Real Estate

A Real Estate Formula
by: Steve Gillman
It was a simple real estate formula. The ads ran in our small-town newspaper for years before I realized exactly what was going on. They were always the same: A house for sale with 5% down and payments of 1% of the purchase price. Maybe a three bedroom home for $90,000, for example, with $4,500 down and $900 per month payments.
When a friend started doing the same thing he explained the process to me. It was a way to get a great return on capital, and it was the opposite of buying with no money down. There is no down payment at all when you buy, because you buy for cash.
The Simple Real Estate Formula
You probably know that when you buy for cash, you can often get a much better price. With no financing contingencies in the offer, and the promise of a faster closing, sellers are willing to sell for less. You can offer $95,000, for example, on a house that might be worth $108,000. If you can't get it for less than, say, $99,000, you walk away - there are always other opportunities.
Once you buy the house, you put few thousand into high-return repairs and improvements. These might include paint, carpet, and maybe asphalt for a dirt driveway. For our example, we'll say you spend $5,000. Let's suppose the house is worth $116,000 now. You're ready for the next important step in this real estate formula.
You put it up for sale, targeting buyers who can't get financing easily. You provide the financing. Because you are making it easy for the buyer, you can get more than the $116,000 value for the home - and do it without paying a realtor's commission. Let's say you sell it for 123,000. The buyer needs a down payment of just 5%, or $6,150, and makes monthly payments of $1230 per month. You charge higher interest than the going rates at the banks, of course.
This is a win-win situation. Your buyer is able to buy a home instead of renting, and you get a capital gain of perhaps $16,000 after expenses, plus good interest. Your total rate of return will often be over 20%!
In our town, the first to do this consistently were a father and son team of lawyers. They saved money by doing their own foreclosures when necessary. Once they foreclosed, they raised the price and sold the home all over again.
They made millions. Did you know that if you can get an average return of 18% on your money, you'll turn $75,000 into more than one million dollars in about fifteen years? That's the power of a good real estate formula.

How to Make Money Online: The Simple, Cheap Way
by: Jamie Clark People are always asking me how I make money online. I’ve been doing it for almost 4 years now and, fortunately, haven’t had to get a “real” job yet (since graduating college). It’s definitely not easy to do, but anyone with some intelligence, creativity, and/or the willingness to do large amounts of research can make a good living on the Web. However, it’s important for newbies to start off small and cheaply. Despite what the marketing “gurus” try to tell you, you really don’t need to spend a lot of money on ebooks and software to begin earning a nice income on the internet. Anyway, here’s an easy and cheap way to create an online revenue stream that I developed for my friends: 1. Choose a profitable topic/theme - There are several ways to do this but one of the easiest is to use Overture’s free bid tool (Tip: It’s always best to choose a topic you know something about…. or at least are very interested in.) 2. Setup a blog - You can use a free one such as Blogger.com or MSN Spaces. This will become your main “site” since it’s really just a way to easily publish content. 3. Start writing high-quality, focused 400-700 word articles DAILY! - This is probably the most important thing you can do for long-term success. You can also use syndicated articles from article directories to “beef up” your site but don’t rely on it. Make sure all articles are based around your site’s central theme. 4. Post your theme-based content to your site/blog on a regular basis - Try to post at least one or two good articles per day. 5. Monetize your blog - Put related affiliate links and Google Adsense on your blog to start making some money. 6. Write and submit good articles to the online article directories - This will get you some free one-way links (great for search engine rankings), increase your site traffic, and help to establish your credibility. 7. Get a low-cost autoresponder and start collecting the email addresses of your site visitors - Offer a useful free report or email mini-course to entice people to sign up. 8. Send out a weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly newsletter with useful information and a couple affiliate links - If you “nurture” your subscriber list well it can quickly turn into your biggest moneymaker! 9. Continue to drive traffic to your site - Submit your blog’s RSS feed to feed directories, submit your main page and/or a few good internal pages to general web directories and theme directories (DMOZ.org is the most important), and trade links with good sites that have related themes. Well, that’s just the beginning! But it’s a great way to get started making money online. In the future I may post an “extended” version of this list with much more detail but I hope this basic list helps you out! About the author:Jamie Clark is an internet marketing consultant, world traveller, health nut, and part-time blogger. You can read more business and marketing articles at his blog: tropicalfruition.com