The posts of Rainers like yourself ONLY go to members.   If that's the ONLY people you are trying to reach, then staying where you are will be fine.

On the other hand, if you are trying to use this platform as a way to reach the masses, you need to upgrade IMMEDIATELY to Rainmaker status !

The $199.00 cost will be recovered with your first commission check from a sale made because you learned something from being in the Rain.

If real estate is going to be your career, be serious and make a commitment to yourself and remember, . . . . .

ActiveRain will only work for YOU when YOU work at ActiveRain !

Original membership did not require a fee.  All posts were immediately live and indexed to the public.  This changed sometime during my hiatus, and I became a Rainmaker shortly after becoming active again.  It is a no brainer, unless you already have a high ranking website and/or blog.   Yes, posts go live immediately upon upgrading to Rainmaker.  

There is more to this community, though, than getting your blogs posts indexed to the public.  It is the educational and networking opportunity with a huge contingent of successful agents who are generous with their time and knowledge.  

Go for it, Kevin.  It is a great investment in you and your business.  If you can't afford it, you won't be able to afford to stay in business.  

Kevin Morris Immediately, if you pay the monthly fee or when you can accumulate 500,000 points.

I took the plunge after 2 months. The $199 per year is well worth it!

I've been here a long time and many of us were "Grandfathered in" !  I believe Rainmaker status should be attained asap to allow your voice to be heard by the masses and not just members.

It is a good idea to have a rainmaker account soon as you can  so that the public can read the posts. Yes the blog posts go live instantly. You can set a goal to write posts regularly and comment on posts and questions so you will get points to eventually qualify for  a free account.

There was this fella... and he was collecting different types of animals.... I think they were two-by-two.

The skies opened up, and the rain came forth for forty days and forty nights.

I think it was right about then.

Took me a while --- and here's the thing --- at least when I converted to rainmaker, I had to go back and make all of my old posts public.

As a rainer, everything is "members only" - that'll stick once the account is converted unless you make the change.  Unless something's changed of course, as it's been a couple years since I changed.

Good idea to make the change sooner than later though.

I have always been a Rainmaker.  The cost of a Rainmaker account is the absolute best bang for your marketing bucks you will ever find.  That said, you need to learn SEO and post regularly ... good content ... and your phone will ring. 

THE DAY I JOINED ON SEPT. 30, 2009....WHY BOTHER WITH THE EFFORT OF MARKETING IF YOU GET NO GOOGLE JUICE????  JOIN.... GET THE JUICE AND MAKE MONEY.

Ditto Michael Setunsky " "

It depends on what you want to achieve here, Kevin.  

If you want to have your posts get to the public --- you will need to become a Rainmaker.  You can either pay now or write posts, comment, ask/answer questions, invite others to join and earn 500,000 points for Free Rainmaker status.

Michael Setunsky has this one.

I think it varies quite a bit, but I think it's important to become one unless you don't want the world to know what you have to say

I couldnt stand the thought of not having all I could have so I went for it

It was at least a number of months.

Gita Bantwal Has  the answer and also when you can afford the expense to get in front of the public. At a dollar a day it is not expensive and when you post and comment it will go away.

When I joined, we were all Rainmakers.   Think once you become a Rainmaker, you may have to go back and change your posts to public.  

It was the challenge of the points accumulation for me. Think it took a little over a year once I committed to it!

Good morning Kevin. It was about 4 months after I joined.

right away

I did it right away.

Took about a year to earn my free Rainmaker account, now you can do it in less than 10 months.

I became a Rainmaker immediately instead of waiting to reach 500,000 points.

     As soon as I found out that your blog is not public unless you pay to play!

I started so long ago there was no just thing as a rainmaker account.  But I highly recommend it.

It took me a couple months before I made the leap.  Had to do my research.  Once you make that commitment, any blogs you write from that point on are public.  Older ones you will need to manually change to public.

Immediately for SEO purposes

Nowdays if you work it you can be one in less than a year. But many take much longer because they don't work it

Kevin, it depends on what in addition to AR you have to work with.

You may have Wordpress AND FaceBook AND FourSquare AND G+ and on and on and on. These sites you have may have strong citizen following. Citizen is where you will find buyers and sellers NOT on a website populated by real estate agents.

The garden that grows will be the one you feed and care for and only you can see fully your situation.

You should post another question asking how many buyers are sellers have called based solely on their AR Rainmaker blogging account.

As you can see, there is a very diverse group here, with very individual goals and ideas. I wouldn't be asking about most, I would tend to model the ones in a similar mindset or similar market You will see agents working small markets or large ones have diversly different mindsets.

I agree with Susan Emo - I think a lot of us were grandfathered-in to the system. Many of us were around for Localism posts and buying territories and building the database. Maybe we earned it!

Immediately when we joined in October 2006!