If you have been around the real estate investing game for a little while you may have heard about a company called Investor Carrot. Well, I finally decided to give their website a chance this year and have been impressed, to say the least. For that reason, I wanted to write my Investor Carrot review, so that you can see exactly what this platform can do for you.
Full Review of Investor Carrot
I intend to cover not only why you need a website for your business, but also deep dive on what InvestorCarrot offers.
I hope that you find this information useful, as I wish I would have known all of this several years ago!
What is Investor Carrot?
First, let us did into what Investor Carrot is.
According to their website they are “The #1 Inbound Online Lead Generation System For Serious Real Estate Professionals”.
In laymen’s terms, that means they help you build websites, that show up on Google when people are searching to sell their home in your market. They make it very easy to set these websites up, and I received my first internet lead within the first 60 days of setting up the platform!
OnCarrot has made setting up your own real estate investor/agent website quick, painless, and affordable…now let’s dig in to why this matters!
Do Investor Websites Actually Work?
Well, I built my Investor Carrot website less than three months ago, here is a look at my traffic right now.
378 visitors and 2 leads in the month may not make you dance for joy…but for a website to be able to do that within three months of launching is incredible!
Oh, and one of those two leads is going on the market for $325,000 with my agent, and I will get paid around $1450 as a referral when it sells. Assuming that one deal closes, it will cover all of the expenses of running this website for almost two years!
Therefore, in my opinion, yes, Investor Websites absolutely do work!
Over time the leads will continue to grow, and the cost of maintaining this website will not.
Why Do You Want a Website to Generate Leads Anyway?
I love the fact that when you have a website setup properly, leads come to you.
The fact that you’re able to put some content out on your Facebook page, and blog, and it will generate leads 24/7 no matter what you’re doing, is great!
To answer the questions succinctly, you want a website to generate leads because it is passive, and scalable, without requiring any additional work from you.
Why Investor Carrot Leads are the best!
Let me ask you a question.
Have you ever cold-called homeowners? Maybe you’ve sent direct mail, or even done some marketing with text messages to ask people if they want to sell their home/
Now, you can absolutely generate leads this way – I know I have – but you can also get told to “go F@ck yourself!” from the person on the receiving end of this marketing.
Why do you think that is?
Well, it is because you are asking people who may not have any desire to sell their home…to sell it to you for less than it is worth.
With a website like what Carrot offers, you will show up on Google when somebody searches for “how do I sell my house fast in (city, state)”.
The people who are going to your website and filling out the form to request information are actively looking to sell their home.
Who do you think is more likely to sell their home to you? The person you had to try and convince to let you buy their home, or somebody who is actively looking for someone to buy their house immediately?
Personally, I would take the person who is looking to sell their home any day of the week.
People who reach out through your website are motivated to sell, and convert at a much higher rate than most leads.
OnCarrot Features
There are a myriad of features on Carrot that are all centered on one thing – making it easy for you to generate leads in your sleep. Here are just some of the features included with your membership:
- Hosting – As I covered in my guide to blogging hosting is what allows your website to function without crashing when you generate a lot of traffic. Normally, you have to choose a hosting site, and pay for this on your own, but with Carrot, it is wrapped into the membership.
- OnCarrot Training – Investor Carrot has some really cool training available to boost your traffic, and lead generation even more! This traffic is tailored to your website setup, and will absolutely help you generate more leads in your sleep. Here are some of the great training programs they offer to help you take your online lead generation to the next level!
- Craigslist Ad Templates
- How to Get Leads Through Facebook
- Optimize Your YouTube Channel
- How to Use Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Effectively
- Content Marketing Strategy
- 90-Day Action Plan
- Some Great Webinars!
- Stats – At the click of a button you have access to statistics that will show how well you’re website is performing. This includes where your leads are coming from (Google, Advertisements, Facebook, etc.), Which page of your website is getting the most views, which pages are generating leads, number of visitors, average visit time, percentage of mobile vs desktop viewers, etc.
- Leads management – You can keep tabs of your leads inside of your investor carrot website as well. You can move your leads through their system in order to monitor them and make sure you are not forgetting to follow up with people who filled out your forms. I still recommend utilizing a full-blown customer relationship management (CRM) software like REsimpli if you want to take this business seriously.
- Content marketing – Content marketing is huge in today’s world! Investor Carrot offers some great articles about content marketing to help you step up your game, and you can also upgrade to their high-end program in order to receive better articles.
- Keyword tracking – You can utilize Google to track your analytics and keyword ranking, but it is definitely nice to have all of this housed locally on your site. Their keyword tracking allows you to see how you rank for “sell my house in (city, state)” or whatever other keywords you wish to rank for. In order to utilize this you will have to upgrade to a pro membership.
- All websites are mobile optimized too – I don’t believe there is much need to expound upon what this means. Sometimes it is a pain to mobile optimize your website, but thankfully OnCarrot does this automatically!
Setting Up Your InvestorCarrot Website
Investor Carrot makes it easy to set up your website. They walk you through the entire process step by step.
The first thing you’ll do is choose what type of website you want to build based on your goals.
They have website templates for:
- Real estate agent leads (for buyers and sellers)
- Motivated house seller leads
- Cash buyer leads
- Rent to own tenants
- Company credibility
- Not buyer and seller leads
- Land buyer leads
- Land seller leads
- Owner finance leads
- Mobile home seller leads
As you can see, the ways you can use Investor Carrot are vast!
Next, you attach the domain name you want to use which should take 5-10 minutes to setup.
*You can purchase a domain for cheap here*
Next, you simply tweak and personalize your website design and content. This can take an hour, or several days, depending on how detailed you want to be. It doesn’t need to be done all at once though.
Once you choose your membership level, and choose what kind of investor website you would like to build, Investor Carrot will hold your hand and guide you through the entire process.
As you can see, Investor Carrot literally walks you through the setup step-by-step. You do not need any prior knowledge about web design to do this, and it really is simple!
Managing your Leads on Investor Carrot
I was going to walk you through managing my leads with images, but I realized there was too much personal information on it. If I redacted all of the info, you wouldn’t get anything from the images.
Instead I’ll just say that the lead management piece of these websites is very simple and straight forward. Personally, I recommend linking it to REsimpli – or whatever CRM you choose to use – in order to keep all of your leads in one centralized location.
Is Investor Carrot Worth the Price?
Surely by now you’re wondering what the catch is. Well, it isn’t free, if that is what you would like to hear.
The Core membership, which is probably all you need when first starting, costs $69/month.
I know that for a new investor this might seem daunting, but I promise you that I wish I had built this website sooner!
At the more expensive levels ($99 and $199 a month respectively) you get a lot of bonus features, including blog posts and content written for you, so you don’t have to spend time creating it.
This will save you hours every month!
In my opinion, these websites are absolutely worth the cost. For less than $1,000/year you have a platform with minimal downside, and unlimited upside for generating leads.
Personally, I spent over $4,000 on direct mail outs last month, over the last 6 weeks. So yes, I think $1,000/year for marketing is absolutely worth it!
Here are all of the plans they offer
My Personal Investor Carrot Website
Here is the home page of my personal Investor Carrot website.
There are a ton of ways for you to set this up, and they all look pretty awesome to me.
I would definitely suggest taking a little time when you sign up and updating some of the copy on these templates.
Simply changing a few words here and there to make it sound more authentic, and like your voice, can make a huge difference for sure!
I Received My First Lead from Investor Carrot Within 2 Months!
I haven’t received a million leads, or made a billion dollars through Investor Carrot…yet.
I have, however, received 1-2 leads a month, and one of them should be getting listed by my agent in the morning!
Is An Investor Carrot Website Right for You?
Ultimately, that depends on your goals.
If you do not have a specific market, or are happy working with wholesalers in your market, maybe you do not need a website like this.
If you want to generate off-market leads to purchase in a specific market, I would say this is necessary.
TL;DR Investor Carrot Review
Investor Carrot is a platform that specializes in helping you generate online leads through organic search results in your market.
Pros of Investor Carrot
- Generates leads while you sleep
- Ranks on search engines fairly quickly
- Once it is setup it is fairly passive
- Online leads are more motivated than people you are reaching out to unsolicited
- You need a website for your business, why not use one that will generate leads too!
Cons of Investor Carrot
- Ummm…it isn’t free?
Honestly, at this point the only real downside I have seen is that it costs a little more than building a wordpress website from scratch. It also takes WAY less time, and is much more effective. Sure, you could be a little more customized with your own web design, but that might not be a good thing unless you’re an experienced web designer, haha.