All Forum Posts by: Joshua Martin

Hello Wisco,

So I've been working on a website I want to rank all over Wisconsin for the last several months. Finally getting some traction with it and leads starting to come in. I am based out of Milwaukee, so have that covered, but looking to partner with established wholesalers/flippers/investors in different areas after I qualify a lead.

For what I'm trying to do a wholesaling model seems the easiest and I'd be looking to split 50/50 with me on the lead gen side and the partner on the acquisition/disposition side.

If someone is an experience virtual wholesaler with a high close rate I'd consider that route too.

For flippers I could just take some sort of finders fee or partnerships possible w/ funding, etc.

If you're in Eau Claire, La Crosse, Fond du Lac, Appleton, Green Bay, Fox Valley, Madison, Lake Geneva, Jefferson, Janesville, or really anywhere in Wisconsin and you have experience feel free to reach out through messaging and we can try to connect to see if something could work as I continue to grow the site and SEO continues to improve.

Thanks for reading!

Well, I guess I'd just like to encourage everyone on this thread to take the high road. A lot of this is sounding a little petty (not a good look for anyone), so with the case already made on both sides, I thought I'd just try to throw in a little objectivity from an SEO bystander.

Jerryl, been watching you do SEO for years, and you're very good at it, and you're also very creative. I was out of the game for a few years and when I came back around you had started SEO for Real Estate Investors. The name makes it clear what you do but as for as the products and services offered specifically I was excited to hop on a group call with you last spring which was a 60 minute upsell of either the credibility package or the full SEO package. My hesitation was first of all the price, second of all the very hands on nature where for that price I felt like it should have been done for you, and third the relative opaqueness of the program itself. With those considerations I moved on and simply figured you had gone a sort of guru route and I just thought 'good for him.'

SEO Meets REI I discovered through some forum or other several months ago and thought I'd first check them out and size them up on their weekly facebook live calls. Here they freely give very detailed SEO strategies and tactics. They have literally shown me the things they have done and just told me to replicate it, and not simply a certain colored banner or check mark but their keyword density, headings, alt tags, etc. After seeing what they do and the type of guys they are I felt confident signing up for a backlink package with them. Results to be seen as this was only a month or so ago but I've already noticed an uptick in domain and page authority on my home page and for better or worse I feel confident I'm in good hands with these guys.

In fact, FWIW, as far as what is out there for REI SEO services I think these guys are the best bet. SEO for Real Estate Investors is probably a good program but I don't know what it entails and I know that I'd be doing the majority of the backlinking work.

Good luck all,

Hey @Account Closed,

  SEO is the bomb. What you're considering is a great way to generate additional deals but like anything comes with a good bit of work. A carrot site is a great starting point but just getting the site up will get you zero deals. To get SEO deals you have to rank in google organic results #1, #2, or #3, and no one else gets clicks. A rough estimate I bet #1 gets 80% of the leads. The great thing about this type of lead though is that they have already made the decision and they are highly motivated. They know what you do and typically they've done their research. They want a low ball cash offer.

 I think you really have one of two options. Decide if you want to be pretty hands on with the site and optimize it to really do well in the search results, or hire it out entirely. I wouldn't however hire Carrot to do actual SEO work for you because they do the same thing for all their clients in all the same markets.

The services aren't cheap, but I'd venture they're def worth it with a 5-10x return, so if you need a referral to a great SEO guy let me know on private message.

Best of luck!

JTM

Hey BP,

  So that's my question: How important is follow up?

I know, I know, I know the general stats that everybody uses that 80% of the deals come after several follow ups, but I just want to know if this absolutely proves true in people's REI as well.

  With my old company I'll admit right out of the gate here that I sucked at it, probably because I was doing too many things and there weren't efficient and effective processes in place, and it's too easy to drop the ball when you're busy.

  Now that I'm starting in an acquisitions role with another existing company and building out some of the aspects of the role myself I'm just revisiting this question and trying to make a plan for it.

  And, given that you guys are likely to say it's essential, what is your approximate process? Do you try to automate most of it with mailer/RVM/SMS/email sequences?

  Okay thanks so much. And by the way, what happened to the old 'Marketing' tab in the forums. That one was my fav.

Best,

  JTM

Hey Wendy,

  Not sure what county you're talking about but they're probably all about the same. To be clear, I've never actually bought at a sheriff sale I've just attended several in MKE and the guy I just started working acquisitions for buys at a lot of them (I'll be doing this going forward) so I was asking him these same questions yesterday - so that's my reference point - I'm not an expert.

 There is certainly a lien on the property, probably the first mortgage, which is why it's at the sheriff sale. I know MKE county handled tax foreclosures differently as well as Waukesha and I believe all the counties have their own process for disposing of tax foreclosures. If it's at a sheriff sale at all I think it's because someone has been granted a judgement of foreclosure. If you search CCAP or even links associated with the address on the county page itself it should normally direct you to court records where you can see the foreclosure amount. If you have a relationship with a title company you could maybe have them do a soft search and see if there's a bunch of seconds listed. From the way I understand it you're typically going to have a formal title search done after you win the bid because you're right, not worth spending all that cash if you don't get it.

Also, just to say, a month can be a long way out for a sheriff sale and you often see them pull right up to the date, so don't stress about it just yet but just keep asking questions. Hopefully I can tell you more in a few weeks after I've been at a couple and seeing this start to close.

Best of luck,

@Christa Kirby ~ Think of it not as a sales position but as if you're talking to a friend. Sellers generally are going to sell to someone they like and who makes a good impression.

Learn the real estate basics so you know what to say, but then realize that real estate is a slow burn, and it will more than likely be the relationship you establish that leads to the deal.

I haven't gone through it, but I came across this guy with trainings (try to find free stuff and skip paying for the thing) called TTP (Talk to People) - I think it's Brent or Brett Daniels - and he runs a very large scale cold calling operation in a very very competitive market, and KILLS IT!

His approach is generally just what I described above, except that he's tested so many ways to phrase questions that his team has gotten really, really, really good at it.

We're looking to implement something similar at scale here in a few months.

Best,

   Biggerpockets resident Metaphysician and Empire Builder,

The Money Dummy

Oh my god you guys are funny.

Jerryl, while I agree with you metaphysics, I'm actually with @Lydia R. on the significance of the question, but I will answer it in a way all my own.

@Tyrek Evans ~ I think you first have to learn to learn before you try going after this REI thing. Why? Because no one is going to help you, you must help yourself - we are all that middle point around which the world revolves - and it's up to you to own it.

So when our friend Lydia thought, 'come on dude, put some of your time and thought into it,' it's because, like me, she's probably seen a lot of people approach this biz and we now see at a glance whether they have the skill set, disposition, and self-starter attitude required for it.

For example, I used to tell people, "You should consider getting into real estate," but when they text me later that evening asking me what website they look into licensing courses on, I realize I made a mistake, because I'm not going to Google That For You.

But take heart, because these are all learned skills, you just need to focus on learning the right ones. 

In approximate order of importance:

1. Study moral philosophy - any of it to start.

2. Study psychology - your interpersonal skills are the thing that is going to close deals - AND NO, NOT BECAUSE YOU'RE CONNING A SELLER, BUT BECAUSE THEY TRUST YOU!

3. Study all those creative real estate strategies so that you can learn to buy houses and buildings without having any money. Once you see it open up, the world is yours.

1 & 2 are much more important, both to your real estate investing biz and the quality of your life.

That's all now, thanks for the nice thread.

Signed: Bigger Pockets resident Metaphysician and Empire Builder,

The Money Dummy

And a P.P.S. to Yoda ~ Think we should come up with some stage personalities for this whole thing? ;)

Oh and quick follow up to that last comment @Blake King: in my post I said it would take 6 months. We're into month two of rolling this thing out and we're doing the Google dance around spots 1, 2, & 3. Just search 'we buy houses Milwaukee' - not sure where we're at today.

Best,

  JTM

Hey @Blake King,

  Sorry, but no one on this thread knows what they're talking about (except maybe that one guys with 20 sites or so - but even there he mentioned his SEO is not top notch).

  The first question is that it depends what you want your site to do. Consider:

1. Simply a bit of credibility if someone searches your company name.

2. Actually generate motivated seller leads.

  Most of the people in this business either can't figure out what high quality, white hat SEO is, or they haven't yet begun to see how powerful it is.

  In either case, you being a young guy and probably a bit more tech savvy than our older peers, there is an opportunity for us here - a big one.

  Biggerpockets won't let me hyperlink out of a forum, but if you go to themoneydummy .com and look under the marketing tab, you can see my SEO strategy (it's pretty high level, and I do intend to provide a newbie SEO post at one point or another), that I'm using to take over Google in southern Wisconsin.

  Then, once we have that dialed in, I'll probably work the same strategies in other markets and just do the lead gen piece. That probably won't happen till late 2020.

  Carrot is great, you'll see we're using a Carrot site and one of my posts is titled, "How to Take Your Investor Carrot Site to No. 1 on Google in 6 Months," but it's not nearly enough to do this SEO thing well and Carrot really oversells the quality of the service they're providing. Still, it's the best platform until you scale.

  I don't remember everything in my post at the moment, but I think I explain why that is.

  In any case, best of luck and PM me if you like.

Best,

   The Money Dummy

Not much, it seems to be going pretty well.

If you were starting out though, I'd recommend getting a RE license. I find it baffling that wholesalers don't do this. It adds massive credibility and legitimacy to your operation and allows you to give a seller many more options than a low ball cash offer (which cash offers have to be).

Good luck!