Too Many Carrot Websites

[Noah Brinker]

I’ve been taking a look around my market and see tons of lead websites built by the popular site builders. Typically these websites from carrot and propeller have a lot of good strategies for helping people find your website.

My question is this: is it worth it to use one of the popular site builders if the differentiators it helps provide are no longer a differentiator?

For context: I work in software and am able to build websites by myself pretty quickly. I can also create content if I were to build a website on my own.

[Barry Pekin]

@Noah Brinker,

@Account Closed is the superhero of SEO and he (like I) loves Carrot.

I am also a internet software developer and could easily do all of that without paying for a Carrot site.  In fact, I did start down that road.  I created a starter site just to have something online as quickly as possible.  Well... it's there.  I'll give it that.  After a while, as I was working in other areas of my business, I realized (largely from following Jerryll and reading his blog) that I really needed to step up my SEO.  I now have a Carrot site in the works.  It's a lot of work to personalize it, and from what they say, 60% of the people out there don't do that.  So right there, you can stand out just by taking the time to personalize it.

So how do you stand out in such a field? It's largely where you focus. When I started, I picked 14 local counties. Some are huge, and some are not. (Hint: I'm working on narrowing my focus.) Within those counties, there are quite a few towns. I know a guy who's quite successful in his real estate business. He wholesales, flips, and rents. He also runs a local REI meetup. At a recent meeting, he said how important his Carrot site is. I had already started building mine, so I went to see how a successful person had set theirs up. Yes, he branded and personalized it, but not very much. He doesn't work on SEO at all. He just set it up and let it sit there. The thing is, in his market, if you do a Google search, he's right there at the top.

If you want your Carrot site to work for you, then prepare to spend quite a bit of time on it.  Then also decide what your target market is, both geographically and situationally.  For example, would you like everyone in three local towns who are trying to avoid foreclosure to come to you?  If so, use your site to target them.  Don't try to target everyone in your state.  When you pinpoint your focus, you're much more likely to dominate that market.

Finally, this is a personal lesson I'm still learning.  I've been a very successful software developer for a long, long time.  I could totally do everything that Carrot, D4D apps, CRM apps, etc. can do, and I can likely do it better.  (Yes, maybe I have a big ego in that area, but I really have been doing this forever.  I also get angry when someone else's solution doesn't work the way I think it should.)  The question is, do I want to do all of that?  If I want to compete in those areas, providing software to RE investors, then maybe I do want to do all of that, and my real estate is a side gig or hobby.  If I want to do it all of myself just to save a few hundred dollars a month, is that really where I want to put my effort?  What business am I in here?  Where is my time best spent to be successful at it?

And another Finally...  You have to decide how to differentiate yourself.  Your website is a tool.  It's not going to do it for you.  What is your message?  What is your mission?  What makes you special?  Are you a NASA Robotics Engineer?  If you are, then use that!  In fact, I only know one of those, and he's quite successful in his RE business.