BiggerPockets

Hello Jim, Please send me a link to your site. I would like to see it for myself.

Thank you,
Doug

First, thanks so much for your feedback. I really do appreciate your time.

I think there is an inherent distruss of fees on the internet. Will they sell my credit card number? Will they sell my info to spammers? Will they out & out steal from me?

This may also be what you are running in to.

Thanks Christian,

What's funny, I was always scared of submitting my cc information as well. Now I've discover how freakin hard it is to secure a company to take cc it amazes me! Paypal ran me over the coals and I have had an account with them for years, a 800 credit score and still its difficult to get a professional account.

I do agree and will update my marketing to show our SSL cert and that their cc info is not even available to us if we wanted to get it.

Hi Jim,

I'm a newbie and I would be interested in seeing your site, please send me the link.

Hi,
please send me the link as well. I need all the help that I can get.

Thanks a bunch,
Tiese

Jim,

This isn't really a real estate question, in my opinion. It's an internet marketing question.

Before someone buys something from you, they will probably sign up on your contact form. I imagine that is where your sales process starts. If that is the case, then your sales process looks like this:

1. Landing Page Impressions - How many people viewed it? If you use services like google adwords, the sale process will start with google search impressions, then search engine click throughs
2. The next part of the process would be Email registrations - how many people signed up for your offer?
3. How many confirmed the offer - how many finalized the double opt in?
4. Then, how many purchased?
what is the percentage?

If you aren't getting the results that you want, your metrics will tell you why.

And, if you do do this, I bet your metrics will tell you that less than one percent of your traffic will trust you enough to buy from you online. If that is the case, then you need to drive thousands of people daily to your site.

BiggerPockets has an astronomical 23,000 members.

Why?

Because it's full of open source great content that is FREE, interactive, and valid. It doesn't cost a penny.

I could email or call a dozen expert members with a question and get a courteous response within the day.

You can't put a price tag on that, but if it cost a dollar I never would have known because I would have moved on to the next site.

Here's My Two Cents!

OK, so let's say I'd never seen this thread on BP first, let's say I just ran across your site (I have a lot of experience in web development so I hope you're not easily offended)
The first thing I am told is that I have just found "The Ultimate Source...." Really? That's a pretty bold statement; I do hope you are not lying to me.

Below that I get so see a 61 second video, erm, OK!
So far I didn't get to see what this site is about.
Then I get to enter my email, Uh Oh, here comes the spam but I quickly realize I can type just about anything in that area in order to continue.
Let's not continue (let's say I don't want to submit anything in there) so I'm still on the home page, what can I figure out.

1) If I go to the About MEC page I get to see a paragraph written in the past tense, hmm, how old is this stuff?
I also get to see some horribly bad grammar along with at least one missing word. It is also written using single, double AND triple spacing, wow, lucky me!

2) If I click on the Contact Us page I see three email addresses, none of which I can click on and none of which are formatted correctly.

3) While on that page I go up to Privacy Policy but I notice when I mouse over the link, the following link also gets highlighted. Then a standard policy is shown so OK.

4) Now, from the policy page I want to click on Post a Property but I can't! If I click on that link it leaves me where I am because of the basic coding error pointed out above. So I guess I have to go back to the home page to get to that link, let's try that, OK that works.

5) I don't want to post a property right now and I'll skip the yet more bad grammar on this page for now, let's move on.

6) Sign In. wait, I'm not a member, let's get a new account.
Oh Geeze, here it is, I finally get to see the numbers, a LOT of numbers, what the heck is all this?

So it's a buck? No wait; it could be $59.97 a month (Walmart pricing?) It says the value of the one buck membership is $759. Oh no, wait a minute, below it says it's $855.

I know I'm being very sarcastic here but are you serious?
How can those items have those values? Because YOU said so right?
The "platinum" value is $1,983.00 a year and you want $59.97 a month?

I hate to be the one to tell you this but your web site model is totally flawed and unrealistic.

YOU CAN NOT ASK FOR MONEY UNTIL YOU HAVE SOMETHING TO OFFER! AND EVEN THEN, 60 BUCKS A MONTH WILL JUST NEVER EVER FLY.

If you want to do this, you have to do if for free for at least a year, maybe two. It is just a fact that nobody will pay to join anything that has no members.

Also, the page you arrive at after entering an email address is coded incorrectly, you have a horizontal slide bar, the page needs to be adjusts to fit the site and the text, not the other way around.


You are using a TON of negative statements such as "We understand that some potential members will also shy away from paying the dollar because they are fearful that we're just trying to get their credit card information."

Seriously, that entire page is full of errors both technical and grammatical.

Wow, am I being that much of an ass here or I am helping you out?

Let's go back to Real Estate for just a second!
Your home page is the best real estate you have and you are wasting it.
You should fill the left and right columns with links to great information.
You should lose the cheesy video.
You should offer me something the second I arrive at your site, something of value to me right here, right now.

You mentioned Bigger Pockets business model in your post. Take a look at the forums entry page! Whoa, a TON of information on just about anything I could possibly imagine.

I really don't think you are looking to reinvent any wheels here; you might want to take a look at what the successful sites do and simply follow their lead (without stealing their content of course)

Oh, before I go, I must address the issue of the One Dollar fee as you guys were doing.
First off, and as I already said, you shouldn't be looking for a dime until you have something to offer, say a year or so.

After that (maybe) you should consider Placebo Reactors

Try to sell me a vacation for 4 days and 3 nights in Vegas. Try to sell it to me for 31 cents, what do you think I'll do? I won't buy it!
Try to sell me the same thing for $149.00 and I just might.

We know that 33 percent of people are so called placebo reactors meaning if they feel something is doing them good then it will indeed do them good.

If I sold you some pills made from starch at ten cents each, the pills would not do you much good BUT, if I sold you the exact same pills at $100 each, then 33 percent of people would find that the pills did them a lot of good. Of course I would be making a lot more money out of the deception but without the deception the pills would not do you any good.

Based on this, your price point needs to make sense and not look like a joke or a scam.

Alright, I'll shut now, wow, look at this reply, pretty long ha.
Sorry you won't like it and good luck!

Not at all. Price is important BUT it has to be realistic. If something is free (or at $1, almost the same as free), where is the peceived value? There isn't any.

Imagine going into a shoe store, you see 100 pairs of shoes at $300 a pair which you just can't afford.
The sales person brings you an unopened box and says In this box are some great shoes and I can sell them to you for 4 cents.
You are instantly going to think the shoes are total garbage or there's a catch or it's a scam.
If the sales person bought you that exact same box and said these shoes are awesome and they are only $39.95, you are much more likely to buy them over the 4 cent shoes because you feel the price is reasonable and fair, at $40 compared to all the $300 pairs you are getting a good deal.

Almost everyone will feel that way BUT, studies show that 33% of everyone who thinks the price is fair will also think that the shoes will in some way actually benefit them.

Take a real world example (there are of course millions of them)
Let's say Viagra costs approximately 5 cents a pill to produce (it probably does) and Viagra was sold for 10 cents a pill.
At 10 cents a pop, you won't expect much in the way of......... well, you know
BUT
at $10 a pill, it WILL work and you better be having a damn good night.

In other words, Placebo Reactors :)

FL Flipper,

thanks for the explanation.

Dave