A quick recap from part one of my "Secrets from a six figure agent" blog.
I am only in my second year of Real Estate Sales and this year I made $200,000. In a down market I have added five members to my team and I have plans to quadruple my income for next year. Sounds too good to be true? Sounds like a cheesy TV commercial? Nope, this is the real deal.
What special training did I have before this? For 10 years I was a crew member on a large USAF military jet that flew around the world delivering supplies which basically means I had no specialized training to become a successful Realtor. The military gave me strength and discipline but the rest I picked up off the internet and from reading books. (right now I'm reading "All Real Estate is Local" by David Lereah which I highly recommend)
In the first article I mentiioned some of my obvious traits which made me successful including:
Answering the phone and E-mail in a timely manner, being available 24/7, being polite, having a good website, a 1800 phone # and the fact that you should not do what everyone else does unless you want results that are similar to everyone else.
Now that I've re-capped the first article I'll add more of what made me stand out from the rest of the pack.
NICHE MARKETING:
I'm almost afraid to post this here because I'm sure I'll be copied but Niche marketing is why I'm successful. I don't have a big website where I profess to be an expert in every field and display every home available in my area. What I do have are several small niche websites where I only display certain types of homes. Take a look at my Rehoboth Beach Condo site. Notice the lack of single family homes, land, farms and everything else other than condos and townhomes? In a world where consumers know what they want they very rarely type "YOUR TOWN REAL ESTATE" into google. What they do type is "your town horse farm" or "your town lake house"
You may say, But Mike, isn't expensive to create and host multiple websites?
It certainly is but sometime to make money you have to spend money. This year I put 1/4 of my profits directly back into my websites. For those of you who are bad at math that's approximately $50,000
KEEP YOU SITES UNIQUE:
I look at websites from other industries and see what ideas I can borrow from them. It's very rare to have an 100% original idea but it is quite easy to take another idea and modify it. I have features on my newest websites that I have not seen on any Realtors site anywhere in the country but if you take a look at bmw.com, amazon.com or cnn.com you may see some features that are very similar. If you start to think like I do there are millions of great ideas out there just waiting to be modified for real estate sales.
So there you have it. Niche sites, unique features and hard work are my secret.
Now before you run off and spend $50,000 on 5 new websites remember a website without promotion is nothing other than an expensive place holder on the web. It may be the greatest thing since sliced bread but if no one knows it's there you've just thrown away a good deal of money.
In my next article I'll share some of my web promotion techniques. Quite honestly you can find most of them on the web yourself by searching google for "website promotion" but be warned there is a lot of fluff and BS out there. I'll try to separate some of the things that do not work from those that do.
Want me to build you a website(s)? I don't have the time right now but ask me again in six months. I've hired two in house web developers who were originally just working on my sites but I think my new system is so good I may just market it to other Realtors (limited to just one Realtor/brokerage per major metro area). Are you a broker in the Caribbean Islands or a SKi town out west? I'd love to partner up with you as I love to ski and sail;)
Till Next Time
Michael Brown REALTOR
Rehoboth Beach Delaware
mike@bwbeach.com
"The two most important requirements for major success are: first, being in the right place at the right time, and second, doing something about it."
Ray Kroc
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