All Forum Posts by: Scott Costello

@Sean Dolan That sounds like an excellent conference to go to for sure, to bad I can't make it down there in November or I'd go.  Any of them in NYC?

Back to the conversation...

I agree that $250/mo is WAY low for SEO.  However, that price was a deal I worked out with the person to help me with the SEO.  I did a lot of the work myself with his guidance.  It was a matter of my budget restrictions more then anything.  He sure would preferred to do the SEO himself if I could have afforded much more.  

To be clear I was happy with his work and guidance and I'd be happy to recommend him to anyone.  He got my site to #2 in about 6 months for the keywords we were targeting.  Those were my expectations.  

To me there are different levels of SEO services.  3 to 4k per month is way out of reach for the person just getting started.  You'd have to wholesale 12 properties a year just to break even.  I realized that if you could afford 4k/mo you'd get those 12 properties a year most likely, but it's about the start up costs in the beginning.  What person can have a 4k/mo expense with nothing coming in at the beginning?  very few.

That is just another reason why $50/mo for Carrot or LP is worth it to me.

However, trust me when I say that I'd love to own my site and build it from scratch.  I'm a software developer by trade and am a creator by nature.  Being able to build in my own customization to the site would be awesome.  I can't do that with IC or LP...trust me I've tried.  

I'd love to connect with you on other projects I have going, like REIFlow (a podio product).  I'll shoot you a message about that though.

@Sean Dolan

I briefly read your reply and I plan on coming back to really digest it tomorrow (i'm on my way out the door).  I few quick additions...

1) thanks for pointing out that the ScottyBuys.com is not working.  I thought I fixed that a couple months ago.  I wonder what the heck happened.  Maybe that was another site.

2) You reference the wrong page when looking at my custom site.  It should be WebuyNjHouses.com.  The site you reference is not mine but a competitor in my area (who I know).  I'm assuming this was just an oversite and you were still talking about the correct site.

The $4000 was not towards the design directly.  That is a theme that I chose from studio press and I wanted to keep the site basic.  The $'s spent where a combination of $200/mo for SEO and about $80/mo for content.  That was on top of the $800 or so bucks that I paid to just set it up and get about 10 articles written from the SEO guy.   I know that comes out to more then $4k, but the costs aren't exact figures.  Just me defending my spending.

Sure, I have no problems revealing any of that information.  You'd have to be able to check back in history because my focus on each site has lacked and both have fallen (in some cases to other investor carrot sites).  My Custom site has really dropped off because I don't maintain that one at all right now.  But anyway, here is the info...

keywords: Sell My House NJ or We buy houses NJ

site: sellyournjhouse.com (IC) and WeBuyNjHouses.com (custom)

There is no doubt that you know what you are talking about when it comes to websites/SEO and conversions.  I read what you were asking Trevor and you bring up valid arguments against using an IC type of site.  None of them bother me that much...but that is just me.  

One question though...When you talk about "Brand" traffic messing up the conversion rate, I don't understand.  How is the Investor Carrot Brand influencing site visitors to fill out my forms?  What does that is good design and the right content.  

Just so I'm not hiding anything...I am an affiliate for investor carrot.  Take that for what it's worth.

@Sean Dolan Like I mentioned in a previous reply, I am an Investor Carrot user for 4 years now.  When I started using IC I also setup my own website, hired an SEO expert to help me out with it and hired a content writer to publish articles.  For investor carrot I used their content package to publish articles twice a month and did some citations.  

For about 18 months I had both sites running.

By month 18...

my custom site ranked #2 for my main keyword and the Investor Carrot Ranked #1.

my custom site was getting less visits per month...but not by much

The Investor Carrot site was converting visitors to leads at a 5 to 1 clip

I get the point of Ownership vs Renting and that was one of the negatives when I was deciding to go with Investor Carrot or build my own site.  But what it came down to was Time and Money.  

I could...

spend 100's of hours building my own site, learning the techniques and testing out designs.

hiring people to do SEO, Content writing and/or web design (which is NOT cheap)

or I could....

Rent a website (Carrot or Lead Propeller) for $50/mo that has Content already done for you, on site SEO built in and a research, tested and done for you design.  

You still have to do off site SEO but that is becoming less and less important in google's eyes.  it's all about the Content these days.

My custom website cost me over ~$4000 after 18 months from hiring out the SEO and Content, buying a template and some plugins (Gravity Forms), while over the same time Carrot cost me $900 (that was actually for 3 sites as well Seller, buyer and Company).

To get to your point about Renting Vs Buying.  I fully understand that the core Carrot content that is on my site now is not "mine".  It will go away if I ever decide to cancel, which is fine because as long as I am an Investor I don't plan on cancelling.  If they go out of business then the content is mine to transfer to my own site (I asked). 

There may be a few other negatives to "renting" your site like not being able to sell it or being able to install custom wordpress plugins, but that is okay and for me not a deal breaker.

That has been my experience and my 2 cents regarding the subject of Owner/Renting websites.   

@Michael Hayes There are basically 4 components to a succesfull lead generating website...

(1) Site Design - Is the site easy to use, has calls to action, opt-in forms and everything else that goes into the design.

(2) Content.  This is very important and a good site will have fresh content posted to it regularly.  The content must be top notch as well.

(3) SEO - This is what is used to get people to your sites.  SEO is something that you always need to be working on in order to outpace your competition.  Though you can trade SEO for paid advertising such as Adwords.  

(4) Conversions - This is how well the site converts website readers to leads. This is the tricky part in my mind.  You have to use your Content to build trust and a connection with the reader and your site design to help lead your readers towards the opt-in forms.  Lot's of psychology involved in this from placement of opt-ins to images.  The nicest looking sites don't always convert as well as ugly sites.  Same goes for clean vs cluttered sites.  

I've been an Investor Carrot user for 4 years now and LOVE IT.  Lead Propeller sites look great and I've spoken with Danny Johnson on a number of occasions...he is a class act and knows what he is doing.  I think you couldn't go wrong with either product.  Where you can go wrong is not putting the continued effort (writing content, SEO and advertising) into your site to make it bring in leads.

I say, stop trying to decide and just pull the trigger.  You'll learn a lot!

Just out of curiosity, why the switch away from Podio to Infusionsoft?  I've heard Infustionsoft is complicated and pretty much takes an Infusionsoft expert to run.  Though they do say it is very powerful.

@Nick Baldo Awesome stuff! 

I love podio as well.  One of my favorite automations that I have setup (using Podio and Globiflow) is my lead referral business.  Leads from my Investor Carrot website get automatically routed to a Podio App using Zapier.  I then Use Globiflow to search my Partners App for my Wholesale partner who I work with in the county that the lead is in.  Then GF links the Lead to the Partner and shares the Lead with the Partner (Sends them an email as well).  This all happens behind the scenes and with no involvement on my part.  I used to do all this manually and Podio/GF/Zapier have saved me so much time it's crazy.

That is just one example of what you can do. Podio integrates with so many 3rd party tools that you can pretty much do anything you want.

A few other things that I have setup are...

• Automatically pull property information and comps from Zillow into Podio
• Get Google Maps Satellite and Streetview images for every lead
• Create documents on the fly
• Manage my direct mail marketing
• Lead Tracking from initial lead to Deal or Dead
• Team Meetings with GoToMeeting Free
• and more...

The only limit really is having the time to think of what to do and how to do it.  The only Bad part of Podio is that you can't get GlobiFlow anymore for as little as $9/mo anymore.  Now it costs a minimum of $120/mo.  Globiflow is what takes Podio from a pretty good system to an outstanding system in my opinion.

Hope that helps

 If you look at the plan comparisons, where it lists Advanced Workflow Orchestration by GlobiFlow, click on the question mark.  There is where it says you need a minimum of 5 user licenses.

@Austin Mudd You could set it up in Podio the way I have my Apps setup.  Then just manually do everything, but I'm not sure how much manual labor it would require to maintain that on your own.  GF was very important to that setup.

One of my blog readers did tell me they got it to work with FusionMint, but I've not looked into how to do that just yet.  Though he did say that it wasn't easy.