Lenderama - three years as a blog.

Lenderama is actually about seven years old. I originally planned to build a consumer advice site, but then I realized that I wasn’t all that interested in talking to consumers. For the longest time, it was nothing more than a page of links. In 2003, it became my own personal web page as an account exec for National City Mortgage. Our corporate web site sucked, so I used it to store stuff online for my brokers. They could download lock sheets, submission forms, and even my most current fliers. I think there’s a pretty good chance that I was the first wholesale account executive in the country with his own, personal business web site. To this day, the idea is almost unheard of. Most lenders of today would probably never allow it. I did it before my company even understood what the dangers might be.

I left wholesale at the close of 2004. I was using lenderama to keep in touch with all my old clients but updating HTML was a real pain. The site was languishing. At the same time, I watched how average, regular Joe’s used blogging to tear apart the tiffany news network, and realized this was the perfect platform to keep in touch with my clients. I launched lenderama as a blog in January of 2005. I know I wasn’t the first blogger to cover mortgages, but I’m pretty sure I was the first blogger to operate at the business to business level, with loan officers as my targeted readers.

I had 54 good clients, and I figured if just half of them read it, I would consider the blog a success. Well I don’t think I ever reached my goal of 27 existing clients as readers, but others came. Lots of them. Before the first summer of 2005, my traffic would occasionally spike well over a 1000 page views in one day. I used tell other bloggers how much traffic I was getting, and I could tell they didn’t believe me. I decided to stop telling them.

It wasn’t always smooth sailing. At this time last year, I was on the verge of shutting lenderama down. I had a big technical problem, and frankly felt like I was running out of things to talk about. My invitation to participate at the Inman News Blog rekindled my spirits.

Last summer marked a huge change for this blog. I got sick. It was an infection in my leg, and it was bad. I was away from the computer for a very long time. This is what motivated me to add contributors. Other folks to blog, so that I wouldn’t have to. At least not every day. It turns out that the stress of not worrying about new content every day actually made it easier for me to write.

Going into year four, I’m more enthusiastic than ever about lenderama’s future. The team of writers that I have been able to recruit is a joy for me. Lenderama is my favorite blog to read. I just want to say thanks to every writer, advertiser reader, commenter, and fellow blogger who helped me along the way.

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