Setting Up A Successful Motivated Seller Website

One of the biggest successes I have had so far is with regards to my website.  I have only had it up for a month as of this writing but am already on page 1 of Google for many of the keywords we all target (sell your house fast, we buy houses, etc.).  So I thought I would share that success and explain why I believe you should consider the same as an option as well.  I will also mention I am not an affiliate of any of the products I discuss here, just a fan or not a fan.

Why you should consider a paid website service

There are many schools of thought on setting up a website (including numerous forum posts on BP, some of which I have weighed in on myself).  While you must choose what is right for you I would caution going with the DIY method of building your site.  Go ahead and check out many of the investor sites out there (or in any other niche for that matter) that were cobbled together.  They are relatively easy to spot, you know: take forever to load, poor design aesthetics, poor content, and an overall lack of professionalism.  Now many of these sites may have actually cost $1,000 or more despite what they look like.  If you ask those very owners I bet they would say they spent more like $200 or less in many cases.  However, stop and ask about all of the time and effort put in by the owner in order to get their site up and running with good content.  How much is your time worth?

That actually doesn't even scratch the surface though.  Now stop and ask about how much a good deal could net the investor from a deal online.  Let's just go with a conservative $20,000.  What if your poorly constructed site cobbled together for $200 cost you just one lead a year?  How much would you be willing to spend on a professionally built site leveraged with all the right components as the foundation for your site?  That includes things like SEO, consistent content from the start, training, and others.  Most investors probably spend something like $1-2,000 on a single deal, perhaps more.  So I think most would say they are more than willing to spend that much on a site if it gets them even that one extra lead per year.  I didn't think of it that way either until it was broken down for me like that.

A Couple of Good Options

Now as you can probably tell I went with a paid service.  My site was built off of the Investor Carrot platform.  It's not perfect in every way but it can be pretty close if I continue to put the time into all of the necessities of building a successful website.  Don't let anybody tell you that you won't have to put considerable time into ranking a website for motivated house sellers or any other niche of real estate.  That's another reason I signed up with a paid service though, in particular one like Investor Carrot that provides great training and resources in order to get your site ranked.  This will involve training on all the on-site stuff and the off-site stuff like social marketing and  back link building.  They also provide a good amount of this for you if you so choose but they are obviously going to be extra cost to you (that includes things like managed PPC campaigns among others).

During my research trying to find the right partner for my site I also discovered a number of other great options, one in particular in Lead Propeller (especially in combination with REI Mobile).  I loved that Danny has a fully integrated CRM with his system and I may still look at using the REI Mobile platform for the CRM side of the business.  His seems to be one of the best available on the market and am still seriously considering utilizing his system for CRM.  It also costs money but if I am honest with myself not having a good understanding of your lead pipeline is another great way to lose that one deal per year that easily pays the investment off.

So that is my two cents on why you should consider a paid website builder.  While it's true that there are many good sites out there that have been custom built if you don't have the experience or expertise to know the ins and outs of building a great website I would personally advise you to leverage those that do it for a living, all for a reasonable cost.  

Would be interested to hear what others have experienced and any other suggestions in the comments section below.