We use Carrot and like it. You will still need paid traffic unless you're just looking for a few good leads per month. When we don't do paid traffic, we still get 1-2 leads per WEEK, but when we do paid ads driving the traffic to our site, we get 1-2 per DAY. But we're spending a lot on paid ads. SEO alone will rank us on page one for most of our markets, but GoogleAds will rank us top 2 in every market we buy. We also use many other paid ads. GoogleAds can get very expensive, but if you do all of the set up correctly, you will get very high quality leads. I would be willing to pay $500+ for a great motivated seller that fits my criteria. I've found that the higher our cost of customer is, the better the leads, the less time we waste. I'd rather have 1 very solid lead per day instead of 10-20 that waste an entire day.
@Will F. Technology is always changing, and I don't claim to know everything. If you can give me some examples of sites that cost $100-300, I'll point out where money is being lost due to inefficiencies, load-times, errors, etc.
To put some number to it - for every additional second it takes for a site to load, you lose, on average, 7% of your conversions. A few seconds in and you've lost 21% of your conversions, and people are getting less, not more patient. So, considering the loss of 21% out of your conversions (for some that is 1 home a month, for some, 5 homes a month?), and the difference between $300 and $15k isn't such a big deal.
I agree, and definitely encourage new investors to sign up with Investor Carrot or Lead Propeller, until they get their lower-funnel worked out. I'm a big fan of pay as you go - don't buy $200 shoes to run your first 5k, when you barely even know if you like running yet. But, when you're doing a marathon a month, those $200 shoes are a no-brainer.
Happy to continue discussing this, if you'll provide me some examples of websites in different prices ranges, I will give you my honest opinion, based on my experience. If I can't find anything wrong with the site, and you know someone who creates them for cheap, I'll be happy to recommend them to you and my investor clients.
My company's bread and butter is PPC management, not website development, we develop websites infrequently, usually for clients that we need updates to in order to improve PPC, or really fun clients that come across our desk (like NFL teams) so I'm not trying to sell anyone website services here, and even if I were, I'd still give you my honest opinion. Thanks!
@Will F. Technology is always changing, and I don't claim to know everything. If you can give me some examples of sites that cost $100-300, I'll point out where money is being lost due to inefficiencies, load-times, errors, etc.
To put some number to it - for every additional second it takes for a site to load, you lose, on average, 7% of your conversions. A few seconds in and you've lost 21% of your conversions, and people are getting less, not more patient. So, considering the loss of 21% out of your conversions (for some that is 1 home a month, for some, 5 homes a month?), and the difference between $300 and $15k isn't such a big deal.
I agree, and definitely encourage new investors to sign up with Investor Carrot or Lead Propeller, until they get their lower-funnel worked out. I'm a big fan of pay as you go - don't buy $200 shoes to run your first 5k, when you barely even know if you like running yet. But, when you're doing a marathon a month, those $200 shoes are a no-brainer.
Happy to continue discussing this, if you'll provide me some examples of websites in different prices ranges, I will give you my honest opinion, based on my experience. If I can't find anything wrong with the site, and you know someone who creates them for cheap, I'll be happy to recommend them to you and my investor clients.
My company's bread and butter is PPC management, not website development, we develop websites infrequently, usually for clients that we need updates to in order to improve PPC, or really fun clients that come across our desk (like NFL teams) so I'm not trying to sell anyone website services here, and even if I were, I'd still give you my honest opinion. Thanks!
I understand you have seen similar results in leads between the two sites, but what is your review of the back end of each? How easy they are to work with, customize, etc. Load speed? Tie in with email services? CRM? Etc.
Thank you in advance!
Investor carrot for sure. I close 1 to 4 deals a month with organic SEO.
Investor carrot for sure. I close 1 to 4 deals a month with organic SEO.
Just started with them myself and I'm very happy so far.
@Shawn Clark your site looks good. keep it up. stay consistent and work on your backlinks for SEO.
We use Carrot and like it. You will still need paid traffic unless you're just looking for a few good leads per month. When we don't do paid traffic, we still get 1-2 leads per WEEK, but when we do paid ads driving the traffic to our site, we get 1-2 per DAY. But we're spending a lot on paid ads. SEO alone will rank us on page one for most of our markets, but GoogleAds will rank us top 2 in every market we buy. We also use many other paid ads. GoogleAds can get very expensive, but if you do all of the set up correctly, you will get very high quality leads. I would be willing to pay $500+ for a great motivated seller that fits my criteria. I've found that the higher our cost of customer is, the better the leads, the less time we waste. I'd rather have 1 very solid lead per day instead of 10-20 that waste an entire day.
Are you able to track which lead comes from SEO, and which come from GoogleAds ?
Of the leads you get, how many turn into deals... and of those deals, how many close ?
@Mike G. We're running a test now, spending 20k between an investor carrot and lead propeller version of an investor's site. So far we can say there are difference between the two, but the overall conversion rates are similar. Once we're done running the test, there will be more conclusive data to share. You can't go wrong with either one, based on the data we have now. I'm speaking only for Paid traffic directed at the site, not SEO.
Good Evening Sean,
From the 8 months that have passed from this post,
What results have you been seeing ?
Of 1,000 page views, how many convert into leads ?
And of the leads, how many turn into deals ?
And of those deals, how many closed ?
Investor carrot for sure. I close 1 to 4 deals a month with organic SEO.
Wow, those are great numbers.
And are you marketing only in Tucson AZ ?
How many leads are you generating per month with organic SEO ?
Of those leads, how many turn into deals ?
Of those deals, 1 to 4 of those close... but how many of those deals Do Not Close ?
@Manuel Angeles I have been consistently closing 1 to 4 deals a month. My closing rate per lead is about 1 deal for every 20 to 23 leads I get.
Have really focused on organic Google SEO rankings for my local market. Have not spent a dime on PPC. Carrot works if you put the time into content and backlinks. You have to be patient. It does time some time but will pay off if you put in the work.
Now really focused on consistent content and increase # of quality backlinks.
Just closed on 2 deals yesterday that were online organic SEO leads that have about $35K in wholesale profit that we will turn by year end.
they're now driving "all paid traffic" to their Carrot site vs. the custom one or one from other site providers.
@Hector Lozano Go get 'em man!
To confirm what Sean said any content written by us on our sites we own but clients can use it on their sites as long as they're a client. But any content you write is yours 100% and of course can be moved off of our platform no problem at all.
@Sean Dolan is spot on w/ the expected cost per lead in that market regarding PPC. But it's all math...
... if your average profit per deal is lets say $20k... and you close 1 in 15 leads into a deal... my guess is you'd all day long trade $5k for $20k... which puts the theorhetical "max cost per lead" ($5k / 15) is $333. So using that example... even at $333 per lead assuming a 1 in 15 lead to close ratio... you'd still be insanely profitable. Knowing your max cost per lead is critical so you can use math in your favor to really get that edge and scale up your paid marketing as you go. Go get 'em man!
@Will F. Great questions on the website development cost man! At the end of the day the parts that cost people the most (both money they should pay and money they're losing from under performance) is in getting the site to a point where it'll perform at a very high level. Either you have to become a great sales copywriter to guide the prospect on the path of converting into a lead or you have to hire a solid copywriter. Either you have to become an SEO expert or hire one to dial in your onpage SEO structure and optimizations. Either you have to become a website conversion rate optimization expert... or you have to hire a web person who truly is one. There are no wordpress themes that are dialed in to convert motivated house sellers or buyers... and if you lose just 1 deal per year... that would have netted $20k... was that site actually saving you money? The hard costs of the "elements" (wp plugins, wp theme, domain name, hosting) are all cheap. Where people get the gains is from the expertise built into the sites on the conversion rate optimization side, mobile optimization, sales copy, etc. Last that's also assuming systems like Carrot or LP are just websites. Look at the feature sets, support, strategy guidance etc. that are much more robust than a simple WP install... not to mention the tech stack that enables an investor to have the best of the best of servers, speed upload times, etc... vs. having to be on a low end shared server. Lots of things to look at.
@Manuel Angeles Great questions man!
"Are you able to track which lead comes from SEO, and which come from GoogleAds ?
Of the leads you get, how many turn into deals... and of those deals, how many close ?"
On InvestorCarrot just to confirm, yes it tracks and shows you where the leads came from (i.e. - Google Organic, Bing Organic, Facebook Ads, Facebook referral, Google PPC, Bing PPC, Direct, etc.. Every lead shows the lead source and you can do even more drilled down tracking campaigns as well).
On the lead to close ratio that really depends on lots and lots of variables. Every market and every investor has a different close ratio. I talked w/ a client last week who is closing 1 in 4 leads into a deal from his PPC campaign in North Carolina (highly targeted campaign). But usually from PPC it's closer to the 1 in 15 leads into a deal on average. Some clients on SEO are closing 1 in 10... others closer to 1 in 20.
But the variables are vast...
- Are you answering calls live or returning calls? Those answering live get a higher close %
- Good email followup or no?
- Negotiation skills
- How good the ads are that get then to the site and if they pre-sell them well
- How well the site has their credibility built out... so the leads are pre-disposed to work w/ that investor because of all of the credibility built into the site
etc.
On conversion rates (from your previous question), again it varies.
Hot markets have lower conversion rates than other markets. Similar to how direct mail performance rates have gone down in the past 2 years... as more competition is there and sellers have more options to sell (including selling fast on the MLS today)... conversion rates soften. So Miami sites likely convert between 3-5% of sellers into a lead... where we're seeing 25% on a PPC campaign we've been running for a year in Baltimore.
So it really depends on the market, etc.
DM me anytime and happy to share anything w/ you my man! Go get 'em!
@Tyler Ford how long have you been working on your oncarrot site?
@Sean Dolan: This has been one of the most useful website threads I've come across. It’s making me rethink my website focus: Mainly whether it makes sense to wait to ditch my "home-grown" website yet.
Right now I mainly need landing pages for my direct mail (probate, and other motivated sellers) and was about to change my “home-made” site to either Investor Carrot or Lead Propeller. Since I only have money for direct mail at this point, this thread has made me wonder if I should use what I have now, and wait to change until I can spend enough to do a good job on it. Do you think there would even be any value in setting up the $49/mo standard site /w content just yet?
Thanks for the great information!
One thing I noticed when Googling various sell quickly terms in my area; The Investor Carrot sites look the same: no branding or personalization. If they get results though, so be it. But if it's lost in the shuffle with everyone else, how well can they convert?
Also, semi-side-note @Mike G.: I really like the whiteboard animation you use on your site. Do you have any feel about how well that has helped out?
@Mike Snyder wow, I haven’t checked in on this in over 8 months. Nothing wrong with a temporary fix. Just keep in mind that any SEO benefits you generate to the onCarrot site will likely stay with it when you leave. It’s possible to do an SEO migration, but chances are if you are at the $50/Month budget, you will balk at the cost of an SEO who knows how to properly migrate organic value. So, don’t even worry about SEO for the temporary site. Once you own your site, go for it.
My wife and I have been crazy busy, we’re closing on our 9th and 10th deal this week, started investing ourselves back in January 2017. Rehabbed a few flood properties, you can see some of our acquisitions at amihousebuyers.com.
I’ve moved to a custom solution for my clients. I built OfferCheetah.com and am offering offercheetah.com/your-city to individual investor clients or buyer pools (multiple investors in an area who put money in and round-robin leads), where I run the Google Ads and the website and direct leads to the client. This way the clients who don’t want to mess with the website, don’t have to.
We’re getting deals for under $1,000 in Houston.
Our personal website hasn’t been up long, but my wife is a former SEO and a new Realtor and gets featured in a few big publications every week. LendingTree.com featured her this week, so we’re ranking above many of the bigger players in the Houston due in a big part to link development.
Happy to answer any other questions, and sorry i dropped off for a bit.
@Tyler Ford I’d bet that most if not all of your “organic” deals are coming from branded searches (technically organic), which isn’t easily replicated by others here without the business being known since 1995. I may be wrong, but SEMRush seems to suggest I’m right.
I’m assuming https://www.selltucsonhomefast.com/ is you, correct me if I’m wrong
@Tyler Ford Actually, https://www.selltucsonhomefast.com/ only has 2 backlinks, so I must have the wrong domain.
@Mike Snyder this is a great thread! All kinds of wisdom here.
Even with a focus on direct mail or radio / tv... there can be a massive difference in performance with a high performance site vs a cheap one not focused on performance.
I’ll DM you an email a client sent over a few weeks back... they’re the #1 home buyer in their state and already had a nice looking custom site...
... after lots of research moved to Carrot and their online leads doubled. But here’s the deal... they do NO online marketing. They do lots of direct mail and TV / radio and the people who were going online to find them were landing on their old site... not getting what they needed and it wasn’t dialed in for conversion on mobile devices... so he was losing lots of leads and deals but didn’t realize it until he switched to a customized version of Carrot.
Next, you’re 100% right that most Carrot sites look similar. But it’s because most customers choose not to personalize their sites. The client mentioned above went through our Concierge program where we do the customization for them and bring in their branding and personal story wrapped in our high performing framework.
I’ll DM you some examples of sites that crush it, retain our high performing framework... but stand out.
The client Sean mentioned earlier in this thread that he was running the tests on now runs 100% of their traffic (both SEO and ppc) through their Carrot site now as well.
Let’s chat Mike!
@Sean Dolan hope all is well man!
@Tyler Ford doesn’t do any offline marketing to drive branded search, but he ranks #1 and #2 for most of his phrases (2 separate Carrot sites) that motivated sellers are typing in in his market. He’s focused heavily on SEO and doing really well as a result.
So his deals are coming from organic “discovery” phrases.
Tons of people use SEM rush and it’s a solid tool but it’s data is highly incomplete most times we use it. Ahrefs backlink data is far better but even it has a lag time on link reporting and both tools don’t do well to predict actual traffic or the terms it ranks for. Gets many terms right but misses most. His sites rank really high for many of the most popular motivated seller search phrases.
@Tyler Ford if I mentioned anything incorrect or missed anything pop on in!
Awesome to see you crushing it Sean!
No @Trevor Mauch you nailed it. I would have to disagree with @Sean Dolan
What you put into your site is what you are going to get out of it.
This is what I do: https://mm.tt/1014645040?t=WgE88H5d31
@Tyler Ford @Trevor Mauch Happy to stand corrected if you would share with me the oncarrot domains, the discovery keywords sending traffic, and the backlinks?
@Trevor Mauch Ahref shows even fewer backlinks for selltucsonhomefast.com. Please help me understand what I'm missing?
@Tyler Ford @Trevor Mauch
I found another oncarrot site Tyler is using: www.webuyhomesintucson.com/
This website has 40 links from 17 domains:
Almost all of these sites look like other oncarrot websites. If I was Google, and I came across this backlink profile, I could easily mistake this for a private blog network, which you can get penalized for. Also, most have very little authority, so there's little value in the link. Other than the link from Oncarrot.com itself, which probably helps quite a bit. It's possible that this link alone is responsible for any rankings you have. Once you leave Oncarrot, I'd assume this link goes as well.
Again, if this isn't the domain we're talking about, please correct me. Thanks!
@Sean Dolan I am NO online investor guru. PPC has not been my focus although I know it works and pays huge dividends for others. I have heard good things about what you do and the results you get for your clients. When it comes to PPC I have little experience. My focus has been low-cost leads.
All I know is that I did what @Trevor Mauch told me what to do and it worked.
Just went to work and got results and my stats below don't lie.
This is what I did: https://mm.tt/1014645040?t=WgE88H5d31
So can we respectfully agree that whatever strategy you decide to do as an investor if you put the time and effort into it and stay the course it can work?
@Tyler Ford My main point is that you are telling others on this forum that focusing on backlinks is why you are getting leads via OnCarrot, but you have so far failed to demonstrate this to be true. I ran the backlink report for both of you sites, and neither one has much of a backlink profile. I asked for the domains, keywords, and any valuable backlinks you generated for your oncarrot site, and neither you or Trevor have offered these up for verification.
Your graph shows 575 leads. The look-back window of 'all time' doesn't give me any idea of how long it took to generate those. I have no idea if they are of any quality, or spam, or you filled them out yourself. Simply put, if you or Trevor would just provide the easily verifiable information I requested above, we could put this issue to bed.
Still, I stand by the my opinion that any SEO built for an oncarrot site is like building a beautiful deck on a house you lease. When you move, the deck stays. Wait to build your beautiful deck on the house you own.
And here are some examples of quality links helping this site rank:
Url: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/10081-work-from-...
Image of link:
Url: https://www.supermoney.com/2018/03/considering-ren...
Image of link:
I may come across like I'm picking on you guys, but I'm always conscious of the thousands of visitors to these forums who will read advice here, then run off and dedicate hundreds of hours of their time to recreate your results. Because of this, I like to be very clear about cause and effect, and make sure assumptions aren't being made and all variables are being accounted for so those reading can make the right decisions about how to use their time.