Real Estate Investing Website 101

[TommyOH]

All of us want to take advantage of the power of the internet. It's a lot of effort to have a website to educate consumers and generate leads for our investing businesses. But where to start? How do you make a great website that works?

Originally Posted by Tim:

Here is an offer I'd like to make, if you are willing...

Over at the Real Estate Investing Field Guide I work with one member to improve their investing related site. Sometimes, it is a site used to find great properties to buy, sometimes it is to find tenants and manage properties. It doesn't matter, the underlying principles are the same. It is done openly, in full view of the other members. All of the transitions from start to finish are documented, warts and all. All of the testing and the results of that testing are shown for others to learn.

So, here is the offer.

We can do that here, for one of your sites, you pick for the members here at MB to learn more about using a site as part of their investing tool-set. No charge, no limits, nothing held back.

You can even leave your existing sites in place, I will be glad to host the investigative site on my servers and then at the end everything can be moved to your servers. Or it can be done in place on your servers. It is just as easy either way.

Whaddya say?

We of course said yes!

[TommyOH]

Here we go:
The main purpose of my site is to generate preforeclosure leads. As in before the property goes to the court house steps. I think I may have tried to include too many things in one site. As I started working on it, I saw other opportunities of "don't wanters" that I thought I should include.

The problem I want to solve is people losing their homes to foreclosure.

We can use whatever server makes it easiest. I have already set up a sub-domain stop-foreclosure.aroollc.com which is where the site will go when it's done.

And thanks for the opportunity to do this Tim, I know you are a busy guy.

[Dan Auito]

Looks like Tommy will get first crack!!! Good Job Tom, we're looking forward to seeing what goes down!

Tim, feel free to take some notes here about MB.COM and forward them onto the moderator forum or even the public forum for our members here to discuss some upgrades.

I'd like to improve what we have here also so keep us in mind if you can squeeze us in.

P.S. Also send me a banner code for your site as I would like to place a link back to the site of your choosing on our homepage.

Sorry to Hijack your thread Tommy. Back to you!

[TommyOH]

This is going to be fun Dan, and I believe he said he was going to do Howard's site here as well.

[Dan Auito]

That dognabbed Howard, He has 10 sites! Oh well 1st come 1st serve. We'll stick it out around here and take it as it comes.

[Tim]

Here we go:
The main purpose of my site is to generate preforeclosure leads. As in before the property goes to the court house steps. I think I may have tried to include too many things in one site. As I started working on it, I saw other opportunities of "don't wanters" that I thought I should include.
Okay, the best way to handle this is with separate sites or at the very least sub-domains. Otherwise, you need to create essentially a menu page as the home page. Then each of the 'sub-sites' have their own landing page.

But, let's focus on the generating pre-foreclosure leads. Actually, you will qualify them on your site because it is unlikely that someone needing to unload at that point is going to look to Google to find a buyer. But, we will talk about getting them TO the site later. For now, let's concentrate on what you do once they get there.

The problem I want to solve is people losing their homes to foreclosure.

Okay, let's drive down into that a little because there are several problems hidden in there.

Unless you are looking to loan them the money to bring everything current, you are not going to prevent them from losing the home. They will have to move. Most states make it an absolute necessity that they move out if you as an investor buy the house. That doesn't mean they couldn't move into another house you have for sale or rent.

So, the problem they have is that they are...

Behind on their house payments
Probably behind on other payments too
Scared about what will happen to them and their kids
Confused about their rights, options and obligations.
Mad at the greedy lenders for 'taking' their home
Awake at night worrying about everything related to their financial situation

Given that how would you refine your problem statement? You might even come up with several specific problems to address.

We can use whatever server makes it easiest. I have already set up a sub-domain stop-foreclosure.aroollc.com which is where the site will go when it's done.
Okay, then let's just use your servers that way when we are finished you are ready to go. On that sub-domain, you might want to password protect it until you are ready to take it public. You could use something like, "magicbullets" as the password so the members here could still watch the progress and still prevent pre-release pages from showing up in the search engines caches.

And thanks for the opportunity to do this Tim, I know you are a busy guy.
Everyone is busy, but hopefully this will be a great learning experience for everyone.

Also, start thinking about colors.

[ZNICK]

Tommy, a suggestion I would make, is to get a shorter domain name. You want something that someone can remember without writing it down.

Z

[Tim]

Yes, but don't abandon your current one. There are lots of ways to point shorter, specific domain names to specific pages on your existing site and lots of good SEO benefits too!

[ThreeRiversREI]

Yes, but don't abandon your current one. There are lots of ways to point shorter, specific domain names to specific pages on your existing site and lots of good SEO benefits too!

SEO? Definition please?

[TommyOH]

I like the idea of separating the sites by subdomain. Anyhow, I had one thing to note.

Actually, you will qualify them on your site because it is unlikely that someone needing to unload at that point is going to look to Google to find a buyer.

There were 24,884 searches on the phrase "stop foreclosure" last month according to overture, so we may be able to get leads from listings on Google and Yahoo.

No, I'm not loaning money, and yes, they are most likely going to lose their home. Per your e-book, I was working on some problem statements, and like you stated above, there are actually many, not just one. That brings up my first question. Is it ok to have more than one problem statement? If so should they be grouped problem/solution, problem/solution, etc?

I guess my new problem statement would be something along the lines of stopping the worry, despair, and anger of losing their home and saving their credit so they have a chance to start over.

I'm working on the password protect thing for the sub-domain. My choice for hosting has left me wanting in that department, but I'll get it. When it is working the user name will be "magic", the password will be "bullets" (without the quotes).

Also, start thinking about colors.

Oh, and as for colors, I like greens. They are said to be soothing and open people up. I guess we'll see.

[ZNICK]

I wasn't suggesting he replace his current address, but add a shorter one to it that people will remember more easily. It has to be something they can remember without having a pen. You can have as many addresses as you like all point to the same site... they only cost around $10 a year.

I currently have 12 to 15 different websites, they all look different, have a different address, and a couple have multiple addresses that point to the same site. My theory is the more sites I have, the more chances of being found (or called) when people search Google, Yahhoo, MSN, AOL, etc etc. If a seller has contact info from 6-7 investors websites, I want my company to be 3 of them. I even use different phone numbers sometimes.

Google, Yahoo, and other search engines are a hotbed of people looking to sell houses as well as get debt relief. I have never run an ad, hung a bandit sign, or sent a letter, and ALL of my business comes from people who stumble across my websites. I have used programs to see where they come from, and they're all coming from those search engines. Certainly the pages are optimized, and some are "pay per click" inclusions, but they definitely draw.

If someone in my area goes to Google and types "buy my house", or "sell my house fast", on a good day I'll have 2-3 of mine on page one, with another few on pages 2 and 3. It varies from day to day, and some days I'll only have 1 on the 1st page, sometimes none, but I average 3-10 seller leads a day, just from Google and Yahoo. The leads I get give me all of their info, so I can pre-screen people before we even call. Of course, some are garbage... like people asking 235k for a 240k house... they're being kind enough to let me make 5k because "I know you're an investor and want to make money".

Z

[Burke]

SEO? Definition please?

Search Engine Optimization. That is about the extent of my knowledge in this arena though. :wink:

[TommyOH]

Hey Z, I was curious, How many leads do you get, and how many of them turn into deals? Just trying to get a rough idea of what I can expect.