Develop as many links as possible from Web sites, directories, and metaindexes related to your target market. There are thousands of Internet marketing- and business services-related sites on the Internet that would provide a great linking opportunity for your site. These sites will provide highly targeted traffic to your site.

Providing valuable contributions to Internet marketing and online business related mail lists and e-zines would be a great way to create exposure for your business. This will allow you to display your professionalism and generate awareness for your services.

Launching a monthly search engine news newsletter or e-zine would be a great way for you to stay in touch with your current clients and potential customers. This could be offered via e-mail or an RSS feed. Offering sound advice is a great way to enhance your corporate image. When your newsletter readers implement your suggested submission techniques, they will want to check their results. This provides you with an opportunity to offer your search engine submission optimization services.

If you are going to include only your own listings, this will not be that expensive; however, if you are planning to offer your services to agents across a wide geographic span, it will cost significantly more. You will also have to design some sort of tracking system to track your referrals to the agents that you represent.

You might consider purchasing comprehensive Web traffic analysis software, which will enable you to track where your Web site visitors are coming from. This information can be quite beneficial for future marketing purposes. Other costs that you will incur are related to the promotion of your Web site. Estimated cost is $10,000 to $60,000 to start.

The approach you take to operating this business determines how many employees will be needed. If you are going to represent only your own real estate listings online, you will need one employee—yourself. If you are targeting a wide geographic span, one to three employees will be needed. They will handle the offline and online promotion, fulfill service requests, and take care of all administrative tasks involved with running the day-to-day business operation.