Property Investment Exit Strategies
If you are planning on entering into any kind of property investment, it is best to have an idea of what your end game is. Your exit strategy should match your abilities and the situation that you are currently in, but in the end it comes down to three options: buying to rent, flipping, or assigning the contract to other investors.
1. Renting - This strategy is more of a long term plan for generating passive income. It's a way to build up your wealth slowing since by holding the property for a long period of time, you will see a significant return on your investment over the long haul. You do need to put quite a bit of money down upfront so you are bringing in more in rent each month than you are paying out to the bank, on property taxes, and on insurance. This method is best for the lazy people who don't want to do a lot of work (or no work with a property manager), but want to sit back and watch a small amount of profit come in each month while building equity in the property.
2. Selling - Are you a fix-it-up kind of person? Then you might be able to buy a cheap house that needs a lot of work, do that hard work by upgrading certain features, and then putting the property back on the market for a substantial profit. With this method you can see a quicker return on your investment, since you only have to hold it long enough to make the upgrades and find a buyer. You will have to be able to put in the time and money to fix-up the property. If you are not able to do the work yourself then flipping may not be the best method for you to make money. Contractors charge quite a bit for the work they do and the more of your budget you burn through the less profit you make when you go to sell. Of course something to keep in mind is that not all properties need a lot of work in order to make money flipping them.
3. Assigning - With this method you can either purchase and then resell or you can assign the contract to another investor for a finder's fee. To use this tactic you need to have a list of investors that are in the market and looking for a deal. It is recommended that you have at least five potential investors lined up in order to make sure you have the financing before making an offer on a property.
So before you go out and start investing in property, make sure you have an exit strategy in place detailing how you plan on making money off of that piece of real estate.
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Increasing Traffic From Referrals
Do you want more traffic to your site? Of course you do, because without traffic you can't make any money online. If you want to succeed with your Internet business then you need to have a quality site that adds something to the niche you are trying to market to, and you also need an audience to sell too (even if it's just advertising space you are selling.)
There are plenty of ways out there to increase your traffic numbers, but I'm more interested in helping you do so at a low cost. It is going to take some work on your end, but the payoff is worth it in the end.
Press Releases
Putting out a press release that has eye-catching information can drive a lot of traffic to your site. Google News has delivered a LOT of visitors to my sites over the years, and your press release can get picked up by other sites to drive even more traffic your way.
Article Directories
I feel like submitting articles to directories is on it's way out, but if you are starting a new site then it might be worth it to get a few inbound links and some click throughs to your site. However, post your middle of the road articles on the directories, and NEVER post this duplicate content on your site.
Forums
This centers on driving discussion in the forum and contributing something to the members more than it does looking spammy by just displaying your links. I feel like this can be a great tool to get noticed, but read my article on how to promote your site in forums to get a more complete guide.
Testimonials
I've bought some great SEO products in the past, and the authors are always looking for testimonials to give their product some social proof. I've made more than my money back in traffic when I provided them with a few quotes on their front page in exchange for a link back to my site. Oh, and by the way, I've also got to use some pretty SEO products to go along with that exposure!
If you try these four quick methods to increase your traffic from referrals you will be on your way to increasing your traffic and making more money with your online ventures.
Do you have any other suggestions? I'd love to hear about them in the comments.
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What Should Go on a Disclaimer Page
If you want to be taken seriously as a blogger then you might want to think about adding a disclaimer page to your site. The key to the page is to disclose any potential conflict of interest you may have between yourself and what you are writing about. It is our belief that too much disclosure is better than not enough, but there is a large gray area covering what is considered necessary and what may be going too far. Think of sites like CNN.com. If they talk about Money Magazine or take a quote from them, the author will normally include that they are owned under the same corporate umbrella so the reader knows about the tie between the two companies. How about if CNN.com talks about Netflix, do you see them adding to the story that NetFlix buys banner ads on the site? Not at all. So when should you disclose?
Financial Association
If you have a financial association with the subject of your post or story then you should disclose it. I don't mean advertising, which should seem obvious to the visitor. If they see banner ads posted everywhere then they should know that you are geting paid for that space and aren't displaying banners out of the kindness of your heart. However, you should disclose when you are an owner or part-owner of a company displayed or talked about on your site. If you are getting paid by the company you are writing about, either as an employee or as a contractor, then you should disclose that. You should also put up a discloser if you are in financial competition with a company you are writing about. If an owner of MySpace is going to write about how terrible Facebook is, then don't you think you should know there might be a financial gain for them if MySpace is chosen over Facebook by the reader?
Personal Involvement
The slippery slope comes in to play when you talk about personal involvement. If a friend owns a company you are writing about, you may want to mention it. How close of a friend does it have to be before it's worth mentioning? Well, I supposed that is up to the writer to decide, but I prefer being overly informative. If you are talking about a family member though, you should let the reader know about your relationship.
What do you think should go on the disclaimer page or be disclosed by writers? Have you seen a site disclose too much or not enough? Let's hear about it in the comments.
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Benefits of a Contact Us Page
It's very important for every site owner to have a way for readers to contact them. If there are visitors who have to spend more than a few seconds looking for a way to get a hold of someone from your site, then you could possibly miss out on a sale, a profitable business relationship, a question worth answering via a post, and I think you get my point. The question really should be why wouldn't you want your readers to contact you. Let's look at some of the benefits of a contact us page in order to further motivate you to get your up and running.
Private Communication
Sure, having comments on your blog generates a sense of community, and we've even spent time trying to teach you how to get more comments on your blog because we think they are so valuable, but not everyone is going to want to ask their question publicly. If you give your readers a way to contact someone via email then they will feel they can talk in private.
Accessibility
If your visitors have a way to get in touch with you then they will feel like they can pitch you their ideas or just let you know that they appreciate what you are doing for them. It also shows that you are willing to take responsibility for the content of your site and welcome criticism. If there is a problem with your site or blog, then your visitors can let you know about it. No site owner has time to monitor their site 24/7 and the thousands of pages they may have.
Opportunities
Like I said in the introduction, visitors could be contacting you in order to ask a couple of questions before purchasing something from your site, or maybe they want to partner up with you on a business venture. The questions that they ask could work great for future articles or posts.
I know that some site owners worry about privacy issues or that if their email is posted they will get spammed to death. Take it from me, someone who manages rather large sites that get tons of traffic, I have never had a problem letting my readers know who I am and what my email address is. As for spam, that's why I go with GMail!
Have you gotten anything else out of having a contact us page? Let me hear your story in the comments!
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What to Put On Your About Us Page
When a new visitor comes to your site and wants to know what it is about where do you think they turn to? Hopefully your answer was the "About Us" page, but how up-to-date is yours? Take a look at some suggestions I have for what to include on this section of your site in order to give your visitor an idea of what you are all about.
Personalize the Page
Your visitors should be able to put a face to the name of the person they are reading about. It will give your site a human touch. If you are selling a product people want to buy from people, not un-named companies. If you are selling information then they want to know you are an expert and not a pimply-faced, unkept 15-year old kid. Provide a professional looking photo and your About Us page will be off to a positive start.
Short Summary
In the introduction section of your about page you should have a short and sweet summary of the information that you cover on the site. Keep it short in case the reader doesn't have a lot of time or just wants a quick overview, if they want more details details then you will give them more specific information further down the page.
Your Details
After the summary you can go into further details as to what type of site you are running and some personal information about yourself such as your name, occupation, location, education, previous sites your have written for and worked for, and whatever else you would put on a job resume. That's how you should see the about us page, as a resume. You are selling yourself to your visitors so put your best foot forward.
Contact Information
Make sure that you include a link to the contact us page or provide the contact means on the about us page. This emans an email address, or if applicable, phone number and physical address.
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How To Increase Your Ad Earnings
There are several different things you can probably do right now to optimize your site's advertising and generate more revenue. The first and most obvious is to get more traffic, but that can take a lot of time and effort to do. Instead this article is going to focus on how you can make the most out of the traffic that you already have.
Ad Positions
It's important to note that not every blog or site is going to be the same. I can't just tell you that by putting an ad in such and such a place this is going to be your click through rate. What I can give you is a general idea of what locations work the best. First off, don't just look at other sites in your niche and think that since they are doing it one way, it must be the best way. You do want to start by thinking about where on the page your reader gives their full attention. Most likely this is above the fold and either towards the left of the page or right above the content. This has been reinforced by the heat map released by the Google Adsense team. Another great location for advertisements is the footer area right below your content area. By using the top left, above the content, and below the content strategy you are probably going to be on the right track, but since every site is different you should split test and experiment to find out which locations give your specific site the most clicks and then stick with that format.
Adding Additional Ad Space
This one seems like common sense but I see plenty of websites out there that do not seem to be utilizing all of their ad space. Where are the natual points for a reader to pause on your page? On blogs you will find it just after you end the article and before the comments section. This is a place where the reader considers what they want to do next so it's a great place for related articles, a link to have them subscribe to your feed, and for advertisements related to the post. Another great place is after the comment section. If a reader goes through the comments then when he or she comes to the end of the list they once again will be looking for more places to go. Why not give them the choice to click on an ad so you can make some money?
You can also find more advertising space with text links. These work great in two places, on your navigational menu and in the content itself. Just make sure that the link text and site you are linking to are a fit to what the content is about, so that way the user gets what they are expecting.
Do you use any other techniques to make money with your advertising? If so I would love to hear about them in the comments section.
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How to Get Indexed Faster By Google
Everyone wants to rank well in Google. A high listing in the search engine results pages (SERPs) can bring you a ton of traffic which hopefully will translate into you making a lot of money. If you have a new URL though, how can you make sure your site gets indexed faster by the major search engines? Take a look at these easy to follow guidelines and you'll be listed in the SERPs in no time at all.
Submit a Sitemap
You first need to sign up for Google Webmaster Tools, this is valuable not only for adding your sitemap but also to get information in general on how Google views your site. Next you need to submit your XML sitemap. If you use WordPress then the Google XML Sitemaps plugin is a must as it will update your sitemap and ping Google whenever you add content. If you use a different content management system then there is probably an automated tool you can use for that as well, which I would highly recommend. If you have to create your sitemap manually then run the program at Audit My PC and upload the generated sitemap to your web server before submitting it to Google.
Get Quality Links
Now I've talked about if you should buy links for SEO and I pretty much think you shouldn't, but if you want to get indexed fast then this is the only time I would consider it, if only for a short duration. I feel like this will help the Googlebot get to your site quickly, especially if you get a link from a high PR site. You can also use some of my suggestions on how to get more one-way links, but to sum that article up you basically need to write great content and then get noticed by other sites in your niche by commenting on their blogs or linking out to sites. Most of the time the site owner will at least check out your site and they think your content is relevant and adds value to their readers they will give you some link love in return.
Social Bookmarking
Another easy way to get links and to get indexed quickly is through social bookmarking. Digg is a very popular site where you can submit your content in the hopes of it catching on and getting to the front page. There is also plenty of other social sites like MySpace, StumpleUpon, and del.icio.us.
How do you get get your sites indexed? Let's hear about them in the comments.