ICIWorld Ambitious Plan For Sustainability and Growth and Increased Networking
ICIWorld continues since 1994 to provide Internet real estate database services.
The following is our chosen plan after much consideration for sustenance, research, development and growth.
Simplified Plan for ICIWorld’s Major Expansion
Important Membership Update:
To ensure our service’s continued growth and sustainability, we’re making a key change to our membership fee structure. Starting now, the annual membership fee will be $480. However, there’s an exciting opportunity to reduce this fee to $240!
How It Works:
- Refer a New Member: Invite someone to check out ICIWorld by making an appointment with us. When they join, you’ll receive credit for the referral, and your renewal fee will be $240! And the new member can join for $240 for one year and three months!
- Fee Reduction: If your referral joins, your membership fee for the year will be reduced to $240!
The best people to grow the service and keep the cost down are you, the members. If every member simply brings in one person each year, at minimum, the service can double in members, and the amount of information networked each year.
Why This Change?
We aim to keep membership costs at $240, a target we’ve pursued since 1994. To achieve this, we need to grow our membership base continually. Increasing our numbers is the only way to keep costs down while expanding our network.
Just as the MLS has taken over a century to develop, we have been building ICIWorld with the support of real estate professionals worldwide for the past twenty-nine years. Your help in referring new members is crucial for maintaining our pricing and ensuring we can continue to offer valuable services.
Thank you for your continued support and participation. Let’s work together to grow and keep our community strong!
Overview:
- Current Membership: 300. ICIWorld has had growth spurts to 700 and pullbacks for various reasons, growing too fast, our technology was not ready, and other issues which take time to solve. However, the global real estate database has been operating profitably for members and the public nicely and with speed since 1994. Our many websites. Internet strategy is evolving, and maintenance and change are happening almost daily with the present operation working but with future improvements continually in the works. This may never stop. We limit the most anyone can make at ICIWorld to $100,000 annually. No one has made that yet, but we are thinking of writing that into the charter to keep the price down for you, the members, as we advance. All the rest is dedicated to building out the service globally.
- Membership Doubling Plan: Annually, 300 to 600 by 2025, 600 to 1200 by 2026
- Real Estate Experience: 50 years
- Operating ICIWorld: 30 years
- Launching Major Expansion: November 1, 2024
Working Paper Key Points:
- Growth Necessity: Essential for service sustenance, research and development and continued growth.
- Cost of Traditional Growth: Hiring salespeople would significantly increase membership fees from $319/year to hundreds of dollars per month.
- Free Membership: Four ways members offset membership cost through:
- Networking. See the members who have already earned over ten years of membership, which would now be $4,800. See testimonials. Return on investment for each broker, each testimonial, is higher than anything on the stock market. If you made $100,000, or $50,000 or $250,000 for an investment of $480 go figure. All these brokers have done that. Over 75 pages. And they have not just one transaction, but 2-5-10-20-30! In the meantime, we are a break-even membership service, bringing in $100,000 per year and spending $100,000 per year to keep it going and doing this for 29 years.
- VIP discount card: It can save hundreds of dollars per use, such as one member in Washington saving $300 renting a car in San Francisco for a holiday and another $200 buying a laptop. It offsets the price of a membership, essentially making your membership free.
- Referral program: Refer one new salesperson or broker to join ICIWorld, and your membership fee will be reduced by 50% from $480/year to $240. The new person can join for $240 for one year and three months ($16/mo.)
- Real estate referrals It is inevitable to trigger leads with the ADD-ON IDX Links for your website. The content updates daily on your website and you do not have to do a thing. It gets better. 75% of the information is not on MLS giving you a competitive edge in the marketplace. It gets better. When someone clicks on a listing, Have or Want, the inquiry alert goes to you, the website owner! If you did nothing else but put the IDX Links on your website, you could trigger leads and do five-minute referrals the rest of your life that average $3,000 to $10,000 to $25,000 and more for five to ten minutes writing up and doing a referral. See details.
- Membership Fees:
- Standard: $480/year, effective Nov. 1, 2024, up from $319. HOWEVER, if you refer one person to join, your renewal will be $240.
- Discount: $240/year for referring a new member
- Additional referrals: Three-month extension per new member
- Doubling Membership:
- 2024: 600 members
- 2025: 1,200 members
- 2026: 2,400 members
- Salary Cap on Employees: No salaries over $100,000 at ICIWorld.
- Collaboration: Partner with real estate boards worldwide.
- New Members Offer: $240 for 15 months.
- Exclusive Information: Defined as non-MLS listings. ICIWorld definition is anything that you cannot put on MLS either because you cannot get a signed listing at this time although the owner wants to sell, or you have an exclusive signed listing agreement that is confidential for many legitimate reasons
- Advertising: Contact information is not allowed in the subject lines.
- IDX Links: Available for members to display listings on their websites.
- Expired Memberships: IDX links change to clickable; expired listings can still generate leads, much like MLS listings. On an MLS listing on your website, the public can see the address and the listing broker information.
- Lead Generation: Programs to drive website traffic.
- Support and Feedback: Appointment and suggestion links provided. If we had to hire four people to answer the phone it would be $200,000 per year and the membership fee would be hundreds of dollars per month.
- Price Change: At the beginning of the year, the standard membership fee is $480. A referral discount of $240 is available for referring just one member throughout the year, or you can renew at $480.
- Referral Incentives: Credit and discount for referring new members.
- Networking Benefits: Enhanced matchmaking with more information shared.
- Conformity: Adhering to NAR, CREA, and RECO guidelines for exclusive listings.
- Public Benefit: Increased choice and security due to broker training. There is security for the public because brokers and salespeople are trained in consumer protection.
- Economic Impact: Significant contribution to GDP from the housing market. See how sales by ICIWorld members contribute to the GDP. BLOG ARTICLE.
- Member Involvement: Encouraging members to help grow the service.
- Vision: $1 billion in sales creates profit for members, and I believe this is just the beginning, aiming for a broader global impact. Returns higher than most anything on the stock market. Ask one question as one member did right after his first orientation. He learned to ask owners, “If I could get you the price you wanted, would you consider selling?” So he asked his dentist, and he said yes. The member searched ICIWorld for the keyword dental for Wants and found a broker with a ready, willing and able buyer. Within 90 days made $40,000. EVERY MEMBER CAN DO THIS NOW. It is just a matter of time for you. See 75 pages of brokers doing it.
This simplified plan aims to communicate the goals and strategies for ICIWorld’s expansion while emphasizing member benefits and cost-saving opportunities.