Great Write Up About ListGlobally in The Australian
Yesterday ListGlobally, a Classified Ad Ventures incubator business, received a great write up in The Australian newspaper. Althought I am not so sure about the headline 
Here is the article.
Nerd goes global in real estate listings: Simon Baker’s attraction to the net has paid off
FORMER REA Group chief executive Simon Baker is a self-confessed “closet nerd”.
From a young age, the 43-year-old says, he has been fascinated with computers.
Baker previously ran REA Group, the owner of realestate. com.au, before starting his latest venture, Classified ADventures.
He studied computer science at Monash University, and his first job was a “tour of duty” at IBM in the sales division.
“I started off life as a programmer in sales and marketing,” Baker says.
“As such, you can’t help but get attracted to the internet and the opportunities it provides.”
He loves the fact that the online real estate market is not fully defined yet, and that new products and possibilities are arising on a daily basis.
That fascination has brought him to where he is today — running his own show as founder of online classifieds company Classified ADventures.
The company provides operators of online classifieds sites with consulting services and helps them get the most out of the internet to advertise their listings.
Among the websites in the stable are smartagentsites; Sobox (Social Media in a Box) and listglobally.
The last, launched a couple of months ago, aims to help real estate agents get global advertising exposure for their listings.
After talking to real estate agents around the world, Baker discovered there were people buying properties across borders.
When you look at the way the online advertising space is set up, he says, each country has its own realestate.com.au, but no one is seriously asking how to market a property across a number of countries to attract an overseas buyer.
Out of that idea, listglobally was born.
From there, Baker says, his team approached the real estate.com.au equivalents in 20 markets around the world to see if they could put listings on their sites.
In each market, the website has become one of the most popular.
For example, if you are in Britain and want to buy property in Australia, he says, your first port of call may be rightmove.co.uk (the equivalent of realestate.com.au).
Each month, 1.6 million searches are carried out on that site’s international section, he says.
“What’s funny is that the fifth most searched country is Australia and there are only 200 listings there,” he says.
“It’s all about saying how do I put Australian listings in front of English buyers or South African buyers or Hong Kong buyers.”
Essentially, with one click and a fee of $90, a real estate agent can put their listing on the equivalent of realestate.com.au in 20 markets.
By the end of the year, he hopes to be in 23 countries.
If all goes to plan, listglobally will be a $10-20 million-a-year business.
Baker’s fascination with computers started early, but the property link was accidental, and only developed several years ago, while he was working at realestate.com.au.
Not long after joining News Limited (publisher of The Australian), Baker says, he was asked to undertake a review the realestate.com.au business.
Not long after that, he joined the board of realestate.com.au and asked for a shot at the top job.
In 2001, he got his shot.
For the next eight years, he says, he spent morning, noon and night turning the online property portal around from a loss-making business to what he describes as a very profitable, dominant market player. In 2008, he departed as chief executive of REA Group and a week later started his own venture with some of his former colleagues.
He had two aims. One was to invest in companies through an investment fund known as CAV Investment Holdings, and the other was to build companies.
With the money he earned from his shareholding in REA Group, Baker invested in a number of businesses. But the main focus for him is Classified ADventures.
He identified about four or five ideas and created an incubator in which those new businesses could be formed, he says.
Three of those ideas have become reality: Sobox, smartagent sites and listglobally.
Baker says his team has very clear goals it wants to achieve, given its financial projections.
With distribution partners lined up, he says, the next goal is to increase the number of listings going through the system. “Our first goal is to get to 1000 listings a month, then we want to get to 5000 listings a month,” he says.
“We are the only ones doing this,” Baker says of his new online property classified website.
“We are the first one to go out and line up all these market leaders, link them all together, and provide them with a feed of properties.
“Either it’s going to be an incredibly good idea or I just wasted two years of my life.”
Great Article About ListGlobally by AAP
A big thanks to the guys at AAP for their write up of ListGlobally.
Here is the article that they have written.
TECH:Aussie pioneers global property site
By Angela Harper
BRISBANE, July 21 AAP – An Australian company has developed a world-first internet platform to help real estate agents market their properties globally.
ListGlobally.com acts as a hub for real estate agents to list their offerings on multiple websites around the world.
Rather than agents having to list properties separately across many sites, they can instead send the data to the new site, which will then post the properties on many real estate portals.
The product is the brainchild of former realestate.com.au boss, Simon Baker, who says no one has previously done a deal with market-leading sites and then put the technology in place to syndicate listings.
“The beauty of these products is that you are helping them reach an audience they’ve never reached before,” Mr Baker told AAP.
“It’s the thing that stitches it all together between players.”
The websites where the properties are syndicated are the top performers in each of the markets, he said.
The site, which was launched this week, has so far attracted listings from the UK, Germany, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, United Arab Emirates, Canada, Japan, and India.
In the next few weeks, ListGlobally will also publish in Mexico, Russia, and South Africa, with Australia, Spain, France, Italy, Brazil and the US to follow.
IPGA Appoints New Director and Chairman
February 4, 2010 – IPGA Ltd (ASX: IPP), owner of Asia’s No. 1 network of property websites under the iProperty.com brand (www.iproperty.com), announced today a number of changes to the composition and structure of its Board of Directors.
Non-Executive Director, Simon Baker has been appointed Chairman of the Board, with former Executive Chairman, Patrick Grove, moving to a Non-Executive role, and assuming the title of Deputy Chairman. The Board has also elected a new Director, Luke Elliott, to join its ranks.
Said Baker, “It’s an honor to take over the Chairmanship of IPGA. The business has established itself as a leader in online real estate advertising in the region and is well positioned to take advantage of the rapid growth online property advertising in Asia. I look forward to working with the Board and the Company’s management to realise IPGA’s tremendous potential.”
CAV Invests in CarAdvice
Classifed Ad Ventures, through its investment company, CAV Investment Holdings Pty Ltd, has take a stake in the Australian based online automotive site, CarAdvice.com.au. In the process, Simon Baker, the CEO of Classified Ad Ventures, has joined the Board.
CarAdvice has over 450,000 unique visitors per month and has just launched a classifieds section – clearly taking on CarSales.
Here is the announcement from CarAdvice.
CARADVICE TAKES ON CARSALES
Sydney, Australia 10th November 2009 – CarAdvice.com.au – Australia’s largest editorial only automotive site has embarked on an aggressive growth strategy and has the market leader, CarSales, firmly in its sights.
Firstly, Simon Baker, internet veteran and former CEO of the REA Group (realestate.com.au) has invested in the business and joined the board. He brings to CarAdvice a wealth of knowledge and experience in building online classifieds businesses.
Secondly, CarAdvice has just released its classifieds section of the site. Private sellers and dealers are now able to advertise their used cars to CarAdvice’s 450,000 unique visitors (source Google Analytics) at half the price charged by CarSales.
Lastly, six months of editorial improvements and 20% month on month growth have been rewarded with a strong increase in traffic. According to Google Analytics, nearly 450,000 people visited CarAdvice in October. In addition, new research conducted by Nielsen shows that CarAdvice is the 3rd most visited vehicle editorial site in Australia behind Drive and CarGuide and ahead of CarSales.
CarAdvice CEO, David Holmes, said; “CarAdvice has strong momentum and 2010 should deliver strong growth for the business. Over the last 2 years we have built a large and loyal readership for our motoring editorial. We now believe we can leverage this readership into the lucrative motoring classifieds market and take on CarSales in their core revenue area.
“The value of Simon’s online classifieds experience, our continued strong readership growth, and experienced team has positioned us to do well in the online car classifieds market and to chase the car manufacturers advertising dollars.
Car Advice is also positioned to do well in markets outside of Australia as 40% of its traffic being sourced from overseas with the US being the next largest country.”
Commenting on his investment, Simon Baker said, “We invested in CarAdvice as the business has significant growth potential – both in Australia and selected overseas markets. They have already done the hard work in building a large relevant online audience and this positions them well to take on the lucrative automotive classifieds and display advertising markets. In addition they have a strong, experienced and passionate management team. I am looking forward to working closely with the team.”
New Appointments to the Board of Quickflix
Quickflix (ASX: QFX) Australia’s leading online DVD rental and movie subscription service today announced the appointment of two new Non Executive Directors to its board.
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