Justin B. McClelland

I just put the finishing touches on my STL squeeze page and wrapped up it’s integration with AWeber.  Check it out below.  I’m at a coffee shop right now as I’m posting this at 3:27am…it’s refreshing to have the larger city amenities again.  Champaign shuts down at like 12am.  I’m such a night-owl, I’m almost nocturnal.

Anyway, I put this squeeze page together using a free squeeze page theme for WordPress.  It took me forever to find a good free one.  So you can find it at:

wordpresssqueezepage.com

Of course, you’ll have to sign-up and be ’squeezed’ for your info before they email you the theme.  While going through this whole ordeal, I realized how much time I used and also the level of technical know-how I had to recall to get this situated.  I wonder if some folks who don’t want to bother would pay (a very reasonable fee) for the entire setup of a squeeze page.  I mean a comprehensive setup including:

-domain name
-hosting
-wordpress installation
-wordpress squeeze-page theme configuration
-integration with email marketing software
-squeeze-page marketing copy

What do ya’ll think…would folks pay to have this done?  If so, I may have to serve this niche (and find a way to subcontract most of the work so I don’t create a tedious job for myself).  Let me know your thoughts in the comments please.

Entrepreneurship, Internet Marketing, Marketing AWeber Communications, Squeeze page, WordPress

This is a post that was inspired by Lawrence Roberts and a long string of blog comments on the BiggerPockets article I wrote back in September 2009.  A lot of people ran into snags when trying this out.  So, in the video below I just give a quick overview of how to create the ‘illusion’ of an embedded YouTube video in Craigslist.  I say illusion, because Craigslist restricts certain HTML tags, one of which is required for YouTube embedding.  So check it:

Entrepreneurship, How To, Internet Marketing BiggerPockets, CraigsList, embed, Facebook, YouTube

So I’ve only got 20 days left in Champaign and I’m changing my focus a bit (actually it would’ve been 10 days left, but my apt complex doesn’t pro-rate. So I’m here until the end of month).  I’m going to focus more on getting my property scouts in place and setting up training videos for them to review.  I need to focus more and more on WORKING SMART.  It’s become more and more clear to me since I left my 9-5 that i hate working!  At first I thought I just hated working for someone else….WRONG.  I hate working even for myself!  I didn’t get into real estate to create a job for myself.  I’m in this to make money work for me.  And real estate is just the beginning.  There is so much other stuff regarding internet marketing that I haven’t even exploited yet, it’s ridiculous.  But I have to tackle one thing at a time right.  So right now it’s real estate and I’m in the process of putting together training videos for my property scouts so that I don’t have to indefinitely be a broken record when recruiting new scouts.  I’ll just say, “Watch the videos. If this is up your alley, cool.  If not, peace out.”

So I’m on the way to the courthouse to create a training video for my scouts to pull probate records.  Funny thing is, I’m going to try and get my Flip Mino inside.  All of the notices outside the courthouse only say that you can’t bring in a cell-phone.  They say nothing about cameras, video cameras, etc.  Plus I already asked about taking my laptop inside and they said that was ok.  So…I’m thinking what’s the difference between my laptop cam and my flip cam…there shouldn’t be.

Yesterday, I took a spontaneous road-trip to Chicago to use the road time to chill-out and brain-storm and listen to my “4-hour work week” audiobook.  This was a great decision.  This book comes highly recommended by many entrepreneurs and I now know why.  In this short month, that I’ve been full-time, I’ve been doing a few things wrong.  One of the main things is letting little things leech my time.  For instance, up until this morning, I had Yahoo.com set as my browser homepage.  Almost 4 times a day, I would get distracted by reading some unnecessary article as a result of just opening a new browser window, this probably eats at least 10 minutes per hour. I now set Google as my homepage.  Next, I’ll have to work on not checking my email so often.  I already don’t watch the news, so I’m good there.  The part I like most so far, is avoiding phone calls and meetings.  Because half of the time, they’re absolutely unnecessary, as an email will suffice and be more to the point.  Those of you who’ve read the book know what I’m talking about.  I’m only half-through and it’s already opened my eyes to some of the pointless tasks that I consume myself with daily.  Such as numerous phone calls with people that aren’t adding to the bottom line (I literally just had a phone call with an end-buyer insurance agent, while typing this, concerning his access to a property.  I have no idea why he called me about this as he should correspond with the seller directly. I gave him her contact information weeks ago. He just murdered 5 minutes of my life.)   Same with email.  I’m going to start trimming the fat.  You don’t get my time if I don’t like you and/or you’re not talking about putting money in my pocket.

So a quick synopsis of my current situation:

2 closings tied-up with a bankruptcy
1 closing scheduled for end of this week (I have a feeling this isn’t going to happen)
3 new properties under-contract, no end-buyer yet

Welp….off to the courthouse.

Blog, Entrepreneurship, Real Estate, Tutorials Flip Mino, Flip Video, Real Estate

Image via CrunchBase

In the following videos, I give a synopsis of how I used the CallFire IVR (interactive voice response) service to dial all of my real estate contacts in an automated fashion.  I’ve used the CallFire voice broadcast service in the past a couple of times, to notify all the respondents to my house ads that the house was no longer available.  But, the IVR service is a bit more complex than just a broadcast as it is a phone-tree that gives the caller multiple prompts to choose from and upon their selection, they’ll hear different audio.

Using the IVR instead of a broadcast allowed for me maximize my efforts of the phone call.  In addition to auto-dialing those who were on my buyers-list, I also added every number that I have recorded over the past few months that had responded to any of my marketing efforts.  This made for a total of approximately 300 unique phone numbers.  So the IVR was advantageous over just a regular broadcast because not only did I supply the call recipient with the property information, I also added a prompt that allowed for the call recipient to leave a message with a property they had for sale.  And the last prompt was for the user to opt-in to my do-not-call list (I set this up wrong, but at least I tried).

So in a nutshell, this is how it went down:

1. Call-recipients’ phone rang
2. They were greeted with the main message
3. This is what they heard when they pressed one
4. This is what they heard when they pressed three
5. This is what they heard when they pressed eight

When the call-recipients left a voice-message, I was able to listen to it in the Admin panel of CallFire.  One mistake I did make though…rather two mistakes….one being that I didn’t change the audio for when an answering machine answered the phone.  No need to give prompts when that happens.  You can actually supply different audio for VoiceMail/Answering machines.  I messed that up.  The other mistake that I made, was that I violated the new DNC law was put into effect by the FTC on September 1, 2009.  I knew about this law change and completely forgot about it.  So technically to be in accordance with the new law, when a user selects a specific prompt, they would be met with a live person to give/take down property info.  This wouldn’t be hard to setup either.  It actually may be the better option anyway.

So here is the video that I put together.  The audio quality on it is horrible, so “my bad”. I think I accidentally changed one of the audio-settings on CamStudio and don’t know which it was.

There are so many other services that CallFire offers it’s ridiculous.  I think these type of services will better allow independent investors such as myself to operate with the scale and efficiency of a Fortune 500 corporation.

- Justin

Marketing, Real Estate, Tutorials CallFire, Interactive voice response, Marketing, Telephony, Voice Broadcast

I was putting together a mailing today and felt like throwing together a quick tutorial of my mail-merge.  It’s not very comprehensive, but just a quick overview.  And if you’re curious about the 404 page tactic that I mentioned, you can read more about that here on the BiggerPockets.com blog.

Blog, Marketing, Tutorials

So I finally have my semi-automated system in place that will allow me to make 40+ offers per week.  Basically what I have is an Option-Contract and a Cover Sheet that are mailed out to the owners of properties that have been listed and since withdrawn from the MLS.  My Realtor was able to export an Excel file from the MLS that contains the expired property information that I desire.  This spreadsheet was then appended with county assessor information (last date sold, owner name, assessed value, and etcetera).  The Option-Contract and Cover Sheet have mail-merged values that include the property address, offer price, mailing address.  This mail-merge along with the custom Excel doc, makes me semi-automatic.  After all of the printing is said and done, I hand-address the envelopes.  I just sent out my first batch today.  Next week, it’s on and popping again.

However, next week I’m going to use my Tax Delinquent list and not the MLS expired list.  I have a Tax Delinquent list left over from the tax sale last October.  With the MLS expireds, there is way too much additional manual-work needed…it’s best to check if the property has since been relisted, if the property has been sold, and etcetera.  This extra work takes the automation right out of the equation.  This is still a task to pursue, but best in addition to something that’s close to automatic and always running in the background while I perform the tedious composition of some offers.  With some of the offers that I’m making, many will go straight to a waste-basket, I’m sure.  But I need to boost the amount of “hell naws” that I receive so I can accept more “yes please” replies.  We all know this is a numbers game.

And to the email naysayer #242 who wrote:

…I seen your 40 deal a week strategy. Thats almost impossible dude…

This is my formal response:

Please Believe That.

- I’m Out

Business, Entrepreneurship, Internet Marketing, Random, Real Estate, Short Sale Microsoft Excel, offers, tax delinquent

Another Friday evening. So much to do, that won’t all get done.  This weekend is going to be pretty hectic.  I’ve got alot of RE work to do.  On a tangent note, why is it so hard to blog everyday?  I’ve been aiming to do so, but it doesn’t get done.  Then when I do post, I have so much new news that is backlogged, it doesn’t all get told because who feels like writing a novel each blog post?  Anyway, I digress.

I’ve revamped my advertising plan.  I know that the Newspapers don’t work for me.  After about one month, I had received all kinds of calls but they were for properties way out in Lynchville, Illinois (that’s meant as a joke, but did you know Lynchville is a city in Maine, Virginia, and Tennessee? Me neither. Either way, you won’t see me there).  My focus is on the college town of Champaign-Urbana, IL.  I don’t have the time or interest to learn about all of these little surrounding cities that don’t even have a Walmart (a good measure of city size BTW).

Nixing the Newspaper ads will free-up about $200 monthly in ad expenses.  So remember the door-hanger brochure idea I spoke about while back?  The brochures are being printed right now and I also got my friend to hook-up a flyer design.  The brochures will go into plastic bag door-hangers and be put on doors of houses within targeted neighborhoods, while the flyer will be printed in 11×17 size and put in grocery stores and laundromats and such.

I’ve also got another idea.  And I think it’s DOPE!  So check this out…as a resident of the Mid-West the winters can be brutal.  It’s not that cold yet, but once January and February rolls around it will be an every-morning task of warming up the car for 10 minutes and scraping the ice off of the windshield.  And I mean everyday.  So since that is a part of the morning routine for most (who don’t have a garage at least), I’m thinking of getting some promotional “We Buy Houses” Ice scrapers.  BAHM!  How you like that!  Genius right?  If these free ice-scrapers are distributed to select homeowners and are quality enough for them to actually use, they will read my advertisement every morning.  And probably every evening in the parking lot at work before heading home.  The beauty is that I can get some decent ones for like a dollar each, which isn’t bad.  I’m a marketing machine baybeh!  I’m going to let this idea marinate and I may just get some custom scrapers to ad to my marketing mix.

I’m a bit cocky to be as broke as I am right?  WRONG!  My vision is clear “I can see it NOW” and pretty soon my bank account will grow into the ego.  It’s all coming together, slowly but surely.

- Peace Out

P.S.
I forgot I was supposed to bring back accountability Mondays.  I’m going to get back on it next week.  Despite the fact that none of my blogger friends do it anymore.  What’s up with that anyway?!  You all know who you are.  That’s OK! (said in Al Pacino – Scarface voice) I’m going to bring it back anyway.  Bring it back like fannypacks

Business, Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Random, Real Estate Advertising, Ice scraper, newspaper

I’ve got an action packed 7 days approaching:

Tomorrow I meet with the lady I mentioned in my last post whose house I targeted with one of my direct mail letters.  My Realtor/Investor colleague and I took a look at the property last Friday.  Man was that thang tore-up.  It will need a new roof, new windows, new kitchen, a new whole bunch of stuff.  But the good thing is that this is the worst house on the street.  All of the neighboring houses look great.  I have some comps, a CMA, and an estimate of repairs to accompany my offer.  So this should take the shell-shock out of the offer.  I think she is expecting an offer close to retail minus just a few thousand in repairs…I hope not.

Tomorrow evening, I’m meeting with the Tax Lien investor who I created the screen-scrape for of the County Assessors’ website.  The scrape just referenced each property by parcel number and extracted the homeowner name, property address, mailing address, market value of land, market value of building.  He mainly wanted this done so that he’d know going into the tax sale which properties have a building attached.  In the past he had inadvertently purchased the tax liens on ponds and vacant land.  I even went a step further and computed some ratios for him in excel, a tax/value ratio.  The lower the ratio the better as in a small amount tax lien could possibly result in a high dollar property.  There’s also some other stuff that I hooked up too.  I think I’ll do a BiggerPockets.com post about Tax Lien research and such on Thursday.  The sale is this Wednesday morning and I’m going to check it out.  I’m interested to see how this goes down. I’ve heard of the fast pace of these things.  I’ll get some video footage if I can.

I now have 5 different classified ads out and because of my nifty tracking methods, I know which paper is yielding the best results thus far.  And that is the American Classifieds/Thrifty Nickel.  My phone is blowing up with people calling from this paper.  And I must say, I love the ad that I placed.  I took the idea from a Preston Ely ebook I purchased a while back.  The ad says:

I Buy Houses CA$H, Quick Close, All These Other Ads Are Jokes! Call Justin @ 217.123.1234

The bad thing is that alot of the people who are calling on this ad, have properties way out in the sticks.  I wasn’t expecting that.  I can’t spread myself all over central Illinois researching different areas and trying to become an expert in them, just not feasible.

I had this one guy who owns a rental in the boonies call me 7 times today.  That’s right SEVEN times.   He left a message the first time and couldn’t wait for me to get back in touch with him.  I was thinking I had a really motivated seller on my hands.  I call him back and this kid wants 3k less than full retail!?  I told him that he may be better suited for a Realtor (I don’t have time to waste), but then he started rebutting and says maybe we can work something out.  I really think that this guy is desperate but just doesn’t want to show his hand.  He kinda already did by calling me SEVEN times in an 8 hour time span.  We’ll see about this one.  I honestly couldn’t care less (for some reason very positive things happen for me when I don’t try too hard).

Next Monday, I’m going to the REBarCamp in Indianapolis.  This event is basically a conference where real estate professionals come together and exchange ideas and techniques for implementing web 2.0/3.0 into their business.  I see it as a marketing workshop.  Should be enlightening.

It’s 10:35pm and I’ve still got a gang of stuff to do before I call it a night.  I burn so much midnight oil, I should buy stock in this s**t. Peace Out

Internet Marketing, Marketing, Random, Real Estate, Tutorials, Uncategorized, Web Development american classifieds, Real Estate, rebarcamp, Tax lien

So it’s been over a week and the calls have drastically tapered off.  I had planned to give some exact call counts, but I kind of screwed that up when I was altering the settings for my Vonage account when setting up my Google Voice accounts (the counts got off).  So I’ll approximate.  After 1 week of the letters being in possession of homeowners, I received about 70 calls with about 12 of those being leads.  Out of the 12 leads about:

4 turned out to have their house listed on the MLS
2 I’ve played phone tag with
2 I’ve yet to call
1 Is in Pre-pre-foreclosure*
1 Plans on moving to ATL in February
2 Will most likely sell retail when ready

* The guy who is in pre-pre-foreclosure is disabled and is soon to be receiving disability checks.  He said he just caught his mortgage up from being 4 months late to 1 month late.  He said that he wants to sell because he doesn’t know how long the disability checks will last and needs to downgrade.  I’ll check back in with this guy in a month or so and see where his motivation is.

The guy who wants to move to Atlanta this winter may turn out to be gold as well.  He didn’t seem too motivated when I spoke with him, but this may change.  I’ll also check back in with this guy next month.

One of my letters hit the property of an investor in town that has over 60 properties.  He responded to the letter just to chat for a bit about investing.  We met in person last Friday and he’s looking to divest his portfolio and needs someone (me!) with a creative mind to market them.  He also invests in Tax Lien certificates and needs someone to perform some follow up with the liens that may soon convert to deeds.  So perhaps we can work out something there, we haven’t negotiated any particulars but I expressed my interest and we may meet later this week.

** One quick note about this guy. I don’t think I mentioned in an earlier post that I went to the County Recorders’ office one day and looked through the judgment books.  I wrote down the information of all the purchasers from the previous years’ tax sale (for buyer’s list building purposes).  I then Google’d each person to see what I’d learn (did I ever mention that I love Google, I could almost be a P.I.).  So when I met with this guy, I already knew a little about him.  But then again, I’m pretty sure he Google’d me before he called me because he mentioned my blog.  So that means he may read this…awkward…

Another letter made its’ way to a Real Estate broker who was a former investor and she called to chat about investing, what she’s doing Real Estate wise and her consulting business.  This lady was cool as a fan.  She was very wise and said that I’m free to call her whenever with questions.

So besides the leads there were many positives to overcome the negativity from early last week.  Sometimes I post my frustrations and speak of slacking and what not, but that’s all part of the experience.  The purpose of this blog is to document it all.  So don’t think that I’m going to give up or get depressed by these suckers who waste their time hating.  I would never lie to you and I honestly think half of what people say is funny.  Now the other half can meet me in the octogan…but I digress.  The point is I’m going to blog about it ALL…give it to you straight, no chaser.

Since I’ve launched my Yellow Letter campaign, I’ve also launched some other marketing.  I’ve got a Sunday classified ad that is going to go in the Champaign News-Gazette, the Savoy Star, and Accent.  I’ve also got an ad that is going to run in the American Classifieds.  And my Yellow Pages Ad prints and should be delivered in November.  I’m going to follow-up to my mailing list in about 6 weeks with a postcard.  I’m also thinking about buying a list from YellowLettersComplete.com, perhaps the pre-foreclosure list.  And the Bandit Signs will go in effect again very soon.  I ordered some more.  This time instead of buyers, I’m going to target sellers.  And I’m going to place them out on Friday and pull them on Sunday.  All of the Realtors do this.  I just needed to cross the line so I knew where it was the first time.  I shouldn’t get any heat for this.  If I do, I have an arguable case.  I also am going to ramp-up my CraigsList activity.  So as you can tell, I’m grinding…but still have a ways to go.

Yesterday, there was a Rich Dad Poor Dad seminar in town.  You know the seminar that gets people amped up about Real Estate investing, and claims that they’ll teach all of the ropes for $500 3-day seminar.  Once you get to that seminar you learn that to really learn all of the ropes, you need to pay $30,000.  I mean, I’m not saying this is a bad deal but DAMN!  At least that’s what the attendees usually say as they leave the hotel banquet room.  I’ve been there done that and so I spontaneously thought of a way to capitalize.  I made up some flyers at the last minute that were aimed towards finding someone to birddog/partner with.  The flyer was folded into a 3-part brochure and in a nut-shell it said

Interested in starting out in Real Estate but can’t afford the training? Call Me! I’m a house-flipper that is looking for partners to work with in Champaign-Urbana.  No experience necessary.

I put those flyers on about 40 cars in the parking lot outside of the entrance to the seminar.  I was scared to death, I didn’t want to get caught and fined.  I almost didn’t do it.  But I did it anyway.  It’s time to start making things happen.  I really don’t care anymore about the rules.  I ask myself, “What’s the worst that can happen?”.  And if the answer doesn’t involve an arrest or bodily harm, then I’m doing it.  So anyway, I did all that and didn’t get one stankin call!  Oh well.  Maybe next time.

Welp, that’s all for now.  I need to kick out a BiggerPockets article for tomorrow.  I think I’ll focus on the features and uses of Google Voice for investors.  Writers’ block, here I come! Peace out.

- Justin

Internet Marketing, Marketing, Real Estate, Tutorials CraigsList, Google, Marketing, Real Estate, Real estate broker, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Vonage

Not too much to talk about tonight. I’m actually still recovering from the all-nighter from two nights ago. I can’t pull all nighter’s like I used to. Maybe it’s because I’m getting old. Or maybe it’s because when I have them I usually have to spend 8 hours at the 9-to-5, the next day versus a few hours at school. Yeah, I’m going with the latter.  I ain’t old yet, although my left knee creeks at the gym.

Peep my latest contribution to Biggerpockets.com, I’ve linked it below.  In the post I write about my experience with Floorplanner.com and how you can incorporate using it into your real estate business.

It’s amazing how powerful the web and social media is. I speak of one of the many ways; I was on Facebook yesterday and one of the posts in my Newsfeed had a YouTube clip about from the movie Boiler Room. As a matter of fact, I’ll find the clip…one sec…

Here it is:

After watching this four-minute clip on Tuesday, I went out and bought the DVD on Wednesday. I bet Time-Warner appreciates that.

Welp, it’s actually time to pop it in, grab me another Keystone and chill. Peace Out.

- Justin

Blog, Business, Tutorials biggerpockets.com, Blog, Boiler Room, DVD, Facebook, Floorplanner.com, Real Estate, Social media, YouTube