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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
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”!
Loan Officers - Generate 50 Real Estate Leads A Month For Your Agents
Loan Officers are always looking for ways to develop a tight relationship with real estate agents.
Good rates, timely closings, great communication skills….. These are all important, but they don’t necessarily put money in your referral partner’s pocket.
One strategy that has worked well for me over the past year has been to participate on high traffic real estate web sites by adding regular mortgage related content.
Those agents who are on page one of search results for (your city + real estate) are generating thousands of visitors and hundreds of new buyer leads every month. They need fresh content to help maintain those rankings as well as generate new traffic through long tail search phrases.
The more relevant and valuable mortgage content you write, the more traffic and potential leads you generate for your real estate agent. Simple.
Do You Have a Web Presence?
Are you taking the time to invest in your future? What you do today, will effect you months and months from now. That holds true with your marketing for your real estate business.
If you spend money on an ad in the newspaper or local real estate magazine, your hope is to generate business as soon as the ad or magazine hits the stands. This type of marketing is only good for generating business today. The question you need to ask yourself, “What are you doing today that will help your business grow for the future?” The answer should be, “Investing your time in your website!”
Just having a website is not going to bring you in business, there are things you have to do to help your website grow and get stronger. It’s like having a baby. When you are blessed with a newborn, all the newborn does is eat, sleep and cry. But over time your baby begins to grow, starts to crawl, then walks, speaks their first words, begins to run, form sentences and then off to school. All this didn’t happen over night. You as a parent devoted your love, nurturing and encouragement that led to these events. Well it’s the same concept with your website. It takes you investing your time by adding fresh and unique content, gaining theme and authority links, blogging, submitting articles and press releases and the list goes on and on. As your website begins to age, it grows with content and gains valuable links, people begin to find you and over time your website becomes an authority website.
Your website should be your focal point of your universe! If you don’t have a blog attached to your website, get one. I recommend WordPress! Everything you do from this point needs to be directed back to your website. If you post an ad on Craigslist, make sure you have a link going back to your website. If you write a blog article on Active Rain, make sure you have a link pointing back to your website. If you submit a real estate press release, make sure you have a link pointing back to your website. As silly as it sounds, many real estate professionals aren’t doing it.
Your real estate market might be competitive on the Internet and I say so what! Until your website gets stronger, go after long tail search phrases. If your website still won’t rank for long tail search phrases, then use other resources that will rank. Real Estate Blogs like Active Rain and WN Real Estate Blogs are authority platforms that usually rank for your blog article title. Use them! I recommend writing the blog article on your real estate blog and then submitting the same title on Active Rain or Wanna Network with a summary of the blog with a link back to your main real estate blog. When the Active Rain or Wanna Network Blog ranks, the consumer will click on the link and begin to read your article, more times than not, they will click on the link to go to your main real estate blog to finish reading the article. This is where you want the consumer, on your real estate blog or website. This increases your chances of turning them into your client as they are on your website!
Remember, you are blogging for business not for other real estate industry professionals!
Use the tools and resources that are at your disposal to build your web presence!
NAR is looking for a Social Media Manager
Looks like the National Association of Realtors is looking to hire a Social Media Manager to capitalize on the massive movement of real estate blogging on the Internet. Many real estate industry professionals have included blogging into their daily real estate marketing routine and I assume NAR recognizes the importance on becoming a leader.
If I were NAR, I would choose somebody that is highly recognized in the field of real estate social media and has a following!
If you are interested in applying for this position, you can view the job posting on Monster.com.
Do You Blog for Business or Other Real Estate Industry Professionals?
I see many real estate industry professionals writing informative blogs about their real estate markets, neighborhoods and local communities. Unfortunately, many of these great blog articles are written on sites like Active Rain and Realtown. What’s so wrong with writing blog articles on sites like these?
- Once you submit the blog article, the content now belongs to those sites! If you decide you want to close your account and take all that great content to place on your own blog, get ready to spend a lot of time copying and pasting all your blog articles to a word document.
- These sites rank very well in the search engines which help your blog articles to be found by your target audience, but when they click on your blog, you are taking them back to your article and all your competitors. Instead of increasing your chances of capturing your audience and directing them to your personal website or having them contact you directly; you are doing the exact opposite.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t use sites like Active Rain or Realtown, what I am saying is, they aren’t the best option for capturing and increasing your chances of generating business. These sites are great for networking, gaining exposure and getting referral business from other real estate industry professionals.
So what should you be doing?
- Your focus should always be on your real estate website and/or blog. You should be directing all traffic back to your website and/or real estate blog.
- Use Real Estate Social Networks as a tool and not as the focal point.
- Look for other platforms that can increase your exposure and/or potential to increase your business, such as the WN Real Estate Blogs.
How can the WN Real Estate Blogs help you increase your business?
- Your blog is located on the WannaNetwork.com domain which allows you to use the strength of the WannaNetwork.com domain to be competitive in the search engines instantly.
- You own all content on the blog. If you ever decide to close your account, all blog articles will be removed and emailed to you in a zip file, which allows you to republish the articles on another blog if you desire.
- When your target audience finds your blog article in the search engines and they click on the link to the article, they will only see your blog, no links directing them to anywhere unless you add the links yourself. This prevents you from directing your target audience to your competitors.
- All WN Real Estate Blogs are hosted on the WordPress Blogging platform which is the best blogging platform in the industry!
- The WN Real Estate Blogs have the best plug-ins and is fully optimized ensuring your blog articles will do well in the search engines. You can even measure how well your blog is doing by looking at the Stats in your blog dashboard.
- All blog articles are streamed over to the Blog Homepage.
- As soon as you submit an article on your blog, it instantly updates multiple services and search engines about updates to your blog through Pingomatic.com.
- The WN Team provides complete support and coaching on how to use the WordPress platform. In your Blog Dashboard you can submit a ticket with any problems or issues that gets sent directly to the WN Team!
There are so many more cool features and reasons why you should a WN Real Estate Blog! If your business plan is to grow your real estate business using different tools on the Internet, the WN Real Estate Blogs should be included in your business plan!
Remember, if you are blogging to increase your real estate business, make sure whatever time you invest in blogging, your time is being spent wisely. Good luck and happy blogging!
Real Estate Link Building
So you want to rank in the top 10 on Google for you keywords but you just don’t know how to do it? You have read many articles, blogs and followed the discussions on the basics:
1.Build a custom real estate website
2.Optimize your website for your key words
3.Write unique real estate content
4.Build Links from authority and theme related sites
5.Blog
6.Participate in Social Media/Social Networking Sites
Knowing the basics and even implementing the basics is no guarantee that you will rank for your key words especially if your key words are in a competitive market.
Optimizing your site for you key words is a discussion in itself, so I want go into optimizing your site, but will indicate that is important to have your real estate website properly optimized! Adding fresh and unique content to your website is also another important factor but I still believe that link building is one of the most important aspect of getting your real estate website to rank competitively for your key words.
In this post I will cover where to look for links and how to get quality, authority and theme related links.
1.Social Media/Social Networking Sites
2.Blogging Sites
3.Directories
4.Partners/Contacts
5.Press Releases
6.Article Submission Sites
Social Media/Social Networking
Social Media has become the buzz words on the Internet and it’s synonymous with the phrase “Web 2.0″. Social Media or Social Networking Social Media encourage social interaction. There are many sites that allow you to create profiles/accounts in order to interact in social communities. Sites like Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit, Active Rain, Wanna Network, Propeller and StumbleUpon, to name a few, allow you to create profiles/accounts in which you can place links to your website. They allow you to vote on articles and blog posts, which generate traffic to your site. Do your research and see what Social Media sites interest you! Here is a list of 48 Social News Websites to help get you started 
Blogging
Blogging has become one of the most important part of the link building process. With a blog born every half second in 2006, now it’s probably 1 every 1/4 of a second, it’s not hard to find influential bloggers in your industry/market. Once you locate the top 25 - 30 bloggers in your industry/market, start linking to their blog posts in your blog posts and this will create trackbacks. Trackbacks can generate many links over time.
Blog commenting is another way to generate links. I don’t recommend commenting on other blogs using anchor text because it is considered spam. Make sure that you have something useful to say if you are going to comment on another blogger’s blog article.
Use your blog to interview someone that is important in your industry. During the interview ask questions that would generate interest from your readers. An interview can be a powerful means in creating Link Bait!
Guest Blogging or Blog Contributor is another opportunity to generate quality links to your website. There are too many quality real estate bloggers that are failing to get their voice heard! Participating in other real estate related blog platforms allows you to target other markets, display your expertise, network, generate click through traffic gain valuable back links!
Directories
This will probably cause a debate, but I still believe it is important to submit your websites to theme related or niche directories besides DMOZ and the Yahoo Directory! Conduct a search on Google for “Real Estate Directories” and browse through the different directories and see which ones you want to be included in. Not all the directories are FREE! Don’t forget your local yellow pages
Partners/Contacts
Getting links from your friends, business partners and your contacts should be a pretty easy process. Many of you probably haven’t even thought of asking for links from these individuals! Anyone you do business with, ask if they would place your link on their website. Every time I enter into a deal with a new escrow company/escrow officer, loan officer, appraiser or home inspector, I ask them if they will place a link to my website on their website. Not many say no because they want a successful transaction and they think by saying “no” it will cause some type of negativity during the deal. This creates numerous new back links for my website
Press Releases
Press Releases are an important part of your link building process. One press release that is well written and newsworthy can generate numerous back links. Many Press Release sites allow your press release to be syndicated, which means the press release could end of up on hundreds of other sites in less than a couple of hours! I recommend the following press release sites:
Article Submission Sites
Submitting articles to various sites allows you to not only educate the readers but generate back links to your webiste. Your job as a real estate industry professional is to educate the consumer based on your field of expertise. Writing articles about your field allows you display your knowledge while generating click through traffic and back links. Here are a few good article submission sites:
If all else fails, check to see where your competitors are getting their links! This doesn’t mean you can get the same links, it just gives you an idea of where their links are coming from and to see whose talking about them.
The most important thing you can do is to get active! Join the different social networks, blog and start learning
I hope you found this blog post informational!