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Updated over 5 years ago,
Separate or together - FIRE blog, real estate website, etc.
How many websites should I have?!?
So here is my situation. I am a Realtor in Galveston, Tx focusing on working with investors. I personally invest in Galveston and am working on buying some commercial properties as well as a few more Airbnbs.
I've always had the stale IDX provided by my broker but never put the time I should have into growing my online presence. I really would like to start a blog discussing my journey to FI as a way to visually see my growth and help keep me on the right track. My question is should I separate my future website as a Realtor from my blog about FI especially since my primary vehicle for FI is real estate. I want to be able to outline projects I'm working on and returns I'm getting on the site as well as a post at least weekly.
I do have one site. I currently have a side hustle doing Matterport 3D tours and I have a basic one-page site to show examples of work and collect contact info from interested parties. I will need to begin actually utilizing it as well and advertising appropriately.
Another site I would really like to set up soon is a tenant portal. I've been looking into updating my management software due to an upcoming project and liked the abilities of Buildium to integrate into a website. I'd love to set up a tenant site for properties to store document, pay rents, and report issues online.
To add another curveball to the mix, I have recently been talking to investors about some private money lending. One website I'd love to have is a secure site where I could upload reports, videos, and updates for investors to give an extra level of transparency.
Sooo how many sites do I have? Do I congeal them all into one master site or keep them all individual? For a quick synopsis here are the different sites.
- Realtor website/blog
- FIRE blog
- Matterport 3D tours
- Tenant Portal
- Investor Portal
I look forward to hearing your thoughts!
- Timothy Church
Timothy,
Since no one else has chimed in, I will. I think that potential clients will want to see your realtor site separate from your FI site (and perhaps I'm wrong, but I think some would be put off by the whole FI topic), but that all the real-estate-related topics could be combined on one streamlined site with a separate blog/site for your FI posts.
Chad
I'm curious as why it would be off putting. Since I work solely with investors, I was thinking showing that I am pursuing passive income through real estate myself might help with credibility.
I'm thinking of doing 3 separate sites. A blog for real estate and FI, my Matterport scanning site, and a secure site for tenants and investors to access information.
I'm a bit bias towards splitting the blogs as it will be much harder to maintain two separate blogs.
- Timothy Church
Hi Timothy,
I've been in the web design business for awhile and clients that do have multiple websites have a hard time keeping up with it. I've also seen most realtors have tenant portals within their real estate website. I tend to notice broker and board provided IDX isn't always the best, there are third party IDX out there that are a lot better.
In my opinion, it would be best to have one website but different pages tied to each. For example, your real estate website can have a FIRE category for the blog and another category for real estate. That way, you get the SEO benefit of using different keywords tied to one website.
As for the Matterport 3D, since you already have a separate site for that, linking to that website on your realtor site would be the best bet. It's always good to keep things simple and easy. No need to have multiple website that fits the same niche :)
Good morning!
After thinking everything over, I'm going with your idea for the blogs. I will have one site which will have a realtor based landing page. There will be links to a real estate based blog/market analysis & a separate link to a FIRE blog.
For the time being, I'm going to hold off on the tenant portal and continue to use Cozy. Maybe after this next acquisition, I'll create a separate site that will be a tenant and investor portal for my investments. I'm curious if having all my properties on one site would count as connecting them from a liability standpoint?? I'll have to ask my lawyer.
Thanks for your feedback!!
- Timothy Church
Glad I was able to help out! Let me know if you have any other questions.