Wholesaler · Spokane, WA · Member since 2013 · 6 posts · 1 vote
Hello everyone - I have been receiving emails about Real Estate website developers called Investor Carrot. Has anybody been using their RE websites and do they convert like they say they will?
Investor · Roseburg, OR · Member since 2014 · 141 posts · 149 votes
12y
Hey Steve! Hope all is well!
I thought I'd chime in here. I'm actually the founder of InvestorCarrot... but I found a few threads here on BP where some of our current Carrot members chat about their experience w/ us... and feel free to connect w/ them directly if you had other questions.
And not if you have, but we actually post our actual conversion and test data on our blog on a weekly basis... and I'd be glad to actually shoot a video for you to show you inside of our database and show you actual tests we're running on actual members websites so you can see realtime conversion numbers.
Not sure of any company in this market willing to do that :-)
But we're an open book. If it's a fit for ya, awesome! If not, no biggie at all.
Investor · Roseburg, OR · Member since 2014 · 141 posts · 149 votes
12y
Hey Steve! Hope all is well!
I thought I'd chime in here. I'm actually the founder of InvestorCarrot... but I found a few threads here on BP where some of our current Carrot members chat about their experience w/ us... and feel free to connect w/ them directly if you had other questions.
And not if you have, but we actually post our actual conversion and test data on our blog on a weekly basis... and I'd be glad to actually shoot a video for you to show you inside of our database and show you actual tests we're running on actual members websites so you can see realtime conversion numbers.
Not sure of any company in this market willing to do that :-)
But we're an open book. If it's a fit for ya, awesome! If not, no biggie at all.
Wholesaler · Whippany, NJ · Member since 2009 · 412 posts · 183 votes
12y
@Steve Stephens When you talk about converting are you talking about bringing traffic to your websites or getting that traffic to fill out your contact form?
Converting usually means "converting" traffic into sales/leads. Some people get it mixed up.
I haven't been tracking my conversions like I should just yet. But on average my site shows up on the 1st/2nd page of most google searches for my keywords. I get about 100 visits per month and anywhere from 5 to 10 contact forms filled out from those 100.
I will have to check out Trevor's stats on his blog to see if that fits in with the standard.
Rental Property Investor · San Antonio, TX · Member since 2014 · 44 posts · 14 votes
12y
@Scott Costello Great break down of your conversions. I'm kind of a stats guy and like to see what the "average" guy is getting from the product. I've recently stumbled upon Investor Carrot and these are the things I look for. One stat you didn't put in was how many of those "qualified leads" (aka conversions) (5-10) turned into a deal?
@Trevor Mauch I appreciate the tone in your conversations. Like what I hear. Maybe I'll check it out.
@Scott Costello Great break down of your conversions. I'm kind of a stats guy and like to see what the "average" guy is getting from the product (pun intended). I've recently stumbled upon Investor Carrot and these are the things I look for. One stat you didn't put in was how many of those "qualified leads" (aka conversions) (5-10) turned into a deal?
@Trevor Mauch I appreciate the tone in your conversations. Like what I hear. Maybe I'll check it out.
Wholesaler · Whippany, NJ · Member since 2009 · 412 posts · 183 votes
12y
Originally posted by @Andrew Schlessinger:
...One stat you didn't put in was how many of those "qualified leads" (aka conversions) (5-10) turned into a deal?
We are working on our first deal right now from the website. So basically to break it down for you that means this...
I've been getting, on average, 7 leads per month since September. I dont count before that because the site went live in June and it takes probably 3 to 4 months to gain some traction and get high enough into the search rankings to see results. So that is 7 months at 7 leads per month = 49 leads for my 1 potential deal.
My guess is that that ratio will improve as time goes on and I get more conversions. The sample size is very small as well. But HELL i'm excited to get a deal where I didn't have to send out any direct mail!
Rental Property Investor · San Antonio, TX · Member since 2014 · 44 posts · 14 votes
12y
@Scott Costello
That's the answer I was wanting.
It looks like a 2% hit-to-deal ratio, which matches up with the VERY LITTLE research I've done into conversions. The great part is letting the people come to you. I've seen that some people use this method as their ONLY form of advertising and it's become more successful as the months pass. Not that they are doing deal after deal, but 5-10/year is good depending on your REI model and goals.
Wholesaler · Whippany, NJ · Member since 2009 · 412 posts · 183 votes
12y
Because of lack of funds, internet leads are my only source of leads as well. If I can get a few deals out of it I will then hire a service like Yellowletters.com to do my direct mail. I used to do the direct mail myself but no more, takes to much of my time.
Wholesaler · Whippany, NJ · Member since 2009 · 412 posts · 183 votes
12y
Originally posted by @Rhonda Eaves:
....did you do any offsite SEO to get to page one? Or is your page rank purely based on the contents of the carrot website?
The only thing I've done since my carrot websites went live last June was to reword some of the provided content to better match my business objectives. All seo is basically "as provided".
Real Estate Investor · OR · Member since 2012 · 390 posts · 133 votes
12y
Great thread. @Sharon Vornholt recommended Investorcarrot (LOVE the name) and I always listen to what Sharon says.
Scott, I got a giggle over the 1 deal with no direct mail. I love direct mail but am ALWAYS open to ways to generate more leads easier.
I do my postcards in house but would definitely want to have as much of the website stuff done by others. Used to do it and was good at it but HATED it. Darn. But it's all about delegating/outsourcing.
Wholesaler · Whippany, NJ · Member since 2009 · 412 posts · 183 votes
12y
@Melodee Lucido It's great to have multiple ways to pull in leads. It can get overwhelming to do it all yourself though. Hiring out each lead generating strategy (direct mail, website, bandit signs, etc..) is a great way to go and one I'm slowly working my way towards. Those things suck so much time away from actually doing deals. It hinders your business big time!
I'm looking forward to the webinar as well. Trevor does a good job giving out the content.
Flipper/Rehabber · Arlington, TX · Member since 2013 · 1k+ posts · 2k+ votes
12y
I don't know much about what Investor Carrot offers, but based upon the conversation above, I just have a question that maybe @Trevor Mauch or @Scott Costello can answer:
I get that it includes a WEBSITE, but everyone knows that's only part of the online marketing puzzle. You guys are talking about traffic, visits, conversions, etc. so obviously you got people to FIND and VISIT this website. Did you accomplish that with PPC? SEO? What is the SOURCE of this traffic?
Wholesaler · Whippany, NJ · Member since 2009 · 412 posts · 183 votes
12y
@Dev Horn There are a variety of ways people have used to get traffic to their investor carrot website. I can't speak for the other people using the service, but I do not use Pay Per Click (PPC).
For me I've depended on the built in SEO that the service provides plus I've created some additional content for the site. This content focused more on individual cities that I wanted to target.
I took my sites a good 6+ months to rank on the first page for some decent keywords. I'm going to have to put in more work (additional content and getting backlinks) to build my traffic up.
Hope that answers your questions Dev.
Oh and the source of my traffic is strictly search engines (organic)
Goshen, KY · Member since 2009 · 835 posts · 683 votes
12y
@Melodee Lucido -
Like Scott said; full disclosure - I am an affiliate too. But like Scott, I use the sites and I don't recommend anything I wouldn't use myself. The SEO for any site is a process that takes time. But the main difference with this company and some others is that the creator is actually a real estate investor that uses the sites himself. Based on the results he is getting with his own Oncarrot sites he is always tweaking things. You are left to do all of the SEO yourself without any help
Involved In Real Estate · Centennial, CO · Member since 2014 · 12 posts · 3 votes
12y
Price Increase Alert!!!!
I have been using Investor Carrot for about a month and it's made my website look so professional. I love the ease of use and all the tools they provide, but you do need to know a bit about wordpress and SEO to use its full features.
Currently you can get a plan with InvestorCarrot for $29/mo for 1 website. But they're actually eliminating that plan, eliminating the $39/mo plan... adding some new features... etc. But the cool thing is that for all people who are members BEFORE August 1st... you'll be grandfathered in on the old pricing.
I'm using the PRO+Content plan right now. I initially had the PRO (3 site plan) but upgraded when they had a limited time offer of $99/mo for the PRO+Content. The normal price is 199/mo.
It's pretty cool. You get to select pre-written articles to post to your site, up to 5 articles per month. They are templates, but do merge your company branding into them. The good thing about Investor Carrot is that I'm free to modify the content to better suit my needs.
Excellent Services that is getting me between 25 to 30 leads a month right now.
Atlanta, GA · Member since 2016 · 20 posts · 1 vote
10y
This sounds good. I was looking for a website and was searching in all the wrong places. I was looking for non real estate investors to make my website. I am glad that I found this thread.
I actually use your website for my business and it has been working well for me so far. I love the template you have set up, very informative support and tutorials and easy to customize. I have the Pro package and am really satisfied.
Sell My House Kauai is my main motivated seller generating website, and I love it.
Although, now that I am getting my Hawaiian real estate license working with KW Kauai, I will need a whole remodel of my current website to format the code of ethics and way of working agency/brokerage style to help buyers and sellers. My question is does your company do this? By "this" I mean, actually design agent websites, not just investors. Let me know!
Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2014 · 76 posts · 18 votes
9y
Hey - just in case anyone reads this thread, wanted to share my experience. Investor Carrot's set up was very messy. I don't think you get what they claim you're getting and when I asked for help, they just tried to blame it on my hosting company. I had to duke it out to get a refund and ultimately cancelled. If you're looking for the plug n' play system that they claim to be, keep looking.
If anyone has found a competitor that actually does what Investor Carrot claims to do (and what Bold Leads does for agents), I'd love recommendations.
Clifton, NJ · Member since 2015 · 4 posts · 3 votes
9y
Dan K. How long did you have the site? Also what were you expecting that they didn't deliver on? I don't think this site is intended to just setup and expect results. I'm not a member myself maybe someone who is can give us more insight on their experience
Investor · Dallas, TX · Member since 2014 · 76 posts · 18 votes
9y
hey @Eric C. - I think what they're selling is an easy lead generation site, but I found it to be buggy and full of tech issue during set up.. the site wouldn't load on my domain (even after following the very specific instructions investor carrot gives) . It turned into a blame-game between them and my hosting company (godaddy) and to be honest, I was much more comfortable with godaddy's explanation and understanding of the issue. You could build one of these sites for <$50 on your own and hire a VA to help with SEO for much cheaper than their cost, but I was willing to give things a shot assuming that investor carrot would be convenient and easy to work with. They definitely weren't.
If others know of firms that produce what investor carrot says they produce, I'd love to reach out. There's definitely a market for investors who want to be doing this type of lead generation and are willing to pay a little to avoid getting bogged down in details.
I wanted to hop in here because the experience you're mentioning you had with Carrot isn't the experience the vast majority of our clients have... so I wanted to dive in and tackle this to see where we need to improve, see what went wrong during your process, and honestly take candid feedback where we can improve and continually get better.
There's no other system out there that can show the results in this industry (as far as leads generated and SEO rankings held) that Carrot has helped our clients achieve... but along the way... there are bound to be hiccups and for every 1 person who didn't have a good experience we get another 100 that rate us a 9 or 10 (out of 10) on our satisfaction survey. So I take feedback like this crazy seriously and want to get to the bottom of it.
I checked your account and I see the issue you experienced and apologize for anything caused by something on our end.
First off, our team replied and engaged in your live chats and emails really fast during business hours and were working through the issues w/ you... but the one issue we had no control over was the Godaddy issue.
It looks like you were using Godaddy which we have tutorials on that show how to update the CNAME settings. Most of our clients actually use godaddy for their domains and it's usually a couple minute update in your Godaddy account like our tutorial shows.
However, for some reason the domain inside your Godaddy account was "locked down" on the Godaddy side and Godaddy wasn't letting you do the CNAME change. You sent us a screenshot showing that and we did offer to log into your Godaddy account for you to make the update... but there was some sort of confirmation Godaddy was wanting done it looks like to enable you to make the CNAME change. Honestly we've never seen this before so it confused us as much as it did you.
The Cancel Process
In another thread with us, it looks like after you were frustrated with the ability of Godaddy to allow your account to make the CNAME setting update (which again we don't have control over) you requested to cancel, and our rep Jake guided you back to your account to click the cancellation link in your account to cancel the account. We require this for security reasons for our customers so someone else doesn't maliciously try to cancel someones account that isn't theirs. But you did notice a bug that was 100% our fault in that the cancellation link doesn't work on mobile devices... that's an oversight on our end because we didn't expect people to be setting up and editing their sites or their account on their cell phones... mainly on desktop... but as soon as you alerted us to that we fixed it.
Again, we apologize for that experience you had and I can say with 100% confidence most of our clients use Godaddy and the CNAME change is really quick and easy on Godaddy and your site would have been live crazy fast.
Again me, it pains me that you had this experience w/ us and if we would have been able to get your domain unlocked on Godaddy (which again, we've never seen that and don't have control over) your site would have been up fast and you'd be on your way diving into the tools Carrot offers, diving into our weekly Coaching Calls, etc. We're still here for ya if you want to give us another go and we really appreciate the candid feedback that you sent out way man!