Creating Multiple Streams of Revenue with Your Real Estate Business

Unless you have locked up an REO account with a lender, times are pretty tough for most real estate professionals.  Many real estate agents are exiting the industry as they can’t generate enough revenue to stay in business.  In times like these, it is very important to try to generate multiple streams of revenue with your Real Estate Business to get you through the tough times.

What do I mean by multiple streams of revenue?  Buying and selling real estate is only a few services of many that you can offer and generate income.  Even if the revenue is only a few hundred dollars, it can add up very quickly.  Here are some ideas of what I do to generate revenue from my real estate business.

1. Buyer Leads – I refer all my business to my agents generating revenue on each deal that closes.  Most agents handle their own business, so this scenario is a given.
2. Seller Leads – We actively market for short sale listings as most of the REO business is locked up in our market.  I have two agents that specialize with Las Vegas Short Sales and they get all the short sale leads.  Again, most agents handle their own business, so this scenario is a given.
3. Property Management Leads – I created a Las Vegas Property Management website and a web page on my real estate website to generate property management leads.  I don’t handle property management but it doesn’t stop me from referring the leads to a property management firm and get a referral fee.
4. Rental Leads – I don’t handle rentals but there is an agent in my office that only handles rental leads.  I refer my rental leads for a flat fee, so again I get paid for every rental lead that turns into a successful closing.  Again, many agents handle their own clients, so this scenario is a given.
5. Commercial Real Estate Leads – I don’t handle commercial real estate, but that didn’t stop me from creating a web page about commercial real estate in Las Vegas.  I have generated a few leads for commercial real estate and I referred the leads to a Las Vegas Commercial Real Estate Agent and 1 deal has closed.  I did nothing but create a web page about commercial real estate and I should be getting a very large check here shortly.
6. Loan Leads – Sometimes we get potential clients to fill out our contact form with lending questions.  We refer the client to our preferred lender and when they are ready to buy, our lender refers them right back to us.
7. Credit Repair Leads – Not everyone can purchase right now but doesn’t mean that you should give up on them.  You can refer your clients with bad credit to a reputable credit repair firm and they usually send you a referral fee, once their credit is solid again, you can assist them in finding a home.
8. Lease Options Leads – I have an agent that specializes in lease options and he handles all our lease option leads.  If you don’t know how to handle a lease option, refer the lead out and get paid a referral fee when it gets into contract.
9. FSBO Leads - I have a separate company set up with a loan officer and we offer consulting to homeowners trying to sell their home by themselves.  We provide a complete marketing system for Las Vegas for Sale by Owners.  Again we get a fee when we sell our marketing package and we usually pick up a few buyers from the program as well.  When they can’t sell, they are referred to our real estate team to list their home which has lead to several closed deals.

I am sure there are many more avenues in your real estate business that can generate revenue; you just have to figure it out!  I hope this gave you some ideas on how to increase your revenue with your real estate business.

Writing an Article on Your WN Real Estate Blog

I have been receiving a few questions on who to write an article on their new WN Real Estate Blog, so I will cover the steps below.

1. Log into your WN Real Estate Blog.
2. Once you are logged in, you will be directed to your “Dashboard” and it is from here that you can manage your blog.
3. To write a blog article, click on “Write a New Post”.
4. Create a “Title” for your blog article.
5. In the “Post” section, write your article.
6. If you need to add a link, bold a word, use italics, etc… use the icons.
7. Once your article is complete, add tags (tags are keywords).
8. Select a Category you want your blog article to organized in or add a new category if there isn’t a category that fits the description of your blog.
9. Click on the All in One SEO Pack.
10. Complete the fields
     - Title should be the title of the blog article
     - Description, a short summary about the blog
     - Keywords would be the same words you used in the “Tags” section
11. Publish your article

If you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this blog or submit a ticket in the “Help Desk” section of your “Dashboard” or submit your question in the WN Blogs Support Forum.

Happy Blogging!

I Don’t Have Time to Blog About Real Estate?

I had a great conversation today with a real estate agent in California.  He was asking me questions about using real estate social networking sites, custom website vs. template websites and why should he be blogging.  After we finished the conversation, he was excited about blogging on his Wanna Network Real Estate Blog!

One of the first things that he said, which I hear all the time was, “I just don’t have time to blog, I need to close real estate deals, so the best use of my time is working with my clients, harvesting leads and conducting open houses.”  I do agree that as real estate agents, our clients come first but if you aren’t investing into your future, you won’t have any clients.

It was obvious that he wasn’t going to be investing a lot of his time in social networking sites, writing press releases, building links to his real estate website so I felt the most important thing he could do to build future business was to blog.  Since he wanted to generate business from his efforts today, I advised that he should be using platforms that will help him generate business today.  Creating a blog on Wanna Network or Active Rain allows you to get instant traffic as both platforms are authority sites and blog articles tend to rank very well.  Obviously, I am biased, so I encouraged him to use the WN Real Estate Blogs as they are built on the WordPress platform which is the best blogging platform on the Internet.

I advised that all he needed to do was invest about an hour a week to write one or two blog articles that were geared towards his real estate market.  For example, if he wanted to talk about short sales, he should Title his blog article, “Las Vegas Short Sales” or “Short Sales in Las Vegas” and to make the article educational and the last paragraph should be the closing where you encourage the reader to contact you for more information!  Make sure you include your phone number and a link to your website.

Since your articles are published on an authority website, they should rank well in the search engines and begin to generate calls or traffic to your website.  In time, you will have 30-40 blog articles that are working for you 24 hours a day!

Once you begin to close deals from your efforts online, start investing into your website and turn your real estate website into an authority website!

Happy Blogging!

New Themes

I just wanted to let those of you signing up for your FREE real estate blogs that there will be some new themes released soon.

We’ve been working on getting together a large theme release so we can let out a bunch all at once.

If you know of any great WordPress themes that you would like to use then please let us know and well try to add them.

Thanks guys!
Dustin Dempsey
Wanna Network Real Estate Blogs

First Interview on WN Radio

I had the opportunity of being interviewed last night by David Baker with WN Radio.  The show will air sometime next week for everyone to hear.  Below is the list of questions that I was asked along with my answers.

I think that WannaNetwork is an amazing resource for everybody in any area of Real Estate, how did you come to create and collaborate the WannaNetwork community?  Wanna Network was kind of created by accident.  I have been marketing my real estate business on line since 2004.  In late 2005 I began to use MySpace as a way to market my real estate business in Las Vegas.  Since Las Vegas has over 5000 people move here every month, I thought MySpace would be a good source to network with real estate agents all over the country in an attempt to get referrals.  The more I used MySpace, I realized it was not going to be the resource I was looking for and that’s when I decided to create my own real estate networking website and that’s when I began laying the ground work for Wanna Network in early 2006.  Wanna Network officially launched in June 2006.
 
There sure are a lot of members on WN, what did you do to get all of these professionals to join up and how big a part did social networking, social marketing, blogging and mass exposure play in that process?  Wanna Network has grown into something I never quite envisioned.  When I launched Wanna Network, my original goal was to try and get 1000 active real estate agents to use the site.  We had 1000 members within 3 months the site was launched.  To get the word out about Wanna Network, I began to tell all my real estate friends in Las Vegas, I promoted the site on sites like MySpace, Face book, Craigslist and real estate forums.  I really never dived into the blogging thing, but I wish I would have, I really never saw the power of blogging until recently.  Even with all my efforts to get the word out, the site grew because of the members of Wanna Network inviting their colleagues in the real estate industry.  The success of Wanna Network can be attributed to the members!
 
I was looking through some of your posts on the forums and really enjoyed one titled, “what is real estate networking?” Would you mind sharing with us again what is real estate networking to you? I wrote that post because I received so many emails from real estate industry professionals asking how real estate networking could help them grow their business.  Real Estate Networking is not, “I am the best agent and you should refer me all your business”!  Real Estate Networking is about establishing relationships with other real estate industry professionals and listening to their needs and offering your assistance.  This approach will open more doors and will lead to more referrals than you can imagine.
 
I can’t tell you how giddy and school girlish I’ve been since I was able to team up with you guys to make WNRadio possible. What would you like to see from this new addition and how do you think it will best help the members of the community further network with each other? I would like to see the WN Radio provide another avenue for members to market their services or products to other members and visitors on Wanna Network.  I receive numerous inquiries from the members asking how they can get the word out about their products and services and I think this would be an excellent way to educate and market to our members in a non invasive manner.
 
If you could respectfully name 5 people you would like to see broadcast a show for the members, who would that be? Oscar Morante offers courses on Short Sales for real estate agents and I think his course would be highly beneficial to those that are thinking about becoming short sale specialists for their area.  Brian Aber with HTDI.  Brian is very knowledgeable in credit repair and would be a great resource for those agents and loan officers that have clients that need a little work done before they can qualify for a home loan.  Tim Davis is a mortgage coach.  I have seen his YouTube videos and they are very educational and a great resource for loan officers who want to grow their business.  David Bartels.  David speaks around the country with Greg Frost and their High Performance Seminars offer solutions to loan officers on how to grow their business.  Tim Harris.  Tim offers coaching on short sales and REOs and I have heard his online courses are awesome.
 
Now I’ve gotten the chance to talk to you briefly about a pretty impressive blogging platform you’ve put together, Can you tell us about that? All members of Wanna Network have a blog attached to their account but it’s a pretty basic blog.  Seeing how the real estate industry was heavily involved in blogging, I thought it was important to provide a blogging platform that gave our members a better opportunity to reach their audience.  We contemplated on building out a custom blogging platform but ultimately we decided not to reinvent the wheel.  WordPress is the premier blogging platform and has some of the best plug-ins available.  So what we did was add a multi user WordPress blogging platform to Wanna Network on a sub domain.  We customized the templates and added the best plug-ins like All in One SEO, cForms and StatPress.   We have been testing the blogs to see how well they do in the search engines and so far the results have exceeded our expectations.  Without a doubt I can say the WN Real Estate Blogs are a better option than the Active Rain outside blogs.
 
You guys all have a lot of talent when it comes to gaining exposure on the internet, and especially Google. How many of these tools are available to the members and how many people would you say really take advantage of using them for their benefit? If you use the resources that we offer, you will see results.  I have talked to many members that have received business by participating in the forum but I believe the most value for our members will be for those that use the new WN Real Estate Blogs.  All the blogs are optimized for the search engines, we provide the best plug-ins and you will never lose a consumer to another member.  The WN Real Estate Blogs are strictly meant for creating the blogger business and not comments.  So there aren’t any links that would direct consumers to another member’s blog.  Because these blogs are only a few months old, we only have about 30 members using the blogs and we have received nothing but excellent reviews so far.
 
After all of your experience in Real Estate, what do you think you can do in the current market to succeed?  I think the real estate market is changing in how real estate agents market their business and how consumers find information.  Agents that don’t shift more of their efforts to the Internet will lose out on business and will have a hard time surviving as a real estate agent.  If the consumer can’t find you, you don’t exist.
 
What do you think about all of these foreclosures? These foreclosures have caused a mess throughout the country but on the flip side, real estate prices climbed to high too fast and priced way too many buyers out of the market and now we are seeing prices come down significantly allowing more buyers back into the market.  The increase in home prices didn’t correlate with incomes and that played a huge role in the foreclosure mess.  As adjustable rate mortgages adjusted, the salaries of the homeowners didn’t increase over that same time period which would have absorbed the increase in the mortgage payment.  This resulted in a ton of foreclosures and I think it will take a few more years to get the real estate markets across the country stabilized.
 
Do you believe there’s an opportunity to help these people who have lost their homes? The only opportunity that seems realistic is allowing homeowners to refinance their homes based on the current market value and the incentive for the lenders would be to give them a tax credit for a percentage of the loss they incur.
 
Now I know you’re a family man tell us a little about your family. I am a family man.  I have been with my wife for 8 years now and we have 3 awesome children.  My daughter is 7, my son is almost 4 and my youngest son is 1.
 
To finish off, how has WannaNetwork helped your business and long term what are your goals for the website? Wanna Network has opened many doors that probably would have never opened which have created new opportunities for me and my real estate business.  My goals for Wanna Network would be to grow with technology over the next couple of years.  It’s not easy keeping up with technology as its always evolving and as it evolves, people move towards the newest technology.  As long as we can continue to provide a platform that gives the end user value, Wanna Network will be around for a very long time.

I would like to thank David for giving me the opportunity to be the first interview on WN Radio.  If you would like to contribute to WN Radio or Advertise on the show, please contact David Baker or Michelle Plotts.

Taxpayers may pay legal bills for Mortgage Executives?

Another twist to whole mortgage mess, taxpayers may be paying for legal bills for mortgage executives who were partly responsible for the housing market collapse!  According to an article on Yahoo News, because the Government bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Government also inherited Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s contracts that stipulated they would cover the legal bills for mortgage executives.

So you have the Justice Department investigating companies that were involved in the mortgage and financial meltdown.  Those mortgage executives that are under investigation have hired attorneys to represent them.  But guess who gets to cover the bill?  Taxpayers!  So not only is taxpayer’s money being use to investigate mortgage executives who are allegedly responsible but we as taxpayers are also footing the bill for their defense!  How about that injustice!

You would have thought the Government would have known about this before they bailed out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and would have made conditions on the bailout like we won’t be paying legal bills for mortgage executives!

Why Do You Put Google Ads on Your Real Estate Websites?

If you are a real estate agent and you are using your website as a way to generate business, than why are you putting Google Ads on your website?  I can’t believe how many real estate agents put Google Ads and other displays ads that have nothing to do with Real Estate on their websites!  Before I go on, let me say that I use Google Ads on my websites and I generate a pretty decent revenue from the Google Ads but I don’t have them on my real estate website that I use to generate business and here’s why.

Google Ads are advertisements for services and/or products.  If you place Google Ads on your real estate website, Google will have relevant ads that display and these ads are usually links to your competitors.  Now you are taking all your hard work of getting your website to rank in the search engines, to generate traffic and ultimately business but now you are encouraging your traffic to leave your site to a competitor and to make it worse, you are only making a few cents from Google with each click of the Ads.  So instead of potentially getting a client and making a 3% commission, you are settling for a few cents?  Now does that make sense?

The reason I bring this up was because I was browsing sites in the Las Vegas Real Estate Market and I couldn’t believe how many Las Vegas Real Estate websites had Google Ads all over them.  Almost every ad was a link to another Las Vegas Real Estate Agent!

So if you are going to use your website to generate real estate business, don’t give away potential clients to your competitors by placing Google Ads on your site!

Question I Received Regarding Generating Traffic to Your Real Estate Website

Could you please email with some basics to start with. My website is almost done. I am having a pro web designer build it. They are going to provide SEO for 3 months. I am sure it is the pay per click kind.

I am interested in becoming the GO-TO agent in this area…especially my website! We have a very transient population, so I feel it is very important that my site come up at the top!

Get Google Love Through Zillow and SEO?

I am sure many of you received an email from Zillow that was titled, “Get Google Love Through Zillow and SEO.”  The first thing that came to my mind was, I can’t believe they are blatantly stating that by using Zillow you can get “Google Juice”?  According to the email, if you use their site, you could receive a boost in the search engines.

For those of you that might not be aware of how search engine placement is achieved, I can assure you that using Zillow and placing links to your website from Zillow is not going to increase your search engine placement.  It takes numerous sites linking to your website to move your way to the top position.  Anyone can make this statement!!!  I could say “Get Google Love Through Wanna Network and SEO” because the key word is SEO.  Your website needs to be optimized for your key words, you have to build links to your website and consistently update your website with fresh and unique content.  As easy as it sounds, it’s not that easy, otherwise everyone would be # 1 for their key words.

For tips on increasing your placement in the search engines, read the blog titled “Real Estate Link Building”!

Chris Brown Gives Feedback on his WN Real Estate Blog

I know it is still to early to say how well the WN Real Estate Blogs will do, but if initial tests are any indication, you can expect to receive great results by using a WN Real Estate blog.  I have been testing sevaral blogs and have received nothing but positive results.

Just today I received a youtube video from Chris Brown who is also using a WN Real Estate Blog.  I have been receiving emails from him over the last few days about his excitement and suprise of how well his WN Real Estate Blog is doing in the search engines.

So if you were having any thoughts or skepticism on how well a WN Real Estate Blog will do, watch the video!

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