The Foundation of Real Estate Success

All of us at some time or another have felt some desire to invest in real estate. I am positive you have witnessed the benefits of real estate investing firsthand in your own life or in the lives of those around you. I would like to help you accelerate your investing success, both in the short term and in the long term. The outline of this process is called the “Foundation to Success.” This program contains the following seven steps:

1. Find your personal motivation for success

2. Identify great investment properties

a. Use competing methods to find properties
b. Use non-competing methods to find properties

3. Analyze these properties in a powerful way using proven formulas

4. Buy the best properties for your portfolio using

a. Other peoples’ money
b. Seller financing
c. Conventional financing

5. Create or enhance equity positions achieved at closing by making both physical and “mental or paper” changes to the acquired property

6. Sell for a profit in the short term, OR

7. Refinance for a positive cash flow and an equity position in the long term

First, the most important part to being a profitable real estate investor is finding a powerful reason to do it!

You can achieve amazing results from real estate investing if you begin by setting the right goals-goals that will push you to
become a successful investor. Some examples of these goals could include:

1.I don’t want to be compelled to work for the rest of my life.

2.I want to become my own boss and make as much money as I choose.

3.I want to be free of any liabilities not related to productive assets.

4.I want to create a college fond for my children/grandchildren.

5.I want to have passive income every month for the rest of my life.

Your first step will be to choose a few powerful reasons why you want or need to be successful. Shape these reasons into goals and seek after the successes that will come from achieving them. Put your goals in a conspicuous place where you will see them and be constantly motivated by them.

I encourage you to begin your investment journey today. Click Here to Send This Page to a Friend

Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

How to Find Out What Your Customers Want, and What Your Competitors Are Up to!

If you’ve read my Insider’s Secrets Course… or even some of my articles, you know that I am a big believer in doing regular web research. There are a number of reasons why regular web research is necessary.

• To find out where your customers and also your competitors hangout. You can find out what your customers are interested in, their hot buttons and their concerns and problems. In order to sell them, you need to find out where they are and what they want.
• To find out what your competitors are up to. What are they doing? What are they selling? What new products are they launching? Find out what they have that you don’t… or what you have that they don’t! The information you find at your competitors’ site is priceless, as it will make or break your business.
• To find out what people are saying about you. If someone is badmouthing you, you want to get in there and defend yourself or your products before too much damage can be done. In order to do this, you have to find out what they are saying and who is doing the “saying”.
• To find out if people are stealing your web content, your articles, your products etc.

Doing web research should not be a one-time or sporadic activity. You should set up a schedule and make sure you check things out on a regular basis. At the Internet Marketing Center, we have an employee who regularly spends time checking out other web sites for competitor activity and copyright violations.

OK… I already know what you are saying… Who has the time!

I can relate… I used to run this business all by myself! At times, it seems like a lifetime ago, but in reality it was only a few short years ago. Time can be a friend or an enemy… and time is one of the reasons I encourage you to automate your business as much as possible.

And doing your research is no different. You can either go to each of the major Search Engines separately… figure out how best to do your research at that particular site… and then type in the same things over and over and over OR you can get smart and use a Meta Search engine, or utility.

Meta Search engines search several other search engines simultaneously, and give you the results in an integrated list..

Meta Search engines can be a real time-saver if you’re looking for results in a hurry. Though they can filter results to a certain degree you probably won’t ever get results as detailed as you would by using an individual search engine. However… you will get results from 5 or 6 or even 250 search engines all at the same time!

Meta Search engines are a powerful way to search the Web!

To better explain this, let me give you an example. Say you wanted to look up “on-line backup services.” You could go to Yahoo.com, GoTo.com, Infoseek.com etc., type in the words “on-line backup services”, and at each site you could follow the links. The problem is, if you go to 5 or 6 Search Engines, you will get some results that are exactly the same, and some that are completely different, and you may end up linking to the same sites over and over again. The faster alternative is to use a Meta Search engine. You type in “on-line backup services” once… and the meta-engine will go to Yahoo.com and GoTo.com and Infoseek.com and others for you. It will collect results from all the Search Engines it utilizes and will compile the list for you. You can tell some of the Meta-engines to filter the results and remove all duplicate sites. Then you can start following links right away, or you can store the list to use later.

Most of the Meta-engines are really fast and will start returning results to you much more quickly than a single search engine could. For example, I did a search on the GoTo search engine and waited 15 seconds to get a page of results. I tested the same search using WebFerret and I got back results within one second that I could go through and examine.

There are two different types of Meta Search engines. The first type works similar to the regular Search Engines, where you go to a web site and perform a search from the site. The second type is a software program that resides on your computer. You launch the program from your hard drive and it connects to the Internet and does the search for you.

And by now, it shouldn’t surprise you that prices range from free to not-so-free and that the usefulness of the various sites and software also range in price!

The results you get will vary. Though some of the Meta Search engines will return some good results, you will still get irrelevant and weird links, because the Meta Search engines depend on the regular search engines for their results. Some of them are better than others at separating the good from the garbage.

With that said, here are a few Meta Search engines to try out.

First, online “search engine” utilities. You must go to their site and access the search service while there. If you like them, be sure to bookmark them or add them to your favorites.

SavvySearch - http://www.savvysearch.com/ lets you build a single search and then apply your query to multiple search engine sites. You can customize your search by choosing from over a hundred search engines and directories you want SavvySearch to use including Google, HotBot, AltaVista, Lycos, WebCrawler, Yahoo and more. Once you select the one you want to use and enter in your request, just sit back and watch as it tallies up the results in front of your eyes!

Ask Jeeves - http://www.askjeeves.com/ can be dangerous when you have to work … Why? Because it’s fun! You enter questions in an honest, real-world “question” format, hit enter and then wait for the results. The fun part is a box that shows you the popular questions other people are asking!

I asked the question “What is a Meta Search utility?” and it came up with four different things that I could have meant by the question… the closest was “What does the computing term Meta Search mean?” Well, I clicked on that, I was directed to a page that went into great detail about Meta Search engines, quoting a lot of the engines mentioned in this article – pretty cool! Not only did I get this information, but there were also links showing the top 10 matches from engines like About.com, Web Crawler, Excite, and AltaVista. This is one of those sites that, if you use it correctly, you can get the quick and definite answers to your questions!

Ask Jeeves for Kids - http://www.ajkids.com/ which is also fun… and at a kid level. Though it returns results with only “G” ratings, they still recommend that you install screening software that prevents kids from accessing web sites that contain adult topics. If you have kids (or if you are one), this is a really great educational tool!

Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com/ uses over 10 different search engines. The big drawback is that it doesn’t eliminate duplicate listings, which is too bad!

Though all of the Meta Search engines listed above can be useful… you will want to seriously consider downloading one of the “software” utilities. I find them to be faster and, because you can easily save and sort results, much more useful. You also don’t have to wade through all the stuff and advertising in order to figure out how to do your searches which is a big bonus!

By far one of the most popular Meta Search utilities is WebFerret. Over 4,500,000 people have downloaded the free version… these users are a testament to its usefulness and popularity. It takes only a few minutes to download the free version http://www.ferretsoft.com/netferret/index.html which is fully functional, and more than most web surfers may ever need.

To use WebFerret, enter your search words and choose from four radio buttons: All keywords, Any keyword, Exact phrase, or Boolean Expression. WebFerret will use your Internet connection to check several popular search engines (Alta Vista, AOL NetFind, EuroSeek, Excite, GOTO, Infoseek, LookSmart, Lycos, and Yahoo) and will return the number of links you specify. It lets you determine the closeness of the match, remove duplicates, and filters pornography and foul language. The results are returned in a list that you can sort, and you can use tooltips to give you more information about a listing. To launch a web page, all you have to do is double-click on the link. The free version displays banner ads, which is what helps to keep it free. It’s fast and easy to use.

Serious researchers will want to upgrade to WebFerret Pro. The Pro version currently utilizes 33 search engines, and they are adding on new ones all the time. The banner advertising is turned off and there are a few additional enhancements for your money.

WebFerret and WebFerret Pro – http://www.ferretsoft.com/netferret/index.html

Though not nearly as popular as WebFerret (yet), do check out the Copernic 2000 Meta Search software.

They have a free version of the software which simultaneously searches over 55 information sources including AltaVista, Deja.com, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, Magellan, WebCrawler and Yahoo. In addition to a search wizard you can also do a detailed search history and highlight keywords. Copernic 2000 displays a relevancy score for each result and removes duplicates automatically. Search results can be saved and viewed off-line.

Click here to get a free download of Copernic 2000 http://www.copernic.com/

The Copernic 2000 Pro Version – http://www.copernic.com  has lots and lots of add-on features, one of which is a scheduling function that enables you to schedule predetermined searches for times that you will be away from your computer! It should come as no surprise that I really like this feature because I believe the more you can automate routine tasks and functions the better!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable online businesses on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources he’s used to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: Online Marketing Tips 

Click Here to Send This Page to a Friend

Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

Northern Place Project Monthly Update: City of Glendale Approval & Land Pricing

Brad Chelton, project manager of Copperfield Management gave this capital investor outline to update us on the Northern Place project:

I.        City Zoning & Planning Board

a.      City of Glendale full approval

II.       Construction Bids

a.      Firming up prices as construction cost seem to have lowered

III.      Real Estate Market Adjustment

a.      Went to the seller to justify lowering purchasing price by $400,000. Received purchase price decrease.

b.     Received closing extension to make sure line of title will be clear.

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Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

The Four Things You Must Know Before You Invest In Anything

Have you ever wondered what successful investing requires? I have found four key ingredients that have made all the difference in my career as a real estate investor.

These four key ingredients are motivation, determination, education, and consistency.

The first ingredient to success is MOTIVATION. Motivation is the catalyst that spurs us to action. Motivation is like the key to a car. The car is worthless if you can’t turn it on and drive it around. Motivation generally drives us in one of two ways: we act either to seek pleasure or to avoid pain. When you find out what motivates you, you can use that energy to start investing. 

The second ingredient to success is DETERMINATION. After we find the motivation to begin investing, determination keeps us going. Determination is like the gas in a car. You can turn the car on, but if there is little or no gas, the car will not function for long. Success and growth strengthen determination. While motivation helps us achieve success early on, determination allows us to have continual success, even through adversity. When motivation runs out, determination continues. 

The third ingredient to success is EDUCATION. Motivated and determined people need education to harness their energy in a successful direction. If you don’t know how to drive a car, the gas and the key are irrelevant. I would like to help you learn how to be a great investor. I have learned important skills and valuable tools that I would like to share with you. Once you know how to drive the car, you can take it anywhere you want to go. 

The fourth and last ingredient to success is CONSISTENCY. A car will only get you where you want if you consistently drive in the right direction. Once you have the motivation, determination, and knowledge, you must then act consistently to succeed. Check your progress frequently and make minor adjustments as needed to make sure you stay on the right path. True personal analysis is necessary to identify which of these characteristics are strengths and which are weaknesses. Your success as a real estate investor depends on making these ingredients part of your life.

Click Here to Send This Page to a Friend

Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

Have Your Own Search Engine

 

Do you have a large site with lots of interesting stuff in it? Is it getting harder and harder to list everything you have and to help your visitors find the information in an easy, logical way? Do you need your own Search Engine?

Well … why not?

You’ve put a huge amount of work into your site and, in spite of your careful attention to making your site easy to navigate, many of your visitors may not be able to find what they’re looking for.

AltaVista, and InfoSeek are just a few of the powerful Search Engines that scour the Internet on your behalf. Now, it is possible to have a Search Engine that indexes and provides information just for your web site. And because your web site is highly targeted (it is, isn’t it?), your visitors won’t have to wade through pages of irrelevant search results!

In addition to offering your visitors a really great service, having your own Search Engine gives you information about what visitors are looking for and what they want. By tracking information about what visitors at your site are looking for, you can further refine your site to give them exactly what they want!

You need a local Search Engine if:

•  
  • Your site is content rich, with many pages and lots of different bits of information.
  • Your site is constantly and rapidly growing, adding new information and topics.
  • The data at your site is getting harder and harder to find.
  • Visitors have to drill down through several levels to get at information.
  • Visitors can’t find information.

For example, let’s say you have a site that focuses on car racing. At your site you have posted page upon page of information about the various race cars, venues, schedules, and race car drivers, along with all sorts of trivia about races past and present.

Visitors to your site may have trouble locating specific pieces of information… such as a bio on Stirling Moss. They might know he is a driver … but past or present? Where would they even start to look? That’s where the local Search Engine comes in, taking your visitor straight to the past racing great, Stirling Moss.

Another example would be if you had a site focusing on health and you featured hundreds of different kinds of health food products and vitamins for sale. Without a Search Engine, a visitor coming to your site for the first time might give up looking for specific information about “lapachol.” On the other hand, if you had your own Search Engine, the visitor would be immediately directed to information on the effects of lapachol on the immune system … and a product containing lapachol.

You don’t need a local Search Engine if:

•  
  • You have a small, easy to navigate site
  • Your site sells one product and you lead visitors through your sales copy step-by-step
  • You have a limited amount of information
  • The information at your site is easy to find and get to

The more information your site has, the more pages it has, the harder it becomes to navigate. The fact is that in spite of your best efforts to make navigation easy and painless, the more there is, the more help your visitors need.

A visitor may have found something the first time they visited your site … but didn’t bookmark the exact page. Now they’re back and looking for this tidbit again… a local Search Engine will help them get to what they want quickly and easily! And they’ll love you for it.

Now, contrary to what you might think, it’s not hard to get a Search Engine up and running. In fact, you could have a Search Engine installed at your site in as little as 10 minutes.

Here is a list of some of the many services available. While some of them are free, some charge based on the number of pages you need indexed:

Freefind’s Search Engine is definitely worth a look. In addition to keeping visitors at your site, it provides your visitor’s with three options. 1) Site Search – enables visitors to search for text strings. 2) Site Maps – gives your visitors an overall site map. 3) The What’s New Page – lets repeat visitors know what changes have been made since their last visit. Easy to install and easy to use … this handy service has received rave reviews from a number of well known web reviewers. And … it’s free!

SiteMiner.com has a free version and a pro version. The pro version comes unbranded and will index your site and store your indexing information in a remote database. When a visitor enters a search into the search form, SiteMiner receives the query, formats the results, and sends them back in an HTML form with links directly to the pages on your site.

IndexMySite4Free is another great Search service. Sites with up to 5000 pages can use it for Free for the first 6 months. If you want to continue using it without advertising after the first 6 months, it costs you a giant $29. If you have more than 5000 pages, you can purchase their services for as little as 1/2 a cent a page per month. You might also be interested in their offline indexing services. And … the thing I really appreciate about this service is their free Search Reports. The report gives you information on how often your site is being searched, and what search terms are being used!

And of course, you can also tap into some high powered and sophisticated technology. However, it is going to cost you!

Take a look at InfoSeek’s Ultraseek Server. You get all the power of a major Search Engine for a price based on the number of pages at your site. If you are interested in trying it out, they have a free trial period, though I couldn’t find any information about how long that trial period is!

AltaVista Search software harnesses the power of another of the large popular Search Engines. They have a free trial download available. You can index up to 3000 documents for free … and then the price goes up dramatically!

My advice is to try your “pick” out for a few weeks … and then if you like it, get the pro service or pay the price so that you aren’t hosting any kind of advertising.

Installing a Search Engine at your site is fast and easy, and it will make your web site look very sophisticated. Most visitors will assume that a built-in Search Engine takes wild amounts of money and expertise. Therefore, this professional look and service will really add “value” to your web site.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable online businesses on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources he’s used to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: Online Marketing Tips 

Click Here to Send This Page to a Friend

Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

The Case For Real Estate Investing

My goal as a real estate investment advisor is to help you improve your life in three main areas: Income & Net Worth, Career Satisfaction, and Lifestyle.

I would like to help you improve your life in these areas by teaching you what I know and then investing with you. Real estate investing can improve your income and net worth.  

First, you can improve your income in the short term by buying and quickly selling properties for handsome returns. Improve your income in the long term by buying properties that produce passive residual income. You can receive passive income without having to manage properties by holding seller-financed notes. Enhance your net worth by purchasing properties below market value. Further increase your net worth as you hold properties long-term and pay them off. Real estate investing can also improve your career satisfaction.

The investment income you receive can augment or even replace your current earnings. Real estate investing allows you to satisfy your financial goals without the interference of bosses and managers.

What you accomplish is up to you—you choose how much you earn. In real estate, you are rewarded for working smarter, not harder. Once your passive income surpasses your needs, you work because you want to, not because you have to. 

Your lifestyle will be forever changed as a result of your hard work and sound investing. When you stop worrying about money, you can make decisions based on criteria other than cost. You will have time to do the things you want: spend time with your family and friends, focus on your personal health, or even go on vacation.

Real estate investing gives you the freedom to be present in the lives of your loved ones while leaving behind a financial legacy to help them become just as successful.

Click Here to Send This Page to a Friend

Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

What Should You Give Free At Your Website

“What kind of information should I have at my website?”

“What kind of resources should I have at my website?”

“What can I offer my visitor at my website to keep them there?”

In the past few articles I have talked about how important it is to give away good information at your site, build credibility and rapport with your visitors and become a good research resource.

You want to become the ultimate one-stop shop for your industry.

You want people come to you looking for information… this gives you the opportunity to direct them to your service or product… so that they end up buying from you.

Your objective is to get lots of traffic and develop that credibility and rapport.

People often tell me that they don’t know what to give away for free. They say they don’t have any information of value, they don’t have any articles and aren’t writers. They insist that they can’t possibly become an information resource because all they have is the one product they want to sell.

Well, you can ALWAYS find an angle.

Let me give you an example. Crayola Crayons. What in the heck kind of information could you give away for free at a Crayola Crayons site? What kind of articles could you write at a crayon site? Well you know what?

They did a great job of it!

Take a look www.Crayola.com for yourself. They know they have three target markets. One is children, two is parents, and three is teachers. So they have created a separate section for each one.

If you are a parent and you visit their site, they have a little section about how to get stains from crayons off your walls or clothing and kitchen cabinets. You can pick out what kind of crayons were used, what kind of material it was used on and they’ll show you the solution on how to get the crayon stain out of that material. Isn’t that a fantastic service? Isn’t that worth something? These are great ideas.

If you are a teacher, they’ll show you all the advantages of using crayons. They have all sorts of teaching games that teachers can print out from their computer and actually distribute in class. These games use crayons but they also teach the kids different things. Teachers love this because they are actually educating their children, and Crayola loves this because they are getting their name out there and are getting people to use their crayons. People end up buying product.

For children they have coloring books and crayon puzzles and games. They’ve got coloring books that you can actually printout. There are different coloring books for different types of products since Crayola has crayons, markers, chalk, and everything else you can imagine. They’ve got lots of free stuff for kids at their site.

Crayola has three target markets that correspond to the three sections at their site. This allows them to track their target markets and reach each of their markets individually. This is very, very powerful marketing.

Crayola found a way to give information and resources to each of their target markets. So don’t think that you can’t do this. Get creative. Open your horizons. Think about it.

• What can you do that would generate a lot of value to your site?
• How can you be a great resource for your target market?
• What do they want to hear about?
• How can you help them?

Giving away free resources and information can make the difference between a winning site and a losing site… so make sure you have something of value for your visitors!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable online businesses on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources he’s used to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: Online Marketing Tips 

Click Here to Send This Page to a Friend

Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

When Is It A Good Thing that the Investment Property Didn’t Sell?

I would like to talk to you about keeping properties for long-term wealth. One of the great fears that people have with investing is that they will purchase property and then not be able to sell it again.

 

Countless investors have purchased a property and then fixed it up with hopes of selling it for a large profit but the property remained unsold. The unsold property dashed their hopes for great profits. This begs the question “Is any real estate investment guaranteed to sell, no matter how good the market is?”

 

We all know that the answer to this question can never be 100% yes guaranteed. If it is true that properties do not always sell, how much of a risk are we taking when we buy a property? Is investing only going to be good until we buy that investment that will not sell and we end up having to keep it long term?

 

This is one of the benefits to my program: it works whether the property sells or not! In fact, I believe that my program works better when the investment does not sell. Instead of worrying about keeping the property, we are excited to keep it.

 

The Foundation to Success states that we evaluate properties, buy the good ones, create and enhance equity in them, put them up for sale, and then sell for a profit or refinance for an equity position. This is the unique part of my program: keeping properties as a strategy for long-term wealth.

 

One of the requirements of true lasting wealth is a great long-term portfolio. This is true because of two main reasons. First, long-term properties with cash flow create passive income, provide depreciation against required income taxes, pay themselves off and appreciate greatly over time. Second, short-term real estate, while it can be lucrative, usually provides profits that we spend living in the short-term. Most of us spend what we make and a little bit more.

 

Having long-term real estate provides great benefits and long-term wealth. Two things usually prohibit investors from wanting long-term portfolios: properties that provide a negative cash flow and the difficulty of property management.

 

I would like to help you overcome those two obstacles NOW! It is easier than you might think, especially if these two things are the only things holding you back from great long-term wealth. Don’t lose sleep over investing. Prosper in the short term and the long term!

Click Here to Send This Page to a Friend

Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

P.s. Get my new e-book “101 Legit Tips To Boost Your Credit Score” Click Here to learn more.

P.s.s. Click here to receive my Free mini e-course for new and experience real estate investors. “7 Steps To Better Real Estate Investing.”

How To Promote Your Site With Specialty Search Engine Directories

I’m going to assume that you have already got your website listed with the top 10 Search Engines. I’m also going to assume that you have already worked very hard to get your website well ranked within these Search Engines.

If you have not yet done this, then the strategy we’re about to discuss is probably best left on the back burner! The most important Search Engines are the top ten (ie. AOL Netfind, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, etc.) – these are the Search Engines that will bring the most traffic to your site, so they should be your main focus!

However, once you’ve done this, it’s time to consider setting aside a few hours to register your site with the appropriate Specialty Search Engines and Directories.

What are they?

Specialty Search Engines and Directories are similar to the top 10 Search Engines. The difference is that instead of focusing on the entire Internet, they narrow their focus to a specific subject or topic range. They will not bring in as much traffic as the big 10 – however, because they “specialise” in certain topics, they will attract a target group of web-surfers who are especially interested in that particular subject!

The Specialty Search Engines may scour the entire web looking for their subject areas, or they may be site specific. The only way you’ll know this is by checking them out individually!

There are also thousands of specialty directories to be found. Yahoo is an example of a “directory” – though most people think of it as a Search Engine! The staff of Yahoo review and categorise hundreds of thousands of sites. As a result, Yahoo is ranked as the number one directory on the Internet. However, Yahoo’s staff deals with thousands of topic areas, so you may sometimes have someone indexing a subject area who is not an expert in that field! As a result, there are thousands of specialised directories that may do a better job of dealing with certain topics simply because they are created by subject area experts and enthusiasts.

The specialty Search Engines and directories can provide you with another opportunity to bring qualified traffic into your website.

For example, let’s say that you have a website called dogsite.com … a site specialising in the topic of dogs (Big surprise!). You have developed your website to be the definitive source for dog information… and now you’re even selling dog vitamins and gourmet dog food! Once you’ve perfected your website and registered it with the top 10 Search Engines (and optimised your position within them), it is worth spending a bit of time registering with the specialty Search Engines and directories who index dog, animal, or pet related information.

However, the biggest challenge you will face is actually finding the specialty Search Engines that you want to register with!

Here are some good places to begin your search:

FinderSeeker bills itself as the Search Engine for Search Engines. You can search by keyword and narrow your search down by Category and/or Country.

To follow through on my dogsite.com example, I searched for “pets” and did not limit my search by category or by country. This search produced over a dozen different Search Engines including “Animal Search” (A family-safe search engine for animal related web sites), “Bulldog.org” (A search engine for information about dogs), “Pet Path Search” (A searchable encyclopedia of information about cats and dogs), and “Simply Pets” (A guide to online pet sites). Basically, I found some great leads!

The BigHub.com also bills itself as the Search Engine for Search Engines. The BigHub.com allows users to search multiple engines, Web directories, and news databases simultaneously. It then produces one simple summary of the results. If you scroll half-way down the main page, you’ll find the search engine panel.

Once again, I searched “pets” … but only received one hit! Disappointing! So I tried “marketing” … and this time I got 19 results, most of them searchable archives.

Beaucoup.com opens with a page of useful search categories. I immediately located “pets/animals” and was presented with a comprehensive list of sites and directories… and several animal related Search Engines. Beaucoup also includes a Meta Search Engine. For those of you who have never heard of this before, a Meta Search Engine polls other Search Engines for your keywords or phrases, producing a list of results for each Search Engine.

Yipe! Is your head spinning yet? Let’s try and unravel this mess….

There are:

• Search Engines like the top 10 ( GoTo.com ) which theoretically index the entire Internet.
• Specialty Search Engines like Animal Search, that specialise in searches for specific topics or subjects.
• Meta Search Engines such as Ask Jeeves that poll a number of the “regular” Search Engines (ie. GoTo.com). Meta Search engines allow you to simultaneously view the results from a number of different “regular” Search Engines.
• and Search Engines such as FinderSeeker that specialise in searching for other Search Engines.

Whew!! We did it!

Try a few of these different search engines, and I think you’ll immediately see the differences between them! The results can vary drastically depending on the engine that you are using.

We’re not finished yet though! There’s more….

Search IQ lists thousands of Search Engines and Directories. Now these people COULD make their site easier to use, but I did manage to find loads of Search Engines and directories about dogs! And a little bonus was the “tutorials” section which had a number of good articles about searching the Internet.

SearchEngineWatch has a limited number of specialty Search engines in their list – it is not as comprehensive as some of the others!

Remember: there is no one thing that is going to be responsible for the success of your website. Marketing and promoting your site is an on-going process! However, taking such steps as registering your site with the specialty Search Engines and directories will help you to build a steady flow of traffic!

Just as a side note, if you haven’t had a chance to check out our Internet Marketing Course It will give you some great tips and tricks on how to best promote your website to the search engines. Check it out, you won’t be dissapointed!

And once you’ve got the visitors there? … Sell them something!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Internet marketing expert Derek Gehl specializes in teaching real people how to successfully start, build, and grow their own profitable online businesses on small budgets. To get instant access to the step-by-step strategies, tools, and resources he’s used to grow just $25 into over $60 Million in online sales, visit: Online Marketing Tips 

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Happy Investing,

Kendall E. Matthews, CRMC
Phoenix, Arizona Investment Real Estate

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