Critique my page

A few things I would like to discuss,

1. How do you feel about the layout? Is it something you would fill in if you came across it? Does it flow? Is it to simple or not simple enough? Does it look to much like an advertisement and not enough like I am a person that cares? (Is it better to be someone who cares???)

2. I wrote the information in the first person rather than using words like we or us. This page your looking at will eventually be my ad on craigslist and other sites, and I will have a modified version for my site. I feel it is better to connect as a person rather than a business to people in ads. I could be wrong though. I prefer to talk to one person every time I contact a place, and even better if it is the owner.
What do you think? Should I change it to something like "email us and we will send you information on how we can help you"?

Thanks again.

My thoughts on your page are:

1. Straight to the point, not a lot of oversell
2.It feels honest as you read it
3.It looks very professional
go for it...take the next step ...

You have great skills...

Nice web page.

Do you have a system to help people build credit?

I would be proud to use that page.

I went through the page and found it very user friendly, especially to someone like me who has minimal tech skills. It is also extremely considerate of you to share you knowledge with the DG family, we do appreciate and we will definitely will take you up on your offer. Take care and God Bless.

Sandra

I appreciate the comments from everyone. I have a made a few more of the pages now. Links will work soon. I am working on that now. I need to do the coding for the question form still...

www.what-a-year.com

So because this kind of goes hand in hand with my site I am going to give a progress report.

I posted an ad on Craigslist searching for an investor friendly agent. I have one respsonse so far (24 hrs or so). She is a fireball. The lady is probably 60 and she said in her letter to me that she is a brownbelt in Karate, working for here black belt! I'm a little intimidated lol.

My wife and I plan to make some flyers to build our buyers list, and place them around a few cites we will be going through tomorrow. We live 1 hour away from our closest real city, and three hours from the Boise. So this investing is going to eat a lot of gas. We're driving to Boise tomorrow to attend a real estate investing club meeting hosted by a realtor that we met last year. Wish me luck.

Thanks again for all the comments.

All of the pages are finished and the links work. I should (hopefully) have the forms working by the end of the day. Then I get to work on iloveugly and get these links out in the market.

Just an update on what my marketing so far has found. I put an ad on craigslist and I found an awesome realtor. I only posted the ad in one form and I guess it was luck that I did. I attracted an agent that is always researching all parts of the market and she came across my little ad and replied.

We drove 4 hours to meet with her last night and attend an investment club meeting. I was very nervous and tried to keep it cool as much as possible. She is amazingly passionate about her job and she is (i think) more excited than me to start. She has no problems with negotiating or verbal low ball offers, or offending other agents in general.

I also got a response from a bird-dog/wholesaler asking for my criteria.

Take care everyone. Good luck.

Great looking site!

Are you using Google Analytics on your site to track visitor activity? Also, are you using Aweber for auto-mated email repsonses? Do you plan on doing keyword research and maybe some PPC campaigns on Google to attract prospects?

I don't know if that fits into the program or not. I am still waiting for Dean's book, but can't wait to be where you are.

Good Luck!

Your site looks great. You will probably get other ideas from improvements from the contacts you have with potential customers. Sometimes customers may ask a question and you can then use that idea to ungrade your site. The key is always to keep the site simple, fresh and do not have a lot of graphics that take too long to load because some people do not want to wait for the page to load or do not have DSL to quickly upload pages. Good luck. Believe and Achieve!

Travis remember you are dealing with people that most likely may need someone like yourself too treat them alittle more personal, I only say that because i get the attorney feel to your site. Example,Life is fair and i...? Positive is the way to go, Your head line should say...I am going to sell you a house,a place of your own, your castle.
Travis it really looks good,To remind you people have feelings and REI do not have feelings...People are the power of the REI!
I wish i could be more on target for you...Still looks great!

rand/2for1

I appreciate the critism. That is the kind of advice I was looking for. I will see what I can do.

The site is 98% done and functional. The iloveugly.com page has yet to be started.

All of the forms work now, so if you are feeling bored, fill them out for me and help me test. I will email you back to say thanks.
One problem I have right now, you will notice when you fill out a form... on the automatic return page the link banner doesn't show up. It is late so I will fix it tomorrow.

I ended up talking to an investor by calling an "I buy houses" number from an ad I saw. Turns out the investor has done 400 or so houses in the past 4 years. I was waiting for a call from a different sales rep from the academy to call back, and decided to ask him if I could ask a couple of questions(Which is how I found out about how many houses he had done). I asked him if he did pretty well at investing, and then asked him about maybe taking me under his wing. HE SAID YES, without even batting an eye. No questions asked. I could just do contract assignments until I got comfortable. He told me to call him back later because his bank was calling.

Well I called back and he basically gave me everything I need to do, what I should focus on, he even provided me with his marketing materials. He is going to act as my buyer for any deal I use and allow me to use his proof of funds to submit an offer. In turn I get 10% of the net profit from each deal for finding and getting the people to work with us, as well as signing the contract.

Yay for me. I am set. I hope this inspires some people to "think a little different". I was ready to do the mentoring program, but if you aren't financially ready to, maybe you can find a person in your area that will take you under their wing.

Good luck everyone. If this post stays up, I will continue posting about what the investor and I are doing. I hope it doesn't get deleted for saying something bad about the academy. If it wasn't for Dean's book, I wouldn't have gone as far as calling an investor in the first place. His book inspired me to take action, but I think he needs to get some better staff at his call center. I am sure the mentoring program is great as well, I just pressed the issue because I honestly believe that if they were that good at investing, they wouldn't be working at a call center. But then again, all we beginning investors need is a push in the right direction right, and those of us that really want to do it will. That is what the mentoring is all about, the little push.

Btw, that sales rep need to learn to listen to the person on the other line, rather than talk for 45 minutes. If she had just asked me if I knew anything about the mentoring, and then asked if I had any questions instead of pitching me, they could have addressed my concerns without arguing with me about whether or not I was serious about investing. I had my credit card out, and my wife sold on the idea. Your "program admin" lost a customer because she never discovered "why" I was calling. Dean does a very good job of creating value for the product in his book, so you should try not to over sell it. I was doodling while you over-explained the system to me, and the upsell. I already knew what the program was about and why I wanted to join, and I had two questions that if you had just said "That is a great question, this is why we do that and here are the benefits.... was that what you were looking for?" I would have gone through with it.

Anyway I'm done rambling. Sorry to go off topic, but I didn't want to start a new thread.

Btw some food for though that may keep you motivated...

LIFE IS A SERIES OF EVENTS. Some would call it destiny, but I think it is the way that things work out if are really trying to make it happen, and try and step out of your comfort zone.

If had hadn't been interested in real estate...

I would never had asked my mom to borrow Dean's book. I already know a fair amount about creative investing without it. Dean's book is amazing at creating motivation and helping make the process seem less complicated. It is also inspiring.

SO because I read Dean's book I created a website.

After I created the website I posted ads on craigslist. One of the people that responded to my ad was the previously mentioned investor. He never replied to me other than asking about the house.

So I called an " I buy houses" advertisement wanting to save the number in my phone for later in case I found a deal. I guess it rang even though I wasn't meaning for it to ring. It was the same investor calling me back right away and he actually caught me off guard so I kind of choked up. He asked if I was the same Travis from craigslist that he contacted about my ad. He told me what he was looking for and to call him if I find anything.

That day because I got a ride with a friend to the city, I was talking about why I was going and he asked how it worked. He realized his sister was in foreclosure and that I can help her out.

I talked to his sister and realized she was a textbook example of someone that does a shortsale.

I emailed the investor from the AD and he didn't respond.

I called the Dean's academy so that I could get help with my new short-sale.

Dean's academy didn't work out for me. I still wanted to be mentored so I tried to find another option.

I called the investor to talk about the short sale and decided to ask about him mentoring me. He said yes and I got what I was looking for in a better way that I would have if I wasn't brave and open minded.

Think about how you can relate this to your own life.