Business

8 Home buying tips to improve your chances of getting a new home.

December 9, 2011 By Andrew Hall

Here are 8 tips to help you when buying a home. Whether you are buying your first home, buying a new home or buying an investment home, these home buying tips are invaluable to any home buyer.

Know your credit score
Don’t even think about starting your search for a home without knowing your credit score. Knowing your credit score allows you to accurately predict how much money you qualify to borrow and how much your estimated monthly payments will be.

Know how much money you qualify for
The more informed you are before making a purchase the better your chances are at getting a home you can afford to keep. During the real estate boon in recent past many home buyers found that they could afford to “Buy” a much more expensive home than they could afford to “Keep”. This was a major factor in the decline of the real estate industry across the US.

Know the maximum monthly payment you can afford
Know it and don’t exceed that. Many families have found out the hard way what a huge mistake it is to buy a loan that they can’t afford. Determine how much you can afford based on todays income not what you might make two years from now. One of the most deceptive tactics used by loan agents is to entice home buyers into a bigger loan then they can afford by offering an interest only loan. More on this later.

Choose your loan wisely
You don’t have to pick the first loan that a mortgage company offers you or even do business with the first mortgage company that offers you a loan. Do your homework and find a loan that is right for you and will be right for you years from now. It costs money to refinance if you can’t afford your loan a few years down the road, and there’s no reason to leave money on the table due to a bad decision made on impulse.

Find your home
After you determine how much you can afford you are ready to start search for your home. Use all methods available to find potential properties and make a list of the top 10 or 15 homes that within your search citeria. Click here to start your Search for Las Vegas Homes

Do most of the footwork yourself
There are several methods to finding potential homes that you can undertake without the assistance of a Realtor. In the end it’s best to have the expertise of a professional real estate salesman, but you can do a lot of the footwork yourself. Chances are you’ll end up doing most of the work anyway, so prepare yourself in advance by knowing what you’re looking for.

Find a trustworthy Realtor
There are so many Realtors that you can pretty much go to any social gathering and meet at least one, but it’s important to find one that you can trust. Attempt to build a relationship with your Realtor and get to know them on a personal level before doing business with them. If they are willing to take time out of their busy schedule to give you personal attention then they most likely have a sincere interest in helping you.

After you find a home
Once you find a home, there are still somethings you need to consider before making that final decision.

Be sure your Realtor provides you with comparable pricing for houses in the surrounding community.
Check out the schools and amenities that affect the future value of homes in the neighborhood.
If the house is older determine the condition of the major appliances including the AC / Heating unit and Water Heater.
Consider buying insurance for those appliances in case they go out shortly after you move in.

Best of luck to you, and good hunting.

Filed Under: Business

Selling Links On Your Website?

November 30, 2011 By Andrew Hall

A client of mine recently received the following solicitation about selling links on his website.

Hello,

I’m interested in placing a text ad on your page: http://clients-domain.com/. The link ad would point to a page on a website that is relevant to your page and may be useful to your site visitors. We would be happy to compensate you for your time if it’s something we’re able to work out.

The best way to reach me is through a direct response to this email. This will help me get back to you about the right link request. Please let me know if you’re interested, and if not thanks for your time.

Cheers!
(Signature Removed)

Client replied as follows:

Hi (Name Removed):

Thank you for your inquiry. Can you please send me a copy of the ad so I can take a look before deciding?

Thank you,
(Client Name Removed)

Surprisingly the solicitor replied with the following response:

Hello (Client Name Removed),

I’d like to have a simple text link Ad on your page http://clients-domain.com/ to link to http://www.soliciters-domain.com/ for $80 per year. Let me know if possible.

Sincerely,
(Signature Removed)

While I am surprised that the solicitor actually replied and it’s quite possible that this solicitor’s offer was legit, I am very cautious when considering advertising on any website. This particular client’s website is more of a personal website, but it is still professional in nature and the site ranks very high for some local keyword terms. The other important factor is that my client is well known in his local market so reputation is important. These things in mind I sent my client the following message.

(Client Name Removed)

The safest way to make money off of paid advertising is to setup accounts with Google AdSense, Clickbank or CommissionJunction or contact companies in your industry with products or services that may be valuable to your visitors and establish some kind of agreement with these companies to sell their products from your website.

Aside from that steer very far away from this particular type of solicitation. They are at best spammers who can hurt your search engine placement, and at worst proxies of Google, trying to catch people who sale links on their website, a practice which is highly frowned upon by the Google monster. If they catch you doing it, they can and have banned many sites.

I wouldn’t sweat this one, I did some research and seems to be just a spammer firm so I would just cut off any further communication with them and it should not be a problem. But for future ref… delete first and ask questions later when you are solicited by these types of emails.

Andrew

Filed Under: Business

How I Got My First Customer

October 29, 2011 By Andrew Hall

I got my first customer in 2001 but it still stands out in my mind how I came to make that first connection with another human being who wanted to pay me for my services. I was looking through the phone book for businesses who might need a website, in 2001 there were plenty of businesses who needed websites, but most did not want to spend the money to get one. So I was cold calling these people and getting rejected at every turn, but I was determined. Finally the manager of an art gallery said “I’ve been waiting for someone to call me” and I knew I was on the right track.

This gave me the confidence and affirmation to continue on no matter how many rejections I experienced, I knew sooner or later there would be more people who were “waiting for me to call them”.

After a while I got my timing and my pitch down, so that most of my calls resulted in a short conversation, which led to a meeting with the decision makers and ultimately led to a transaction.

Cold calling is one of the hardest forms of marketing to master, but with a sincere desire to succeed anyone can use it to their advantage.

What strategy did you employ to get your first customer?