BiggerPockets

Well, I knew that I was missing out by not having a company website, being an active member of Biggerpockets, etc. But I think I underestimated just how important this is to ALL aspects of my investing business. I have always been more of a listener and just a "lurker" for a long time. This year my goal is to become much more visible online and to get involved.

I got a Sub2 deal under contract and I have been marketing the place to a retail buyer through Craigslist, Oodle, etc. I received a call from a VERY nice lady who was looking to purchase a property for the family and was interested. After some quick prequalifying I was sure we could help them own this home and we scheduled a time for her to go see the property. She called me the next day excited to tell me she was about to Google me! Even I was surprised, this was a first for me. She actually found me on THIS site!

So now I am even more motivated to build a helpful website for my company. Does any one have any advice for doing this? I am a young guy, but I have NO web design skills!

How do you feel your presence online is helping your business? What steps would you take first, if you were starting with nothing?

I appreciate the input!

Andrew,

That is my problem I have no idea what SEO or any of that means. I will keep trying to teach myself here but I want the site to look professional and be functional. Oh yeah.. and profitable!

If you are working on marketing to purchase properties, I think it's worthwhile to have an on-line presence. Have a web site for your company, that is a first. You can do all sort of things with this type of site, including video testimonials, have on-line forms they can fill out about their property, etc.
You can do a google adwords campaign...I've had mixed results with it. What's worked best for me is putting my url on post cards I send out to sellers.
I also run ads on craigslist for sellers. Have gotten some deals using that approach.
The key to thing type of marketing, like anything else, is consistency.

You need to have a website for both your sellers AND your buyers.

You can get cheap template style sites without looking to hard to start doing some google PPC (pay per click) adverstising. I do this and get about a lead a day for about 300 bucks or so which is relatively cheap advertising speaking since one deal can make us up to 20K...I think it is worth the risk... lol
Oh...dont worry about SEO because you will really never crack that code...if you are playing the local SEO game it is a lot easier..

For buyers you definitely need a site to post your properties on so that the buyers can quickly scan them to see what is what...you may even want to do a video of the property to save even more time for your buyers

Forgot to answer your original question:

My different online presences are absolutely great for my various business ventures and are becoming more and more essential in today's macro and micro economic reality.

yup, need a website.

something plug and play will do, and will run you between $10 to $20 a month. the first few weeks will be annoying if you don't know much about computers or building a website, but most of the companies that offer them make it real easy to navigate pages and add content, so it won't take long to get used to the applications.

plus if you plan on adding content on the site constantly then you will definitely want to do it yourself because a web developer can be expensive to use their services constantly and often have other clients so you are not top priority.

I use a company called agentbizzup.com for my site and have been very happy with their functions. i used them when i was just a real estate investor trying to showcase my properties and it worked, and now i use them as an agent to market myself and it works very well.

Hey thanks for all the responses everyone! I have been swamped doing other stuff and havent gotten a chance to respond. I actually got a site in 48 hours from a company called Investorpro.com. I wanted to quickly get one up and not have to do anything. I was very satisfied with it. I need to focus on the SEO and other stuff I don't quite understand soon. But, I have been swamped with deals! Thankfully.
Off topic- Finally read The 4-hour work week by Timothy Ferriss and I LOVED it. Outsourced the most time consuming part of my business and new employee starts tomorrow. Very hard working guy, we will see how it goes.
Thanks again!!

Oh yea my site is[LINK REMOVED]
Still need to ad a TON of content!

Rob,

I have a lot of FSBO leads that I have been calling on. It is very time consuming but there are a lot of deals there. I have an employee who is now calling on all of this leads and getting a lot of questions answered for me and setting up calls. So when I call seller within 23-48 hours they are already expecting my call, know we are a decent sized company, and I have a lot of information on property. This should save me a LOT of time.

Anthony,

I used a company called Investorpro. At Investorpro.com. It was $600 and done in 48 hours. I still contact them almost everyday and ad stuff or get info for site. They have been great with getting back to me and helping me with site.