Just mailed my first wave of yellow letters!

[Wane Tango]

Ok so I have virtually no budget to speak of and with some help the collective advice of bigger pockets I narrowed my mailing list to an extremely specific 200 people to mail to. So here is the break down of my mailing criteria:

With-in city limits

35 to 100% equity

950 -1800 sqft

Owned property 4+ years

Built between 1965-2011

Absentee Owner 

Exclude trustee/corporate

So my total budget to get my marketing off the ground is a mere $200 but I plan on putting in a ton of sweat equity to help make up the lack of capitol. The above list cost roughly $50 and I went and bought enough supplies to mail to each 6 times. Including yellow pads, pens, and envelopes. Bringing my total cost before postage to around $85. 

Now I am currently handwriting and addressing all of these letters. I am currently trying to find the zen real estate investor through the small tasks. Think Daniel-son in Karate Kid where he is waxing the car. I am doing this because I dont really have an alternative but at the same time, I want to do every step of the entire process of wholeselling to have a better appreciation of the entire process.  Currently  I am shooting to write, label, stuff and mail about 14 letters a day. That will give me roughly 14 days worth of work and should keep the calls at a low enough volume that I will not get overwhelmed. That and I will have a couple of days where I wont have to write more letters for follow up. 

Hand writing everything is a painfully slow process but it has left me with plenty of time to ponder things I would have not thought about until I was here. So this leaves me with a couple of questions that maybe others have some opinions on. 

1. Do you use your personal home address as return address when mailing yellow letters or PO box? Pros & Cons?

2. I am using Google Voice and the phone number listed on my biz cards and mailers, the number is the same area code but not the same city as I live and market to. Do you think this would have a positive/negative impact or non at all?

Thanks everyone and I hope everyone out there is on the path to hitting their REI goals!

[Mark Marinaccio]

Hey Wane congrats on getting started!
Something that I did was to hand write a letter in plain white paper but laid on top of yellow lines paper for lining up the lines.

I wrote the letter and left space for property address.

Then I tore out sheets of yellow lines paper from notepad and put them into my printer and did a copy of the handwritten paper so it was printed onto the yellow lined paper.

Then I only had to hand write in the address :)

It's super simple and people that I showed it to couldn't tell it was printed.

Good luck!