All Forum Posts by: James M.

Another thing you might want to think about is moving over to WordPress. It's one of the (if not, the) most popular blogging architecture and it is very customizable with a strong community constantly producing and updating plug-ins, themes, etc. for it.

It is also incredibly easy to set up. You can set it up in 5 minutes or less by just following the instructions at http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress#Famous_5-Minute_Install.

If you don't want to set it up yourself though, I'm sure it would be a lot easier to find and hire someone to set a WordPress blog up for you.

Honestly, I wouldn't spend too much time trying to think of a good business name. While a catchy and simple business name may get some people to remember it, it's the quality of service you provide to your clients that help.

Anyways, when it comes to names, one thing I always recommend people do is take 2+ words (not phrases) that describe their business and try to make them into 1 catchy sounding word. It's amazing the amount of clever business names you can come up with just doing this.

Originally posted by "Snowbird2e":

Craigslist may be good for certain things, but I have found a lot of scams on their site. Years ago it was a great place to advertise anything, mostly cars, trucks, etc... but be careful on Real Estate, you can spend alot of time answering questions to people who are just out to get your information or have nothing else to do but waste your tme... Happy Investing - There are sites out there that can help you, some for free too!

Yeah, definitely need to agree with this. It will be interesting how the current situation on Craigslist is going to pan out since they said they are going to let it 'police' itself. If you're not familiar with it, scammers are developing networks on Craigslist setting up scams all over the place. Then, whenever a legitimate users thinks a listing is suspicious and tries to post about it, someone in the scam network will immediately delete it.

That's really going to put a dent on Craigslist reputation for I don't see how something like this will 'police' itself on its own.

I actually know some people who used to heavily rely on the values trulia gave to homes. Long story short: they ended up making some pretty bad investments and decisions. There's no way trulia will be able to accurately determine values of homes everywhere in the U.S just based on algorithms. That being said though, like previous posters said, they are good to look at for general figures.

Originally posted by "1stchoice":

It seems that Options and Bird dogging are the easiest ways to get started right now, however, there are gurus everywhere who tell you their way is the right way.

I'd have to agree, birddogging gives you a great education into finding quality investments before you start sinking any of your own money into properties you 'think' are good investments.

When it comes to the 'gurus', of course they're going to say that they have the best solution... it means more money in their pockets :D

I don't know, but I think one of the main reasons why people do a poor job with regards to marketing is because they believe that if everyone else is doing it, it must be working. While that is not a bad assumption to take, it just states that if the father's of certain marketing tactics blew it in the first place, everyone will think it is working if they continue to do it. That being said, I think the primarily culprits of marketing mistakes comes from the big boys with the deep pockets...

By the way, that's some good info esnuts. Definitely a great starting point for marketing.

Wow, when I first saw this post, I thought you were talking about the show on MSNBC with Mr. Cramer... then I start seeing these posts about 'Mean Girls' and figured out that I was wrong :lol: .

I'd have to agree with Chop. For starters, the best way you are going to get your rankings up in the search engines is to 1.) have other relevant sites link to you and b.) make sure the anchor text those sites use to link to you have your keyword(s) in them.

When it comes to onsite factors, Chop has a good list of things to focus on. Just make sure not to abuse any of them...

Yeah, I would have to agree with Michael. Especially with the RE market in its current status, a lot of FSBO's may not think it is worth it to advertise their home since it is so difficult to get qualified buyers nowadays...

Dang... no kidding. I'll take deals like that any day of the week!

I'm going to have to test this 'dumb luck' strategy you used someday to see how it works for me :lol: .