Wholesalers, where do you find your inventory?

Question

Have a friend who wants to wholesale. I wasn't quite sure as to the first step. Curious how people here find their inventory? Anyone using online platforms for property identification? What are the next steps?

Barry Pekin · Answer

@Trevor Ewen,

A better question would be, How do you skin a cat?  There are many ways, my friend.

Driving for dollars, Direct Mail (and all the ways that you can work to find the leads to mail to, not to mention choosing your criteria), SEO, Pay per click, bird dogs, personal networking (referrals from people you know and other RE professionals), ...

There is a podcast I’m currently listening to, REI Marketing Nerds (and others).

The best advice I’ve found is to market, market, and market. Never stop. Never slow down. Don’t worry about being perfect. Just do. (Which reminds me of another good podcast, Wholesaling Inc)

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

The problem with D4D, Doorknocking etc. etc. you may never ever find your first deal. You may very well always be driving for dollars for years.

On the other hand, if you do something like PPC or facebook ads, you WILL find a deal if you have enough budget set.

If you simply do not have the budget to do PPC or FB ads, you will be better off getting a job, save up 2 to 3 months of salary and then try "real" marketing. You are absolutely correct thoiugh... just find your FIRST deal. The put the money back into marketing. I just would not advice anyone to do D4D or DK. But that's just me!

Justin Silverio · Answer

@Trevor Ewen there isn't one answer for this. A lot of investors have been successful with different marketing approaches but the thing they all have in common is CONSISTENT ACTION. It takes time to build momentum with marketing but once you do, you can create good deal flow. Now, when starting out you likely won't have the funds to take massive action so do things that you can do on your own - driving for dollars, cold calling, door knocking, writing out and mailing letters. Once your friend gets his/her first deal, then use the money to ramp up the marketing.

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

I don't find my inventory.

My inventory finds us. For free!

All day, every day! What ever strategy you use for immediate cashflow, you HAVE to start getting a website. Make it credible and invest in SEO.

we get between 4 to 12 leads in our email every day without spending a dollar on marketing.

And you can do SEO yourself. There is NO need to pay anyone. I did it myself, so can you!

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

Hey Charles.

Yeah it is so far out for me to see some people don't know about SEO. And this is why I am always blabbing about it.

Believe it or not, you come across SEO all the time.

When you do a search on Google and Google displays all the results... which result do you choose? I am not asking which specific link you click, I am asking what is your process to choose one link over an other?

Do you scroll down all the way and check out all the links for you then to go to the second page of the search results and keep on skimming the results till you find a good one?

Probably not.

Have you noticed that the further down the google results you get, the less relevant the pages get? When you end up on page 4 of the Google results, pretty much none of the links are a good fit for your search.

More than likely you pick a result on the first page of Google, and chances are you will at least click on the #1 result on the first page. Well you are not the only one my friend. Most, if not everyone, will do the same.

Now imagine if Google puts YOUR website on the first page on the top spot of Google. Wouldn't you believe you will get A LOT of peole clicking on your page and checking out your website and filling in your form asking you to please buy your house, if you website is good?

Absolutely they will.

So anyone that types in "We buy houses in [city state]", Or "help I am in foreclosure how do I sell my house fast"

Will see this:

Ranking #1 houwever is only going to get you traffic . Nothing more. Your website STILL needs to be really good. That is what I call Credibility. If you have traffic + Credibility you will get leads.

This is what a credible website may look like. Every colored dot is where someone clicks on the website.

And obviously the result is:

Now for the fine print.

You CAN do SEO yourself. No SEO company can compete against you doing your own SEO. I mean this! You do NOT have to pay anyone for SEO if you don't want to. I am not paying anyone for my SEO and my results are better than ANY pro SEO company out there. This is because my methods are absolutely out of this world. And that is the point. When you create your OWN methods and strategies, no one can compete against you.

So yes, people will seek you out and you don;t have to spend a cent on any leads. But it is not easy, it takes hard work and patience. But ask me if it has been worth it.

Freck yes it was worth ever time I bishhslapped my cat of the table when that freak steps all over my laptop keys when I try to make freaky and sweet love to SEO.

Marketing is an art and a science. Master it and you will be filthy!

(rich)

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

that is why I said, get a job first, save a "small" amount and use that starter capital to dive in.

No, you can't spent money you don't have... because you don't have it.

Justin Silverio · Answer

@Jerryll Noorden I do agree that more marketing is better, however, most people that start out don't have the systems, knowledge, capital, and an understanding of how to know when something works. They learn through experience and build capital through deals. I could never recommend to someone to spend money you don't have on marketing because the truth is, they are going to make mistakes and lose deals because they won't know what to do with them. Now, the marketing could be working but they will just miss opportunities. I would much rather someone do that through non-paid marketing. With PPC, you can't do it well unless you pay someone and you're not in control of what you are doing. This doesn't work well for me and I wouldn't recommend it for a newbie because they are at a fragile point in their business and they need to understand how/why something is working.

Now, the SEO vs other marketing conversation is another story but that is your option and your experience. I couldn't say how SEO because I haven't become as proficient at it as I am with direct mail. And I'm sure the same is with you for DM. However, what I will say is that I'm in a mastermind with some of the top investors (doing 200+ deals/year) and they all track their KPI's very closely. And DM has proven to be their cheapest lead source.

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

Hello hello Mr Justin.

Honestly I am not sure what you are disagreeing with. Don't misunderstand. There is a difference between "hard work", and "a better way to make it".

I am all for hard work. I started in this business after I quit my job without a plan B so I am all too familiar with working hard and failure is not an option. So no one here is talking about the "easier" choice.

To drive my point consider this.

What is DMM all about?

Well DMM's forte is scaling.

If 1000 mailers gets you 1 deal, 3000 mailers will get you 3 deals. This is pretty much the way it is.

Now if you dive 100 houses for dollars and you make 1 deal, it absolutely does not mean that driving 300 houses for dollars you will make 3 deals. You could make 5 deals, you could make 0 deals.

My point simply is this.

If you have 2 people both new looking to start into this business.

One decides to get a job at Mc D for 3 months and the other decides to drive for dollars for 3 months.

I am willing to bet that the one that saved up their money on the Mc D job and dumps all that money into marketing will reach 100K faster than that person that jumped into d4d immediately.

So what does it all come down to?

D4D is so tedious, energy draining with such a low success rate vs work put in, people will more likely give up before they reach a deal.

If you want to look straight at the numbers, mathematics, you have a much better chance at succeeding by building a website, make it credible, drive manual traffic to your site (paid advertising/ppc) and convert leads into deals....

vs D4D. I am not sure about Cold Calling. Never did it, and never want to do it either.

This is not "hard work" vs. "Easy work". This is about what will get me the highest probability to reach your goals.

Lastly.. I come across this ALL-THE-TIME

"Ohh I don't have money to spend on marketing".

This mentality is the best way to never get anywhere. You NEED to spend money to make money.

People that tell me "Ohhh when I make my first deal THEN I will spend money on marketing".. yeah.. I am not going to say they will never make it.. because they COULD make it if they indeed did d4d get lucky, make a deal and jump on marketing, and this certainly is a strategy...

But it is MARKETING that will bring in money, better than anything else. (Except SEO of course)

Justin Silverio · Answer

@Jerryll Noorden I respectfully disagree with you. When I started in REI, like most other people, I didn't have the funds to spend money. If I just never got started then I wouldn't have quit my day job a few years later and went on to start another business and have a lifestyle that allows me the time to do what I want with my family.

In my opinion, people starting any business need to dig deep and see what they are made of. If they just press the easy button and let someone else do it for them, they won't learn. When starting out learning is the most critical component to ensure success because the learning process brings successes and, more importantly, failures - leading to more learning.

Will it take dedication to get a deal? Hell Yes. But this is what it takes to be successful.

Jerryll Noorden · Answer

Well although you don't have to pay anyone I STRONGLY suggest before buying a digital marketing course, you vet them. Most of these companies have no idea how to do SEO. And you have no idea how much I mean this.

Anyone with a main strategy of guest posting and backlinks, is doing it wrong. Stay away from anyone that wants to rank you high by simply getting you backlinks!

When I say you can do SEO yourself I mean the following (And you will be disappointed.

There is no secret hack/shortcut here. When I say you don't have to pay anyone, and you can do it yourself, I mean just that.

You CAN learn how to do it.You can read up on it, study it and once you understand it come up with your own strategies to get your site ranking high.

Don't get me wrong, you absolutely can hire someone (heck I own a SEO consulting business) so I am not against it. I am just saying that you have a choice. SEO companies exploit users making sure to let everyone believe SEO is just SO SUPER integrate, complicated and you have to constantly monitor google updates and if you scratch your butt the wrong way your entire site comes tumbling down. That is such crap. I don't care about Google or their updates and I am still ranking #1 strongly after 2 years. Note: Not caring about Google and not understanding how Google works are two entirely different things!

So yes you can hire someone as long as you know it is a choice. And as long as you know they absolutely know what they are doing.

SEO the right way TAKES WOOOOOOOOORK!!!!!

That is why it is expensive. Anyone that charges you 1000 a month or less, simple stay away. The amount of work and patience it takes to do SEO legally (white hat) is just so intense it wouldn't make any sense to just charge 1000. So if they still charge you that little they are ABSOLUTELY taking shortcuts. And shortcuts means... trying to please Google. Manipulating google metrics to rank higher and you will regret it eventually.

If you have a website and if you (or anyone else) want me to check out the site just let e know. I love bishing at people telling them what to do.

Don't worry. I don;t have a shortage of clients. There will be absolutely no sales pitch. Just me telling you what to change how to change and why to change. I have done this a lot of times and just that free consultation has make sites jump the ranks!

Wholesalers, where do you find your inventory?

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