1. Buy my book, Crafting Multimedia Text: Websites and Presentations. It will help you craft content, choose effective images, increase your website's "usability" for visitors, and heighten your sensitivity to ethical, legal, safety, and cultural issues (remember, the world is your audience.)

2. Be careful. Avoid putting your clients' expensive belongings or their kids' photos on the Internet. Remove family photos and valuables before shooting any photos.

3. Your viewers are looking for a dream. Help them find it, but not at the expense of ethics. Don't let anyone use Photoshop to remove cracks in the wall or cover up problems. Fix the problems, then shoot. It's fine to use Photoshop to enhance photo quality, but not photo content. Web designers love their designer toys, but it's your business and your credibility at stake.

4. Re: text -- try to avoid vague words like "beautiful." Also, some web designers are notoriously bad spellers and dislike dealing with the words (or text or copy as we content providers call it.) Hire someone (like me) to do the writing or at least edit it. (Did I mention that I'm an English teacher?) Spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes are quite noticeable on websites and affect the site's credibility.

5. If you require visitors to register before they can look at your listings, rethink that idea. In focus groups, many people click off such websites and go elsewhere. If visitors see a listing they like, make it easy for them to find you, but let them browse around first without demanding personal information.

6. Plan every photo. Online visitors want to be able to recognize what each photo represents -- avoid mystery room photos. Include living rooms, bedrooms, baths, kitchens, and other readily identifiable spaces. What the heck is this? A dungeon?

7. If your listing has grown stale, go back and reshoot the photos before you lower the price. Brand new images and text can freshen a listing; take the advice you gleen here, then re-evaluate, restage your photos and rewrite your content. Remember, I can help.

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