cashflow Creek (and two bonus steps) (11)
• What to do with dead tenants (5)
• Interactive Maps of Edmonton and Red Deer (5)

The Four Posts with the Most Views

•  Edmonton Real Estate Prices Since 1962 (2,095)
• Six Steps to Finding Cashflow Creek (and two bonus steps) (384)
• What will Alberta be like in 2010 for Real Estate? (286)
• Edmonton Townhouse Rents – CMHC Stats in a Motion Chart (274)

The Four Posts with the Longest Time on Site

• For Real Estate Investors (category) 23:07
• Alberta (Category) 14:21
• Don’t Buy Here! The Black Triangle of East Edmonton 11:59
• My Belize is in Italy 9:28

The Four Posts with the Most Links (according to Google Webmaster Tools)

• Chris’ News Roundup – Canadian Edition
• The Tragicaly Hip – Song of the Week
• Where to Advertise your Properties (and some traffic tips)
• Moving charts for Edmonton, Calgary and Toronto

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Here’s a list of the most popular posts thus far on my blog:

1. Edmonton Real Estate Prices Since 1962
   This post was the undisupted winner, grabbing ~800 views in the first couple days and links from several other sites. 
2. Six Steps to Finding Cashflow Creek
   This was one of my favorite posts to write because of the great feedback I got. I know of atleast two cases where people tried using this method to screen properties and ended up buying the properties they found. I also helped convert several people to firefox, which also makes me happy.  
3. Benjamin Tal on Canada’s Economy and Real Estate
   Originally with a video, now it’s just my notes on the presentation by Ben Tal at the July 2008 REIN Meeting. I love hearing Ben speak, and he’s as bang on as any economist can be.  
4. Top 10 Alberta Investment Towns
   REIN’s list of the Top 10 Towns to Invest In is always a popular topic, and this post was no different.  
5. More Fun with Stats- Monthly Edmonton Statistics
   This was the followup to my #1 post, and it’s got a sliding chart similar to what you may have seen on Google Finance.  
6. What to do with dead tenants (Also known as “Got Dead People?)
   I think the title says it all. What it dosen’t tell you is how many people have emailed me or come up to me at a REIN meeting to comment about it, or to ask advice with their own suicide/death/murder issue (as they said in Demolition Man, MDK-MurderDeathKill)  
7. What will Alberta be like in 2010 for Real Estate?
   This was a guest post from Thomas Beyer, and generated some good discussion. Maybe it’s time for some more predictions from Thomas… 
8. My Belize is in Italy
   The reason I invest in Real Estate, articulated as a fictional blog post from the future. I did this as an exercise at the February 2008 ACRE weekend in Vancouver.  
9. Where to Advertise your Properties (and some traffic tips)
   A resource for investors looking to advertise vacancies. I’ve updated it a couple times with more sites, and I put some traffic statistics too.  
10. The Black Triangle of East Edmonton Eats New Investors
    This was a guest post by Brent Davies, and I’ve heard from more than one investor they were saved from buying a hell-hole by reading it. Just like a ski hill, some areas are marked with a black diamond – experts only – and the Black Trangle is one of them.  

I startred tracking this blog somewhere around the 25th of January 2008, and it’s been gratifying to see how it’s grown. If you’ve got any ideas for new topics, questions or suggestions, please leave a comment or drop me an email. 

Thanks for reading!

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