Real estate sales is a mobile business.  It has been since the 70′s.  No longer do we sit in an office waiting for the prospective buyer to walk into our brokerage and ask us “what’s for sale.”  In adapting to the world’s technology advances, the right mobile device makes the difference in how effective your communications will be.

This article focuses on a lighter side of technology specific to the iPhone…Ringtones!  How do we create our own ringtones.  Some of you might be nauseated by the notion of custom ringtones and I fully agree, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a billion dollar ring tone market.  The frustration for those of us who do like to have a custom reing tone is that we have to pay for them.  Well, I’d say paying for something of value isn’t really a problem.  But what about when we have to pay for it twice?

In order to create a ring tone in iTunes, it typically requires that the song you’re making into a ringtone be a song you purchased through iTunes.  I’m here to show you how to make a ring tone out of any non-DRM (that’s a song that is not digitally protected, in other words, a song you did not buy in iTunes) song.

I’ll credit this knowledge to my friend Loren Kutsko at Food for the Hungry since he is the one who rattled off the steps that are required.  On to the good stuff.

How to Create a Ring Tone in iTunes (Example performed in Windows Version, not MAC)

1. Open iTunes
2. Find a song that is not protected with digital rights management.  This would be a song that you did not purchase from iTunes, or one that you added from a CD.
3. Play the song and find a 30 second section that you’d like to become your ring.
4. Right click the song and click Get Info.
5. Click the Options Tab.
6. Under Start Time and Stop Time, enter the starting and ending time within the song that you want to become your ring tone.
7. Click Okay.
8. Right Click the song again and select “Create AAC Version.”  This will encode the 30 seconds of play time that you defined as a new file in the same folder as the original full version of the song.  You should see a little orange icon under your left menu heading “Playlists” for a short period and then you’ll hear the same sound you hear when you get a voicemail on your iPhone or when you rip a CD.
9. In the search field, search for the song you just converted and you should see two copies.  One will be the full version, and one will be 30 seconds long.
10. Drag the 30 second version from your iTunes library to your desktop.  (Note: You may want to adjust your folder options [ Control Panel --> Folder Options ] to NOT hide file extensions for known file types.)
11. Delete the song from the iTunes library, moving it to the recycle bin.
12. Right click the file you moved to the desktop and click Properties.
13. The extension on the file should be song_title.m4a.  Change the “a” to “r” so the file is song_title.m4r.  This will force iTunes to put the song in the ringtones section.
14. Now that your song is converted and staged for importing, use the File menu in iTunes to Add File to Library.  Browse to your desktop and select your newly created m4r song.
15. Confirm you have a ringtone by clicking on the little ringtones item in the left menu in iTunes.  Your song should be there.
16. Connect your iPhone to your computer and adjust the sync settings to include your ringtone.
17. When it’s done sync’ing, you should see the new ringtone on your iPhone under Settings –> Sounds –> Ringtone under the Custom section above the Standard section.
18. Congratulations!  You have a new ringtone and it was completely free.