The Internet is a powerful marketing tool, but just how can a real estate investor make the best use of Web pages?

We've spent some time experimenting with Web sites and we've found a couple of ways that they can be useful.

First.. we just don't believe you can effectively use Web sites to find motivated sellers. It least you can't find them consistently. How many motivated home sellers do a Google search for "fast home buyer"?

We have two Web sites. Web site #1 serves two purposes...

First it acts a brochure. It explains that we buy and sell property and cash flows of all kinds. It reveals the names of the principal players in our company. It gives our address, phone numbers and email addresses.

We place the URL for this Web site on all our promotional material... letter head, business cards, flyers, newspaper ads, etc. It does not produce home sellers, but it does help to establish our credibility with sellers we find through other means. They can check the Web site and learn we are real people with a real business.

The second task that Web site #1 performs is to present the homes we have for sale and for rent. We create a page for each with well written copy that contains the property's address.. and nice photos of the house, yard, nearby parks, shopping areas and schools.

When a potential buyer or seller contacts us we can refer them to those pages. This saves hours of time answering questions about location, price, number of bedrooms, etc.

What about Web site #2? We use this page to help recruit "bird dogs". We feel that an important part of every investor's marketing program should be an ongoing effort to find people who will search out motivated home sellers for us.

Where ever possible in our marketing material we include this line... "We will pay you CASH to find home sellers!" Then we will include the URL of our "bird dog" recruiting site. We do the same with inexpensive ads in penny-saver types of publications.

You will find an example of our bird dog Web page here: http://lease-option-sub2.com/reward.htm

We don't spend much time on these sites after they are up and running. The only pages that change on a regular basis our are homes for sale and rent pages. They take just a few minutes to add and delete.

Any work on Web pages that takes more than a few minutes is taking you away from more important marketing tasks. Keep it simple and keep moving toward profit producing projects.

Mark Walters is a real estate investor and author with Web pages at: www.lease-option-sub2.com and www.CashFlowInstitute.com