All Forum Posts by: Mark Shaver

@Oran Kraft, the main requirement for the lead generating site is a fast download within 3 seconds. Unfortunately, site designers and ready-made REI sites based on WordPress and download tens of seconds. Slow website load excludes lead generating:

• Search engines show slow sites last. Forget about organic traffic from search engines.
• 70-80% of visitors will leave the site, as they will not wait for the download to finish.
• Only 20-30% of visitors will wait for the slow site to load. But they will be sure that the business owner of the website works just as slowly
• If there are several pages on a slow website, the slow downloading torture will be repeated on each page.

For more details, see the article "How to increase website conversion up to 100 times".

You wrote: "Does anyone have a good company that will develop my website and help me get leads organically through SEO?"

It's a bit of a provocative question. BiggerPockets rules prohibit direct advertising on the forum.

But I suppose I can invite you to visit my BiggerPockets profile. If you think our company can handle your website, then DM me.

@John West, You probably need a "merchant account subscriptions" service:

"A subscription merchant account provides businesses using a subscription-based sales model the ability to take payments from customers. Payment methods could include debit card, credit card, value added card, and high risk ACH processing."

Cloud accounting services also know how to collect monthly payments and automatically monitor them.

Disclaimer, I'm not an accountant.

@John West, Website builders like Wix are very slow in generating pages. The page load time can be tens of seconds. Only one of 10 visitors is ready to wait so long for the download to complete. This means that your advertising will only work at 10%.
Use a faster website engine for your lead generation site.
Read more in the article "How to increase website conversion up to 100 times".

@John C., You probably need some kind of Help Desk Software:

"Help desk software is designed to provide a customer with information and support regarding a company’s products or services. Customer inquiries are typically submitted via multiple channels including email, phone, or social media.

Help desk software provides a ticketing system for staff to organize and respond to customer inquiries as well as create information portals on the company’s website."

Help Desk Software reviews on G2.com

An example

FreshDesk is one of the typical Help Desk Software:

FreshDesk works well with cloud call center FreshCaller and FreshChat from the same developer.

All Fresh... programs have a free plan in their tariff line. It's well functional.

@Kevin Daley, If your virtual assistant is from another country, specify in the contract in the court of which country the dispute will be handled.

Samples of virtual assistant contracts

@Joshua S., if you research the CRM customer market, Salesforce is not popular among real estate investors.

Try to offer customization service for one of the CRMs from "Top 50 CRM for REI".

@Nicholas Field, 1) If your main focus is project management, it is better to use specialized PM services. 

See the PM reviews at G2.com. Many of them have free versions.

2) Almost all CRMs have calendars, tasks. Some have a timeline.

Read the article "Full Top 50 CRM for REI". Look for a suitable CRM under "General CRM" section. There are 8 free CRMs among them.

3) The core value of CRM or PM software begins when you work together with someone. Notebook and Excel are uncomfortable for group use.

1) @Bryce Witcher, It'll help in your quest "Best WordPress Plugins to Make Your Site Delightful for Visitors".

2) I usually do not recommend WordPress for lead generation site. Most of your visitors will leave your site before WordPress has finished loading the page. WordPress is slow even with the caching like a snail (image source):

Read more in the article "How to increase website lead conversion from 3 to 100 times"

If you PM me I can make some recommendations of website engines.

@Christine Lang, It's very good that you decided to provide virtual assistants. Virtual assistants are an important part of REI business automation.

Christine, let me give you a few tips.

1. E-mail requests were popular in the last century. But now it works against your VA agency business. Especially since the BiggerPockets rules allow you to specify a link to your site in your profile and in the ads in the Marketplace forum.

Please organize your website BusyPawsVAServices.com:

• Change the Wix to a faster service. Your site is now loading in 15 seconds, this is very slow. Only a quarter of the visitors wait until the download is complete, the other three quarters leave your site unhappy.
• Add a price list and a portfolio.
• Be sure to place a picture of your majordomo cat in the "My Story" section! 

2. I agree with @Joel Fischer that general virtual assistants are not much in demand on BiggerPockets. An REI investor should teach a general assistant. It's not productive:

• To spend his time training a general VA in the basics of real estate investment.
• Pays for the VA training time
• It could be that the VA isn't learning well.
• After the virtual assistant is fired, the investor must begin to teach the new general virtual assistant.

For this reason, RE investors prefer virtual assistants who have received REI training or have experience working with REI. When hiring a trained virtual assistant, the cost of a hiring error is much lower.

Take the time to complete your REI training and organize training for your virtual assistants.

3. DM me for a sample training program for your virtual agents.

Christine, success in business!

I agree with @Jonathan Greene that usually an American investor starts delegating uninteresting and not very qualified tasks to virtual assistants in the first place.

But I would like to point out that @Michael Barnhart is not an ordinary American investor. He lives across the ocean and writes about himself in his profile "EXTREME (out of the country) long distance investing":

It's already rocket science.

It seems to me that ordinary VAs will not allow Michael to invest in the USA across the ocean. He needs extreme rocket VAs.

Our experience

Our REI department is also involved in extreme ultra-long-distance RE investments from Moscow (Russia) to the USA. We have found that Philippine assistants are of little benefit to us.

Read more in the article "Why did we refuse Filipino VAs". At the end of the article, I explain where we found extreme rocket REI VAs.