Real estate is a profitable industry, but you don’t need to buy and sell actual properties to make money. All you need is a website. However, there are advantages to being an investor. For instance, when you’re an industry insider, you’ll know what kind of content will get the most attention, and you’ll be able to offer the best advice.
Regardless of whether you’re an investor or not, here are some tips to help you make money from your real estate website.
If you’re a landlord, build a portal for your tenants
Whether you’re a residential or commercial landlord, your tenants will appreciate having an online portal where they can submit requests and pay their rent or send you general communications. This will keep you profitable in several ways, primarily by making it easy for tenants to pay rent on time and in full, and by making it easy to report repairs.
When tenants have an easy way to report repairs, they’re more likely to tell you when something needs attention, which means you’ll avoid a lot of costly problems.
For instance, when a tenant doesn’t report a leaky roof, that leak can rot the roof and drywall and cause thousands of dollars in damage. However, when a tenant can simply go online and fill out a quick form, they’ll be more likely to let you know what’s going on.
When you make it easy for your tenants to get their needs handled, you’ll create stronger relationships with your tenants. Having a portal for tenants to communicate with you will make them feel valued, especially when they can see the progress of their requests.
Nail the technical details early
The earlier you set up all the technical aspects of your real estate website, the better. For example, start your search engine optimization (SEO) campaign early and don’t stop.
Even if all you do is acquire one backlink per month, and produce one new article every two weeks, keep the momentum going. If you cease your SEO efforts, you’ll fall behind your competition in terms of where you show up in search results. If that happens, you’ll get less traffic to your website.
Also, pay attention to technical details from the beginning. For instance, make sure your website is built using proper code so that it doesn’t get omitted or dropped from Google’s index. Check the spelling and grammar for all of your blog posts before publishing them, and set your page and post URLs appropriately.
Some other technical details to manage early on:
- Create only authoritative content. Whether you’re a true real estate expert or not, make sure your content is authoritative. If you can’t create it on your own, consult with someone who has the experience to help you create truly authoritative content. People will know if your blog contains true expertise or information collected from Google searches.
- Be consistent. Consistency is a major key to profitability. Not only do you need to be consistent with how often you publish content, but you also need to be consistent with your branding and imagery. Every aspect of your website will be perceived as part of your identity, and you’ll want to make sure your website’s aesthetics fully represent your brand.
Create exclusive content
One of the easiest ways to make your website profitable is to offer exclusive content to members for a monthly fee. You can essentially create as many membership levels as you want, but ideally, it’s best to keep it simple. Three levels should be more than enough, but if you can keep it to one level, you might get more members.
Usually, having multiple tiers for memberships is more effective, but it depends on your exclusive content. If you don’t have different levels of value, multiple options might deter people from joining as a member.
With a real estate blog, you’re probably better off with one membership option that gives people access to exclusive content, like in-depth articles that explore niche topics.
Profitability is determined by quality and marketing
Your profitability will be determined by the quality of your content and your ability to market your offering(s). You can have the best offer in the world, but you need to present your offer to the right market in a convincing way to be profitable.
So, be sure to focus on developing your offer as well as how you market your offer, whether you use PPC ads or rely on organic search traffic.
