BiggerPockets

Just doing a quick search through the internet for places to build a website, I've come up with a few dozen sites with a wide range of prices and services. I would like to start building a site to capture info from potential home sellers, and would appreciate any help, advice, or tips on what to watch out for when choosing a service.

Many thanks in advance.

Jeff

Jeff - there's a few ways you can approach this:

If you're short on time but long on cash you can go with a professional who will give you turn-key results.

The next step down is you can purchase a ready-made template and tweak it to your preferences.

I have three web sites and did them all through Yahoo. Yahoo hosts my sites for $11.95 a month each with 24/7 phone support, which I have never had to use.

Yahoo has free downloadable design software which was all I needed to design my sites. I have one site for my rentals, one site for buying houses, and one site for my writing business. I keep my sites relatively simple because, personally, I hate twirly, buzzy, flashy, noisy sites. Of course, you can always spend some long green on professional design software if that pulls your trigger.

What you might want to do first off is determine the purpose of your web presence. I use my sites to establish credibility, answer questions, screen out people, generate leads, and get folks to call me so I can try and close.

However, if your purpose is to sell a million widgets a month that's beyond my experience.

TheREIbrain.com has some useful info on website content.

I use freewebs.com
As the name implies, it is free to set up and build the site. Then I purchased a URL name for I believe $15 for 2 years from godaddy.com and get what ever catchy name that is available that I choose.

Hope this helps.

Robin

If you want the easy, no hassle approach I would reccommend going with " Investorpro" . We used them for years and they've been great. Of course, with ease comes extra expense. I believe it's like $60/month

If you're looking to save money, I'd head over to " rentacoder dot com" and fill in exactly what you want done. Those guys will bid on your project and you can choose the most qualified / price for the job.

Turnkey site companies are:

www.prospectizer.com

www.supersmartwebprofits.com

I would suggest that you spend some money upfront and get a quality website built. It doesnt pay to try to go thru one of the sites if you arent 100% satisfied w the end product.

Remember, there are so many sites out there that you want people to remember yours and like to use it (DONT PUT A LOT OF ADS ON IT!). From experience, map out the pages that you will need then take them to a couple of web design firms, at that point you will get a good idea of what it will cost, additionally, they will build you an admin site where you can add/delete homes, track your page views and understand who is hitting your site. It really is worth it to spend the money upfront.

Just my $.02.

Good suggestion, Kristi.

Depending on your skill level you can find free templates online just by googling it. I host my sites with gaddy for 7.95 a month. Or you can hire a web designer and pay 10,000 +.

You can qualify for my site, www.ibuyhomes.com

For $500 per year, you get to use the name ibuyhomes.com exclusively in your area and all the leads that come thru there.

I also set up your own site for you like the one I just set up for my newest affiliate Pat Bowen. Check it out at http://www.sellcamdenhomefast.com

The key to web site traffic is inbound links on real estate sites that have a high ranking. Make your site specific to your area by making your copy talk about your cities where you buy. Also put the city names in the Title tags and Alt tags

The two easiest to work from in my opinion are Godaddy.com's WebSite Tonight for $48 per year and Yahoo's site builder as well.

Putting the site up is not the trick it is getting traffic and it takes a lot of work and reading about how to get traffic.

I would assume that what he means is that you can purchase a geographical area and if lead come in for that area then the person that paid $500 for the area gets them.