ALLREI.com Real Estate Investing Articles

Would you like to have a separate phone number for your business without the expense of having a new phone line installed?

Or what if you’re doing business in an area outside your local area and would like to have a local number in the market you’re targeting?

I recently found a great solution to these problems.

First let me just say that while I’m writing this article with real estate investing as the type of business, this applies equally well to just about any kind of business (especially home-based), or even for personal use.

So here’s the situation:  You are starting a new business, such as investing in real estate, and you want to have a dedicated phone number to use in your advertising so you don’t have people calling your home number or your cell phone.

There are several reasons for this.  For one thing, you want to handle these calls differently than calls coming into your home or cell phone.  You want to answer the phone in a professional manner.  You don’t want your kids or other family members answering the phone.  And you want your voicemail message to let people know they’ve reached your business.

Here is an additional reason you probably don’t want to use your home or cell phone for this.  I know this first hand because it happened to me.  If you do some marketing that gets a great response, you may have more calls coming in than you can handle and many of the calls may go to voice mail.  Most voice mail boxes have a limit of something like 30 minutes.

So what happens when your voice mail box fills up?  It starts automatically deleting the oldest messages – even if you haven’t listened to them yet.

Here’s what happened to me.  We made some handmade signs and put them in busy traffic areas one weekend.  We literally had hundreds of calls coming in.  We tried to answer them all, but there was just no way we could.  We’d be on the phone with one person and have several more calls come in while we were talking to that person.  Our voice mail box filled up in no time.

Before we could even listen to the messages, they were getting deleted.  That means we were losing lots of valuable leads.

Obviously that’s not a good thing.

So here’s the resource I found and why it’s so great.  You may have even heard of this service, but didn’t think of using it for your business.

It’s called Magic Jack.

The way it works is you sign up and they send you this little device that plugs into the USB port on your computer.  It basically is a phone jack.  You can plug any regular phone into it.  It uses your internet connection, so you do need to have some type of high speed Internet access like DSL, Cable, etc.

When you sign up, you get a phone number.  They have local numbers all over the place.  Chances are, you’ll be able to get a local phone number for your area (or any area you choose).

I’ll get into more of the details about how it works in just a second.  But first let me talk about the price because that’s one of the best things about it.

Now, the pricing may change so be sure to look at their website for pricing info rather than taking my word for it, but as of this writing, it’s 39.95 + shipping and handling.  When I signed up, it ended up being about $46.90, so roughly $47.  But here’s the great part.  That not only gets you the device, but an entire year of phone service!

You’d probably pay close to that for just one month of regular phone service through your phone company, but with MagicJack you get a whole year of service.

After that, it’s just $19.95 per year! Not per month, per year!  At least that’s the current rate.  It may go up, but that’s what it is right now.  And they’ll let you purchase additional years in advance to be locked in at that rate.  Again, their pricing could change so check their site to make sure of their pricing.  But that’s what it is right now.

So you just cannot beat the price.

Now let me get into more about the features of this and how you can use it.

They have an option where you can get a vanity number for $10/year.  What I mean by that is something like 555-CALL-JOE or 555-SELL-NOW.

That can help you with branding if you can get part of your business name or message in the phone number.  That’s not necessary of course, but it can be nice if you find something that works.

Now let me tell you about some other great things about it.  It comes with some standard features like voicemail.  Remember the issue I was talking about before where I was doing marketing and my voice mailbox filled up and messages started getting deleted?  Well, you don’t have to worry about that with this.

I think they do have a limit on your voice mail box size, as far as calling in to check your voice mail.  But the great thing is when you get a voicemail, you get an e-mail with the voicemail message attached as an audio file.

So you get an e-mail for each voicemail and, as long as your e-mail doesn’t fill up (if you need to, you can always setup a new e-mail account at Gmail.com or something similar which gives you tons of space).  So even if the voicemail messages aren’t available when you call in to check your voicemail, you have an e-mail with each message.  So nothing is lost.

Here are some other great things about this.  You can take your phone line with you wherever you go if you have a laptop.  Just get MagicJack set up on your laptop and you can take your local phone line with you wherever you go.  In fact, you could even take your laptop and MagicJack with you out of the country and still answer local calls as if you were at home as long as you have high speed internet access.

So you can go on vacation or even operate your business from a foreign country and as far as the person on the other end of the line knows, you’re still in the local area… pretty cool huh?

I’ve been trying out MagicJack for a couple weeks now and it seems to work really well.  I don’t notice any difference between using it and a regular phone line.

You could also use this to replace your home phone service.  But keep in mind that if your internet access is through the phone company (such as DSL) this may complicate things a little.  Often you can still have DSL through your phone company without having a phone line, but it may vary by company.  And often they may raise your rate for Internet access if you don’t have a phone line too.  So you’ll want to do your research before taking that step.

Anyway, there are many ways you could use this service and I just wanted to let you know about it.  I’m not affiliated with them in any way, but am just using the service myself and was pretty impressed.

Here’s their site:  MagicJack.com

Let me know if you found this helpful!

Today I wanted to share with you some new tips for finding cash investors. If you’re not sure why you might need cash investors or who these people are, I’d suggest you first take a look at our Cash Investor information page.

As we’ve discussed previously, cash investors are people who have some money sitting in the bank that you want to use to buy properties when you find them well below market value.

Today we’ll think about a different way to reach people that could be potential candidates for being cash investors. In other words, people with money. There are many different ways to do this, but today we’ll just focus on one.

You might think of places that people with money spend their time. People with money usually like to hang out with other people with money and anywhere that makes them feel elite. One example is country clubs.

Often people with money are members of country clubs and go often to play golf or have lunch with friends. These places are not cheap to join. So you know you’ve got a fairly targeted audience.

How can you use this knowledge to reach some of these people?

Well, one way would be to scope out areas that most members pass through such as lobbies and see if there are any kind of advertisements, flyers, or business cards around. If there are, then you may have a shot at putting some of your own ads in those areas.

Even if you don’t see any other ads, it wouldn’t hurt to talk to someone there and see if they’d let you leave some flyers or business cards around.

If you happen to be a member at one of these clubs yourself, then make sure they’re aware of that as that may give you some extra pull since the staff and management generally try to keep members happy.

But what if there is no spot to put ads and the management/staff are not very accommodating?

Well, one option would be to put out bandit signs on the roads leading to the clubs. You especially want to focus on any areas near the country clubs with stop signs where people going to or coming from the club will have to stop and will have time to see them, write down information, or call the number on the sign.

I wouldn’t recommend putting these on the property of the country club as the owners probably won’t tolerate this and might complain to local authorities. And even if it’s not on their property they may still complain.

Before putting out bandit signs anywhere, you should check with your local authorities to see if it’s legal to do so. In some areas it’s not and you can get fined. One thing you can also do is look around and see if you see other signs and if you do, either it’s legal or not strictly enforced. Whatever the case, realize there are some potential risks with putting out signs and if you choose to put them out, you do so at your own risk.

Besides directly putting out ads, you may find that country clubs could be a good place to network and you may find cash investors simply by striking up a conversation with people and telling them what you do.

If you’re not a member of a local country club, you might check into it and see if it’s something you could afford and whether it would be worth it. If you play golf, often non-members can pay per game, which could give you some networking opportunities. There may be occasional events and things for non-members to attend as well.

I’m sure this is something that could work better at some country clubs than others. And maybe you won’t use any of these specific ideas, but maybe it’ll give you another idea for something you could try. Part of marketing is being creative and looking for opportunities, or sometimes creating opportunities.

If you use this idea, please let me know how it works for you. As always, let me know if you enjoyed this article or if you have other ideas that have worked well for you.

Until next time, happy investing!

Todd

P.S. For more tips on marketing, check out The Real Estate Investor’s Missing Manual – How To Effectively Market Your Business.

Depending on your investing strategy, sometimes you’ll need cash investors when you need to purchase a property outright.

There are lots of different ways to find cash investors. What I’m about to share with you is not necessarily the best way but is just a creative way that you may not have thought of before.

When you’re looking for a cash investor, essentially what you’re looking for is someone who has a relatively large income and some significant savings. In general this is not going to be your Average Joe who works a 9-5 job as an employee. As you know, there usually is just not enough money coming in from an average job to accumulate any significant savings. (This is probably why you got into real estate investing in the first place.)

So you’re looking for people with some money sitting in the bank. Who might that be? Well, think about how people might get a lot of money in the bank. Some might inherit it, but most will probably earn it. There are doctors, lawyers and other professionals that make quite a bit of money, and sometimes they can be good candidates. And then there are business owners.

Today we’re going to focus on business owners. Granted, business owners are not all going to be successful, but some are. If they’ve been in business for a little while and are doing things right, then they may have some significant savings in the bank.

Let’s touch briefly on what they would get out of funding your deals as a cash investor. You have to offer them something that’s going to be truly appealing to them. They’re obviously not just going to loan you the money to be nice. The only real benefit you can offer them that will get their attention is a higher return on their money than what they’re getting from their bank.

Depending on where they have their money sitting, it might be making them 5-10% on the high end, but often lower than that, especially if it’s just sitting in a regular savings account and not a money market account. So what you can offer them is a higher return, such as 12-15% return on their investment.

Now, it should go without saying, but you have to have room in your profit margin to be able to offer this. You have to know your numbers and you have to be getting the property significantly under market value. This is not the place to get into those details. I’m assuming you know when it makes sense to pull in a cash investor.

So now you know why you might target business owners as cash investors, as well as what’s in it for them. So now let’s talk about one way to get in touch with them.

Again, there are lots of different ways you might get your message in front of them. But today I’m just sharing one creative method with you.

Do you have a Sam’s Club store in your area? Well, as you probably know, they sell items wholesale for cheaper than you can get them at retail stores, and often the items are sold in bulk. Business owners often shop at Sam’s Club. It may be for office equipment, office supplies, software, or if they’re in the food service business, they may buy food and food-related accessories.

So Sam’s Club and similar wholesale stores can often attract a lot of business owners. However, they’re not solely for business owners. Often other people shop there too to save money by buying things in bulk. So how can you single out the business owners?

Well, at most Sam’s Club stores, there are different levels of membership. There is the regular membership and then there is a business membership. One of the benefits of being a business member is that there are special hours for business members when only business members can shop there and not regular members.

At my local Sam’s Club store, Monday through Friday from 7am to 10am only business members can get in. After 10, then it’s open to regular members. Then on Saturday it’s 7am – 9:30am. This is a nice benefit for business owners because they can get in early and do their shopping before their business opens for the day, and without having as many other shoppers in the way.

So how do you use this to your advantage? Well, one way would be to make flyers and put them on people’s windshields, under their windshield wiper so it doesn’t blow away. I’m sure you’ve had flyers on your car like this before. But here you have a targeted audience of business owners.

This doesn’t have to be expensive. You can make a simple black and white flyer and either print off a bunch of copies or take it to a print and copy shop and make some copies, which will often be about 5 cents per copy.

Just include a brief message about how you’re looking for cash investors for a real estate deal and what percentage they’ll get and how quickly and include your contact information. You’ll want to put the main focus on the benefit to them, which would be the ROI they’ll get. So you might use a headline that gets their attention like: “Cash Investors Wanted! Make 12% Per Year.”

Now, you might want to get permission from the store owner before doing this. You might also take note of whether anyone else is doing it. Last weekend I was at Sam’s Club and someone was walking around putting flyers on people’s windshields for a fast food restaurant. But I’ve never seen that before. If you don’t do it too often, they’re not likely to say anything. However, if you do it too often, people may start complaining to the manager and they may put a stop to it.

Another option is to talk to the manager/owner about setting up a table outside the exit with flyers and pass them out to people as they leave. I’ve seen various groups doing that. So that may be an option if the manager says it’s ok.

I mentioned that business members can get in during special hours, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that business owners aren’t going to be there at other times. There just won’t be as high of a concentration of them at other times. But if you have time, you could try at other times of the day as well or if you have a table or booth set up, you could potentially sit there all day.

If you’re going to go that route, though, and you have some income coming in from your investing, I’d suggest hiring someone else to sit out there and hand out the flyers since that’s not a very good use of your time. The same would be true of putting flyers on windshields. Unless you’re just starting out, you’d probably be better off paying somebody who’s looking for work a few bucks to pass them out. You could even offer them a bonus if you get a cash investor for your deals out of it. That would give them extra incentive to do a good job and not just throw the flyers in the trash or something.

Another option would be to put out bandit signs near the entrance/exit of the parking lot. The exit would probably be best, especially if there is a stop sign where people have to stop anyway.

I mentioned Sam’s Club as an example, but there are other wholesale stores as well and other types of businesses that primarily sell to business owners. You might think of some examples like office supply stores, sign-making shops, advertising agencies, etc. where the primary customer will be other businesses.

Granted, it’s not always going to be the business owner going into these places. Often they may hire someone to take care of shopping for them, but you will still catch some business owners this way.

So as I mentioned, business owners are just one group of people who could potentially be a source of cash investors, and this is just one way to reach them. If you enjoyed this article, please leave a comment and let me know and I may post some more articles about other ways to reach business owners, and also ways to reach other potential groups of cash investors. Even if you don’t use this particular method, hopefully it has got your creative juices flowing and has helped you to think of new ways to market your business.

Until next time, happy investing!

Todd

P.S. Be sure to harness the power of Web 2.0 and get a real estate investor website that is 8 Websites in 1!

Marketing is vital to any business, and real estate investing is no exception. But if you’re just starting out or, for whatever reason, have a tight budget to work with, that doesn’t mean you can’t do any marketing.

In fact, there are a number of very powerful marketing techniques you can use that are either free or inexpensive. A thin wallet is no excuse not to market your business. In fact, it’s a very good reason to get busy with your marketing.

Because this is such an important topic, Jim Mitchell (aka The Biker Who Buys Houses) and I put together a course that covers it in detail:

Get the Low Budget Marketing for Real Estate Investors

Watch the video below to find out how you can make money by helping people keep their homes:

For more information, go to:

www.LoanModsSaveHomes.com

This service allows you to help people stay in their home by modifying their loan.  You don’t have to do the loan modification yourself, it’s all handled by lawyers.  You just bring them the leads and get paid.  You can make $800 – $1,000 per person you help, depending on how many you bring in per month.

You can also make money by bringing in other reps, such as real estate agents or mortgage brokers. Not only do you make a little money each month just for referring them, but you make $100 off every lead they bring in.   And if they refer someone, you make $50 off their leads.  So there are a couple tiers to the system.  But you make the most money by bringing in leads yourself.

www.LoanModsSaveHomes.com