If I started my career as a real estate agent fifteen years ago, I had a long checklist of marketing tasks to complete. Postcards, newspaper ads, fliers: all of it was necessary for getting my name out there and starting the long process of building relationships.

The marketing methods of yesteryear came at a steep financial cost.

Often times, what held someone back from marketing was money. All of these materials cost money—a lot of it.

And as many new agents know, the marketing budget often starts at $0.

Today, the wall between new agents and marketing isn’t financial.

In the Internet age, there’s an abundance of ways to get your name out there without spending a dime. You might:

·     Start a blog if you’re a writer.

·     Start posting videos to YouTube if you’re more of a talker.

·     Start posting regularly to social media outlets like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

·     Do all of this if you can!!

Though you can bolster the reach of your digital efforts with paid advertising, the starting cost of all of these is $0.

If money isn’t the barrier, what is?

So why isn’t every real estate agent sharing regular vlogs? Arguably, the new barrier is lack of feedback.

When you start marketing online, there’s a good chance few people beyond your family and friends will respond. You’ll be pumped about that first blog post—only for it to find a readership of ten people or less.

Then the second blog post only gets one or two readers. And the trend continues.

Maybe your readership grows steadily, but not fast enough for your expectations.

We all want to go viral and start raking in new clients after one, two, or at most three brilliant YouTube videos.

But the hard truth is, building an audience takes time. You have to persevere patiently, with no promise of results.

This can feel like talking into a vacuum, so the challenge is to hang on to the right mindset.

Building an audience online is a farsighted strategy. Your audience may grow slowly, and interactions with them may be few and far between, but over time your online connections can become a valuable source of relationships and leads.

In the meantime, you have to hang on to the mindset that you’re writing, filming, and posting for people who may not contact you until far in the future.

Don’t measure your success in views, but interactions.

Meanwhile, remember your goal isn’t going viral; it’s building your business.

As a result, the best measure of your success isn’t thousands of views, but how many of those viewers reach out with their questions and comments. You’re better off with twelve views, if one viewer interacts with you, than a thousand views and zero interactions.

That smaller, engaged audience is more valuable.

If you build it, they will come.

At Warren Buffett’s first Annual Meeting, only twelve people tuned in. In his most recent Annual Meeting, 40,000 people tuned in.

Your audience may never expand into the tens of thousands, but a valuable audience of any size starts with one. What’s holding you back?

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Matt Mittman and Eric Rehling are the owners of RE/MAX Ready in Conshohocken, PA. See articles from them about learning something new, building relationships, Freakonomics, simple business planning, generating leads, Zillow, the weather, Chip Kelly, RESPA, and more.