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Renaming My Blog Contest Winner!

When I first switched my blog over to StrugglingInvestor.com from my old blog at sjcostello.blogspot.com it took me ages to come up with a domain name that represented my current struggles to break into real estate investing.  What I liked about the name, StrugglingInvestor, was it also represented and large group of people who where just like me, people working a full time job and wishing they could break free and venture out on their own into Real Estate Investing.

It is not an easy task to accomplish for most of us.  There are many personal fears, financial obligations, every day obstacles and even a lack of time that we must overcome to fully reach our most prized goal of controlling our own lives.  The word Struggling, to me isn’t a negative word.  It’s a word that challenges me.  A word that made me work harder and never take anything for granted.

In the end, every day of my investing life has been a battle, and maybe that is a better word to use then struggling.  Many days I felt like just relaxing when I got home from a long day of work.  Taking a nap or going to play basketball with my friends always sounded like a much more enjoyable alternative.  In the beginning tt was a struggle to force myself to research investing until I understood it.  It was a struggling to visit 100 open houses over the course of a year.  And it is a struggle to stop my investing momentum every weekend so I can spend time with my wife or I’d never see her.  I battled myself almost every day for the last 2 years to keep moving forward.

Today though, it’s time to turn the page and bring on a new persona.  To be honest, I have  yet to come up with the perfect 2 or 3 words that describes my blog.  I can do it in a sentence or paragraph but that would make for a terrible domain name.   So I asked you guys to make some suggestions and  I got many excellent options.  In total I got 46 well thought out domain names.  Here is the list…

1. NoFearRei.com
2. 9to5Investing.com
3. FreeTimeInvesting.com
4. LateNightInvesting.com
5. ScottyInvests.com
6. MyInvestingStory.com
7. InvestingInMyLife.com
8. FromRatRacetoRealEstate.com
9. leaprealestate.com
10. scottssuccess.com
11. positivespin.com
12. alwayslearning.com
13. advancerealestate.com
14. resoluterealestate.com
15. dauntlessdeeds.com
16. profitprogress.com
17. realprogress.com
18. landingland.com
19. thenowinvester.com
20. investmenthaven.com
21. buybuy9to5.com
22. InvestingWithAPurpose.com
23. InvestingToBeFree.com
24. Investing2BeFree.com
25. Scottyblog.com
26. Scottsblog.com
27. wheelinginvestor.com
28. ProgressingInvestor.com
29. AspiringInvestor.com
30. HustlingInvestor.com
31. NoStruggleInvesting.com
32. InvestWithoutStruggling.com
33. StruggleFreeInvesting.com
34. ProbateInvestor.com
35. 9to5tofreedom.com
36. www.SuccessfulInvestor.com
37. Thestruggleisover.com
38. NixingThe9to5.com
39. GoodbyeGrind.com
40. FocusingOnFreedom.com
41. InvestingInTheMeantime.com
42. PartTimeProbates.com
43. nomore9to5.com
44. ScottTheInvestor.com
45. InvestingOnTheJob.com
46. InvestingToEscape.com

My favorite one of the bunch and the winner of Steve Cook’s Flipping Homes Profit Machine Intensive DVD set is…

9to5toFreedom.com by Steph “the StealthInvestor”

You won because you came the closest to coming up with a name that best described my vision of this site.   Steph if you could send me an email with your mailing address I’ll ship out your prize the next chance I get.

Now, even though I really liked 9to5toFreedom, I’m still undecided if I’m going to use that or not.  I don’t mean that to be unappreciative, as I couldn’t be more thankful to all those that took the time to make a suggestion.  I’m undecided because this is important to me so I want to mull over all my options before moving forward.  When I do make the change there are certain steps I must take in order to maintain my current web presence and google rankings so I hope you all understand.

Again Congrats to Steph!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Free eBook: 7 Day Action Plan

I’m sure most of you who read my blog already have downloaded the 7 Day Action Plan e-book that Shae Bynes, over at GoodFaithInvesting.com has put together.  If you have not, then head on over to her site and fill out the form.

I just finished reading through all 17 pages.  I must say,  Shae really managed to break down the proper way to take action and succeed.  I’ve done a lot of research, read many books and experimented with different methods on this subject and and it was amazing how all my most successful techniques where covered here.

I am not just saying these nice things because Shae is my friend.  We both have no problem calling each other out if we feel something is not right.  This is a fine product and one I have no problems recommending.    Here are some “quick hit” points about the 17 page e-book that I liked…

• No Fluff!
• She gets right to it.  (if you’ve read other e-books that have taken 20 pages to get to the good stuff you know what I mean)
• Simple steps that anyone can accomplish
• Supplies forms for you to fill out and help you organize your plan
• Caring.  Shae truly cares about helping you out

7 Day Real Estate Action Plan is a great launching point for someone who is just getting started in REI as well as for someone who is stuck in a rut.  It’s a quick and easy read so head on over to Shae’s Blog and sign up to receive your Free copy before she wises up.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Last Chance to Win a $400 Prize!

Just wanted to remind everyone that Friday, August 14th is the day I’m going to be closing the doors on the contest to rename my blog.  All you have to do to enter is leave a comment suggesting a great sounding domain name.  If I go with your entry I will give you Steve Cook’s Flipping Homes Profit Machine Intensive DVD course.  There are over 20 DVDs in this set of awesome content.

Go to this post, Contest: Rename My Blog and Win a $400 Prize, and read all about it and enter right now!

Once the door shuts, I will then take the weekend to decide which name I’m going to use and announce the winner on Monday, August 17th.

On To Other Things…

I’ve cracked open another book by Seth Godin called All Marketers are Liars (with a New Preface). I’ve only gotten through the first 10 pages but it’s looking like a fantastic and interesting read. As with the last book review, I will be giving this book away once I am done with it as well (Shae, Tribes will be in the mail this weekend, sorry for the delay). So stay tuned!

Comp Practice and Making Another Offer

I’ve identified another house I want to make an offer on this week.  During an REI meeting last week I met an investor who’s side job is an appraiser.  We got to talking a bit at the end of the meeting and he offered to help me out with coming up with comps.   In my mind, it is very important to get as accurate as you can with comps.  It’s your basis for offers, if you can be certain what the ARV is then you can be confident that your offer will work out for you.

Checking the MLS Daily

I’m taking Jason’s advice and am now reviewing a few choice area codes daily.  At this point many of the areas are foreign to me, but taking it one day at a time and building on the previous day will make me an expert in no time.  I recommend this approach instead of trying to review everything for your area that is currently listed, sold and under contract.  Doing that can be very overwhelming if you live in a very populated area like I do.  So each day I look at 15 to 20 properties instead of the 1000′s that are already in the system.

SI Lead Manager Bug

Last but not least, I discovered a bug in SI Lead Manager with scheduling recurring mailings and appointments.

Problem: If you create a one time mailing and then go back into the mailing to setup the recurrences, the program will throw an error.
Work Around: If you exit out of the calender area and go back in you’ll be able to setup the recurrence with out problem.
Fix: I have managed to fix the bug and it will be apart of an update either next week or the week after.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Must See Posts: Women, 1000 Houses, Target Markets and More

Here are some of the great posts I’ve read over the past few weeks from around the blogosphere.  Patrick Riddle over at MustKnowInvesting.com is running down the top 8 women in real estate investing and is currently featuring Steph Davis (no wonder why she just restyled her hair).  Along with Steph, another P-Rid girl, Shae Bynes just posted up a killer book review that you can see down below.  It may just be my first 400 page book I’ve ever read.  The rest of the posts are extremely informative and ones I will review again in the future.

Hope you enjoy the posts and if you know of any other great posts from around the web feel free to post the link in my comments section.

1) Steph Davis – The Best and Brightest Women in Real Estate Investing by Patrick Riddle

Here we go again… with our “Best and Brightest Women in Real Estate Investing” series.  New to the series? Start with the introduction.  This week, bartender-turned-wholesaler Steph Davis of Flip This Wholesaler is bringing us Part 5.  I had the pleasure of meeting Steph recently in person for the first time. We’ve known each other for awhile… but like many of the online relationships I’ve made over the years, I hadn’t actually met her in the flesh until the other day.  Check us out…

2) Book Review: My Life & 1000 Houses by Mitch Stephen by Shae Bynes

Last week I finished reading my 24th book of the year….phew! My goal of reading 2-3 books each month is going really well.  I keep a running list of the books I want to read and interestingly enough, today’s review is for a book that was not on the list, written by a first time author I was unfamiliar with, and yet is one of my favorite reads of this year!

3) Why & How New Investors Should Focus on Specific Target Markets by Ryan Moeller @ BiggerPockets.com

One thing I notice about the most successful investors is that they focus.  They focus on one strategy, focus in specific areas of a market and become a master.  This is extremely important, especially for beginners; choosing 2-3 zip codes or neighborhoods are a great  Unfortunately most beginners are open to any kind of strategy and look for deals anywhere, often leading to problems.  Here are reasons why successful investors focus on specific areas.

4) Investing 101: Working With Banks by Rachel @ Adventures in Mobile Homes

Recently, I’ve been getting a bit agitated and annoyed working with banks on their mobile home inventories. Right now, the banks owned mobiles are just too much of a risk for what the banks (in my experience) are looking to get. It’s getting to the point where even the parks won’t buy them back. And, that raises a major red flag with me.  (Note: Typically, I try not to compete with the parks I do business with. Some of the parks I work with (but not all), will usually go after the bank owned mobiles – they’ve got a separate team of people and experience in this area (usually not the park manager). Regarding typical homeowners, they usually don’t go after these as it is too time consuming and usually cannot be negotiated effectively over the phone like the bank owned homes).

5) Is Your Realtor a GREAT Real Estate Agent? by J. Scott @ BiggerPockets.com

There’s a BiggerPockets forum thread going on this week that addresses the issue of realtors, and whether they are worth their fee when selling your investment property. While I’m not going to address that particular issue in this post (suffice it to say, I believe great agents are worth every penny and not-so-great agents will lose you lots of pennies), I do want to review the criteria that I use to differentiate the great agents, especially when it comes to working with investors.  First, let me break down the three main areas that I use to evaluate an agent…

6) 123Flip Newsletter by J. Scott @ 123Flip.com

I’ve had a Newsletter Signup form on my website for over a year now, and while I’ve had a lot of people sign up, I never started sending our 123Flip.com Newsletter… I’m planning to change that, and will be starting to send a regular newsletter within the next couple weeks or so. I plan to include tips, industry news, how-to articles, etc, that won’t be available on the website (I need some incentive to get people to sign up, don’t I?  This is not a typical informational post but I put this here because if J. Scott is sending out a news letter, you want to be on the mailing list!

Popularity: 6% [?]

Question: Using BiggerPockets.com

One of the best REI resources out there is BiggerPockets.com.  Unfortunately I don’t really know this from experience .  I’ve heard quiet a investors, that I respect, give high praise to the site.

I have dabbled on the site over the last couple years, but have never really sunk my teeth into and really figured it all out.   Well here is my question for experienced users of the site…

Question:  How do you use the site effectively and what features do you find yourself using the most?

Along with getting answers from anyone who is kind enough to reply, I am going to do a little bit of a case study on the site and then write a blog post about it.

Popularity: 7% [?]

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