Why Our Visitors Stayed: YouTube vs the Big Land Sites

The big land listing sites told me they had all the traffic and I needed to pay them. I asked them if they’d ever heard of YouTube.

“We have all the traffic”

When I started selling land, I bought the best online advertising I could find on the independent land sites: LandWatch, Lands of America, Land And Farm. Then CoStar bought them up. Their reps told me they had all the traffic, I needed them, and I’d have to pay their new, much higher rates for a lot less advertising.

I asked if they’d ever heard of YouTube. There’s way more traffic over there than they had to offer. How could they ever compete?

Video kept people here

So I built this website on YouTube traffic instead. Almost every listing got a video. I walked the land, showed the roads, the views and the neighbors, and talked through the deal like I was standing there with you. Then I went live every week and answered questions.

It worked. People who came to RuralVacantLand.com from my videos stuck around. Back then, our average visitor spent 10 minutes or more on the site. The big listing sites were lucky to keep people for 2 minutes. When people watch the video, they already know the land before they ever call.

Other land dealers noticed

Before COVID, over 40 serious land dealers were listing their land on this website too, because the buyers here were real and they’d done their homework. My own listings, plus theirs, add up to the more than 2,000 properties you can see on the Land History map.

Tell your story

Social media is great for getting your story out there. Nobody can buy that from a listing site. If you show people who you are and how you do business, they’ll find you, and they’ll stay.