Real Estate Investing gurus have been peddling websites since the very beginning ranging anywhere from $30-40/month upwards of several $100 per month with sign up fees ranging from “waived with a one year contract” to “$3000+”.

And here’s the kicker, most of these sites are TERRIBLE.

Most of these real estate websites don’t do anything for the investor whatsoever. (Click Here to watch our recent training video on local real estate website traffic)

I can’t tell you how many people I know have bought these websites, spent thousands on them, and have never received so much as a single lead.

The problem is this… MOST of the people selling these real estate investor websites don’t actually know anything about driving real buyer and seller leads, letalone on a local level, which is (a) more effective, and (b) less expensive.

We’re going to focus on setting up a LOCAL real estate investor website in this article because it’s going to be the fastest way to getting real leads that you can actually take action on.

Building a list for an investor-buyer info business is entirely different. You’re looking for people seeking information, many of which will never actually really do anything. In addition, when someone is looking to buy or sell a property, they’re searching on different terms and looking for different kinds of information.

So… WHY A Local Real Estate Investor Website?

Take a look at some of these statistics:

• 87% of Buyers Use the Internet In the Home Search Process

• 94% of Buyers Between the Ages of 25-44 Use the Internet In the Home Search Process

• 45% of All FSBOs List Their Properties On the Internet

• 2.6 BILLION Local Searches Are Done Each Month

What this means is that people are either looking for information in close proximity to where they already are or are looking for information in an area they’re moving to or from…

This is why the “local” aspect is so important.

(For a deeper explanation as to how this works and why it’s important, watch this video as I cover this in particular in the first 10 minutes of the training).

Now, let’s dive into exactly how to set up a local real estate investor website:

Step #1: Get A Local Keyword-Rich Domain Name
Basically, you want to get a domain name that has the local search terms included. For the traffic aspect, we’re not interested in domain names like BobBuysUglyHouses.com or SallySellsFixerUppers.com. We want a domain name with some relevance.

You can buy it at GoDaddy.com or you can do it where you register your website (which might be the easiest route if you’re new).

So, to do this, you can simply go to Google’s keyword tool.

Find out what keywords people are searching on in your local area. You may want to type in your city or county + “real estate” or “buy houses in” your city, county, etc. You’ll wind up with a bunch of keywords and you’ll be able to see the search volume for the particular keywords.

Next, go to www.Bustaname.com and enter some of the most common keyword phrases into their search tool and they’ll return a number of available domain names based on those keywords you entered in.

Step #2: Set Up A Hosting Account
Set up a hosting account that has cpanel with Fantastico. This is important. It will save you time and money over the long haul. And most hosting accounts come standard with this included nowadays.

We use LiquidWeb.com or Hostgator.com, but any hosting company will do as long as your package comes with cPanel and Fantastico. You should be able to pick one up for as little as $5/month.

NOTE: At the time of this article, if you set up an account through Hostgator, they’re giving away $50 in Adwords credits.

Step #3: Install WordPress
Log in to your website cpanel for the local real estate website you’ve just set up (Note: This may take up to 48 hours to be able to see your site at the domain name itself. Your hosting company can tell you how to access it using the IP address in the meantime while you get it set up)

To install WordPress:

1. Login into your Cpanel Account
2. Click the “Fantastico” Icon
3. Click “Wordpress”
4. Click “New Installation of WordPress”
5. Fill in the information

You can now view your site at www.YourLocalRealEstateWebsite.com. It’s a basic, simple site, but it’s a start and you can customize it from here.

Step #4: Set Up An Autoresponder/Contact Management System
When you’re just getting started, you can use a service like Aweber.com or ConstantContact.com. These will work for you up until the point at which you are doing a large volume of email marketing and are quite reasonable in cost, somewhere between $10-$20/month for the database.

Set up a form requesting a first name and primary email address. It will generate “HTML” code. I know that it probably looks like a lot of gobblydigook… Just highlight it, copy it, and paste it into notepad.

Step #5: Login to Your New Website & Paste Your Opt In Form Code Into the Sidebar
Now it’s time to add it to your website. The fastest and easiest place to do this is in your sidebar. You can get advanced later, but the key here is to get you started… to get you up and running quickly.

Next, login to www.YourLocalRealEstateWebsite.com/wp-admin with the username and password you just set up when you installed WordPress

You’re going to want to place this on your sidebar. Here’s how to do this:

1. Click on the tab in the sidebar that says “Appearance”
2. Click on “Widgets”
3. Click on “Text” and drag it over to the sidebar on the right side of the screen (You may also want to add pages and posts as well)
4. Go back to your Notepad document from step #4 and highlight, copy and paste all of that into the text area
5. Save

Now… go back to your site: www.YourLocalRealEstateWebsite.com and you will see the updated sidebar displaying your new optin form along with Pages and Categories.

Additional Tips:
To customize the look and feel of your site and to make it look more professional, go to Google and search for “Wordpress Themes”. You’ll find hundreds of themes that you can use for free and you can install them under appearance.

To give your site more functionality, use “Plugins”. You can install them all right through the WordPress interface and don’t need any “HTML” skills nor do you even know how to “upload” a site.

In future articles, we’ll talk more about how to use Themes and Plugins. But for now, go ahead and get your Local Real Estate Investor website set up so you’re ready for the next step!