Passive Income Grrl Blog

Setting up a Penpal php-based site, half done

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 22:12:00 +0000

I've started a new project, based on PHPenpals which is a small application written in PHP that ties into MySQL and performs very very basic handling of a penpals website.

I worked on it all today after finding and uploading the software to my test server last night, late.

My plan is to take this basic software and use it as a base for a very specific "pals" website that is online game-related. Instead of finding "snail mail" penpals or email penpals, the people who will be using this site, in theory, will be using it to look for new friends to play with on their online game of choice.

Today's work got me pretty far ahead and I'm very pleased with myself - after many false starts, I found an HTML template that was basic yet attractive enough for my needs (since I can only write basic HTML and cannot write an entire page, and generated pages from programs are often confusing, and don't even get me started on the confusion that are CSS sites...), and integrated that HTML template into the software's layout pages.

Then, I did some poking around and pondering on things, and came up with the information I'd like to gather from new members. This lead to re-working of the database the application had created in its installation procedures, and the creation of a simple SQL INSERT statement to test the new structure.

From there, I went to the website itself, and started working on pages in the order that people would go through them - first the Index page, then the Join page... the Join page has taken a number of the hours today, re-working the Join Form and adding new variables was half the job - tomorrow I'll tackle updating the SQL INSERT statement and test to make sure they work before moving on to the next page to update.

I'm going to start this project as a piggy back off of an already successful endeavor, and have enlisted the help of another web developer to increase awareness of the site once it launches. I'll write another entry tomorrow after I've done another few hours of work on it.

But, tomorrow I have to spend some time working on a "review" blog that I have, because I've recently received a handful of things of which I'm reviewing and wish to take pictures of and write about. So, I'll have to ration my time to make myself feel like I've accomplished enough in both.

Still Passively Earning

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:50:00 +0000

Hello folks! I'm still here. In the background, lingering.

Still earning cash passively through the Internet, through blogging and through Google Adsense.

Life's changed a bunch for me, however, with the seperation of my 9 year relationship and delving out on my own. This summer has been a time of renewal and re-programming.

Right now I'm in the process of going through all of my existing blogs and making a few new entries, and deciding what it is I want to do with the various blogs for the future.

Some blogs need to be moved off of the blogger.com setup and into my own hosting space, where I use Wordpress for my preferred blog server type. I need to import entries and do a bunch of low-key template adjustments - once I find a suitable template! This has proven to be challenging, but I've recently begun looking for 'wordpress theme pack' in Google and came across a few 'packs' that include more than a single theme within them. Widget-ready even!

One of my oldest blogs has over 1000 comments waiting to be filtered through and approved or deleted as spam. I'm actually looking forward to going through that content over the next month or so (I need to set a goal to get through it all, and of course new comments are being added every day) because it gives me a lot of ideas about new entries.

One of the beautiful things about blogs is that once you get them going with enough momentum and get folks leaving comments for you and asking questions, then writing the blog in the first place becomes SUPER easy, because you no longer have to worry about coming up with topics to write about. You read your comments, and topics fly out at you like crazed bats going for your hair.

This blog... I'm not sure what I'll do with it yet. I think maybe until I run into a snag I don't like, I'll keep it where it is and keep contributing to it. Or maybe I'll set up over on Wordpress.com where the tag pages do a really good job at bringing new traffic into the blog.

Hmm, for now, I think I'll make sure Technorati tags are sufficiently set up here, even though the Wordpress category tagging setup is MUCH easier to handle.

Improving monetization of my blogs

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Tue, 10 Jan 2006 15:52:00 +0000

There are a lot of things I do to check on how my blogs are doing online, besides logging in to Google's Adsense page and seeing how much money or how many ad views there have been today.

One of the things I do is check the Search Engine Saturation of my sites, especially new ones or ones that haven't been fully indexed in the engines yet.

Another thing I do is use the competitive ad filter to filter out ads that I don't want to show up on my blogs for whatever reason. Generally it's not because they're "competitive" sites to me, it's because they're pretty much "spam" sites in my mind.

Take for example my online role playing game blogs - I have one for World of Warcraft and one for RuneScape at this time - most of the ads for these blogs are places you can buy gold pieces for real dollars. I personally don't like my sites to be slathered with a whole bunch of companies selling exactly the same thing, I want my ads to be a nice mix of things related to what I'm writing about. So, I do this:

Venture over to http://www.thebizbank.com/adsense-preview.php
Feed in the address of the website I want to review ads for.
Filter the site URLs of any ads that I don't want to have shown on my site
Copy that filtering information across to my Google Adsense configuration

The filter list that comes across needs a bit of tweaking to be most efficient, but not a big deal. It's just better to have

domain.com

in the filtering list instead of

www.domain.com/runescapead.html

which is a false URL btw, but represents what some of the filtered information comes across as. If you just put in domain.com then the filter is broader and more effective. Of course, if the same site offers multiple ad types for multiple things they offer, you're also filtering out those other ads as well. My assumption is that if you're selling RuneScape gold, you're not going to be offering a helpful tips and tricks website too.

I tend to go through this process whenever I notice one of my blogs take a nosedive in earnings. And for some reason that nosedive always seems to occur in the wee hours of the morning, so I wake up to cruddy results in the AM. Ah well, as long as I catch the bad ads and filter them out (ie: I was getting Title Company ads on my RuneScape site for some reason for a few days), I should be okay.

Of course, one day I'll fill up my filter list on Google and I'll have to start a second Adsense account JUST to be able to filter more!! Hopefully not soon however.

First Google Adsense EFT Payment!

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:25:00 +0000

Woot!

After much waiting for the PIN number, and then deciding to change my payment type to EFT immediately afterwards (but after the 15th of the month cutoff date), I've finally received my first payment from Google!

Kind of a shame I didn't get one in cheque format, but the postal system is slllllooooowwww and I just want my money :)

This payment represents my adsense revenues from August 2005 when I started my first blogs through to November 30, 2005. There were 3 main blogs contributing to this balance, 3 blogs secondary in contribution, and 4 other blogs that contributed small amounts or very infrequently.

December is approaching $600 USD on its own. I've fired up a few more blogs in the mean time but nothing is really "hitting" beyond those primary three blogs that contributed to the money I've already earned.

Those primary three blogs still have a long way to go in terms of being represented in the search engines, but they're getting better month by month and the traffic is increasing as a result, and that's what counts!

Google Adsense PIN number arrived

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 18:33:00 +0000

So, I got my Google PIN number last week for my Adsense account. Apparently they send out the PIN number in the regular mail when your account first reaches a $50 balance, and mine reached that around October 21. Of course, by October 31, I was already over $100 and still waiting for the PIN!

It came in this past week, so I went and activated the payout from Google. They're going to send me the first one in a cheque, and then after that I'm having it set up to do direct deposit into my bank account so I don't have to worry about depositing it every month. I wanted that first one in a cheque format, however, so I can do the standard "photocopy and frame" thing. Just from how my silly sites have increased in click-thru value, I can see that this small cheque will be something to giggle at in the future.

I surpassed $100 USD on November 15 this month, and am on track for about $300 this month, I think. Nice little deposit just before Christmas, I'd say!!

I'll write more entries soon about some of the things I'm doing with my websites to increase traffic, or just to monitor it and see how things are going. Keep tuned!

Search Engine Saturation, "hitting the engine"

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:55:00 +0000

I have about 8 blogs going right now on various topics I'm interested in. One of the blogs is a Sims 2 downloadable houses site for the new Nightlife expansion that came out in September, because my best friend loves to make and decorate houses and I can't play them fast enough when she's in creative mode.

I figured about a month ago that I'd make her houses available for download through a blog site because I couldn't find comparable downloads online for what she was making

An Orphanage-type home set up for adopting and raising as many as 3 babies/toddlers and 4 children/teens/adults at one time
The Senior's Centre which was set up to allow couples to "retire" to a lot with other Senior Citizens and a house caretaker to make meals, etc
Houses under $20,000 simoleons - I have had extreme difficulties finding any online - and $20,000 is what new Sims or Sim Families start with unless you intend to use money cheats in the game!

So, I started up the blog and took some pictures of the houses from the outside (roof up), then wrote a description about the features of the house and what type of Sim family the house had in mind when being built, and gave a download link.

I noticed, however, that because my entries were very much like REAL Real Estate and all that, my Adsense Ads were things like "bathroom renovations" and things like that... very off-topic. So... I tweaked the template a little and added some keywords to my entries more often, and posted a few game cheats and posts that naturally lend to use of keywords that attracted more on-topic ads.

Just a couple of days ago, I saw through my regular Marketleap "search engine saturation" searches on my site that MSN put my site in their active database, and by looking at my free stat information and Adsense info, I'm starting to get a wee bit of traffic... more every day. They're searching for homes for their Sims, and a few end up clicking through on other Sims 2 ads as well, which is exactly what I want to see!

Yay isn't this fun :)

My first month of $100 revenue through Google Adsense

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 16:59:00 +0000

Hey, check it out :) :)

I'll post when I actually see the money, as right now I'm waiting for the Google PIN number to arrive via mail to give them permission to begin to release the payments.

Cool! This is working!

Alternatives to Google's Adsense ad program

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 03:50:00 +0000

Adsense is where I get most of my income from that blog that's doing well, but I've found a few times when Adsense isn't enough, because the Adsense bot "can't find enough relevant content" on the front page(!) and the ads then really suck-er-oo.

I poked around online and found AlternateURL, which works well in conjunction with Adsense to ensure there's some kind of paying ad on your site where you wish to display ads. I implemented it about a week ago and although I haven't had very many click-thru's yet nor much revenue from it (1000 views, 6 click thru's, $.33 :) ), I'm pleased with its results, because if nothing else it lets me know just how often the Adsense bot is having troubles with my main page. I haven't implemented this across all of my blogs yet, just some, so far.

I was reading a blog about how to make money with your blogs, and learned about Chitika. It's yet another ad program that publishers can subscribe to, but its ads look definitely different than the Google ones so there's absolutely no clash with any terms and conditions with Google Adsense.

Again, I've only been subscribed with Chitika for a week but already I've had 2500 impressions and - yes its measly - 2 click-thru's, which have generated $.58 for me. Considering it can sometimes take 10-15 click-thru's on the Adsense ads that come up for my site to generate $.50, I'm happy with a few click-thru's and a bit more cash.

We'll see, however, if I ever get actual cheques from either of these places. Will I hit their minimum for payout?

Stay tuned and see! And in the mean time, note that the links in this entry have affiliate ID's attached so if you sign up after clicking through to them, I'll be marked as who referred you and I'll get a bit of a commission. I personally signed up to both of these "under" someone, even though I didn't know who the people were at all. I appreciate good information and good advice, and am willing to share a bit of the money I earn with others in the same boat as me. I hope you share this ideal with me and if you're signing up, sign up with me as the referrer :)

Passive Income From Knowledge

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 23:26:00 +0000

Hey cool. I have been keeping moving forward on my Real Estate stuff, but I've also been writing in a few different blogs, and a few weeks into one of my new ones, the traffic started to pick up rather nicely from MSN.

This is not a lame plug for my other site, so I'm not even going to tell you WHAT site it is. Just that I get about 300 unique visitors a day to it from what I can see in the logs, and because the Ads on the site are unobtrusive and relevant to the content and to what the viewers of my website are seeking, I get a decent click-through, although I'm told the 7-10% click-thru rate I get is "low". I'm okay with that for now, it's bringing in a few bucks a day that wasn't being generated before.

I've got about 6 personal blogs going, under different topics that I enjoy. I like to reflect these different parts of me separately because I find all together, they're too confusing.

The blog that is doing well is a helpful information site for a popular online game that's been running for a few years already, and it's attracting a fair amount of traffic because there are so few sites like it out there for this game.

Right now, MSN is the only one really dishing results for this site, but slowly other search engines are indexing the information and sending people through.

As for Google, I'm in their "sandbox" right now, and I'm quite confident that once my site is fully indexed and listed there, I'll have a noticable increase in traffic just from search engine queries from there.

It's fun to log into Google's Adsense site every day and look at the building income, but now I'm looking to improve the amount coming in, by creating informational blogs on topics that are better-paying and by using more of my knowledge on popular topics to attract return visitors.

I'll let you know how it goes!

Visiting my first houses with RealtorTim

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 22:44:00 +0000

This afternoon was yet another small step towards finding my first passive income through single family homes that I intend to turn into rental property. I met RealtorTim at a house about 15 minutes from my place, near the western edge of the city and we went through the first of four houses we visited this afternoon.

I drove about 30 KM in total, following RealtorTim from the first house to the second, third and fourth. Of course, I recorded my kilometrage, since this is a personal business. I haven't talked to my accountant about how to do it "right" but I'm just starting with recording it and that'll have to do for now.

Two of the four houses definitely had potential to buy, do a bit of fixing up, re-assess, and set the rent at 1% of this newly estimated value. One of the promising ones was "supposed to be vacant" but wasn't, quite yet, but perhaps this does show some kind of urgency in sale. Both of the promising ones have been on the market 14+ days - one 14 days and the other, 88 days.

It took us about an hour and 45 minutes to go through all of the houses and discuss the different parts of them, but was very educational for me.

I've sent an email to TJ to let him know I'd looked at houses and saw a couple that were "promising" but ... now what?? I think I'll also call my advisor line tomorrow and see what kind of advice they can give me. I guess now is the time to "tie up the property" so nobody else can get in there, so I can do my due diligence, and determine whether this really IS a good deal... but I'm kind of hesitant to jump on any of the early "deals" I find... I'm always of the mindset that the first things you see aren't the ones you should choose, unless you've also reviewed a bunch more. When you're first reviewing anything, you can't tell whether it's really good or not because you have no real frame of reference for this new thing. Only time and exposure can give that understanding.

I'm fortunate to live in a city that has a 98-99% rental occupancy rate, I should be able to find a family to rent the property, in theory...

But I'm not sure exactly how to go about things. I figure if nothing else, I have time :)

Jill

Goin' to see houses tomorrow

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 19:24:00 +0000

This afternoon I got some house search results from RealtorTim, and tomorrow we're going to see all five of them in my area. I'll get together with him around 1PM, it'll be the first time I've seen him in person, since he was referred to me by TJ.

I haven't heard back from TJ about going out for coffee with him but I still am setting Thursday PM as my deadline, and considering my appointments tomorrow, I'd better get that done now.

Excuse me :)

Letting the long weekend stall me

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 14:34:00 +0000

This past weekend I really did nothing, other than watch Carleton Sheets DVD's that TJ gave me. I went to listen to my Robert Allen stuff again but my roommate came downstairs to play on her computer and visit with me and the cats, so I put on music instead. There are times when she's perfectly fine with listening to my "take over the world" stuff, but she's had a headache going on for a couple of days so instead we shared background noise in the form of music.

On Tuesday I jumped back on the horse, however, by emailing updated search criteria to RealtorTim and emailing TJ as well, hoping we can get together on Thursday evening. Setting this "date" with TJ gives me a deadline to find all the materials I'm supposed to be getting to him, in terms of finances so he can determine how much $$ we have for our first deal.

I also called another realtor who I saw listed as selling specifically to private investors - foreclosures, rehabs, income property, etc... I left a message with the answering service at about 7:30 PM expecting to chat with the realtor this morning during regular hours, and the guy called me back at 8:30, apologizing for "taking so long"! We set up a tentative meeting for Thursday at 11:30 AM but he didn't have his schedule in front of him so he asked me if he could confirm this morning.

This morning he called at about 8:30 am and confirmed our 11:30 appointment, and gave me the information I need to buzz up to his office once we nailed down where to meet.

I'm quite impressed that he called at 8:30 PM to follow up with my call from earlier, perhaps he'll be someone available on weekends, as well, without this being a big pain for him.

Apparently this guy works 85% with private investors and used to be a private investor himself years ago. This is good information to know, as I know I'm working with someone experienced. I'll have to ask him why he got out of private investing however, or if he even did.

I went for a walk last night around the neighborhood, and I write about it in this entry over in my karate/physical health blog. I noticed that the new private real estate magazine comes out on Friday, I'll grab one of those then and start making calls over the weekend to get some practice in with that.

My First Investment Realtor

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 23:00:00 +0000

Tim's his name. He's a referral from that friend-of-a-friend, TJ, since TJ uses this guy to find some of his real estate deals.

Today Tim called me and we had a little chat about what kind of properties I was looking to get into, and I told him my starting criteria. He called me again about 30 minutes later saying he had 17 hits in the MLS, and he requested my email address so he could email the results. I was to contact him back with the MLS #'s of the properties I wanted to check out, and we'd go from there.

I looked at the properties and realized I hadn't narrowed my criteria for him quite enough - I'll chat with him about that when we're in person next, which might be as early as tomorrow afternoon. At any rate, I narrowed down the properties and came up with four that looked like good deals, one of which had the strong possibility of being a motivated seller. I called Tim and left a message on his machine about the MLS#s of these houses.

Tim called me back after he had quickly reviewed the status of the properties again, and it turns out that the motivated seller property looks like it had been updated to 'conditionally sold', so we may not be able to even go and see it. But the other three look like they're still for sale, so he was going to do further research and see if we could go and see the properties starting tomorrow afternoon.

In the mean time, I need to find our notices of tax assessment from the last 3 years for TJ as part of this "how much $$ do you have for your first downpayment?" question he's helping me answer.

Jill

Found my first real real estate mentor

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 20:22:00 +0000

Excellent!

I went for lunch (sushi) with a friend-of-a-friend, a guy who has been a real estate investor for about 6 years and owns a number of cashflow positive rental houses which have very low turnover and high occupancy complete with tenants who are more respectful of their property because they're paying over $1000/month in rent on an ongoing basis. He's also bought and sold about 30 properties on top of the ones he's retained for passive income. He's in his mid-thirties and has already retired but then came back to work because he got BORED.

Yah, this is an excellent mentor for me to have been lucky enough to be referred to. And as a superb bonus, he's one of those people who finds joy in helping other people get to the same financial freedom he's attained and he offered to walk me through my first couple of deals from start to finish!!! I'm really excited!

He's going to hook me up with some realtors, give me the names of the different lawyers he uses for different aspects of his real estate ventures, and take a peek at some of our personal financials and our house to see if there's equity that can be realized to fund getting the first rental property and postive cashflow situation set up.

My first action from here, once I get the details through email, is to contact the realtors and start getting out there and looking at homes. Since my afternoons can be dedicated to this, I expect to have a lot of "looking at houses" posts coming up very shortly :)

And in closing, I'd like to say that I was pleased to note that one of the laywers I had selected to call on my own was actually one of the lawyers that TJ uses :)

TTFN!

Jill

Slow and steady...

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 19:55:00 +0000

I spent a lot of time on the weekend working on my new business website (not live yet) and on educating myself.

I found a bunch of local sites that gave me information on my city, its laws and real estate associations, and after a few hours of reading a bunch of really great stuff, my head was humming with new information to sort through and store.

I spent a few hours working on my new website as well. I probably worked 20-30 min on my site, then 30-45 min reading and collecting useful informational links online, then back to working on my site again... this tends to be the way I work.

I'm not a strong HTML'er but I can hold my own given a template to start from, so I found a free web template online and started doing my work cleaning the content of the template out so I could put in my own content cleanly. I haven't figured out what my content will be, exactly, but I have a few ideas that are simmering in the back of my brain. I'll post the URL here when the site is launched.

As I surfed around and found sites and articles that gave me reason to think, I created a questions list for the different mentors I have to find. Now that I have some questions, it's easier to be motivated to make the call to start to test some people out for the role.

I called this afternoon and left a message with a local real estate lawyer I found by searching online. I reviewed his bio and history and that of his colleagues and I feel this guy is the best choice. We'll see how it goes :)

Jill

Conversation #1, oops

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 17:12:00 +0000

Oh man, I got some excellent advice from a member advisor by the name of Liz, and I THOUGHT my tape recorder was recording, but alas... I had it on a voice activation setting and for some reason that didn't kick in.

So, I'll try again today with some new questions.

Jill

Recording conversations for my own use

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 17:14:00 +0000

I'd imagine most people wouldn't like to know their phone call has been recorded, no matter for what the reason. But I'm going to record my phone call with my mentor advisor today, just the same.

I am not going to share the phone call, I'm just going to use it for my own things. Specifically, I hate knowing DURING the conversation that I'm probably going to forget more than half of what I'm being told, and I'm going to have to ask again later on. I tried to type up some things that Reid said last night on my first call but I'd really rather just talk and think, not talk, think, formulate and type. Sooooo... I'll record this one.

I'm not sure if I'll be able to record the whole thing however, because my recorder device hasn't been used for about 5 yrs and I'm sure the batteries will die quickly, because they're from the same time period. But it's a start and I'll make sure to buy more batteries - rechargable ones of course.

Speaking of rechargable batteries, who outside of my family remembers the purple-colored rechargeables from the 80's? They rocked :)

I'll post about how the convo went, later.

Jill

Keeping the focus on the seller

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 12:16:00 +0000

I paid just over $25 to put my first classified ad in the newspaper this weekend. Its target audience is those who are behind in house payments and looking to avoid foreclosure or stop the proceedings that have already recently begun. I submitted the ad through a web interface, however, so I don't remember exactly what I put into the ad. I'm hoping I said "Looking to stop foreclosure and save your credit?" as the opening line, because that "save your credit" thing is important.

I talked to a Member Advisor last night - Reid was his name. It was an interesting conversation, quite useful, I will be calling back to bounce my thoughts off of other Member Advisors for sure. I wonder how many of them there are...

At any rate, he reminded me of an important thing I'd already learned in the past, that the focus of what I'm doing needs to be on how it will benefit the seller - that will be a huge difference between myself and others who may be contacting them about selling their home due to their financial difficulties. The big key is to make sure it's clear that while yes, I am a private investor in this business to make a profit, I am also a private investor who believes in finding mutually beneficial solutions even if that costs me some of my profits. I am a problem solver, but I am not looking to get all I can get, I'm looking to help someone out of a difficult situation but still make a profit while doing so.

When people call this weekend as a result of my ad in the classified, I was advised to start the call like this:

(after hello's etc)

Thank you for calling. My name is Jill and I am a private investor here in OurCity. I help people save their credit rating by buying a house being foreclosed on. May I ask you a few questions about your situation?

Of course, I hope to have plenty of opportunity to hone this starting chatter down when practicing against real people on the weekend... and since these people are calling ME, I can be a lot more frank with my questions.

Another important question after finding out about their financial situation will be:

How much, above and beyond what you owe on the property/house, would it take for you to save your credit, selling your home to me today?

This question above I have questions for the Mentors about again, however - they say deals should be done at the kitchen table, in person - not on the phone. But is this question above just a way to determine if this is a motivated seller or not? I could also see it being a question that could open up more conversation about things like CC debt that needs to be paid off, or other loans, etc. I'd imagine if folks are going into foreclosure, they don't have room on their CC's and they're not able to get loans either, so it's an important consideration.

I am looking forward to getting this practice in. It would be neat if I found a good deal as well, but I'm not really counting on it. I still haven't found anyone to buy/sell the homes, and the Member Advisor advised me to option the property to a real buyer instead of another investor, because then I can make more profit, still sell the property under market value, and everyone's happy.

In theory, anyway.

Another productive day

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 22:20:00 +0000

My short term, day-to-day goal with this "real estate thing" is to do four or five things every day that have to do with it. I believe this slowly-but-surely attitude is best for me, and really when I look back at things they'll progress quite quickly even though I feel like I'm laying back in terms of pressure on myself.

Today I did the following things, in no particular order of importance:

Fed some of the goals that were swirling around in my head into My 43 Things To Do List
Made my first call to a realty company in an attempt to start the process of finding realtors to help me find quality investment property
Looked up real estate lawyers in my city, and pondered how to talk to them about my goals. Planning to make this my first question to the Member Advisors I have access to as a result of the seminar I took.
Recorded my bird-dogging attempts to this point
Listed a $25 classified ad with the local newspaper, with a "stop foreclosure" bent. It'll run one day and I've listed my cell phone as a contact number. I plan to chat with my Member Advisors about this before the ad goes into the paper this weekend.
Registered a domain for stopping foreclosure in my local market. I tried to put up a basic one-page site to get the site indexed by some search engines but ran into a temporary snag. Instead I put up a one-page thing on another domain I own (sorry won't list it here) which links to the new domain. This page can be indexed and then at a later time, re-direct visitors to the new domain.
Updated my personal site http://www.somechickslife.com - added a Canadian Real Estate Resources section, complete with a few links to sites I've found useful myself. Added Google ads to the site - text only so they're not flashing or graphically annoying. Hopefully I'll get some click-thru's once in a while, the passive income is the goal after all!

Now I don't feel bad venturing over to my other passtime... Runescape ;)

Things I need to do

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Wed, 24 Aug 2005 17:20:00 +0000

http://www.43things.com/person/valdesta

Neat little site.

Jill

My initial/immediate Real Estate goals

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:51:00 +0000

I've decided I'm going to start with Assignments - that is, I'm going to hunt down deals for private investors according to what they're looking for, and I'm going to pass off the deal to them, getting an assignment fee for my efforts. From there, the private investors will have to deal with securing funds, closing the deal and selling the property, but that won't be my responsibility initially.

I don't expect that I'll be doing too many Assignments before I feel confident enough to do the whole thing myself, but it's a mental place to start that gives me boundaries to work within and goals to acheive and still offers enough $$ value to more than pay for my legwork time.

There are other things I've started in motion as part of making this decision and actually moving forward with it:

I have gotten back into contact with our 'financial guy' (I really DO have to find out what he prefers to call himself and then call him that) and am asking to set up our next in-person meeting within the next week or so, so we can discuss questions I have about the finance tracking I'm doing in Simply Accounting, plus answering my beginning questions about how to do things correctly within my real estate business entity. Also, I'm going to see if he knows anyone who deals specifically with real estate financials who I might be able to work with for RE-specific things. Last time Gil and I met was just over a month ago so we have a lot to talk about.
I've contacted a couple of my fellow students from the Robert Allen course and let them know my intentions to be available for Assignments, and I'm setting up "coffee dates" over the next two weeks to chat with them about their goals and see if I can fit in with them, and if nothing else, chat with them on a semi-regular basis to keep in contact with like-minded people.
I'm getting my non-blog website updated in the back end so I can expand the site to include my Investing hobbies. This site already has content which is well-indexed in search engines and has a growing number of sites linked to it, so increasing traffic should be easier than if I started up a new site.
I'm going to get back into Microsoft Access to start to Db the various bits of information I have - names, contact numbers, house information, etc.
I've looked around for a local real estate investment club but I can't find one online. Joel (passive income buddy) wants to check out some Investment clubs in general, so perhaps we'll do that and I'll see if there's any inside information about clubs that already exist. Otherwise, perhaps I'll see if I can find someone to go in on running one with me.
I called the CMHC and got them to fax me a form that lets me get notified when they're selling property that was foreclosed on in my area, I'll get that back to them and then that'll be another resource to refer to in my hunts.

So far so good. Over the next two weeks I see myself meeting with many many people, having many many conversations, and I should be already in the process of looking for deals for those investors that are willing to back good deals I may find. I am looking forward to moving forward with this.

Jill

RE Seminar, day one

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Sun, 21 Aug 2005 01:26:00 +0000

Wow, what a long day. I'm not used to sitting in one room for so many hours in a day anymore, I'm spoiled in that way.

I got to the seminar location at about 8:40 AM, and while we did have an hour-long lunch and a few 10 min breaks throughout the day, we didn't get out of there until 6:30 PM. Tomorrow promises to be equally long, and while Monday's class ends at about 4:30 according to the schedule, that's still pretty long all in all.

HOWEVER - the length is just fine with me as long as there's good materials being covered and good learnings to be offered. I did, after all, pay a few THOUSAND dollars for this seminar, and I expect to have to give a lot of myself in order to get the full value - but I expect there to be value if I'm willing to give that of myself. And so far I'm NOT disappointed.

Of the three days this seminar goes on, today was the "intro" day, of course, and also the last day that students could back out of the course, get their money back, and give the materials back and go on their merry way. I didn't talk to many people directly during today's opportunities (well, I talked to more people in the afternoon than in the morning), but the 6-8 people I talked to all said they were committed to coming back for the whole seminar.

Initially I equated the commitment in coming back for the whole seminar with the commitment of making this work for them, but I think for some people that's going to be too big of a leap, too much learning for them to do immediately, and unless they're persistent they'll drift off and never do anything with it. For me, however, the commitment of spending this money comes with the commitment for me to make it work. And from what I've been learning today, it's NOT too big of a leap for me, as my learnings from Robert Kiyosaki and Brian Tracy and many many other authors and successful business people have prepared me well for what is going on in this seminar.

If I would have taken this seminar 5 years ago, things would be much different, because my brain was wired differently in terms of looking at jobs, money and my future. The seminar wouldn't have been what I was ready for back then - it would have been interesting and educational but I would have seriously lacked the tools to feel anywhere near confident moving ahead with it. Now, however...

Today we talked about how to find appropriate sellers, assessing their property and then how to go about financing the deal if indeed it's a good deal. My writing this here makes it sound so SIMPLE, but it certainly wasn't. There are many details in there that I just can't write about with any measure of greatness. Check out Robert Allen books, I'm sure it's all in there ;)

We talked about the value of having other private investors "in your back pocket" for deals you can't/don't want to fund yourself - the value of getting a "finders fee" especially for someone who wants to get started but wants to slip their toes into the water more gently than they would if they were to buy a whole house themselves.

We talked briefly about the power of having no assets under your personal name, but controlling assets just the same, but that'll be in tomorrow's discussion of business entities.

We talked about how to start the process of gathering useful information on properties to determine whether they're a good deal or not, and then were given homework to find a property in the paper or online, locally, and make a call and gather information about the property, so we'll have this experience to chat about tomorrow during the day and during lunch during the Q&A period they're holding.

I did my homework, I actually called 2 places, but the first place nobody answered so I just left a message on their machine to call me back. The second place I got a hold of someone and I fumbled nervously through chatting with him about the home but I was dishonest about my buying intentions, not mentioning I was an investor and making it sound like this small house was all my husband and I could afford and that we were in the market for our first house. I wasn't sure how to talk about myself, the guy threw me off by asking right off if I was an agent.

Another thing I have questions about for tomorrow is about how to gracefully get out of a phone call when it's apparent the deal isn't for you or when you're just practicing like we were this first time. I lied about "talking to my husband about the houses we're calling about" as part of my exit.

At any rate, a second homework assignment was for us to call our credit card companies and ask them to drop the annual interest rate on our cards. That will have to wait until Monday or Tuesday as I can't do it through the website (make a request like that, that is) and their offices are closed for the weekend.

But, I DID my homework. I noticed while I was reading through the paper that I found a few potential people to call but I kept on looking even after I found two or three that would serve my needs at this time. A form of procrastination for sure, but I forced myself to get the ONE done (maybe two if the first one calls back?), as that's what needed to be done to get myself started.

One
Step
At
A
Time

Jill

Seminar starts tomorrow, got my materials

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 17:30:00 +0000

Got my materials, got 'em all packed in my backpack, ready for me to go tomorrow morning.

It's going to be a long weekend, I'll miss the opportunity to rest that I normally afford myself on the weekends, but I'll be learning a LOT of great stuff and I'll be excited all the while, and I'll come out ready and raring to go next week.

Ta for now, while I listen to some of the audio stuff that came with my materials.

I'm going to do it.

noreply@blogger.com (SingleGrrl) — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 14:55:00 +0000

I sent in my registration form to the Robert Allen Institute to reserve my spot in the upcoming seminar.

I figure if nothing else, if I don't like what I see after the first full day of the seminar, I can back out.

I hope the seminar is exactly what I'm looking for, however.

I'll let you know how it goes of course!

Jill