Investing 101

When you are looking for a good quality web site for your real estate investing business, you must pick the best that will make your business uncomplicated and fun. Here are a few basic must-do rules for selecting a good real estate investing web site.

1) It must be database-driven

It must be able to collect information into a database and allow you to manipulate it any way you want, such as sending email, importing and exporting data and so on. Preferably, when someone submits information, you should receive an email and that information should be logged into a database.

2) It must be interactive

The ability to interact with visitors is a crucial, compulsory element of any modern web site, also extremely necessary in your real estate investing business. You must be able to gather any information and feedback you want from motivated sellers, house buyers, or any other visitors that you target in your real estate business.

Your motivated sellers must be able to leave testimonials, a crucial element in real estate investing.

It must be simple enough for them to submit their information on the web site rather than make a phone call; thereby you receive a fully pre-screened and pre-negotiated deals.

The ability to interact freely on social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and others is a basic necessity. Even if you do not use these services, your friends (buyers and other investors alike) will share them with their friends in the same media resulting to a quick sale. Most real estate investors today share their properties on these media.

3) It must be easy to use

You do not need to be a computer geek to run a real estate investing web site. Preferably, it should be controlled from a virtual back office (admin panel). The front end should completely free of maintenance.

4) It must be adaptable

Your web site must adapt to any real estate investing needs your business takes. You should be able to create new pages, add content easily, and create any forms to collect any type of information you want.

5) It must offer numerous designs

You do not want your web site to look like every other out there. It should offer a big selection of designs to choose from and the ability to customize them to suit your investing needs. You should be able to keep your brand such as logo or even a custom look if you need to. Preferably, you should not have to pay extra to choose any design you want.

6) It should offer automation capability

Your real estate investing web site must allow you to create unlimited follow-up autoresponders to handle email campaigns for your motivated sellers, buyers lists or any other lists you manage on your web site.

For example, if you wanted to send out a Thank You message to a motivated seller after they submit their information, all you need to do is to automate an instant message that says something like “Thank you for your enquiry. We will contact you within 24 hours” . Or something like that.

Similarly, you should be able to create automated reminders to remind you of any important events on your real estate investing business. Your busy schedule should not get in the way of important follow-ups so crucial to successful real estate investing.

7) It must be affordableSadly, most real estate investing products are just too expensive. If they do not hit you with a big upfront invoice, they get you stuck with monthly fees. This should not be the case. The web site must allow you to install it and run it from any web hosting account.

Be especially careful with companies that only charge a monthly fee (like $30) with no “setup fee”. In reality they offer a template hosting service branded as real estate investing web sites that must run on their server. You sign up with them, pay a monthly fee, but they own your web site.

The minute you stop paying the monthly fee, your web site will stop working or be deleted altogether along with your business. Do not fall into this trap. If at all possible, the web site should be a one-time purchase with no strings attached.

It must offer free lifetime support and upgradesWhen you buy your real estate investing web site, you must get free lifetime support and upgrades. If they offer every little thing as a module for an extra fee, run the other way.

These are just a few tips to look out for when shopping for a real estate investing web site. There are many other little things but if you follow these rules, you should be happy with what you get.

Simon Macharia is a real estate investor that also offers web 2.0 database-driven web sites for real estate investing at http://RealEstateInvestorsWebSites.Net