Avoid The Sticker Shock Of Relocating – Real Estate
Avoid The Sticker Shock Of Relocating
Dan The Roommate Man
To avoid the sticker shock of relocating, moving Americans can use the results of movecentral.coms annual moving survey to plan their spending. The new survey finds that movers spend $9,400 on purchases during the three-month relocation period, while renters spend $3,700.
Conducted by movecentral.com and Boston-based Atlantic Marketing Research, the survey polled 22,000 relocating Americans and yielded an average response rate of 4.1% percent. movecentral.com president and CEO Rick Libby presents the results as spending guidelines for relocating Americans to follow throughout the 90 day relocation process.
"Most people dont realize how much theyll spend during the course of a move," says Libby. "Our survey reveals how and where people spend their money, making it easier for them to plan a budget that anticipates surprises."
The survey found the following:
# During 1998 and 1999, 42 million Americans moved, spending $102 billion on move-related goods.
# Homeowners spent an average of $9,400 on purchases; renters spent $3,700.
# 15% of homeowners and 12% of renters stated that they bought a computer within the 8 weeks surrounding their move; homeowners spent an average of $2,160, and renters spent $1,340.
# 12% of all moving homeowners bought a car; 66% of these carbuyers made the purchase within four weeks after moving.
# 57% of owners and 37% of renters bought furniture within the 12 weeks surrounding their move; owners spent an average of $3,500 and renters spent $1,220.
# 35% of owners and 40% of renters bought bedding; of these individuals, 72% did so within three after their move. Owners spent an average of $420 and renters $240.
# 55% of moving homeowners purchase at least one appliance when they move, and 57% of homeowners buy furniture.
# 12% of all respondents with Internet access researched moving companies on the web; 8% researched real estate sites, 7% researched appliances/furnishings and 2% researched electronics, computers and banking services.
# 6% of movers using the Internet for research actually made online purchases; those buying goods and services spent an average of $600.
About The Author
Since 1989 Dan The Roommate Man has helped 1000s of people find roommates. Need help Contact him at 800-487-8050 or www.roommateexpress.com
info@roommateexpress.com
How To Realistically Set Your Fees – Part 5 – Real Estate
How To Realistically Set Your Fees - Part 5
Sue and Chuck DeFiore
How To Raise Your Fees
There comes a time when it is inevitable that you must raise your fees in order to maintain both your profit margin and income level. You will find that the greatest resistance to this comes from your oldest clients.
There appears to be a direct correlation between the length of time a client is with you and the amount of outrage they show to your rate increase. This article will discuss the types of clients and how they usually react.
Keep in mind, no matter how you raise fees, how you approach telling clients or amount of lead time you give them, you will lose some clients. This is a given. I have found over the years that a very high percentage of clients lost are those that Im not crazy about working with anyway. Its worked out, for me anyway, that these former clients who complained the most about your fee increase, were responsible for 85-90% of the aggravation I encountered.
Clients are attracted to you for a variety of reasons. We would all like to think that it is because of our brilliant promotional pieces, our award winning designs, outstanding service, etc. The reality is that many clients are using your services strictly because of price. I refer to these clients as price loyal. They are loyal to whomever has the lowest price. This type of client is not particularly sensitive to quality of work or level of service you provide. They go strictly with the lowest price and if you have the opportunity to examine how they run their business, your see it operates on this principle. For me anyway, this type of client is no loss.
There is a second type of price conscious client that is concerned with the quality and type of service being provided to them. You may lose this type of client with a price increase, but youll find that they will be very apologetic about it. These clients truly can not afford the higher rates. They are usually a dream to work with, and I hate to lose them. In this situation, I will try a number of ways to keep them.
Your newer clients usually react in a more neutral manner to a rate increase. They havent been with you long enough to get a true baseline on your fee structures. You stand a very good chance of keeping these clients if the reasons for the rate increase are explained to them and not just dropped on them.
I find that I lose about 5-6% of my clients when I raise my fees. Usually, I suffer no income loss because my higher rates absorb their loss. Remember, the bottom line is you are selling your time, you must make the most efficient and profitable use of it. If your rates stay around market level, you should have little or no trouble finding new clients.
Copyright 2003, DeFiore Enterprises
About The Author
Interested in having your own successful, home based creative real estate investing business Chuck and Sue have been helping folks start successful home based businesses for over 17 years, and we can help you too! To see how, visit http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com for the latest FREE tips and tricks, educational products and coaching in creative real estate investing and home based businesses. No time to visit the site Subscribe to our FREE "how to" Home Business Solutions Digest, its like having your own personal coach: mailto:subscribeHBS@homebusinesssolutions.com
coaches@homebusinesssolutions.com
5 Tips To Create A Kick-Butt Mini-Course That Pulls In Thousands of Rabid Subscribers… in a Flash! – Real Estate
5 Tips To Create A Kick-Butt Mini-Course That Pulls In Thousands of Rabid Subscribers... in a Flash!
Jim Edwards
One of the fastest ways to develop, build, and grow your own list of subscribers is to develop a "mini" course with an incredibly compelling promise.
I have personally used "mini" courses to build lists of several thousand subscribers in as little as a week.
A "mini" course is simply a series of e-mails where you teach people a specific skill, set of skills, or reveal other information they really want to know.
In the process of providing this focused, valuable information, you prove to your subscribers that you are THE expert in a particular area - and, you also encourage people to pay you to get even BETTER information from ebooks and information products youve either written or recommend.
An example of a "mini" course offer Ive used with great success is the free mini course at www.7dayebook.com that appears in the exit pop up window when you leave the site. The promise of this "mini" course is strong and compelling. Heres what it says...
FREE eBook Mini-Course
"How to Write and Profit from your own eBook...
while youre still young enough to enjoy it!"
All the registration page asks for is first name and email address... and this mini-course has generated thousands of subscribers!
So heres the basic formula in a nutshell: Strong promise+ low risk+ high perceived reward= Subscribers
Now, if youd like to build your own list of rabid subscribers, here are 5 sure-fire tips for creating a mini- course that truly kicks butt!
Tip #1 - The Promise
If you want to launch a successful mini-course, target an audience with a specific need and then make them the biggest possible promise you can deliver on.
People are pressed for time and rarely see as much value in something they get for free as opposed to something they pay a lot of money for.
Add to this the fact that the Internet gets more and more crowded everyday and you can see that the best offers are the ones that grab peoples attention by making a benefit- driven promise they cant resist.
Even though you offer your mini-course for free, you still must SELL people on WHY they should pay you with their time and attention.
Example: If you want to do a mini-course on real estate investing, look for the biggest and best promise you can make for people.
Lets look at these various promises for identical mini- course content:
Good: How to make a fortune in foreclosures.
Better: How to find and buy a profitable foreclosure within 2 weeks.
Best: How to find and buy a profitable foreclosure property in your area within 2 weeks - using none of your own money!
** The promise you make has everything to do with whether or not people sign up. IMPORTANT: After they sign up, make sure you deliver on the promise.
Tip #2 - Dont reinvent the wheel
Look for existing content - your own or other peoples - you can adapt directly or indirectly into the mini-course.
Hey, I understand youre busy... Im busy too!
Why would you want to spend 2 days coming up with all the content for your mini-course if you already have past information you can adapt!
If you dont have any existing material, then find someone else who has written an article and use that for part of your mini-course - with their permission of course.
Youd be surprised at all the pieces of the puzzle that are out there independently which you could combine into a great mini-course without nearly the mountain of effort you might expect.
Tip #3 - Give yourself lots of chances to make money
One way to build more value into your mini-course and make sure people hang onto your messages instead of deleting them is to put lots of quality links into your mini-course.
This allows people to get additional information on specific aspects of the mini-course.
Some of those links can be to free resources, others to resources where you earn an affiliate commission, and still others to your own products and services.
The more links you have that actually contribute to your students learning the subject of your mini-course and fulfilling the promise you made to get them to sign up, the better your chances of them clicking those links.
If you create lessons people save for future reference because they have great links in them, youll make more money!
For an example look no further than your "in-box"! Almost everybody has email messages theyve saved from other people because they contain links to sites you want to use now or access in the future.
Tip #4 - Build anticipation for the next message
If youre going to take the time to put together the mini- course, wouldnt it be great of the majority of people who subscribed actually read your messages!
If you want to launch a successful mini-course, youve got to rise ABOVE the noise of all the other email messages people receive every single day.
One way to do this is to always end each lesson with a small "ad" or excitement builder for the next message. You do this by really playing up a big benefit theyll receive as a result of reading the next message you promise to send them.
Heres an example:
"The next and final installment in this mini-course will give you five tips for how to get 10,000 visitors to your website without spending a dime on pay-per-click traffic! So stay tuned for the next lesson in 2 days..."
Its a simple, yet very powerful way to build anticipation for the next message into EVERY message you send.
This simple step helps make them look forward to the next message so it gets read... not trashed!
Tip #5 - Tell them what they dont know!
If youre using the mini-course to promote a product that covers a much "bigger picture" of the topic as a whole, constantly remind people that the mini-course is just a "tiny piece" of the whole product.
Remind them of what else they need to know and tell them if they buy the product then theyll get this benefit, and that benefit, and even more specific information.
Remember, you didnt publish this mini-course to practice your typing skills! You are in this to make money, to get subscribers, and to make sales!
Once you deliver quality content that gives people a real taste of whats in store when they actually purchase, then its time to close the sale... you deserve it!
About The Author
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...
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