Author's articles

The people you need to assemble your dream team

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

A good business needs a good staff, just like a good sports team needs good players. That’s common sense. I have a dream team and that makes my life much easier. My staff includes my ...

Structuring a short sale on an REO property

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

With short sale houses, you’re dealing with the bank’s loss mitigator. You agree to a purchase price and you’ll be working with a short sale package. The package that you should always have at closing ...

When you need to pull potential tenants' credit reports

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

When we get a potential tenant buyer for one of our lease option houses for sale, we have the right to go online and pull someone's credit report. It costs me $12 and it takes ...

Make sure to address basic repairs on your property rehabs

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

We all like to talk about the fun stuff with our rehab houses. We like to show the before and after pictures of our new kitchens with the shiny new cabinets and the stainless steel ...

Keeping all applications will help fill future vacant houses

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Applications are important; they are what start up the business relationship. Everybody in a real estate deal has to fill out applications. Your housing application has things you have to ask like name, address, phone ...

Why your real estate business needs to have systems

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Having sound business systems in place is truly the key to have success. Even if something where to come up that you didn't have a system in place for, just create the system on the ...

What to look for when hiring a contractor for real estate rehabs

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Always get recommendations and reference with contractors you hire. You don't have to get references from another real estate investor; there are tons of places you can go to find out who the best contractors ...

What to consider when you prepare the promissory note

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

I would suggest almost everyone have their closing agent prepare the promissory note and that’d be the normal way. I’m just telling you exactly the way we do it so that you know. What we’ve ...

The best ways to handle common property rehab jobs

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

As you know my main strategy with real estate changed from a buy and hold mentality to more of a buy, fix, and flip. When I get a house, there are certain things that I ...

Make your real estate advertisements more effective

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Most people don't truly understand advertising. I have heard of people who started to advertise in the paper and didn't have any idea about what to say in the ad. The average company today wastes ...

Make your eviction policy clear to your tenants

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Starting out in real estate is never easy. I have herd stories about people who were running their business out of a pickup truck. They'd call their tenants and ask for the rent. The tenant ...

It pays to be disciplined with your collections

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

My attorney goes to eviction court on my behalf. There are a couple levels. One of them is the first cause of action. That is where I get possession of the property. I have had ...

Eliminate real estate chaos with check sheets

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Every time you implement a little system in your office, you have just eliminated a little chaos. I have found the best way is to implement systems through the use of check sheets. I would ...

Affiliate marketing with web 2.0

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

In order to unlock your potential using what is commonly referred to as web 2.0, you must first understand at least in a basic sense, what web 2.0 is. In the earlier days of the ...

Use long tail keywords to narrow down your affiliate market

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

If you have ever searched for a topic on a search engine, you have no doubt found that you sometimes have to search through several pages of topics to find what you are looking for. ...

Buying traffic for your affiliate site can boost sales

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

We've already touched on a few ways to promote your site to increase the traffic. Article posting and social networks are a great place, but if you want to kick it up a notch, there ...

How to keep people on your e-mail distribution list

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Know, like, and trust. How many times have you read those words in my tips? Now you're going to find out exactly why those three words are so precious in internet marketing. When somebody knows, ...

Split test your affiliate squeeze pages to see what works

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Split testing, also known as A/B split testing, is used to compare the performance of a squeeze page, webpage, banner ad, or anything else you may think of to do, with another version of itself. ...

Setting up your affiliate auto-responder

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

You may have used an auto-responder and didn't even realize it. Have you ever signed up for a newsletter or anything similar that sent you daily, weekly, or monthly emails? That was an auto-responder. You ...

Using banner ads to benefit your affiliate marketing

By Alan Cowgill · 13 years ago

Picture you own a restaurant and you need to sell a certain percentage of the special of the day. How are you going to accomplish that? The waiter may tell you what the special of ...