Real Estate Investing - Creating a Website

A house buying website is a central aspect of my plan to find deals. I wanted to create a website with a catchy, memorable domain name that emphasized one of the benefits of selling to me. My site is: www.3WeeksOrLess.com. Here are the steps that I used to creating a website:

1. Choosing web hosting services. I wanted a web host that was very inexpensive, but had features including:
- Easy site for uploading without having to fight with FTP programs. Many web hosts have their own web based uploading and file management programs that are simple to use.
- Great site statistics. The host I use can give me amazingly powerful statistics that show how many hits I've received, how many of these are unique users, how long people stay to view my copy, which search engine robots have viewed my site, where people have come to my site from (search engine, other website, mail programs, etc), and, if people have come from a search engine, what keywords they used to search.
- Low price: I was looking for a web host for less than $10/month.
- Great customer support available 24/7, and quick responses to email. Since I am new, this is very important to me.
- Server up time >99%. I didn't want a host that has significant downtime because if someone is frustrating trying to find my site because they keep getting the message "server not found" then I will lose customers.
- I chose ICD as my web host. I am very happy with their File Manager, they have excellent site statistics, and their customer service is superb. I get an answer to my emailed questions within 5-10 minutes!.
- If you want to use ICD Soft as your webhosting service, please use my affiliate link at: hop.clickbank.net/?abwolf/icdsoft.

2. Choosing a domain name. I went to http://www.GoDaddy.com to research what domain names were available. I chose http://www.3WeeksOrLess.com because it emphasized that I could buy houses quickly. GoDaddy is kind of a difficult site to use, and it is not the cheapest. In retrospect, I would have bought my domain name directly through my web hosting service. This would have been easier and less expensive.

3. Changing domain name servers to my new web server.

4. Downloading a free web authoring program. I have a Macintosh computer, so the most popular web authoring system (FrontPage) was not an option for me. I did some searching through Google and found a free WYSIWYG HTML editor to download.
In looking for an HTML editor, I found that there were 2 basic types: and HTML code editors and WYSIWYG programs. Code editors allow you to write HTML code directly, so you need to know the code very well and be able to predict how the page will look from the code you are typing. Obviously, this isn't a good type of program for a novice. WYSIWYG stands for "What you see is what you get." A WYSIWYG program allows you to create how you want the page to look, and then basicly writes the underlying HTML code for you.
The most popular WYSIWYG web authoring programs are FrontPage and Dreamweaver. Unfortunately neither of these programs are written for a Macintosh. I chose to use a free program called NVU which I downloaded at www.NVU.com. This program is available for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux operating systems.
I found the program fairly easy to use. However, sometimes the program misunderstood what I intended and made the page look different than I intended. I could fix it by switching to view the underlying HTML code directly, and re-writing the code. This was a process of trial and error, but I was usually able to get it to look right.

5. Writing the sales copy. I wrote my copy using Microsoft Word, then saved it as a text file and imported it into NVU. Writing sales copy is, I think, was the most important step of the process. And the most difficult. Rebecca has been studying copywriting through telecourses, Ebooks, and books from the library for the past several months. She had some templates and some basic tips on writing good copy. I tried to follow them. These included:
- Begin with headlines emphasizing three major benefits
- Introduce yourself, tell your story to connect emotionally with the reader
- Have a shocking statement to get their attention
- List and discuss the benefits of your program
- Include testimonials from satisfied customers (unfortunately I don't have any testimonials to use, yet)
- Include bonuses (I don't have a bonus yet, but I am considering writing a free report about repairing credit, or how to sell your own house)
- Include a rock solid guarantee (I don't have one, yet. I'm thinking of guaranteeing that I offer the best deal available, and allow them the possibility of accepting a better deal any time before closing -- what do you think of this guarantee?)
- Write the entire sales letter on one page. Internet marketers have found that writing copy on a single page increases conversion rates. If you break up your site into multiple pages, people spend time clicking between pages and often never do what you want them to do: buy your product, or, in this case, submit information. With a single page, people only have one choice. So I have one long page with a single choice - to submit the form with sellers information at the bottom.
I still have a lot to learn about copy. My first letter made bold claims -- I wanted to write a letter that was very exciting, urging people to sell to me. I claimed to be able to buy everyone's house in 3 days or less. After getting feedback, many people shared that my claims were not believable. Most people would not believe that I could close on their house in 3 days, and in most cases, given my lack of experience, I probably couldn't. So I completely re-wrote my copy without such bold claims. I decided to stick to the maxim coined by Ron LeGrand: "Don't make promises you can't keep."

6. Write the HTML code. I used the WYSIWYG code editor to make the webpage look the way I wanted. A couple tips to creating a one page mini-site for a sales letter:
- Start by creating a background color, dark or bright
- Create a table with one column and one row, choosing a white background for the table
- Place your entire page within this table. This will create a single column surrounded buy a dark color, directing people's eyes down the page.
- Use a picture
- Make your title large and bold
- Use single celled tables with a different background color to include sub-topics, testimonials, and your guarantee within the page to provide variety
- Use bold and color to offset and emphasize major benefits or shocking statements
- create a form to submit info. I am still working on this process. I want to create forms that save to a SQL database on my server, but I don't know how to do this yet. When I learn, I will post on my blog how to do it. For now, I have a form that when the customer types submit, the information is mailed to my email address. I learned how to do this on the website: http://webdesign.about.com. This site has a page on web forms that explains the process very well.

7. Optimizing my page for search engines. This process makes it more likely that your site will appear on a search engine when appropriate topics a searched:
- Include a page title that uses keywords central to your topic, or to your customers interest: I chose the title "Home for sale by owner"
- Include metatags that list content and keywords appropriate to the topic (my keywords included "house, home, for sale by owner, land, property, selling")
- Use keywords repetively in your text so that search engines can decide your page is relevant to your topic
- Use the alternative text for all your images to repeat your most importan keywords. The alternative text to my picture is "house for sale by owner".

8. Uploading the page to the server. With my webhost, I use the file manager to upload the program. For the file to come up to your home webpage it needs to be named "index.html". For example, my index.html file will show up at http://www.3weeksorless.com. Files that have other names (such as "OtherName") will show up on the website with a "/" following the home webpage name (for example: http://www.3weeksorless.com/OtherName).

9. Continuous improvement. I have made many changes to my website as I've corrected bugs, improved the copy, or responded to feedback. I just upload a new index.html, replacing the old one.

This entire process took me one weekend (about 30-40 hours), with significant help from Rebecca.

Please let me know if there were questions about how I created my website that I didn't answer.

Thanks, and good luck with your own website. Feedback on my website is always appreciated!