There are a ton of options when it comes to launching a website for your real estate investing business. From cheap and low-cost mass template builders like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly, GoDaddy, LeadPages, and others… to high-end custom websites that may run $6,000 or more.
So, what are the differences between the different website types and what we offer here at Carrot? Well, I shot a video to answer that very question!
Before you dive into the video, I want to introduce the four main things you should consider when launching a website for your real estate investing (house flipping, wholesaling, rent-to-own, note buying, anything). They’re right under the video.
Check out those 4 crazy important things to consider before you launch your website… then I’ll expand on that a bit and show examples in the video below.
Low-Cost Generic Website Builders vs. Specialized Website Solutions Like Carrot
The 4 Most Important Things You Need To Look At With Your Real Estate Website
The first is… your website’s #1 priority should be performance.
Not how fancy it looks. Not whether you think it looks pretty. Not how fancy the CRM is. And not whether you think it looks different from others in your market. It’s…
“If I send 100 qualified people to this website with SEO, PPC, Craigslist, or direct mail… is it going to convert as many of those into qualified leads so my website isn’t a leaky bucket?”
Because every lost lead is a lost potential at a deal.
And as we always like to say…
If you lose 1 deal that would have netted you $10,000 because you were trying to reinvent the wheel or save a few bucks a month and your website isn’t performing like it should… that $10,000 is real money lost out of your pocket.
Before you go out to build a real estate investing website on Wix, Weebly, or Godaddy… focus on making sure what you build your website with is focused on performance (conversion rate optimization) as its main priority because a high performing website means more visitors converted into qualified leads (and in turn, more deals closed).
The second is… ease of use.
There’s got to be some way to ensure you’re using the system well.
We’ve taken 80% of that off your lap and built it into our platform.
Many of our Carrot members don’t even use our system. They hire us to do some of the build-outs through our services, or they might hire some other people or they have their friend use the system, and they just go be the agent or be the investor. So you get to choose how much of the system you will use yourself versus just wanting to pay people to do that for you, so you can do the parts you enjoy and love.
The third is… aesthetic
We want to make sure that number one, you should be proud of the website that represents your business.
Aesthetic is number three in my eyes because aesthetics only matters to you from that perspective. The aesthetic is what you think about your website. Performance is what your prospects think about your website.
The aesthetic is “I think it looks pretty.” Performance is your prospects say it solved their problem and got them to opt-in and become a lead.
So that’s why aesthetic is number three. Many agents and investors put aesthetics as number one. They lower performance and end up having so many lost leads and deals because they think prettiness and aesthetics are more important than performance.
Fourth is… cost.
And then last here is cost. I put the cost as last, where many of you guys might be thinking, “Oh my gosh, the cost is number one for me. I don’t have a big budget.” Because a lot of us look at cost differently than we should. Many of us look at the cost as what’s the monthly payment that I will be paying for that tool, or how much am I going to have to pay my buddy down the street to develop my website for me.
But the actual ultimate cost is not the monthly payment you will pay. The ultimate cost is how much money this website makes or does not make for you. So if you use a website like Wix and it’s going to be low cost, but let’s say it loses you one or two deals every year because it’s not set up for performance. It’s not set up to convert well, for page speed, or to rank well in Google. And if you lose one deal every year, let’s say your average profit per deal is $10,000. That cheap website just costs you $10,000 bucks.
It’s often easy to go with the website solution that looks at the lowest cost monthly.
After all, a $10/mo website with one of those low-cost generic website builders is only $120/yr versus what our average investors pay of $99/mo (for 3 websites, our weekly Coaching Calls, our content marketing system, and high-performance built-in).
But when you look at the return, you get for those dollars and your time… the story changes drastically.
1 extra (or 1 lost) deal because of website performance is a big deal when dealing with real estate.
1 extra deal pays for a Carrot membership for 10+ years.
So focus on performance and the return on investment your real estate investing website system can provide you over the long run.
Ongoing expert guidance and help from those who have done what you want to do.
An often forgotten thing critical to your success in generating consistent leads online today and next year (over the long-term) is the support team behind you.
If you go with one of those low-cost website builders, you can better believe that their pricing model doesn’t allow them to invest a lot into building the team and support structure to make your life easier and more successful over the years.
If you’re paying $6/mo for hosting… you may be able to reach out to them for help with basic technical things… but most of the time, the questions that you need to be answered most are the strategy-related questions that can take you from no or mediocre results… to crushing it.
With Carrot, we have amazing support (just ask around)… industry-leading training to show you exactly what our most successful members are doing to drive leads… and our full-time staff is among the industry’s most experienced online lead generation experts (specific to real estate investors). So if you have questions about your strategy… or your PPC marketing isn’t getting the results you need… or you’re ranked at the top of page 2 for your #1 keyword… who are you going to turn to at those cheap and low-cost website builders for the strategy help to get you over that hump?
Weekly Live Coaching Calls, 1 on 1 Strategy Sessions, Industry Leading Training, We’re Here For You
With Carrot, our weekly LIVE Carrot Coaching Calls, complimentary 1-on-1 Strategy Sessions with us, and fast strategy help are all included as a Content Pro member.
It’s like having the most experienced lead generation expert on call… and it’s included in your Carrot membership at only $99/mo.
The difference between amazing and no results is often the strategy help and expert guidance.
If you want to try to save a few bucks and go it alone… how much extra time and money will you invest? For only $99/mo, it’s a no-brainer for high-level investors who recognize the value of their time and expert guidance.
Getting The Right Tools In Place To Grow Your Real Estate Business (and have less hassle with tech issues)
These days your website is one of those tools that is a really important part of your credibility, lead generation efforts, and the future of your marketing.
More and more people are going online to find solutions to their problems (especially on cell phones)… so getting your web presence right is a pretty darn important thing these days.
Just like you get the right direct mail before you spend that money to send out those letters… take the time to make sure your website is dialed in and will convert a high percentage of your visitors you’re working so hard to get… into qualified leads.
We can help you here with Carrot, and we’d love to review your website and give you honest, candid feedback on what you can improve with your current site if it’s at one of those low-cost generic website builders.
Just leave your website URL in the comments section below and we’ll shoot quick videos walking through changes you can make to your current site to make them more effective.
And as always, we’re here if you feel Carrot is a great fit. Just take a demo or check out our pricing and plans.
Please review. Looking for “We Buy Houses”
My site is a weebly site, please take a look.
Built on weebly.
Heard on podcast and wanted to see if this could help me stand out from the competition.
Hey Aroldo! Thanks for hopping on over here!
Ya, right now Carrot members are pulling in more online leads than any other platform for investors, so it’s working great.
But it’s definitely not a one-size fits all solution.
Head over and check out our demo or hit us up and we can help answer any of your questions!
Which podcast was it if you don’t mind?
Check my site out
I my opinion there is NOTHING out there that beats or even competes well with a carrot site. We had Investor pro for 3.5 years. Carrot has produced more leads for us in 30 day that the investor pro did in 3.5 years. Now that is 100% fact.
The downside to having a carrot site; when I do a “we buy houses” search you will see that there are many investors using the carrot site because all of there sites look the same. Theres nothing unique about it. What am I missing here?
Great question John!
At Carrot we focus on performance, which is why you see the Carrot sites really out performing the other sites in search results.
So the first thing to look at is “what will get results?”. Without being in front of the motivated sellers… the site won’t do any good.
Next, the question to ask is “How do I stand out in the market?”
And for that part, the issue we see is most Carrot members don’t take the time to really customize their sites to stand out. There are a ton of personalization options that you can add to increase your credibility, build more trust, stnad out visually, etc.
The things we suggest people do to stand out visually while getting the performance of Carrot include…
1. Pick a site style that helps you stand out from others in your market: Do a few Google searches in your market and see what the Carrot sites are looking like… then pick a site style within your Carrot Design tab to stand out. We have 2 amazing Premium site designs in our Advanced Marketer Plan for those who want to stand out even more. Less than 5% of our overall user base is using those Premium Designs. Well worth the investment.
2. Dive in and add credibility, a great About page w/ content unique to you, add testimonials, etc. We have services that can do it for you (our Concierge Setup is our whiteglove high level service that dives in and personalizes the design to help you stand out big time, our copywriters dive in and re-write your content, etc.
3. Make sure you have clear clean branding.
At the end of the day, start with performance… then personalize.
If you have a beautiful site that looks different than everyone elses… but doesn’t rank well or convert visitors into leads at a high rate… that design differentiation doesn’t matter. It actually costs your business tens of thousands in lost revenue.
Here’s a great example of a member in a competitive market who had a $10k+ custom site that stood out… it looked different… but it didn’t convert well. He switched over to Carrot w/ our Concierge Setup and saw a dramatic increase in leads and profits even in a market with other Carrot sites. He personlized his to stand out and leveraged the performance Carrot bakes in.
Here’s the interview w/ Carter: https://carrot.com/blog/growing-a-real-estate-investing-business/
Great great great question though John!!! Really good question and I’d ask the same thing if I were you for sure.