18 months ago my son was born and even though I was warned continuously about how it would affect my life and free time I don’t think I fully understood what that meant. In the beginning there was just chaos, lack of sleep and sheer helplessness. The idea of a schedule was just crazy, but thankfully we all settled into a daily routine which allowed me to carve out some time for real estate again. Unfortunately it was at most only half the time I used to get.
To say there was never any frustration would be an utter lie. When I’m with Ben, my mind can’t be any where else…Period! Oh trust me I tried. My patience would be so short that getting pissed off was a regular occurrence. As it would approach his bed time and I wanted to start getting into work mode, Ben would have other ideas. He would take off running around the house, diaper half on. Then he would proceed to pee on the kitchen floor, slip in it and soak what clothes he had on left him. I laugh now, but back then I had no patience for any of that…I needed to get some work done!
A More Relaxed Me
What I learned over time was that if I just put all myself into spending time with my son, I didn’t get pissed off. When my son would run behind the furniture to keep me from changing him I now laughed and played with him. When he was ready for me to change his diaper…I would. I become more relaxed and a better father. The added bonus is that I got my work done anyway.
I found the balance that worked for me and my family which is very very important. The only issue is that I’m not going to be getting any more time to really grow my business the way I need it to grow. Unless I quit my 9 to 5 job. The hours in the day just aren’t there. In the world of trading hours for dollars, I’m all maxed out.
So how is someone in this position going to grow?
My partner and I have one main lead strategy and that is Probates. In order to get this list in New Jersey you are pretty much stuck having to pull the leads yourself at the court house or hire someone to do it for you. My partner does this dirty work and it takes days to pull the lists from the 5 counties that we get. That brings us a total of about 600 to 800 leads a month. The only way to grow is to go to more counties and spend more time pulling leads. Not very scale-able.
We need a way to get leads that we didn’t have to work for (Trading time for money again). My solution was to start concentrating on inbound leads. That means I needed to create a web site, do SEO work and write content for this site. I was all excited at first, was going to build it myself and even started the process. Once again I quickly realized I just didn’t have the time. Frustration was really setting in at this point.
How the heck was I going to get more leads if I had no time to build the systems to get those leads? Hiring the job out was the only way. I finally got it….
The Solution
The solution I found actually came to me when I had bought an SEO course. As part of that course I joined their Facebook group and I found that many others had my exact issues with time. At hat point I was introduced to a product called Investor Carrot websites. So I looked into it.
The sales page sounded great and there was only a $1 introductory offer so what the hell I signed up. About 2 days later I got an email from an old online friend, Trevor Mauch. He apparently is the founder of Investor Carrot and saw my name when I signed up and wanted to touch base and answer any questions I had and even happily took my input on the system.
The Giveaway
I liked this product so much that I talked Trevor into a big discount for a few lucky people. Unfortunately this type of product doesn’t work as a free giveaway because there is a lot of constant support and costs that Trevor must take on for each subscriber. I pay $50 per month for a 3 site plan and the quality of the sites that were created for me is outstanding. What took 3 days from Trevor’s team would have taken me 6 to 9 months to do on my own (remember, I have no time).
Here is an actually getting started Training Video trevor did on what the website is all about
For more information, go to the Investor Carrot website and here is the Comparison Chart of the packages.
So what is being given away
1 Pro Package @ $19 per month for LIFE (normally $50/mo)
Plus The 3 Deals Per Day Training for FREE (normally $100)
The Pro Package is what I have and you get three websites to help attract different lead types. I set mine up like so (click on the link to see my sites)….
- Company Website – where you can direct people who want to know all about you and your business. It’s up to you how you can use this page.
- Sellers Website – This is where I pull in all my sellers leads. Someone will go searching Google for ways to sell their houses fast and this is the page that will show up.
- Buyers Website – This website is where I attract all the cash buyers and also where you will sell your deals.
You can use the different websites to have different messages for different lead types (probate, absentee,etc… ).
2 Solo Packages @ $10 per month for LIFE (normally $29/mo)
The Solo Package gets you one website that you can use to attract what ever type of leads you wish. I’d choose seller leads because to me those are the hardest to find, so I’d want them finding me.
Rules to Enter
Entering is easy…all you have to do is post a comment below. In the comment just ask me a question about the InvestorCarrot website. Not only will that enter you into the contest but Trevor or I will answer it. It’s a nice To-For.
Who will win?
The winner of the 3 Website Pro Package will be selected by who ever asks the best question.
The winners of the Solo Packages will be selected at random
When will the winner be announced?
I will announce the winners Wednesday, October 30th.
Additional Info
As with all products and services I use and really love, I am an affiliate of the Investor Carrot service. I am NOT getting any commissions for this giveaway however because I gave that up in order to reduce the price to you. I just hope it can really help someone out.
If you are interested in kick starting your online presence and getting Leads coming to you I highly recommend at least a Solo Package.
You can get more information by going to the Investor Carrot Website
See what my experience has been like after a full year of using their service…My Full Investor Carrot Review
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Comments 28
Scott.
I can relate to your situation with mine. We have two year old son and 9 to 5 job. I am still trying to juggle my list of things to do and find time to work on my business. I started investing in Baltimore city in 2007/2008 and had to slow down considerably after my son was born in 2011. I will check out investor carrot, my leads so far have been from MLS, but it is getting tough to find them.
Author
Hi Srikanth,
I don’t get my leads from the MLS but i can imagine as the market improves that deals get harder to come by because it becomes more of a sellers’ market. Buyers are forced to be less picky so the “lesser” houses tend to get sold faster and for higher prices.
It’s always good to add new marketing methods over time. Master one then add another. It gives you a more balanced portfolio so to speak. You can more easily manage the highs and lows of one particular marketing method.
Does that makes sense?
Scott,
Absolutely. I put in to action some of the stuff from your probate Monday blog post. Since I am in the DC metro area i have started looking at Arlington county and Fairfax county (based on criteria you listed : population, # of people above 65, again not to sound morbid). I started off with Arlington county as it is available online. I am getting the following info Decedent, Decedent Address( if different from last address where tax returns were filed from) , Executor & Executor Address. Do I need any other information?
My plan is to pull all the data for this month myself and get a VA to pull this info going forward. Next step after that is to verify if the property has been sold and if not sold, send letters to executors.
Please critique my plan and any suggestions on content of the letter is really appreciated.
Author
Concerning the information from the probate file, that is all the info that I am getting that matters. I do pull the Date of Death, Probate File # and Issue date so I can better track the records.
Your plan for pulling the records yourself first and then getting a VA to do it is great. No need to waste your time pulling the records if a VA can do that task for you.
Nice Work!
Thanks for the encouragement and guidance. How far back do you go in the past to pull probate leads? I started of all records since beginning of 2013.
Author
There are two methods…
1) just pull the records from your last visit. You get the latest probate files and are “first” to mail to these people.
2) you go back 12 to 24 months and pull the records and mail to them. the thinking is that many of the people involved in the probate process tend to wait for quite a while before dealing with any real estate in the estate. So waiting put you in front of executors when they are ready to sell.
Take your pick or even try both methods. Would be a good test.
Scott,
There is a BIG difference between being a DAD and being a Father! You my friend have found it early in the transition to parenting. In fact you nailed it! When having a son or daughter (I have 2 sons age 7&9) although you want to be the best father out there it’s all about being a DAD, making time, sharing experiences & being patience. You may have been told this a few times “Time goes by so quickly w/ your child” next thing you know he’s a senior in HS. So always take the time to spend that special moment with him!!
To share an experience I had just yesterday: I had several calls I needed to return to some motivated sellers but my 7 yr old had a different plan he wanted to show me (in detail) how to make a rubber band bracelet because all his buddies on the pee wee football team are sporting them. Now these rubber bands are smaller than what kids use on their braces. So he fumbled around with them trying to loop & connect them and several went flying here or there and after 20 minutes or so we were not very far. In the back of my mind, honestly, the first few minutes I was thinking about the calls. I saw my son so focused & determined that I found myself right there with him as well. Long story short I started a rubber band war with him and we had rubber bands flying every where and in every room. When he & I ran out of rubber bands he cam over to me gave me a hug and said “DAD that was AWESOME! No call, deal or money could ever replace that moment!!!
So Scott, I see that you have three websites a main/home site, a seller site and a buyers site. I’m new to blogging so my question to you or Trevor is; what is the difference between having a separate blogging site such as this one, why not have this site attached to a blog tab on one of your other three sites? is there a special reason you and many others use a different site to blog?
Thanks for the great posts and information you provide!!
Anthony (DAD first, last, & always!!)
Author
Anthony,
That is the perfect story and one I see my self living as Ben gets older. I’m a big kid at heart so those rubber bands would be flying in my house too. My wife would kill me when she saw the mess and my dog would probably be pooping rubber bands for months (after eating them), but it would all be worth it for that moment you had with your son afterwords. Great Story!
To answer your question it’s all about “Keeping It Simple”. If you co-mingle all your sites into one it creates one huge, and confusing site. The reader won’t really know what your message is. That is important because your message should be different depending on who you are talking to and the entire website should shout that message.
Blog – It is for like minded investors who are trying to make it in this business. Place to learn what to do and what not to do. What works and doesn’t work. It’s a place to share my stories.
Company Site – This is a home base for my business. it is the closest thing you have to an all encompassing place you can direct people who want to know what you do as a whole. Your values, your contact information and a few places to collect leads in case someone finds this site while searching.
Seller Site – This is where I want all people looking to sell their house to go to. It has a singular message (in many different forms) that says I will buy your house at a fair price and can get you your money quickly. All directions on the site lead them to a Form to fill out so we can capture their information and contact them.
Buyer Site – This is where I want all people looking to buy investment properties to go. Singular message that says I have great deals, buy from me. All paths lead to a form where they will fill out so I can capture what they are looking for.
Hope that answers your question and Thanks So Much for posting your comment!
Scott,
I was just looking into getting my online marketing in place. I noticed that REItheme is used by investor Carrot is there something different that is provided by Investor Carrot that Reiheme doesnt provide?
Author
REIThemes has actually been rebranded as Investor Carrot from my understanding. If you look through the oncarrot.com website you’ll see some references to REIThemes. I will ask Trevor this question to see if he has any further insight.
Hey Christian! Great question.
Actually… REItheme was our old platform… before we totally rebuilt it from the ground up and rebranded it as InvestorCarrot. I just wasn’t a fan of the name REItheme anymore and with where we want to take our platform… we felt it was best to start the code fresh and build our dream system from the ground up.
So, we do still have a few dozen investors on the old REItheme platform… most have migrated over to InvestorCarrot.
Hope that answers your question. Great question! By the way, where did you see REItheme mentioned? Curious.
Thanks!
– Trevor
Hello, this video was awesome. My name is Vincent, I am a wholesaler in Hampton Roads Virginia. I currently market mainly to probates and absentee homeowners via yellow letters along with bandit signs. Leads are very slow and it seems like the my most motivated sellers are upside down on a mortgage paired with a ridiculous interest rate. I desperately need to generate more motivated seller leads. Since I am strictly a wholesaler do you think your service would be sophisticated? and also I do almost 100% of the work by myself … how much manpower is needed to manage this website? or do you guys offer a simple website for wholesalers like myself?
Author
Vincent,
The setup of the entire site is simple and requires no real effort on your part. The Investor Carrot team does all the upfront work for building the site.
Now after that it is up to you how much effort you want to put into the SEO. If you want the site to show up on the first page in Google searches you’ll have to create some new posts and go out and build some back links. I don’t think you have kill yourself but a little effort will benefit you greatly.
Now if you want a completely hands off experience, I think they offer a $199/mo plan where they will write all the future content and keep your site fresh. That is a bit expensive for me because I have very little money to spend on these things right now, but if I did I would go for it.
In total hours, I would say if you spend 5 to 7 hours a month writing new content and building some back links you would be doing great.
Hope that helps,
-Scott
Scott,
How does Investor Carrot help you in your probate investing?
Author
John,
Good question. I didn’t gear my message specifically to attract probate deals, although I will have a few pages setup for related keywords. What the website has helped me realize is that I can get a steady flow of leads by another means outside of direct mail.
If I get 30 new leads per month from the website, that will match me sending out 600 letters (5% response rate). So since that is about the amount of letters I send out per month I’d be doubling my leads.
Currently I’m getting about 10 or so new leads per month, but with a little effort to get higher up in the Google results and targeting a few more keywords I’ll get to 30 leads no problem.
Scott,
Does the theme allow you to target different cities in one county?. So say for example you want to write an article for one city#1 in its own category and have city #2 articles in its own category as well.
Author
Christian,
Very good question! First off I want to say that this product/service is much more then a theme. However to get back to your question, you definitely have the ability to create as many posts/pages as you want and you can organize them anyhow you want. Your question was actually one of my questions before I signed up.
You can have create a category called Brooklyn and another called Bronx. You then create a unique article for each based around a key word such as “Sell Your House Fast”. Some say you can even have almost duplicate content and just change the city name with in the content. Makes it easier, but you do risk google catching onto this tactic and penalizing you a bit.
Hope that answers your question,
Hey Scott – you’re obviously a technical guy and I am too. I’ve built a handful of WordPress sites in the past and am working on building a new one for my REI business now. Time is obviously an incredibly important resource to manage, but what put you over the edge in deciding to use the Investor Carrot team? As a technical guy, you could add the right plugins and widgets into a nice theme, create the right SEO setup, etc. So what *else* is it? Or is it really just a matter of time?
I’m often skeptical of programs like this because I think many of the sites all look the same and the user knows it when they arrive at the site. So maybe this is a question for Trevor but what makes this different / better than the other REI website programs that are out there, where users can plug in their own information? Also, are their any constraints to the system? As someone who is familiar with WordPress (but far from an expert), can I add other plugins that I like or does IC limit those?
Thanks guys,
Cheyne
Author
Hey Cheyne,
Fantastic question that you basically answered for me. It all came down to time. Sure I could have put this all together myself in terms of setting up the wordpress site, adding good plugins, creating the content and setting up the contact forms. All within my capabilities for sure.
I just didn’t want to spend the time doing those tasks because what little time I have I need to be spending on money making tasks. That doesn’t include building a out a website. As I mentioned in my post it would easily have taken me 9 months to create something that matched the investor carrot website setup.
The reason why I chose Investor Carrot was…
To answer some of your other questions…
The look being generic and having lots of similar sites just like yours. Well if you don’t modify anything it will look exactly like another person’s site that didn’t modify anything. You have the ability to tweak a lot of different things from color, images, heading, number of columns. You can make it look fairly unique. It will still have the wordpress look if you know what I mean though.
The one thing you can’t do is install your own plugins. While at first this was a bit of a drawback, I realized that it is not really a big deal. It had almost all of the plugins you’ll need like SEO tracking (They use Yoast).
They really put a lot of thought into every aspect.
Well I hope that helps answer some of your questions. Let me know if you have any more technical questions I’ll be happy to answer them from a user perspective.
Thanks Scott. You’ve mentioned time being the biggest attraction for you to try IC and some of the other features like SEO / keyword setup as being nice to have included. If you had to pick one thing that is missing from IC, what would you say? You mentioned the inability to add plugins but also said it didn’t need much else anyway. So as someone who has now used the system for a little while, what’s one thing that you really wish would have been included in the IC package? I’m not trying to highlight the negative but rather hear both the strengths and the weaknesses. Also, their site mentions 3 reports included in the pro package. What do those 3 reports cover? Thanks again for the insight & feedback!
Author
It’s definitely important to look at the good and bad of a service before you buy into it. Here are a few things from a technical perspective and from a general consumer perspective that I didn’t like about investor carrot.
Technical
1) I do not have access to the backend database like I do with my other wordpress sites. I would love to be able to pull the leads it generates directly into my Lead Manager software.
2) I can’t take the content and setup to another hosting company if I decide to move on.
General Consumer
1) The content on the site can’t be used directly on another site. No cutting and pasting. It’s great content though!
2) It does require you to update the site with new content every so often to keep Google happy. (though they do offer a plan where they will write all content for you in the future)
3) If you don’t make any customizations, your site will look almost identical to someone else’s site who didn’t make any changes. It’s easy to make changes though, so you can separate your site from others fairly easy.
You have to judge for yourself how big these items are for you. For me they aren’t that big of a deal.
Also here are the 3 reports that was included when I signed up…
Investor Carrot websites are built on the WordPress platform and you chose them to save you time. I’m always an avid believer in delegating thing out. My time is better spent on other important things. Besides saving time what are some other pros in having Investor Carrot build your website? As opposed to a do it yourself WordPress website?
Author
Hi Jerry,
Time is a big factor in going with Investor Carrot, but here are a few other reasons why I chose to go that route…
In the end though it all really comes down to how I want to spend my time these days. The time spent isn’t just putting together a website using wordpress, it’s also the knowledge of correctly putting together the website. The content should be worded a certain way, the input forms should get the right information and just all those little details that I could only learn with trial and error. That trial and error takes tons of time learning and running experiments. I did not want to spend my time doing that.
Hopefully that answers your question.
Hi Scott,
It’s been a long time, but I’m so glad I continued to get your email updates. It seems I’m at the same stage you are: I’m maxed out on what I can physically do during the day to create leads with my current methods, since I stay home with our 2yo and also have a 7 and 5yo in school. So, I recently set up a website, but it’s not SEO-friendly at all. It’s also very clunky. (Take a look: sperohomebuyers.com) Unfortunately, it serves as my company website, seller website, etc. It’s like an identity crisis: I don’t know WHAT it’s doing, so it’s not doing anything well. I have no idea what a website needs to do and I certainly wouldn’t know how to do it.
My question for you: for someone who is the opposite of tech-savvy (I tend to disable any tech devices and programs in my vicinity), how user-friendly is Investor Carrots? How much extra time would it require to get over the learning curve? How can this work for those of us who want a high-performing website, but really need to be hands-off, but don’t have tons of money to hire SEO experts and IT people to manage the site?
Thanks and glad to hear how you’re doing!
Kelly Payne
Author
Hey Kelly…Great to hear from you!
Investor Carrot uses WordPress as their base site manager which is great. They even simplified it somewhat. So to answer your question it’s very easy to learn how to write new posts. If you are not SEO wise, you can simply write posts about what you would search for if you were a motivated seller. Like someone might search for “I need to sell my new jersey house”. So you write a article (1000 words) about why someone in that situation should contact you and what you can do for them. It’s much simpler then you might think. If you write 1 new article based off a possible google search someone might do a month you’ll be doing good.
For instance…I had my sites setup last April. At first I made some adjustments to the current content that they wrote. I just wanted some things reworded, but that was it. I haven’t touched the sites in more then 5 months since that time. At first the leads were few and far between, but over the past few months they have picked up. The reason is that Google likes sites that have been around for a while, so the extra few months of “Age” on my sites have helped it rise in the search Results.
You definitely have to put some effort into keeping the site active by putting up some new Posts every once in a while. You don’t have to kill yourself to do it though. If at some point you do get some extra cash you can hire someone to come in and make your existing content more SEO friendly.
In short, it’s not maintenance free, but it’s a heck of a lot more maintenance free then creating and maintaining your own site.
Hopefully that answer helps you out.
Thanks Scott! My blog (Flipping Oklahoma) is a free WordPress site, and has been the easiest for me to use. I even managed a few widgets on my own! Doesn’t sound like much, but a big deal for me. 🙂
Hi Scott
You are doing great work and I’m a long time follower. I believe had I followed you closer and more consistently I’d probably would have make a buck or 2 by now. My question would be how important is the 3 deals per day training in making this all work ? The site coupled with the training
you have great content and you mentioned you took an SEO course
how much input does investor carrot provide if any regarding the content
I must say you sites look inviting and enticing
again you do a great service
Author
Hi Erie,
I don’t know much about the 3 leads per day training as it wasn’t available when I signed up. I’ll see if Trevor can explain how it works and what is involved.
I’ve taken a few SEO courses over the years and know quite a bit about how it all works. However, it is always changing and as time goes on what holds true is Great Content and Backlinks from Highly rated websites will get your site to rank highly in google. All the other tactics are slowly being figured out by google and getting eliminated from their algorithms.
Investor carrot doesn’t really ask you for much input on the content. When I signed up I just provided basic information, such as my contact information, target area and a few other little details that forget. Wasn’t much though.