Playing sports my entire life I’ve grown up loving competition. I compete at everything I do and when there is not a competition going on I’ll most likely create one…paper football anyone? I don’t win all the time, but I always give my all. I believe that competition is really the only way to push yourself to the next level. Whether i’m playing basketball with my friends or trying to beat your last 5k time I crave the competition.
It irks me to no end to see society taking away competition in our lives. Not keeping score in our kids town leagues or giving everyone Participation Trophies…REALLY??. No wonder why there are so many people growing up with an entitlement mentality. Experiencing the pain that goes with losing is how we learn and build character.
I used to play a lot of sports video games growing up (shocker I know) on Nintendo, Genesis and the Xbox. The football, baseball and hockey games I loved the most where the ones that I would actually lose sometimes. I wanted the thrill of close games, fighting for a playoff spot and even losing on last second field goals. Beating the other team by 100 points in Madden was not fun at all.
I don’t give up until I succeed because the battle to get to the top is the fun part. Plus that feeling you get when you finally achieve a hard fought goal is like nothing else in the world. Getting my lead generating websites to rank highly in Google search results is going to be one of those battles.
Must be in the top 3 spots
It has always been said that if you want your website to get leads through organic traffic your website must rank in the top 3 for your main keywords. At the very least you need to be on the first page. I’ve seen the stats and completely agree with the notion. I myself rarely click on anything past the first few sites when I do a Google search.
Not only do I agree with it but I can now confirm this as well. From around February 25th till March 11th, Google was kind enough to jump my SellYourNJHouse.com website up into the top 3 for some of my main keywords. I found this out because I suddenly started getting many more “Congrats! you have a new Lead” emails from my investor carrot lead website.
Since I started up the website back in June 2013, my average leads per month have been around 5. Over that two week period I got 17 Leads! That is about a 700% increase over what I was getting previously.
Dropped back down
Unfortunately the euphoria didn’t last forever and my site returned to showing up mostly on the second page of Google. From what I understand, this is common for sites that are becoming relevant but don’t quite have the credibility (backlinks and age) just yet.
As I keep adding to the site and building backlinks I will slowly regain my first page status. What will also happen is that my rank will become more consistent and I won’t bounce around like I just did.
The experience was huge validation for what I can expect once I get to the top of Google Rankings. What would this mean in the long run? Lets do some math…
- 8.5 leads/wk (based off my 17 leads I got over the 2 weeks)
- 42.5 leads/mo (based off a 5 wk month)
- 442 leads/yr
How does this compare to my direct mail campaigns?
At my current response rate of 5% for direct mail, i would have to send out almost 9000 letters.
- @ $0.60 per letter I would have to spend $5400/yr ($450/mo)
- Lead Website = $600/yr ($50/mo)
My Cost per lead is…
- DM = $12.22 ($5400/442)
- Website = $1.36 ($600/442)
Did I Get Any Deals?
The one question I’m sure you’ll ask is…”Have I gotten any deals yet?”. The answer is…. No. However the quality of the leads has been better then my direct mail campaigns on average. You still get tire kickers, but what you NEVER get are people calling you to tell you to stop mailing letters to them or to YELL AT YOU for being a lowly scumbag.
Remember, they sought you out by doing a search. They are interested in selling their house. What you have to do now is figure out how motivated they are and are they willing to sell at price we need to buy at? What I also always need to remind myself is that I am building a relationship with them. They are more likely to contact me again in the future if there motivation increases.
P.S. – If you have any lead generating website questions feel free to post a comment or send me an email at scott@strugglinginvestor.com