The Most Critical Error Investors Make Online

Are You A Landlord or A Tenant?

Over the last couple of years I've seen small businesses and newbie investors migrate all of their marketing efforts to subscription based template websites and social media sites that allow business listings. It’s free, it’s cheap, it’s easy and it allows them to get in the game. It’s the biggest mistake any business owner could make.

What happens when the template website that you subscribe to goes out of business or sells itself to another entity? What are you going to do when a social media site decides to shut down your fan page or business page?

The Rented Business Model

If you’re running a successful online business then you’re creating content on a weekly basis. Real estate investors make the mistake of publishing the content for social media sites like Facebook Fan Pages, LinkedIn business pages, Google+ and other online communities. Once published the content belongs to the media outlet. The more value you create through the content the more valuable the online outlet becomes. You’re basically a slave to the media outlet.

Think of Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Ebay as a digital landlord. They allow you to use their platform but they have all of the control. If and when the landlord decides to change their offerings or stop allowing content marketing by individuals then your business is dead in the water.

You have no equity with this business model.

If your business model depends on lead generation companies (buying leads) social media sites or subscription based websites then you have a rented business. You’re the tenant, they’re the landlord.

I thought you got into this industry because you wanted to be the landlord, you wanted to be the one that makes the rules and reaps the rewards. So, why are you so quick to be tenant?

A few of you will comment on how unlikely this is to happen but ask yourself if it does happen then what do you have to do to make it right?

You have to start from the beginning. You have to build a brand new We Buy Houses or I Buy Houses business from the ground up and your competition is now years ahead of you when it comes to search engine ranking, back link profiles, and domain authority.

This goes for all of you that depend on the MLS for investments. You’re feeling the pain right now because the MLS deals have dried up due to large buyers of single family homes.

I’m not saying social media sites or the MLS are bad for business but you need to use them as tools to build your business.

Spend your time and money building assets that you own and control. Have others work for you to help build your online real estate portfolio.

Top 3 Online Real Estate Assets:

1. A website that you own and the hosting

2. All original content, no copied junk, no link networks

3. Online reputation that adds value to your industry

Do these 3 things and you're the landlord.

Do these 3 things and you’ll build tremendous equity on and offline.