Just over a month ago we launched a new business from our incubator, Classified Ad Ventures, called ListGlobally.  ListGlobally allows any realtor, agent, broker or developer around the world to advertise their listings to a global audience. All they do is upload the listing to www.listglobally.com and we then syndicate that listing to the market leading sites in 23 countries. We make money by charging US$90 to advertise the listing for 90 days and then pay our distribution network a percentage of what we charge. Overall a simple, but effective, model.

We were fortunate to have a great write up of the business in The Australian newspaper last week. Here is the article.

Nerd goes global in real estate listings: Simon Baker’s attraction to the net has paid off

FORMER REA Group chief executive Simon Baker is a self-confessed “closet nerd”.

From a young age, the 43-year-old says, he has been fascinated with computers.

Baker previously ran REA Group, the owner of realestate. com.au, before starting his latest venture, Classified ADventures.

He studied computer science at Monash University, and his first job was a “tour of duty” at IBM in the sales division.

“I started off life as a programmer in sales and marketing,” Baker says.

“As such, you can’t help but get attracted to the internet and the opportunities it provides.”

He loves the fact that the online real estate market is not fully defined yet, and that new products and possibilities are arising on a daily basis.

That fascination has brought him to where he is today — running his own show as founder of online classifieds company Classified ADventures.

The company provides operators of online classifieds sites with consulting services and helps them get the most out of the internet to advertise their listings.

Among the websites in the stable are smartagentsites; Sobox (Social Media in a Box) and listglobally.

The last, launched a couple of months ago, aims to help real estate agents get global advertising exposure for their listings.

After talking to real estate agents around the world, Baker discovered there were people buying properties across borders.

When you look at the way the online advertising space is set up, he says, each country has its own realestate.com.au, but no one is seriously asking how to market a property across a number of countries to attract an overseas buyer.

Out of that idea, listglobally was born.

From there, Baker says, his team approached the real estate.com.au equivalents in 20 markets around the world to see if they could put listings on their sites.

In each market, the website has become one of the most popular.

For example, if you are in Britain and want to buy property in Australia, he says, your first port of call may be rightmove.co.uk (the equivalent of realestate.com.au).

Each month, 1.6 million searches are carried out on that site’s international section, he says.

“What’s funny is that the fifth most searched country is Australia and there are only 200 listings there,” he says.

“It’s all about saying how do I put Australian listings in front of English buyers or South African buyers or Hong Kong buyers.”

Essentially, with one click and a fee of $90, a real estate agent can put their listing on the equivalent of realestate.com.au in 20 markets.

By the end of the year, he hopes to be in 23 countries.

If all goes to plan, listglobally will be a $10-20 million-a-year business.

Baker’s fascination with computers started early, but the property link was accidental, and only developed several years ago, while he was working at realestate.com.au.

Not long after joining News Limited (publisher of The Australian), Baker says, he was asked to undertake a review the realestate.com.au business.

Not long after that, he joined the board of realestate.com.au and asked for a shot at the top job.

In 2001, he got his shot.

For the next eight years, he says, he spent morning, noon and night turning the online property portal around from a loss-making business to what he describes as a very profitable, dominant market player. In 2008, he departed as chief executive of REA Group and a week later started his own venture with some of his former colleagues.

He had two aims. One was to invest in companies through an investment fund known as CAV Investment Holdings, and the other was to build companies.

With the money he earned from his shareholding in REA Group, Baker invested in a number of businesses. But the main focus for him is Classified ADventures.

He identified about four or five ideas and created an incubator in which those new businesses could be formed, he says.

Three of those ideas have become reality: Sobox, smartagent sites and listglobally.

Baker says his team has very clear goals it wants to achieve, given its financial projections.

With distribution partners lined up, he says, the next goal is to increase the number of listings going through the system. “Our first goal is to get to 1000 listings a month, then we want to get to 5000 listings a month,” he says.

“We are the only ones doing this,” Baker says of his new online property classified website.

“We are the first one to go out and line up all these market leaders, link them all together, and provide them with a feed of properties.

“Either it’s going to be an incredibly good idea or I just wasted two years of my life.”

The ideal candidate has probably worked for a seek.com.au, carsales.com.au, realestate.com.au or domain.com.au in a front line sales position. They would have experience as either a BDM (business development manager – ie new business) or account management (management of existing customers).

Classified Ad Ventures is building a series of new and innovative online products and services targeted at the real estate agency market. Recently we launched SOBOX and ListGlobally to the Australian market.

• SOBOX provides social media solutions for Australian and New Zealand real estate agents
• ListGlobally allows real estate agents to advertise their listings around the world

Classified Ad Ventures has more products in the pipeline and these will be launched in the coming months.

Our sales team will sell across the range of products to real estate agents in their territory.

Packages for sales people are competitive, weigheted towards uncapped commission, and include mobile and laptop.

In addition, you will get to work with many of the team the built realestate.com.au and the REA Group.

If you are interested in a position, know someone that is or just want more information, please send an email to sbaker@classifiedadventures.com.

Under the heading of Blog Reveals All, The Sydney Morning Herald decided to write up the existance of this blog and my departure from the REA Group in August last year. While a little late, it was flattering to know that they wanted to write this up as a story. The article focuses on the fact that this blog exists and openly discusses what it is like to be a CEO of a listed company and now a start up – Classified Ad Ventures. The article also talks about how i was summarily dismissed from the REA Group by the Board.

While it was fund to read about the past, it did get me thinking about blogging and why it is important – for the blogger and the reader.  In Australia, there are not that many blogs – especially compared to the US and to a lesser extent, the UK.  And those that are blogging are usually not writing about things that are that interesting. 

However, i do think that blogs play an important role.  When well written, they provide great insights into a specific topic – far more than you are likely to gain from traditional media.  They allow those that are interested in a particular topic to gain easy access to subject matter experts.  The challenge of course is wading through the mass of poorly written blogs to find those that can truly provide valuable insights.  That is where services such as <a href=”http://www.regator.com”>Regator</a> come into play.  They provide a sort of filtering mechanism, much the same as LookSmart did in the early days of the internet.  A blog is also important for the blogger.  It provides an outlet for them to share information (news and views) that they believe is important. 

It would be great to see more blogs being written by people in leadership positions.  I think that the transparency would go along way to providing a better insight into their day to day lives and the challenges they face.  Lets hope more leaders catch the blogging bug soon.

The first is from Global Edge based out of the UK …

http://www.globaledge.co.uk/news/details/global-property-chief-sacked/22821?code=700 

The second is from SmartCompany.com.au in Australia

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/Free-Articles/The-Briefing/20080805-Realestatecomau-sacks-chief-executive-Simon-Baker-.html

Finally, an article from Business 2 in Australia (always good for a read)

http://www.business2.com.au/2008/08/04/job-vacancy-realestatecomau-ceo/