All Forum Posts by: Trevor Smith

@Erik Drentlaw Man. I wish I had so much cash that I didn't know what to do with it, like those folks! 

For the original poster: You can look into new western acquisitions. And Networth Realty. I've not dealt with them, and you should be sure they're not ripping you off. As was mentioned above, there are no laws preventing them from taking advantage of you. I don't even think it would be illegal for them to knowingly lie to you about the ARV, etc. So just be sure the deal is as good as they say it is.

@Erik Drentlaw

Hi Erik. If there is profit, and they are knowingly taking the risk, then yes, I am aware that there are varying degrees of risk tolerance. But this is not risk...this is foregone loss. How can anyone make a profit paying 90%? The realtor commission will be 6%. That leaves 4% profit. What about closing costs, utilities, taxes, insurance? Not to mention anything going wrong? 
Who the hell are these people willing to pay 90%? Do they know what they are doing??

@Duane Kidman

I can see how you are playing devils advocate. In this case however, it is as I said. He and I actually agreed on the ARV because I asked him. He offered about 83% of ARV and then was going to sell the contract for about 90% ARV minus rehab. And we agreed on the rehab too. He knew exactly what he was doing.

If you don't think it is unethical to pitch a greedy terrible deal to someone uninformed and take advantage of them, then you are in denial of justification just like he is. I'm sure he would swear all day that he is doing nothing wrong. People that do bad things never think they're doing bad things. It is amazing what people can justify. 

p.s. I don't assume that you are unethical which is why I started this paragraph with "if". 

@Jason Jones

I met a guy yesterday that doesn't even look for motivated sellers anymore. He looks for motivated buyers. He didn't say it in so many words, but he overbid me by 20k(meaning, he didn't even need to get a good deal, he didn't even bother), and then asked another 40k from the other investors. He was going to double close so they wouldn't know. It is without a doubt the most unethical thing I have seen first hand so far. I think it should be illegal. He was conning those poor people. But he doesn't even need to get a good deal so long as he can find one sucker to buy a bad deal from him. 

So you said it's hard to get any deals? Yeah, how are you supposed to compete with that? 

@John P.

John, what do you mean by, add and update my google listing frequently? 

@Com M.

Thank you both! 

Hi all,

I tried to search if a post of this question existed but I did not find any; I was called by Google offering me an organic position on the first page for 10 keyword phrases for $1,200 a year. This does not include click costs because it is organic. My result will be under all of the PPC ads. But first page is guaranteed, and among the spots on the first page, the customers, myself included, are shuffled among the spots so we all have top spot evenly. 

What is the catch here?? How could anyone possibly ever rank on the first page naturally through SEO, if people can pay $1,200 to beat them? $1,200 for a year!? It sounds too good to be true. 

It just doesn't make sense. I have heard of people paying $5,000 a month to SEO experts to make their SEO good enough for the first page. 

Does anyone know what is the deal with this? 

Thank you!

@Sean Dolan

Thanks again. I finally got around to re-reading this thread and reading about remarketing. That stuff is pretty insidious! I certainly would never have thought of any of it. I wish I was smarter--this would be a lot easier!

I have more questions if you have time. I sure do appreciate it. I wish I had some way of thanking you more. If I knew anyone with 15k to spend on marketing, I would send them your way. 

First, simple content or not simple? 

I am in touch with someone from Investor Carrot that is offering to help me. One thing I mentioned to him was that I deleted several pages from their template, and also simplified the landing page significantly. He got back to me saying they like to pack the site full of info because it helps make the user feel like it has more to offer than other sites. But then I look at webuyuglyhousesfast.com and I see the exact opposite. They don't even have more than ONE page. And that page is simple. And I know they are obscenely successful. That one page looks very effective to me. 

Second question: You said that PPC is better than SEO. I don't understand why that is. Once your SEO is strong, shouldn't it be acting almost for free? You continue doing blog posts, and twitter posts and whatever. But that is cheap and easy. The machine is working for you, is it not? Where as with PPC, you will always be paying a lot for every click indefinitely. And if your content is not optimized, then your content score is low, and your PPC clicks cost even more. Am I misunderstanding this? It's true that the ads appear on the top of the list--does that make all the difference? I for one scroll past ads--they turn me off because they didn't earn their spot in my results. Their content could be garbage and I don't even bother. I am probably in the minority though? 

Moving right along; I am worried about hiring someone to help me because the results are not measurable. If it takes 6 months for someone's efforts to come to fruition...how am I supposed to justify paying this person for 6 months with no proof that it is working? I mean, that sounds crazy. I understand that it could take 6 months...I am not denying that. But how am I supposed to be throwing money at this thing that is not even working yet and may never work? What if 8 months pass? 12 months? I need some way of knowing this PPC manager is doing a good job. They could literally be taking my money and doing nothing for all I know. Even if I asked them to explain their efforts to me, they could easily trick me into thinking they're doing a lot more work than they are. What am I to do about this? 

And lastly, what can I expect to pay an effective PPC manager? My current plan will be to build SEO quality of my site on my own, at my own pathetic pace, while paying someone else to do PPC in the meantime. 

Thanks a lot man. It feels like a bottomless pit of information. I read, and read, and read, and I just end up with more questions. I don't know what to do any more than I did a month ago, or 10 articles ago. 

Hey Cindy.

I'm sorry no one has responded to your post! Maybe try posting in a different forum category. I can't help you find those good people unfortunately, but I think you're right about all of it. You can't know too many people that are good at what they do. Maybe you don't think you need to know a good mail man or veterinarian but it wouldn't hurt! 

@Sean Dolan

This has been a really great thread. I feel like I owe Sean some money just for this thread. My favorite part was Sean's warning about scammers. Bots faking visits?? Really? Man, that is low. Thank you for the warning--I will be more cautious now. 

I have done my best to follow the Investor Carrot $99 training videos. For the sake of brevity, I will just say it's just not gonna happen. This stuff is simply not in my wheelhouse. 

How can a broke beginner get ONE deal? Mind you, I have even less interest in direct mail. I believe inbound marketing is what I need to do for my personality type. 

Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think Facebook Advertising might be like Adwords for dummies. Adwords requires an expert nerd to manage a complex testing of search terms for local, non-local, etc. But for Facebook, you simply pay some money and more people see it. More visibility equals more leads equals more deals. That is a formula even a dummy like myself can understand. 

Would you guys recommend I try that instead? I am keen on it because my one and only deal I've had so far came from a fluke lucky Facebook post I made for free. 

Because from what you've said, a broke beginner simply has no chance. I can't afford to do what ya'll say has to be done. But I do need a website good enough to convert my facebook leads. 
What can I expect to pay for someone to help me just with my main page to better convince people to give me their info? And can you recommend someone? Should I get someone from Malaysia to do it? 

I am going to be embarrassed to share my website with you. I'm sure it is a hot mess. But I need help, so if you looked at my site and gave me some pointers, I would appreciate it. http://www.webuyhousesfastdfw.com/

Thanks!