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Sample Real Estate Investing Free Reports for Lead Generation – Ideas to grow your business
Need to generate leads for your real estate investing, wholesaling, or fix and flip business? Read on…

So, you want more leads for your real estate investing business? Or any business for that matter?

Great. You know the easiest way to generate leads as a real estate investor?

Offering something of value to your prospects for free… in exchange for their information.

In this article, we’re going to talk about using free reports as a lead generation tool for motivated sellers, cash real estate buyers, private lenders, and more.

Sample Real Estate Investing Free Reports

A free report can be on anything that will help your prospect get closer to their goal… while at the same time build credibility for you and get you closer to a sale.

Here are some topic ideas for free real estate investing reports you can use to generate leads online.

For Motivated Sellers:
- 5 Ways To Stop Or Avoid Foreclosure
- Why Sell To A Real Estate Investor?
- How To Repair Your Credit During A Foreclosure
- 5 Ways To Sell Your House Fast In Today’s Market
- 6 Ways To Increase The Value Of Your House Before You Sell
- How To Navigate The Probate Process: Selling An Inherited House The Easy Way
… those ideas are all geared to help the prospect get information on solving one specific problem. There are many many other topics you can write (or have someone else write) free reports on.

For Cash Real Estate Buyers:
- A Local Real Estate Market Report (investors eat these up. Offer this on your home page… just compile a new local real estate report every few months w/ free info you can find online or from your real estate agent)
- 4 Ways To Cashflow Invest In Today’s Real Estate Market
- How To Buy Investment Real Estate With Your IRA: The Pros, Cons, and What to Avoid
- How To Analyze A Real Estate Deal So You Never Lose A Penny On A Deal
For Private Lenders:
- An Unofficial Guide On Private Lending In Real Estate: What Is It, Pros, Cons, Risks, Rewards To Look For
- 3 Ways To Invest Passively In The Current Real Estate Market
You get the drift. Simple stuff… just good little guides that will help whoever you’re trying to attract get a bit closer to solving a problem or helping them reach a goal.

How To Write A Real Estate Investing Free Report

We actually provide our Carrot members 6 or so real estate investing free reports that you can use in your online lead generation (our members can even edit and customize the reports)… but if you’re not yet a Carrot member and want to create some great “free report” material to give away on your site… here are your options:
1. Bear down and write them yourself: Really, they don’t have to be long… 2 – 10 pages is good enough. Anyone can write a 2 page report… right? Just create a report title, determine what you want that report to do for you (i.e. – get a seller to call you), then start doing some research on Google to come up w/ the content to write about… then write for a couple hours. Done.
2. Hire someone to write the reports for you: You can go to websites like www.TextBroker.com, www.Guru.com, and others to have great content written for you pretty reasonably. A 5-page report on a topic like the ones we’ve lined out will probably only cost you about $50 – $100 or so for solid writing. If you want top shelf writing with good graphics… you’re probably looking no more than $200 – $300 or so. Pretty cheap in the whole scheme of things.
3. … or once again, shameless plug… but join Carrot and get access to ours :-)
What To Do With The Free Real Estate Lead Generation Reports When You Have Them?

Get them on your website, in your email signatures, etc.

Here are some examples of effective ways we’ve been generating leads with our free reports (and ones we’ve seen elsewhere that we know work well).

Example #1: On their website, they put these 2 free reports on the page. One is a home sellers guide and the other about ways to stop foreclosure. Simple enough eh? And it works great. Then, when people click on these they go to “Lead Pages” (some people call them Squeeze pages for real estate investing ).

Example #2: A Squeeze Page (or we call them “Landing Pages” ) for Real Estate Investing. A page like this is where you’d drive people to once they click on a link to download your free report. These pages are the real key… they need to be designed to convert well. Keep them simple, keep them short, and the only goal of the page is to get someone to put in their email address in exchange for this valuable information. From there, they’re in your email database so you can follow up with them again.

Example #3: Here’s an example on one of our AgentCarrot websites that drives people to opt-in to get a free home value report. Quick, simple… not a fancy design… but we’ve found designs like this tend to work very very well.

Example #4: This is a really cool strategy that has worked really really well for us on all of our sites in multiple industries… including real estate investing. At the bottom of every page on your website you should have some sort of a call to action. In this example, on the bottom of our “motivated seller sites”, this particular site focuses on “stop foreclosure”… we have a message offering our free report. This is VERY effective. Build out your own, or of course… we have these built right into our Carrot platform for our members.

What To Do Next To Get Leads Online For Your Real Estate Investing Business?

So, now that you’ve seen some examples and samples of how to effectively use free reports for your real estate investing business… what do you do next?

Here are some quick action steps for you:
1. Take some of our topics above or create your own free report topics… and create your first free report in the next 7 days (or hire someone from guru.com or textbroker.com for cheap). OR, join Carrot and get our “done for you” reports, websites, and Lead Pages to use to generate more leads online.
2. Get your website tweaked a bit to have 1 goal in mind, to generate leads… and close deals… that’s it. If a specific page on your site doesn’t actively drive people to take an action… add a free report link on it. Simple.
3. Start driving traffic to your site. We teach our Carrot members how to drive traffic to your site… you can have the best site in the world… but if no one gets to it and reads it… it doesn’t mean a thing. So, learn how to drive traffic and start to generate leads with your new free reports.
Have questions? Comments? Want to see inside our free reports that our members use? Just make a comment below and we’ll email you some sample pdfs that you can check out that have worked really well to generate cash buyer leads, motivated seller leads, and private lender leads.
November 21, 2012
What No One Tells You About Designing a High Converting Real Estate Investing Landing Page
Ok, so you’re knee-deep in real estate investing and now you want to start to generate a cash buyers list.

Do you drive them to your main real estate investor website and hope they punch in their information to join your cash buyers list… or do you learn how to set up a real estate investing landing page (some people call them squeeze pages or lead pages)???

The answer is both… but if you really want to generate a lot of cash buyer leads for your real estate investing business you’ll want to set up what we call “Lead Pages.” In this post we’ll show you why landing pages work, we’ll show you real estate landing page examples, and show you how to get your own landing pages up and online quickly.

Why Real Estate Investing Lead Pages Work

Landing pages have been used online for a decade or so… evolving each year it seems to add in some fancy flashy new gizmo to help increase conversions. You’ll see videos on many landing pages, pictures, audio, some are fancy looking… others really plain and simple. In the end, it doesn’t matter what a landing page looks like… as long as it converts visitors to leads for your business.

Without cash buyer leads you can’t sell your houses. Without selling (or wholesaling) your houses… you can’t cash checks.

Without cashing checks… well… you can’t eat. Not fun.

Lead Pages (or as people call them, real estate investing landing pages or squeeze pages) have one goal and one goal only: To provide (solutions) value in exchange for a website visitor’s contact information so you can follow up with them. A good squeeze page doesn’t have a bunch of links, not a lot of options, etc.

The Anatomy of A Landing Page

I’m not going to spend a ton of time on laying out the anatomy of a real estate investing landing page because they’re really pretty simple. But first, a few questions you probably are thinking right now:
- Is there a specific design that always works the best?
- How can we tell if a landing page is really working well?
- What do I use to build my own real estate lead pages?
First, NOPE, there isn’t a specific design that always works the best. What works really well for your real estate investing business and your market may not work as well as another design (or message) on another real estate investor’s website. But, there are elements that usually work well.
1. A clear and concise headline at the top of the page
2. A short description of what they’re about to get in exchange for their email address
3. A few bullet points listing out benefits of what they’ll get when they “opt-in”
4. An opt-in (a box where people can put their information in and submit it to you)
Really, those are the only elements that are extremely important and pretty much are needed on any landing page. Yes, you can use pictures and videos… but definitely test the video versus just the text with no video… because you’d be surprised that often the one with just the text (no video, unless the video is killer) usually works better. Which is good news for you.

Here are some real estate investing landing page examples below that have worked pretty darn well. (NOTE: All content on the example lead pages below is copywrited and cannot be used without permission. They’re for reference only so you can see the structure and look/feel of solid landing pages for the real estate market)

Example 1: Very simple page, lots of whitespace on the page, offering a free guide to the visitor. Opt-in box on the right.

Example 2: An education based cash buyer generating lead page. Uses credibility from a well-known person to relay the message.

Example 3: Simple looking page as well. Simple headline, image of what they’re getting, and opt-in form to the right

(all of the lead forms above are pre-built forms professionally copywritten that Carrot members get to use as members… in addition to being able to create an unlimited number of custom Lead Pages saying whatever you want them to say, inside your account. Learn more about the Carrot website marketing systems)

Example 4: A cash buyer page we came across online that looks great and I’m sure works well (since they’re sending paid advertising to it). Notice the structure of the page is essentially the same as the above 3… but with fancier graphics.

The reason we’re showing those real estate lead page examples is mainly so you can start to learn why things work… rather than just copying things without knowing why you’re copying.

We’re all about the whole “teach a man to fish” thing… so you understand why things work so you can take full control over your own marketing… but we also like to make things easier for you with our Carrot software that will help you set up your lead pages for you.

Is My Landing Page Working Well?

As far as being able to tell if your landing page for your real estate investing website is working well… there are a couple of ways. The simplest… is if you’re getting leads.

Are you getting anyone to put in their info and send it to you? If so, it’s working. Now, if you want to make it work better… you have to “test”. It sounds fancy… but all testing is, is tracking how many people visit your page versus how many actually “opt-in” (put their info into your opt-in form).

So, if you have 100 people that have seen your page and 20 have put their info in… it is converting at 20%. Now all you need to do is get some software that helps you track that.

Google Analytics has free tools that will help you do it, or our Carrot website lead generation system has a built-in conversion rate tracker on all of your forms so you can see exactly which ones are working the best.

What Do I Use To Build My Own Real Estate Landing Page?

It really depends on the skills or budget you have.

If you have money to put into the project... hire a web developer who has a LOT of experience in generating leads online and knows everything inside and out about creating lead pages that work.

As a warning, 98% of web developers have no clue what converts… many will say they do. Always get references, have them show you actual pages with conversion numbers… and make sure they know how to use tools like Google Analytics so they can help you put in conversion tracking so you know if their pages are working.

You should be able to get a solid lead page created for under $200 by a competent web developer to get the page set up… then whatever they charge after that to set up the Google Analytics, graphics, make changes to the page as you test, etc.

Overall, over a period of a year, you can probably have a solid web guy do this for you for under $700 a year.

If you’re on a really tight budget and plain and simple absolutely have no cash to invest in a solid lead page system… you can “swipe” other pages, learn HTML so you can customize the HTML page, then put it on your own hosting account.

This will probably take 3-4 hours of your time if you know some HTML, or a few days minimum if you don’t know HTML yet.

It’s not really hard HTML, but I can say with experience that I’ve wasted more than a few days hacking away at HTML that I’m terrible at

Blowing more time and money in the end because I was just trying to “save” some cash. But, if you absolutely have no money to invest… this will be your only route.

If you have a small budget but want a professional result that works… find a real estate investing website system like Carrot that has cutting-edge real estate investing specific lead pages in the system. Look for something that has simple-looking Lead Pages (simple is better) and that is flexible.

The worst thing is when you’re tied to a specific design and specific content that you can’t change. Make sure you can edit the content on your Lead Pages so you have full control. In addition, make sure the system tracks the traffic to your lead pages and shows you conversion rates so you’re not in the dark.

Last, make sure there are several options on where the leads go after they opt into your Lead Pages.

If you use a system like Aweber (the email marketing system we use) you’ll want your lead pages to integrate for free with Aweber. Carrot will let you use your Aweber forms, MailChimp forms, or our custom form system on your Lead Pages… and it’s crazy easy.

How To Get Your Own Real Estate Landing Pages For Your Website

I just went over what a Lead Page is (or squeeze page), why they work for real estate investing businesses, what good ones look like, and 3 options on getting your real estate investing lead page up and online.

So, what do you do now?

First, if you don’t have a Lead Page and you’re a wholesaler in real estate… you NEED ONE. I’ve personally built very targeted cash buyers lists well over 500 buyers 100% online via a squeeze page… it works really well and you’re essentially leaving money on the table if you’re not using them.

Next, decide your budget, skills, and even more important… how valuable your own time is worth. People try to save money by hiring things like this out cheap (thinking any web guy will know how to create a landing page that works) or they try to learn it all themselves in the name of “saving money”.

If you don’t already know HTML (if you don’t know what HTML is, I’d highly suggest you don’t do it yourself) then you’re going to be investing a lot of your own time and energy that you should be spending actually finding deals and making offers.

In the time you learn HTML and hack away at things yourself you could have potentially done a deal that pays you $5k – $20k (which would more than pay for a solid lead page system).

Usually, the option that makes the most sense is to piggyback on a lead page system that already works and that you can have full control over whether you know HTML or not. Of course, we’re pretty darn bias to our own real estate investor website lead generation system… you should check it out and see if it’s right for you. But, there are other systems out there too that you may look at.
August 1, 2012
REItheme – Here we are!
It’s been 2 years in the making… over 350 beta tester real estate investors later… and we’re officially releasing REItheme real estate investor websites to the whole world (at least… the whole real estate investor world ;-).

The Story

The story of how we came to be over the last 2 years is really pretty simple. We ourselves are real estate investors and own rental properties still today. In addition, we’ve worked with thousands of real estate investors around the country through our free tools and content at our sister site thereibrain.com. Through working with our subscribers and students there was one common need that they all voiced…

“I need a simple but effective website to use. Do you have a recommendation?”

We got that question over and over… so in 2010 we decided to create the first version of the REItheme sites just for those initial members. That group was our “beta” group which is over 350 members strong now. Giving us feedback, testing the sites, using them for their own real estate investing businesses… the whole shibang.

Then, finally… after enough procrastinating and delaying (because we’ve been so darn busy growing our other companies)… we decided to finish out REItheme so the entire real estate investor community can have access to the website system we’ve developed over the last 2 years.

Why We’re Different

The real estate investor website market has been a pretty stale market over the past 5 years. No real innovations, no one really deciding to take the leadership role in the market, and no one really focusing on what is best for the customer for running their real estate investor websites.

Above all… here are the main reasons why we’re excited about REItheme (and so are our customers):
- Customization: No two real estate investing businesses are the same, so why should you use the exact same website as 1,000+ other investors? That’s not the recipe for success in any business. You have to differentiate your company from the rest. With REItheme we’ve worked hard to make it so you can easily customize virtually every aspect of your website. From the branding, colors, and look/feel of your website… to the content… lead capture forms… properties… and more. You can put your own personal touch on your real estate investor website so it’s not like thousands of others… and you take control over every aspect of your website and no longer have to rely on a web guy or someone else to update your content for you.
- Stellar Member Experiences: Over the past several years our team has built multiple successful companies, combined reaching into the 7 figures… and a huge thing we’ve learned is that the better we’re able to create great customer experiences… the more our customers love us… and the more people flock to our services. So, we’re not just about amassing as many customers as we can… we’re about making using REItheme the best possible experience for you… from the signup to using your website day in and day out.
- Leveraging Social Media and the Search Engines: A HUGE drawback of most other real estate investor website templates on the market is that they look like they were built in 1987 and haven’t been built with the new technologies in mind. We’ve been able to generate over 30,000 real estate related leads directly from the search engines by ranking our pages and sites high for competitive search terms. Most website systems today in the real estate investor world never crack the top few pages of search results mainly because they weren’t built from the ground up with search engine optimization in mind. The same goes for social media. We want to make it easy for you to get the benefits of social media sites like Facebook… right from your own website.
- Credibility: Credibility is a big thing in any business… especially as a real estate investor. So, it’s very important what your website looks like and what it says when your prospects and clients find their way to your site. Our top notch design and copywriting team has put together great looking and professional websites that give a great first impression… and we’ve added in credibility elements that’ll help you relay the right message to people you want to work with. Easily add in testimonials, tell your story about your company on your about page, and more.
- Continual Improvements: We have a dedicated team focused on continually making REItheme the best website system for real estate investors today… and in the future. As new technologies come and go… we’ll continually update the system so you get those benefits without having to hire a web guy every time things change. Also, we’re continually testing our websites and finding new ways to make them rank higher in search engines, generate more leads, and be easier for you to use… and we always push those results down to your websites automatically. With REItheme you won’t have to worry about being left behind the technology curve… we’ll help you stay ahead of it.
The Future

We’ve got big plans for REItheme and the growth of this company and the growth of our customers businesses. We have no intentions of building REItheme into a “one stop shop” for real estate investor tools. There are already great systems out there that will calculate your offers on properties, manage your deals, run comps, and other great things.

That’s not our focus.

Our focus is to be the single best system for managing your web presence for your real estate investing business… with the features that help generate more traffic and leads as the main focus… and keeping the system simple and not packed with features 95% of investors don’t need.

Getting Started

So, if you’re a real estate investor and are looking for a better way to manage your online presence, generate leads, and regain control over your websites… check out REItheme to see if its a fit for you.

Also, if you know other investors who could use a website system like REItheme… check out our referral Partner program where you can earn 25% commissions on ever new REItheme member you refer (for the life of their account).

Enjoy and we look forward to working with you!

– Trevor and the REItheme Team
June 11, 2012

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