Ultimate Wealth

There are lots of cable television shows these days that feature “flipping” houses for profit that make it seem like just about everybody’s doing it. For the uninitiated, flipping a house means buying a house at one price, then improving it in a short amount of time to sell it again quickly for a substantial profit. Most people who flip there first house have dreams of making an enormous profit very easily, but it’s not that simple. Complications almost always come up, and you have to be very aware of the area, what the market will bear and which improvements are worth the investment to flip a house successfully.

You need to find a house that fits several criteria in order to make a healthy profit at flipping. Some of the things you need to take into consideration include:

Is the neighborhood a growing or improving one that buyers will be interested in?

Are the improvements or repairs needed ones that you can do within a reasonable budget?

Can you pay for the needed repairs/improvements and still net a good profit?

Is the area one that will appeal to a wide range of buyers?

Are there any problems that just aren’t fixable (bad location, a foundation that is sinking and can’t be shored, etc.)?

How many other houses are for sale in the immediate area (too many, and the market glut will drive the price of your house down no matter how nice it is)?

Locating a home that fits your budget and criteria means research, and lots of it. Many people who have flipped successfully say the best way is to simply drive around mid-range neighborhoods and look for the slightly run-down homes with solid bones that have been on the market a bit too long. The owners are usually anxious to sell, and the most buyers avoid fixer-uppers, so you can negotiate from a firm position. Also check out Sheriff’s Sales, banks that handle foreclosures and online auctions.

Of course, even after you purchase the property you have plenty of work to do. Be sure you set up a budget in advance and resolve to stick to it when doing repairs and remodeling. Remember, the goal isn’t to turn this into your dream home, but a solid, saleable property that will net the highest possible profit for you. Have a complete home inspection and get bids for any repairs that you can’t handle yourself, such as upgrading wiring or dealing with dry rot. Next, determine what jobs you can do yourself or with the help of friends to save money. Finally, shop around for the best price on materials and haggle whenever you order more than one thing (say, tile and cabinets) from one supplier.

One of the most common mistakes a novice at house flipping makes is choosing top of the line everything, thinking that this is what will sell the house. Quality is always a good selling point, but only within reason. There is a bell curve to this - after a certain point, you start to lose money if you’ve purchased luxurious upgrades that aren’t necessary. For instance, if you’re remodeling a house in a mid-salary neighborhood with primarily starter homes for young families, buying granite countertops and solid cherry bathroom cabinets will mean you will end up pricing the real estate too high for the market to bear in order to get your investment back. Instead, consider attractive, durable laminate countertops and oak or pine cabinets.

On the other hand, if the home you are flipping is in an exclusive neighborhood where most other homes have the best of everything, those granite countertops may be a must-have. How do you know what is best for the particular home you’re flipping? Go to several open houses in the area and see what the standard is, then talk to realtors about what they feel are the most sought-after features for buyers in the price range you are anticipating selling the house for. Generally, you don’t want to be the most expensive house in the neighborhood, but you should shoot for the upper end of the scale.

Being aware of what buyers want also means that you should remodel with in eye toward appealing to the greatest possible number of buyers. This means keeping things practical and neutral, not tailoring the house to your own personal tastes. You may love rich, bold colors in every room, but most home buyers prefer to see walls that are in a warm neutral shade such as eggshell or taupe. The same goes for fixtures - if you install fixtures that include color inlays or have elaborate detailing that either is extremely elegant or (at the other end of the spectrum) ultra-casual, you may put some potential buyers off. Sticking with what’s simple and classic is best and will multiply your chances of a quick sale.

If you plan to continue flipping houses, but sure to establish a rapport with your contractors, suppliers and the inspectors you deal with. You’ll need their help and goodwill in the future, and it’s always a safe bet they’ll return your calls more quickly if they like and respect you rather than if you are yelling and demanding things. In fact, if you find a good contractor or supplier, it can often pay for you to establish an informal agreement with them that you will use them for any future flips in exchange for some type of consideration on their part - after all, they want that steady work or those steady orders from you.

Finally, although some flippers will try to sell a house on their own when it is finished, a realtor can be your best friend. Realtors are professionals at getting the word out, generating interest in an open house, and talking up your property to other realtors. Again, if you decide that you want to flip other properties in the future, let the realtor know this. He or she may very well lower his or her commission in exchange for the promise of future listings from you.

Good luck and happy flipping!

I just wrote a post about everyone else making so much google adsense revenue the other day and lo and behold, I break my first $100 day with google adsense!

Its so bizarre but maybe there is a hidden message in there somewhere. The power of intention maybe? If I keep going this route though I’ll be stepping into steve pavlina territory, so I leave that to him. Check his site out if your getting into the thought/matter “think and grow rich” sort of stuff. It’s a great site.

Actually I signed up for his million dollar experiment a while back.

Back to the google adsense revenue. With this last day happening, I am almost frozen. The problem is, I have not done anything different than usual. What that means is if I do not know what caused the spike in adsense revenue, I cannot duplicate it or increase it on demand. That’s a terrible business model. If you don’t understand why then you should be reading the James Brausch blog. He is all over systems and I learned a lot from him. I’m sad to say that I actually was not ready at the time for everything that man new. So I backed off. Unfortunate.

So if your making $20 a day from the adsense program your probably looking for some adsense tips. Well guess what? I used to spend a lot of time looking around the net for adsense tips too and this is what I have chosen to use on my sites.

• Lighter url color than main ad

This is something I learned in the google adsense video series.

• The wider the ad the better

There is more text to read and so I believe the reader can see the information they want is only a click away.

• Large rectangular block
• Ad inserted into the content and not on top.
• If it doesn’t affect the reading experience, place your high paying keyword into the title tag.
• Keep trying to boost traffic. This is the biggest thing. Yes conversion is important but without traffic you get nothing. Nothing to measure, fix, adjust or make money from.
• Give people what they want and they will come back to read more, and click.

Another thing you want to keep in mind is that if you can find a high converting product that tightly matches the theme of your website, it will pay better than adsense. If you get 400 clicks at fifteen cents each you have made $60 in google adsense revenue. However if you have found something that converts at 2 percent and sells for 35 dollars then you can make 280 dollars a day.

Finding the product and losing the google adsense revenue while testing is the hard part!

You know sometimes you just dont know how good you have it. I was out looking for google adsense alternatives because I thought I wasnt making any money, or not as much as I wanted at least. Then I come across people bragging about making $1400 a month in adsense . According to problogger over 50% of adsense publishers make less than $1000 per month. There is a chart there you can look at also.

I dont know how long most of those site have been on the web but the site that I make my money on has been online for about 5 years now. All I have done is write about what I love which is fitness. Most people that would read this article have done thier cost per click research and know that fitness is not the killer cost per click that some other topics pay out at but that doesnt matter. I couldnt write the content that I wrote over a 5 year period on something that I didnt care about.

Making money with your website starts of as something to do, not survival. If it was survival, you would starve to death before you made any money. To make money with adsense or any of the google adsense alternatives you have to have traffic and traffic takes a while to build. If you have nothing of interest to read about on your site, you simply will never build any traffic. This is why your site should be about something you love. Something that you need to put down and get out of your system. That way even if the money doesnt come, you are still fullfilled. If you invest time writing for an google adsense topic that pays out well but you despise, then you are going to fizzle out before the money pours in.

Now in my travels I also ran across weblogs. These guys are making $600 a day through google adsense?! WOW. Now that is what I call passive income. They have been using adsense as a revenue source since 2004. That was a kick in the pants for me seeing as I’ve been using it longer and am not making half that. Of course I dont get a million page views either, so there in lies the secret. Worthy content, leading to lots of traffic and tons of clicks on your ads.

I need more traffic and then I can write a post about making $200 a day in google adsense and everyone will link to me! GOAL: Increase traffic by 50% to play with the big adsense dogs!

Shortly after I met my mentor he asked me, “Mr. Rohn, how much money have you saved and invested over the last six years?” And I said, “None.” He then asked, “Who sold you on that plan?”

It is better to be a lender than a spender.

To become financially independent you must turn part of your income into capital; turn capital into enterprise; turn enterprise into profit; turn profit into investment; and turn investment into financial independence.

Financial independence is the ability to live from the income of your own personal resources.

If you depend on your company to take care of your retirement, your future income will be divided by five. Take care of it yourself, and you can multiply your future income by five.

I remember saying to my mentor, “If I had more money, I would have a better plan.” He quickly responded, “I would suggest that if you had a better plan, you would have more money.” You see, it’s not the amount that counts; it’s the plan that counts.

If you were to show me your current financial plan, would I get so excited by it that I would go across the country and lecture on it? If the answer is no, then here’s my question: “Why not”? Why wouldn’t you have a superior financial plan that is taking you to the places you want to go?

I used to say, “Things cost too much.” Then my teacher straightened me out on that by saying, “The problem isn’t that things cost too much. The problem is that you can’t afford it.” That’s when I finally understood that the problem wasn’t “it” - the problem was “me.”

The Bible says that it is hard for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven. It doesn’t say that it is impossible!

Credit Statement to be included in Reprints:

These quotes are by Jim Rohn, America’s Foremost Business Philosopher. To subscribe to the Free Jim Rohn Weekly E-zine, go to www.jimrohn.com or send a blank email to subscribe@jimrohn.com Excerpted from The Treasury of Quotes by Jim Rohn. Copyright © 1994-2005 Jim Rohn International. All rights reserved worldwide.