Another Offline Marketing Income Stream...

Started doing this a few months ago....figured I'd let it ride a little to see what came of it after time. It's not a main source of income idea, but it's an additional stream to put in the mix.....

There is a lot of focus on "landing the big fish" lately in offline marketing, but someone's got to look after the small businesses too.

A little background history is in order to understand how I fell into this...

We were selling our house. It came time to look for a new home....in our searches we noticed a ton of "for sale by owner" (FSBO) homes. Some of these we looked into. In doing so we talked to a lot of these homeowners. We discussed some selling points that helped us sell our home fast (many of these FSBO homes were on the market for well over a year). The main thing that helped us was a well managed MLS listing...in addition to a website I created on my own, with solid SEO. Talking to these FSBO home owners one thing kept standing out....none had a good listing or any kind of "online presence".....most are relying on a sign out front, some "take one" flyers & word of mouth... No wonder it was taking so long to sell these homes when we sold ours in just under 60 days...

I got to thinking.....why can't I make some simple one-two page real estate type websites & offer them to all these FSBO home owners who are in desperate need to get their homes seen....would be simple enough to do. Wordpress has some good free real estate themes that have easy photo galleries & home listing info....& it's easy enough to build HTML sites....SO, I began putting some together.

Next step was to get some interest in these templates. I put together a website & got a good keyword filled domain name for the FSBO niche....gave it some solid SEO (wasn't hard since most other sites in that niche had crappy SEO...lol) It took 3 days to put together 10 1-2 page HTML template sites & 5 wordpress theme sites. I priced them low, knowing most of these home owners had a budget of $0. $100 for a 1 page, $150 for 2 pages + hosting cost.

I called some of the FSBO home owners I spoke with & offered them a site. Most took the offer.....I contacted a lot of home owner associations who posted my info at their offices & websites. I posted in many real estate forums & blogs. I also made good use of craigslist. The websites were a big hit & the money I was making from hosting accounts was beginning to pile up.....orders also started coming in from regular home owners who wanted to do what I did, have my MSL listing plus a website on the side....even some orders from real estate agents who wanted to use my templates for easy posting on craigslist...

All in all it took me a just over of a week (8 days) to put together these sites, my site & get them marketed....to date I have sold over 210 one page templates & 118 2 page templates (since late October 2009).....pocketing me in excess of $38,000 in 5 months....+ another $6000+ in hosting fees.....not bad for a long weeks work...plus, it's basically on autopilot now. (except for setting up the hosting accounts, which is what...maybe 10 minutes each?) This in addition to my already thriving offline business is making for a very profitable year...

Just another simple idea that was easy to implement & set on autopilot. In time I will create more templates & add them to the mix....I also will implement a "rental plan". When I first started this I noticed other websites offering some FSBO templates...most were very lame, way over priced & all were not marketed very well....

Won't find this as a WSO next week or next month...I do better at my offline business in a week than I could by working on a WSO anyways.....

Good luck,

~Ken