Steph has a blog series called Success Stories.  These posts focus on new investors who have finally closed their first deal.   Well, a couple weeks ago Steph contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in being one of her Success Stories?  Well, of course I would!   The Interview is going to happen today and I’ll be sure to let you all know when it’ll be published on her site so everyone can listen if you want.

Diva Money Club Update

I’ve been lacking on my Diva Money updates and I apologize for that.  The part of this awesome club that I’m currently working on is creating my own product.   Since I already have SI Lead Manager in the works I’ve been heavily concentrating on that right now.  This new beta release is going to be light years better then any previous version.  Here is a sneak preview image of what is in store…

From SILM Beta 5 Images

Once I finish up with Beta 5 I’ll be throwing that time back into advancing to the next module, but right now I want to get this done.

Are you the Diva Type?

Related posts:

1. Flip This Success Story – Probate
2. Can I do it?
3. Marketing Monday: Plan To Success

I wanted to share with you the 14 benefits that I’ve gotten from blogging since I started.  Some benefits are realized after your first post, while others will happen randomly.

1) Makes you think about and understand what you are doing

Writing about a specific topic requires you to have some level of understanding. That understanding will allow you to put together a logical and smart post. I’ve had to research things like liens, financing terms and cap rates just to include those topics in my posts. I am much more knowledgeable now because of that research.

2) Holds you accountable

Even though this is mentioned second, to me this benefit is the top reason for creating a blog about your real estate investing. When I write down in a post what I’m going to be doing, I really feel the pressure to actually do that task. I don’t care if you have 5000 readers or just 1, it’s human nature to want to please others. I want to be a man of my word and always follow through.

3) Networking

I’ve met so many people because they’ve found my blog it’s hard to even begin to list them all. Let me list a few..

• My coaches, Jon Zorrer and Casey Smith
• My Investing partner Lance
• Shae Bynes (goodfaithinvesting.com)
• Steph Davis (flipthiswholesaler.net)
• and many many more…

I bet anything that I’ll sell a deal at some point because of my blog, it’s gauranteed!

4) Make some extra money

There is no shame in promoting products that you have used and recommend on your blog. Many of these products have affiliate programs that will pay you up to 50% of the product sale if they buyer clicked through your link to purchase.

5) Being part of a community – like minded people

Once you have a blog, go around and comment on other investor blogs. Do it long enough and you will notice that there is a definite community of bloggers out there who will do anything to help each other out. A part of being successful in anything is surrounding yourself with like minded people. It’s great to be able to shoot one of my blogger friends an email to chat about lease options, wholesaling REOs or other passive income streams.

6) Journal – Progress

If you post regularly to your blog (as you should), you’ll quickly create a history of your progress. From year to year you’ll be able to go back and recall events from the past and also learn from them. One of the best examples of this was Steph Davis’ blog. If you read from post #1 to now, you’ll see how struggles slowly turned to success.

7) Learn about online marketing

Just writing a blog doesn’t mean you’ll get traffic. You have to promote your product (the blog) in places where people will be interested. Put your blog web address in your email signature, Real Estate forum signatures, and comment on other REI blogs. If you do this and keep posting often you will eventually get traffic. Warning: it could take years to see decent traffic. My site gets 80 to 100 visitors a day and I’ve been at this blog for over 2 years now. I’ve still got a lot to learn.

Improve your communication skills

This is a no brainer. Writing posts requires you to be able to communicate your thoughts and knowledge to others through words. Not my strong suite by any means, in fact I dare say I used to suck at it. Now I find myself more open to talking and meeting people then I ever have.

9) Get questions answered

I used to go to REI forums to get my questions answers, but now I can simply just ask in one of my blog posts and I’ll have 100s of people who answer my questions. The more you help other people, the more they will be willing to help you.

10) Learn how websites work

You will easily learn the basics of how to put together a website. From regeistering a domain to figuring out what the hell a Host is. It can get a little confusing for sure, but it is not that hard.

11) Good discipline practice

To be successful in a startup business you have to have discipline. Writing a blog is no different in the fact that writing posts must be done on a consistant basis or the blog will fail. Many times I DO NOT feel like writing a blog post, but I know I have to because it’s been 3 days since the last post. An inactive blog will die a quick death. Momentum is key (sounds familiar huh??)

12) Expand your imagination

There are days when posts just write themselves. There are other days when I have to be really creative to come up with a topic. Thinking outside the box doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but you can train your mind to do so. A blog will help you.

13) Teach others

Even though I still have so much to learn about real estate investing, there are people who are just getting started and could be helped from my experiences. It’s awesome to get an email from a reader who has a question. I never give advice on something if I don’t have experience, but I’m surprised at how often I’m able to help out.

14) It’s fun!

At the end of the day, I really just plain enjoy having my blog. For all the things it gives me it is an invaluable tool that will lead me to great success.

Final Thoughts/Advice

Don’t get turned off because you’ve been blogging for 3 (or even 6) months and nobody is showing up and commenting. You never know when someone will discover one of your posts and really help you out.

If anyone ever needs help setting up a blog, send me an email or post here with any questions you may have.

Related posts:

1. Top Blogs: 12 Incredible non Real Estate Blogs
2. Real Estate Investor Supply Box
3. How to Pick the Right Real Estate Investor Course

This causes a problem because I want to send out a multiple mailings to each lead over a 7 month period.   Lets quickly do some math and see how much that will actually cost me.

Here are my assumptions

• Sending letter (stamp, envelope, ink and paper): $0.60 each
• Sending Postcards (click2mail.com): $0.35 each
• 100 mail pieces in each list
• First Mailing will be a letter and
• We will go cheap on mailings 2 – 7 and use postcards

Month #1

• List 1: $60

Month #2

• List 2: $60
• List 1: $35

Month #3

• List 3: $60
• List 2: $35
• List 1: $35

Month #4

• List 4: $60
• List 3: $35
• List 2: $35
• List 1: $35

Month #5

• List 5: $60
• List 4: $35
• List 3: $35
• List 2: $35
• List 1: $35

Month #6

• List 6: $60
• List 5: $35
• List 4: $35
• List 3: $35
• List 2: $35
• List 1: $35

Month #7

• List 7: $60
• List 6: $35
• List 5: $35
• List 4: $35
• List 3: $35
• List 2: $35
• List 1: $35

Totals for each Month

1. $60
2. $95
3. $130
4. $165
5. $200
6. $235
7. $270

That means after seven months of lists I’ll be at a steady cost of $270 per month to send out all the letters and postcards I need for follow up.  Obviously I’m $170 short and pretty much need to double my budget to accomplish my plan.

How am I going to get an additional $200 a month?

If you face a similar situation you shouldn’t just resign yourself to the fact that you can only send out $100 worth of mailers per month.  I’m going to figure out a way around this road block because follow up mailers are so important!

I began brain storming some ideas

• get a part time job
• sell some of my belongings like old computers or things I don’t really need
• build some websites for people
• get a loan
• use credit (hurts even to write that)
• get a partner
• use my blog and earn extra money with affiliate sales
• sell advertising space on my blog
• use adsense on my blog

After listing all of these items it didn’t take me long to realize my best option(s).  Leverage what I’ve built already and my current knowledge to earn extra money with affiliate sales and adsense.

I already have had some success

From the beginning of my blog I’ve played around with Adsense and affiliate products and have had some moderate success.  All the links in the How I learned section to the right are affiliate links.  So are the square banners.

If you aren’t sure how affiliate marketing works, it’s pretty simple.  You get paid a percentage (up to 50% and more) of a sale if the buyer clicked through one of your links to the sales page and purchases a product.  It some cases like amazon, it doesn’t matter what item is bought, just as long as the buyer clicked through your affiliate link to their site.

Another way I can make a few cents is by using Google Adsense ads on my site.  These ads you’ve probably seen in my side bar at the top (large square banner ad) and also in posts that are older then 7 days.  Adsense ads are CPC or Cost Per Click.  This means that every time someone clicks on an ad, I earn a few cents (could be 1 cent or all the way up to $10).   There is an entire other side to adsense that I don’t really want to get into, but the simple of it is the ads that appear in Adsense are through another Google service called Adwords.

I believe in being totally transparent with my blog and want to make sure you know that if you see a link for a product on my site, it may contain an affiliate link.  Rest assured though that I will only have links for products that I have tried myself and think highly of.   I will have no hard feelings if you decide to not click my affiliate link and go directly to the site and buy the product that way.

Over the past 6 months, I’ve averaged between $30 and $50 in additional income from the above methods.  about $20 of that pays for my domain name renewals and my hosting fees.

I think I can up my earnings significantly and over the next 6 months am going to work hard to do so.   Don’t worry, this blog won’t get over loaded with ads and affiliate links.  I plan on creating other blogs and using facebook to build lists that I can leverage.  I will give a monthly update on how this is all going.

Has anyone else had any success with affiliate marketing and adsense?  Or how about selling ad space on your blog?  I’d love to chat with you.

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Day 25 – Sell Your Blog
2. Extra Money
3. IM: Created the Local Blog

In 2008, there was a special video that went viral and caught the attention of millions of people. It didn’t go viral because it was simply a cat playing the piano or some kid named Charlie biting another kid’s finger. It went viral because it was personalized.

If you haven’t seen the video, the general idea is that beforehand, you can enter the name of a person and while watching the video you can see the name that you entered inside the actual video. It’s quite clever, and because people’s names were shown in it, tons of people paid attention.

In the online business and marketing realm, which is where I come from, many of us utilize an email subscription service, usually to generate leads for future sales and marketing tactics, or to simply stay connected with our audience and readers. Whatever the case is, it’s widely known that one of the best practices is to include the subscriber’s first and/or last name in the emails, which can easily be done by including code such as %firstname% within the email. Why is this important? Because “Dear Pat,” attracts a lot more attention and sounds a lot more personal than “Dear Subscriber” or “Dear Member”.

Personalization keeps people’s attention, and personalization sells.

As I’m sure you know, there are many ways that a real estate marketer could utilize personalization, however I’m going to try and introduce another strategy that you may not have heard of before: PURLs.

PURLs, short for “personal URLs”, can be used to combine direct marketing tactics with a website and personalization. It’s the alternate to a business reply card and a lot easier to get people to use. Utilized across various niches online, it could prove to be perfect for the real estate marketer as well.

This is basically how it works:

You setup a direct marketing campaign that mails out a number of postcards or letters. When a recipient receives the piece of mail, not only does it have their name on it, but it also includes a link to a website. The copy might look something like this:

Dear Mr. Pat Flynn,

We have a special deal just for you! You can visit your personal website which explains everything by visiting:

pat.flynn/website.com

This is obviously a crude example, but I think you get the idea. There are a lots of possibilities here.

Anyways, when the recipient, curious about his “personal website” (wouldn’t you be if you saw that there was a website with your name on it?), enters the address into a web browser, he’s taken to a landing page which also includes his name on it. It might say something like:

“Welcome Pat! We knew you’d come and see us. Here is your special offer…”

On this page, you can then do whatever it is you need to do, like collecting lead information such as email and phone number. One advanced trick is that during this PURL process, you can have the website also automatically autofill the visitors’ name and address, which you should already have. This makes the lead generation process even easier.

Other things you can do on the landing page are show special offers or mention open houses or viewings in the area that are “just for them”.

Again, because the page is personalized and just for them, you will see increases in ROI and conversions.

Sound complicated?

If you manually created each unique website, with each unique person’s name and information on it – indeed, it would be hard grueling work and probably a waste of your time. Fortunately, there are a lot of services out there that can automatically do this for you!

All you need to provide is the name and addresses of each recipient, and they will take care of the rest. Some of these companies will even take care of the direct mail and websites for you (so you’ll need some good copy too), to make sure your letters and websites are congruent with each other, thus increasing your conversion rates.

There are some fees involved, usually a setup fee (I’ve seen it start at $50.00), and then a cost per PURL (usually only a few cents each).

I recommend simply typing in the keyword “PURL” or “PURLs” into Google and start comparing the various companies that offer the service. I’ve attended conferences where I’ve heard of people making crazy ROIs using this technique, so maybe there’s something in it for you.

Thanks for your time, and best of luck to you! Cheers!

About the Author: After getting laid off back in 2008, Pat Flynn has since created an online empire, starting multiple online businesses which earn him well over 6-figures a year in passive income. He writes about online business and blogging on The Smart Passive Income Blog. You can also download his free eBook, eBooks the $mart Way, which reveals all of Pat’s secrets to writing and automating a killer eBook for your blog or business.

Related posts:

1. How To: Do It Yourself – Yellow Letter Marketing
2. 5 Things I Must Improve On as an Investor
3. Money or Marketing

Over the past 4 weeks there has been a very steady increase in traffic.  I contribute half of that traffic to my adwords campaign.

Overall Visit Information

Total Visits: 232
Unique Visitors: 218
Total Pageviews: 500
Unique Views: 379
Pages/Visit: 1.94
Bounce Rate: 71.12%
Average Time on Site: 1:42
Most Visits in one day: 19 (Oct 22nd)
Visits in September: 48
Visits in October: 183

A bounce rate of 71.12% means that about 30% of the visitors are interested in reading more articles and have clicked through to other pages.   Not bad, but the lower that number the better.

Adwords

Ad Impressions 3,912
Clicks: 113
CTR: 2.89%
Avg CPC: $0.33
Cost: $37.19
Avg Ad Position: 3.7

At this point I think I have had a long enough testing period with adwords.  It’s been over a month since I started using it and it definitely does produce, but at this point I’m going to discontinue it and work on getting non-paid organic traffic from search engines.

As for my Google Page Rank, for my main keyword (New Jersey Probate), I’m currently sitting at 63 for the Broad Match (Search term without quotes) and 44 for Phrase match (with quotes).  I’ve fallen back quite a bit because I’ve not worked on getting back links by posting on other related blogs and forums.   Plus google bounces new sites around in the beginning.  In the future I will also be publishing more articles to the article sites like ezines and goarticles.

Other Keywords I rank in the Top 15 for are..

• Sell House in NJ Probate (B:
• Sell inherited house (P: 12)
• New Jersey Probate Court (P: 14)
• New Jersey Capital Gains Tax (P:8)
• Sell Vacant House (P: 7)
• New Jersey Probate Estate (P:2)

Other Traffic Stats

Search Engines: 185
- Google: 180
- Yahoo: 4
- Ask: 1

Top 10 Keywords
- New Jersey Probate (6)
- probate will (6)
- new jersey probate court (4)
- nj probate law (4)
- nj probate court (3)
- avoid nj probate (2)
- avoid probate in nj (2)
- new jersey probate law (2)
- new jersey probate process (2)
- probate a will in new jersey (2)

160 Total unique keywords used to find my page

Direct Traffic: 49

Referring Sites: 8
- Hubpages: 4
- EzineArticles: 2
- Scribed: 1
- NewJerseyProbate.blogspot.com: 1

10 Top Pages Viewed
- Selling a house before it gets through probate in new jersey (74)
- New Jersey Probate Process (36)
- New Jersey Probate Tips (34)
- New Jersey Probate: Surrogate Information (33)
- How to Avoid probate in New Jersey (27)
- New Jersey Probate (25)
- New Jersey Probate Court (15)
- Testate Vs Intestate (9)
- About (8)
- New Jersey Probate: Can’t Find the Will (8)

6 Total Click Throughs To My Squeeze Page (ScottyBuys.com)

1 Lead

Conclusion

I need to get more people to click through to my ad.  As of now I only have a 2.5% click through rate which needs to improve a bit, I’d like to get it up to around 5%.  I can accomplish that by testing different types of ads and changing the locations.   Overall I believe the 30DC strategies is going to work very well in the long run.  If I’ve made this much progress in just around 2 months just think how much traffic I’ll be getting by this time next year.   The key is to keep working on it and being consistent.

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Update – Dropping!
2. 30DC – Half Way Update
3. 30DC – Day 26 – Finding Long Tail Keywords

Adwords

Overall

• 1707 impressions (total times ad has been shown)
• 20 click throughs
• 1.17% CTR (click through rate)
• $0.35 Cost per click
• $7.07 Total cost
• 4.2 average ad position (4th or 5^th ad on the right side of a google search)

Campaign: New Jersey Probate

• 775 impressions
• 12 clicks
• 1.55% CTR
• $0.34 CPC
• $4.02 TC
• 4.4 AAP

Campaign: New Jersey Probate Will

• 203 impressions
• 5 clicks
• 2.46% CTR
• $0.40 CPC
• $2.00 TC
• 2.8 AAP

Campaign: New Jersey Estate

• 729 Impressions
• 3 Clicks
• 0.41% CTR
• $0.35 CPC
• $1.05 TC
• 4.3 AAP

After initially setting up the Adword campaigns I haven’t really modified them.  My CTR for New Jersey Probate Will is not bad at 2.46%, but for my main keyword New Jersey Probate (1.55%) and New Jersey Estate (0.41%) my CTR is too low and I need to adjust the ads a bit and see if I can increase the clicks.

My Current Ads…

This ad is the weakest of the 3, only getting me a 0.47% CTR.  I will change this one around and see what happens.

2.46% CTR – Good but will try to improve by adjusting a word here and there.

1.96% CTR – I’m gonna try and change the call to action (“must read on how to do it!”) and see if I can improve the CTR

I’ve spent just over $7 to get 20 clicks or 35 cents per click to my site.  In the beginning I was worried that I would be getting to much traffic and spending a crap load of money, but as you can see that is not the case.  I guess for such a targeted market it shouldn’t be a worry.

My Ads have an average position of 4.2, which means it has been showing up on the first page of Google searches for the above keywords.  This is the intent and is driven by your maximum bid for a given keyword.  Mine are $0.50 for each.  If someone bids higher I will drop.

Overall I’m happy with the Adwords experiment and I may expand it in the near future.  I will be testing out new ads however to try and achieve a higher CTR.  All in all a great way to drive traffic to your site.

Analytics Stats

Total Visitors: 68

• 66 Unique visitors
• 45 from Search Engines (google)
• 22 from Direct Traffic (typing in url directly)
• 1 from hubpages.com

Over the past week or so there has been an increase in traffic to the site.  As you can see today I had the most visits (8) I’ve ever had.  Hopefully this trend will continue and make me happy.

Of the 68 visitors there where 22 from direct traffic which my guess is from me and some people from this blog checking out the site.  You’re throwing off my stats people!!  Haha just kidding.

Other Stats

• 93 Page views
• 1.37 average pageviews
• 43 seconds avg time on site
• 80.88% bounce rate

These are just nice to look at once in a while.  The bounce rate and time on site are the two most important stats here.  Bounce rate is the percentage of people who leave your site without looking around at other articles, one and done.  In a blog format a high bounce rate is not necessarily bad per say because blogs tend to be just one long page of articles.

I would like to increase the average time on site as this is indicative of the quality of your content.  The better it is the longer people will stay reading what you have, and the more likely they will click on my squeeze page ad.

Keywords (clicks)

• New jersey probate (5)
• Avoid probate in nj (2)
• Probate in new jersey (2)
• 3b: 10-3 small estate affidavit new jersey
• Advantages of will versus intestate
• Avoiding probate in nj, 2009
• Beneficiary rights sold asset nj
• Bergan county probate office, wills
• Can a copy of a will be probated in new jersey
• Can an heir transfer share before property goes to probate in nj
• Can we sell the house before probate closes the estate
• Getting money out of probate new jersey
• How do I probate a will in nj
• How is tenancy by the entireties created in nj
• How to avoid probate new jersey when there is a will
• How to probate a will in nj
• If you have a joint bank account and one person dies what happens
• In new jersey, once a will goes into probate does that have to take a long time
• Is it illegal not to probate a will in nj
• Is probate necessary to sell a house in nj
• New jersey probate.com
• New jersey wills and probate law what happens with joint accounts left in other jurisdictions
• New jersey wills probate
• Newjerseyprobate.org
• Nj bank joint tenancy laws
• Nj probate pod
• Nj successor trustee accounts
• Payable on death beneficiary nj
• Probate estate nj
• Probate process house nj
• Probate process in new jersey
• Probating will nj
• Probating wills new jersey
• Selling home in probate
• State of nj.org
• Testate estate nj
• Transfer ownership of house to relative new jersey
• View wills online new jersey
• Will vs. intestate

Being able to see the keyword terms a visitor used to find your site is gold!  There is so much I can get from this information it’s tough to know where to start.  First off I can tell if people are actually finding my site using my targeted keyword phrase.  And in fact they are, so that is good.  Here is a list of other information I can get from looking at the keywords above.

• Find additional keywords to base articles on
• Create a FAQ to answer questions people are asking about probate
• I can see which keywords produce visitors that stay on my site longer
• If my main keyword New Jersey Probate gets people to my site, but they only stay for a few seconds I know my content needs to be improved.
• You can determine a “hot” topic of the week if you get a lot of hits from one particular keyword in a short period of time.  Write a quick article on that topic
• Most important you learn what your target market is actually interested in finding out.  By slightly changing your content you might be able to drastically improve your traffic.

Keyword Rankings

Keyword: New Jersey Probate

• Broad Match: 12^th
• Phrase Match: 3^rd
• Back Links 0
• Page Rank N/R

Slowly my site is moving back to the top as I had hoped.  My last update I was at 22^nd for broad match and 15th for phrase match, so this is a good sign.   Google has yet to show that I have any backlinks.  From everything that I’ve read, Google knows about the backlinks I do have, but just is not reporting it.  I am still wondering why I don’t have at least one though.  I’ll give it another month and then really start digging into reasons.

My Page Rank, which is the score that google gives each individual page on your site is still an N/R.  That is where you start off and the lowest you can have.  The next step is PR0, then PR1 and so on.  A PR4 or higher is considered excellent, but hopefully I can get a PR0 sometime before Christmas.  PRs are based on a number of factors including, Backlinks, Content, age of your domain and more.

Conclusion

There is still a lot of work to be done to get more traffic to my site.  Everything is a trial and error at this point in the game, so if you are following along be patient as your hard work will pay off.  I can guarantee you that not many investors in your market are taking the time, like we are, to establish such a large web presence.

Keep on working it, because you know I will!

P.S. I will update again when I reach 200 visitors

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Day 7 – Statistics
2. 30DC – Day 26 – Finding Long Tail Keywords
3. 30DC – Day 22 – Adwords Content Network

Market Research

Having a solid base is they key to marketing.  Making sure that any keywords being focused on will have the numbers to support your success.  This is like speculating in Real Estate.  Getting into a market because you think there is huge potential is like buying a house in a bad area because there are expectations that it will be an up and coming neighborhood.  This is not a good idea and can lead to wasted time and money.  Be thorough researching a market and take the time to find just the right keyword(s), it’ll pay off in the end.

Traffic

No traffic equals no success, plain and simple.  The 30Dc shows us great techniques for getting traffic from Pay Per Click, using Adwords, and getting free traffic by use SEO.  Backlinks are the driving force for SEO and developing a network of backlinks will keep your website on the first page of Google and other search engines for a long time.

If 200 people per day are not looking at your site, you’ve got a traffic problem.  I’ve explained in past posts how to solve a traffic problem as well as analyzing whether it’s because of poor content, poor advertising or the keyword(s) just won’t provide that many visitors.

Conversion

Traffic, No Problem!  But converting that traffic to leads (or sales) can be.  This is an art in and of itself, and the only way to improve your conversions is with trial and error.  Change wording, graphics and writing styles until conversions go up.  Practice is the key here, never stop educating yourself on propery sales techniques and remember, what works today might not work tomorrow.

Product Creation

The scope of the Thirty Day Challenge was to sell affiliate products or a product that you would develop yourself.  For our purposes, we want to get Motivated Sellers Leads so we aren’t selling a product but a service.  The rules still apply though.

Final Words

Understand your market,be involved.  Whether it’s foreclosures, probate, short sales or absentee owners, become an expert.  To become an expert you must participate in the market.  What I mean by that is…

• Read up on state laws
• Join local Rei group and meet people who are doing what you want to do
• Create content by writing articles or making videos.  I can’t tell you how much this is helping me learn the Probate process.
• Talk with motivated sellers and learn what questions they ask (this is great content for an article).
• Just be involved!

Link to the 30DC

• http://www.ThirtyDayChallenge.com/training/

Links to my experience

• Day 1 – Introduction
• Day 2 – Keyword Research
• Day 3 – Google Rankings
• Day 4 – Monitization
• Day 5 – Content
• Day 6 – WordPress
• Day 7 – Statistics
• Day 8 – Getting Traffic
• Day 9 – Rank Tracking
• Day 10 – Article Submission
• Day 11 – Squidoo and Hubpages
• Day 12 – Blog Content
• Day 13 – WordPress.com and Blogger.com
• Day 14 – Weebly and Facebook Pages
• Day 15 – Check this Tool Out!
• Update – Half Way Update
• Day 16 – Break Day
• Day 17 – Google Analytics and Pretty Links
• Day 18 – Paid Traffic
• Day 19 – Setup Google Adwords
• Day 20 – Ad Groups
• Day 21 – Quality Scores and Adwords Management (i thought I wrote about this, guess not)
• Update – Dropping!
• Day 22 – Adwords Content Network
• Day 23 – Day Off
• Day 24 – Go or No Go?
• Day 25 – Sell Your Blog
• Day 26 – Finding Long Tail Keywords
• Day 27 – Great Backlink Techniques
• Day 28 – High Quality Backlinks
• Day 29 – Learning From Mistakes
• Day 30 – You are reading it

I hope you enjoyed my venture through the 30 day challenge and that you learned as much as I did.  Look for my New Jersey Probate Blog status report coming up this week.

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Day 24 – Go or No Go?
2. 30DC – Day 26 – Finding Long Tail Keywords
3. 30DC – Day 12 – Blog Content

It’s going to be really tough for me to outline exactly what was said in today’s lesson without writing a book, but take a look at this Mind Map that was created by Ed and listen to the audio….

[audio: "mistakes.mp3"]

My Stuff for real estate wholesaling

Going through the previous 28 days has been a challenge for me, particularly with not skipping ahead to the next day.  What made it possible for me was posting about each day, one day at a time before I would move forward.  In order for me to post about the day, I had to actually complete the task so I could explain it to you guys.  This is the reason why I started a blog, and should be a great example for any newbie out there who is getting into Real Estate Investing to start a blog.  It helps so much you would not imagine.

The 30 day challenge is just about over as the next few days will talk about where we should go from here and a few other items to tie up any loose ends.  I can’t tell you how much I learned and the solid base I now have for setting up my internet marketing.  Anyhow we aren’t done just yet so stick around for the final 3 days (yes it does go to day 31).

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Update – Dropping!
2. 30DC – Day 27 – Great Backlink Techniques
3. 30DC – Day 28 – High Quality BackLinks

Outside of scouring the internet for sites with PR’s of 3 or higher, a great way to get said backlinks is by getting your site listed on DMOZ, Yahoo Directory, and any ‘.edu’ and ‘.gov’ site.

DMOZ Directory is the largest human-edited directory on the web.  They manually review and approve web site submissions, so you want to make sure your site is full of great content before submitting your site for review.

Yahoo Directory on the other hand will just cost you money, to the tune of $299 per year.  A tad pricey for someone just getting started, but once you have a steady stream of income coming in then it’s very worth it.

Edu and Gov sites.  These are sites like www.harvard.edu or www.nj.gov.  Google figures that any link from an education or government site should be treated as a quality site.  Good deal if you can actually find one that will give your site a backlink.

As I stated in the last article (day 27) you can use SEOQuake to give you stats on search results for a keyword.

example of a google search with SEOQuake turned on

My Stuff for real estate wholesaling

I convased the net for .gov and .edu sites related to New Jersey Probate and found quite a few government sites as you would expect.  Unfortunately not one of them allow for commenting on articles.  Another way to try and get backlinks would be to send them an email, but you’ll have to be able to offer them a good reason to post your link on that site.  Offering to pay them might work as the government is always looking for some extra money.

Here is a tip I just read about searching google for .gov and .edu sites with in your keywords.

Now, here’s the juicy part of this post. In order to find the .gov and .edu blog and forums simply do a search in Google, Yahoo, and MSN with these terms “inurl:.gov+inurl:blog”, “inurl:.edu+inurl:forum”, “inurl:.gov+inurl:blog, and “inurl:.edu+inurl:forum”.

I’m not going to submit newjerseyprobate.org to DMOZ because the content is lacking at the moment.  Over the next two weeks I’m going to write a bunch of articles and then start my next wave of SEO.  I’m just about done with one of them (Insuring a Vacant house during probate) and have a good idea and some notes for a second article (ToDo list for leaving a house Vacant).

I’m trying to write an article about anything someone might do when a house is in probate or has been inherited.  If someone has an idea leave a comment, I’ll be greatful!

Only 3 days left of the Challenge!  Find out tomorrow what is next

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Day 27 – Great Backlink Techniques
2. 30DC – Day 3 – Google Rankings
3. 30DC – Day 24 – Go or No Go?

The main thing that you need to know about High Quality Backlinks is that they have three main traits..

1. They come from Keyword-Relevant Web Pages
2. They come from High-Value Web Pages
3. They do not use “NoFollow” attributes

“NoFollow” attributes means that the site will tag all links with the word NoFollow. By doing so search engines won’t recognize them as backlinks and if they aren’t recognized as such then it won’t help your SEO.  Market Samurai has a tool that tells you if a site allows backlinks, but you can also use firefox pluggins like SeoQuake.

High-Value Web Pages are those that have High-Quality Backlinks of their own.  I’m not sure how to research this without MS but when I find out I will edit this post.

Some great places to get backlinks from are…

• relevant blogs.  You can find these blogs by using the google blog search tool
• relevant forums.  To find forums, just search google for forum: your keywords
• Finding web 2.0 pages such as Squidoo, Hubpages, etc…

Another great way to get backlinks is to get pingbacks from other blogs.   A ping back is a link that points back to your blog from a website that you’ve referred to in one of your posts.  So all that has to be done to get a link from another site pointing back to yours is to put a link on your blog, easy right?  Well there are some limitations to this strategy which are not all blogs allow pingbacks and they are sometimes moderated by the blog owner, so they won’t always appear instantly or at all.

My Stuff for real estate wholesaling

I’ve been using Market Samurai to find blogs, forums and web 2.0 sites to post comments on and ask questions.  There aren’t many in my desired keywords, but if they allow backlinks and pingbacks I’m trying my hardest to leave good quality comments.  It is very important to leave well thought out comments because for one the owner of the site will approve it and second it will entice readers to click through to your page to find out what else you might have to say.  This strategy will not show immediate results so I can’t report if it’s working or not.

Earlier this week I get notice from ezinearticles that my probate article got rejected AGAIN!?!?  For the same reason as last time, apparently the content of the article does not deliver on what the title proclaims it should.  I tried changing the title around, but still a no go.  I might post that article to my blog and then write another one and post it on Ezines.  I hate being rejected!

What’s Next?

Looks like day 28 is about backlinks again, must be a pretty important topic huh?

Related posts:

1. 30DC – Day 12 – Blog Content
2. 30DC – Day 24 – Go or No Go?
3. 30DC – Day 25 – Sell Your Blog