Another anecdote for you:
When we wanted to sell our house with some property in a rural area, we signed with the same realtor that we bought it through years earlier. After 6 months of him trying to talk our price down and not getting any response at all, we found out that he hadn't even put the place on the MLS or advertised AT ALL. His technique was entirely word-of-mouth (and only his mouth).
We found a realtor closer to the city and signed a listing agreement with her. Our place was an unusual old property with river access and a lot of history. We were sure that some city folks with some money would love it.
When we signed the agreement with her, it was understood that all showings would be by appointment only and there would be a certain amount of advertising paid for by the realty company. She immediately put a lock-box on our door and never did any advertising at all. When we questioned her about it, she said that we would have to pay half for any ads.
While we sat and waited for the listing agreement to run out, my wife created a web site for our property. We incuded digital video, historic studies about our property, a map with clickable links to photos of the place and many photos of the house(s) and outbuildings, etc. We handed the web site to the realtor on a silver platter and they still wouldn't advertise our place. They- of course- also put more energy into trying to talk our price down for a quick sale, than trying to sell the property.
The day the listing agreement expired we ran 2 ads that cost us a little less than $500.00. One in the Wash. Post and the other in the NY times. They were one line ads with the web address under the heading of Vacation Properties. We watched the hits on our web site and could see the same people looking at it again and again. We had a showing arranged the first day after the first ad ran. Those people wanted the place but the guy had to talk to his banker about money. The next day we showed the place again. The second group met us the next day and signed a contract for the full listed price. No home inspection. No contigencies at all. We sold the place it 2 days. We had over 25 contacts in the first weekend that the ads ran.
Afterwards, we kicked ourselves for not asking for more money, but the stupid realtors had shaken our confidence so that we left the price where we had started. As it was, they kept trying to get us to lower the price by at least 25%. It became clear to us that all the realtors wanted to do was get the price so low that it would sell quickly and they wouldn't have to do any work or spend any money on ads. For the six weeks following our ad, we had people pestering us to sell to them. We had people trying to fly out from all parts of the country to look at the place. 6 months later, well after the closing, people were still putting notes on the door of the house trying to buy the place from the new owners.