• Finding Motivated Sellers. In order to make a substantial profit, investors must offer a purchase price substantially lower than the Seller is willing to accept. If the Seller doesn’t negotiate with you on price or terms you are wasting your time. Move On!

Determining the Maximum Allowable Offer MAO. This formula allows real estate investors to determine the MAXIMUM price they can offer the seller and still make a profit.

• Determining the Property’s Repairs Costs. Sellers are usually motivated to sell their property because the asset or themselves are in a state of distress. As investors purchase multiple properties they get pretty good at determining the cost to bring the property back online.
• What is the After Repair Value APR? What will be the property’s value be after cleanup and repairs are done? You need comparables to assess the property’s value. The Multiple Listing Service MLS is a fantastic source for retrieving sale and property information but:
  • MLS is only available to Realtor Associations.
  • You have to be a Realtor Association Member.
  • Costs money to be a member:
    • Realtor License Fee.
    • Association Membership Fees.
    • Continuing Education Fees.

What if you don’t have access to the MLS to determine property comparables or COMPS? How are you going to determine a property’s value if you don’t have access to information about the neighborhood?

• Repair Costs.
• If you are financing the deal, Principle and Interest or P&I and closing costs.
• Monthly Fees like:
  • Electricity and Water Access.
  • Insurance.
  • Taxes.
• Determine the After Repair Value APR.

you will need to plug in these numbers into the MAO formula to determine your MAXIMUM Offer Price.YOU MUST never, never, never, ever go beyond that price or you will lose money and the MAO price is only good for 90 days! It is based on a three month window.

When a customer has bought one product, draw them toward another purchase by making them aware of your full product line. This can be a catalog or a simple list. Let them know there are other products along the same lines as the one they purchased. You could, for example, suggest other cookbooks to customers who have purchased a cookbook from your site already. You can increase your sales by tailoring your product offerings to their purchasing trends.

It is important to estimate the ratio of visitors to customers to see if your site is effective. Many companies have tools that you can install on your web server to track visitor behavior.

High-quality graphics will increase attention when you are selling products on your site. Customers are more likely to buy from you if they can see a clear example of what they’re ordering. Be sure to add functionality that lets customers upload their own product images. Using a “before and after” picture is a great strategy.

One way to become an authority or subject-matter expert is to compile a relevant glossary on your website. This can help your customers figure out what they need to know, making them more likely to visit your site again. You will gain a lot of traffic and trust if people that are looking for these definitions stumble on your site.

Give people in other countries the option of trying another version of your site. Offer visitors the option of choosing their own language when viewing your site. This will broaden your customer base and get traffic from all over the world. To do business with you, a customer needs to be able to read and understand your website in a language familiar to them.

Incorporate an automatic electronic signature into your emails as it portrays a more professional image. Since your signature is essentially your cyber business card, you need to hand it out at every opportunity. You can increase traffic and revenue to your site by offering to show people your business via email.

Internet marketing is an ever-changing phenomenon and researching up-to-date techniques will prove helpful. Find a mentor, online or physical, that you have faith and trust in. A lot of very good Internet marketers are willing to provide expert advice cheaply or even for free. Chose a system that is going to work for you, and give it a solid effort. It may start slowly, but it is definitely worth the time you put into it.

Email can be a good marketing tool. You should design your newsletters to draw in and excite your customers. Your goal is to give subscribers the feeling that your emails are useful to them, not spam messages. By sending customers newsletters, you can stay in touch with them after they have left you site, thus, making them feel appreciated.

A feedback box at the bottom of an ad copy can be implemented, allowing consumers to provide you with information as to why they chose not to purchase from you on that day. There are a lot of reasons people might not want to make a purchase, from not liking the way you write, to being uncomfortable with your guarantee or your prices.

Apply these tips to your own business. Solid knowledge will build a strong foundation for network marketing success.

Fight Foreclosure: Make ‘Em Produce The Note!

Using the “produce the note” strategy is something all homeowners facing foreclosure can do. If you believe you’ve been treated unfairly, fight back. We have created templates for a legal request, a letter to your lender and a motion to compel to help you through the process.  Read the step by step “how to” under the videos.

Special note:  In some states, a lender can foreclose on your home without going to court.  These are called non-judicial foreclosure states.  You can still use the “Produce the Note” strategy in these states, but it takes a few more steps on your part.

Produce the Note – Steps To Follow:

WHO OWNS THE NOTE?

Your goal is to make certain the institution suing you is, in fact, the owner of the note (see steps to follow below). There is only one original note for your mortgage that has your signature on it. This is the document that proves you owe the debt.

During the lending boom, most mortgages were flipped and sold to another lender or servicer or sliced up and sold to investors as securitized packages on Wall Street. In the rush to turn these over as fast as possible to make the most money, many of the new lenders did not get the proper paperwork to show they own the note and mortgage. This is the key to the produce the note strategy. Now, many lenders are moving to foreclose on homeowners, resulting in part from problems they created, and don’t have the proper paperwork to prove they have a right to foreclose.

THE HARM

If you don’t challenge your lender, the court will simply allow the foreclosure to proceed. It’s important to hold lenders accountable for their carelessness. This is the biggest asset in your life. It’s just a piece of paper to them, and one they likely either lost or destroyed.

When you get a copy of the foreclosure suit, many lenders now automatically include a count to re-establish the note. It often reads like this: “…the Mortgage note has either been lost or destroyed and the Plaintiff is unable to state the manner in which this occurred.” In other words, they are admitting they don’t have the note that proves they have a right to foreclose.

If the lender is allowed to proceed without that proof, there is a possibility another institution, which may have bought your note along the way, will also try to collect the same debt from you again.

A Tennessee borrower recently had precisely that happen to her. Her lender, Ameriquest, foreclosed on her in July of 2007. About three months later, another bank sent her a default notice for the mortgage on the house she just lost. She called to find out what was going on. After being transferred from place to place and left on hold for lengthy periods of time, no one could explain what happened. They said they would get back to her, but never did. Now, she faces the risk of having her credit continually damaged for a debt she no longer owes.

FIGHT FOR FAIRNESS

This process is not intended to help you get your house for free. The primary goal is to delay the foreclosure and put pressure on the lender to negotiate. Despite all the hype about lenders wanting to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, most borrowers know that’s not the reality.

Too many homeowners have experienced lender resistance to their efforts to work out a payment structure to keep them in their homes. Many lenders bear responsibility for these defaults, because they put borrowers into unfair loans using deceptive, hard-sell practices and then made the problem worse with predatory servicing.

Most homeowners just want these lenders to give them reasonable terms on their mortgages, many of which were predatory to begin with. With the help of judges who see through these predatory practices, lenders will feel the pressure to work with borrowers to keep them in their homes. Don’t forget lenders made incredible amounts of money by using irresponsible practices to issue and service these loans. That greed led to the foreclosure crisis we’re in today. Allowing lenders to continue foreclosing on home after home, destroying our neighborhoods and our economy hurts us all. So, make it hard for your lender to take your home. Make ‘em produce the note!

STEPS TO FOLLOW

A. If your lender has already filed suit to foreclose on your home:

1. Use the first form. It’s a fill-in-the-blank legal request to your lender asking that the original note be produced, before it can proceed with the foreclosure. In some jurisdictions, the courts require the original request to be filed with the clerk of court and a copy of the request to be sent to the attorney representing the lender. To find out the rules where you live, call the Clerk of Court in your jurisdiction.
2. If the lender’s attorney does not respond within 30 days, file a motion to compel with the court and request that the court set a hearing on your motion. That, in effect, asks the judge to order the lender to produce the documents.
3. The judge will issue a ruling at your hearing. Many judges around the country are becoming more sympathetic to homeowners, because of the prevalence of predatory lending and servicing. In the past, many lenders have relied upon using lost note affidavits, but in many cases, that’s no longer enough to satisfy the judge. They are holding the lender to the letter of the law, requiring them to produce evidence that they are the true owners of the note. For example:

• In October 2007, Ohio Federal Court Judge Christopher Boyko dismissed 14 foreclosure cases brought by investors, ruling they failed to prove they owned the properties they were trying to seize.

B. If you are in default, but your lender has not yet filed suit against you:

1. Use the second form. It’s a fill-in-the-blank letter to your lender which also requests they produce the original note, before taking foreclosure action against you.
2. If the lender does not respond and files suit against you to foreclose, follow the steps above.

UPDATE: CNN features The Consumer Warning Network and the “Produce The Note” strategy. Borrowers are putting this plan into action and getting results!

Consumer Warning Network Featured on CNN

THE LATEST: Borrower wins more time to fight foreclosure! At a court hearing Tuesday, a Pinellas County, Florida Judge denied Wachovia the right to proceed with its foreclosure against borrower Jacqueline O’Brien (profiled in the CNN story).  Instead, O’Brien was granted a continuance, as she pursues the produce the note strategy.  Wachovia expressed interest in renegotiating the terms of the loan, rather than continuing the court battle.  We’ll keep you posted!

- You will not use your personal profile for your own commercial gain (such as selling your status update to an advertiser).

- You will not send or otherwise post unauthorized commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.

Lots of people post about their company, promotional programs, or links to articles they’ve written. There is clearly a commercial gain in these profile updates. Anything related to your work, company products and services, etc, could be classified as spam.

This places many hundreds of thousands, if not millions of users in violation of this rule and subject to having their account terminated.

- If we disable your account, you will not create another one without our permission.

Also:

- You will keep your contact information accurate and up-to-date.

And you have no right to your name if it is similar to a trademark.

- If you select a username for your account we reserve the right to remove or reclaim it if we believe appropriate.

And:

- You will not tag users or send email invitations to non-users without their consent.

You have to get prior consent to send non-Facebook users an invite?

Clearly, many of these rules aren’t easily enforceable but they provide Facebook with plenty of potential reasons to disable virtually any account. For example, who hasn’t sent an invite to a non-Facebook user?

You can be in violation of the user agreement for not updating your cell phone number within two days:

- In the event you change or deactivate your mobile telephone number, you will update your account information on Facebook within 48 hours…

Be careful, you could lose important rights to your own content. If you place Facebook’s share button on any web page you give Facebook the rights to use that content on Facebook, even if no one actually shares your content! Facebook has the right to license that content to anyone it wants and to make money from it!

… you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (”IP License”). This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it
If you have created a Facebook application, watch out if it’s successful:

- We can create applications that offer similar features and services to, or otherwise compete with, your application.

The takeaway is: beware if you use Facebook for commercial purposes of any kind. You could lose important rights to your intellectual property and inadvertently assume new liabilities that leave you vulnerable to legal and financial claims.

Bloggers spend many hours elaborating text, trying to create the perfect blog post.  Know that images are very important in your post and with the right SEO  optimization can lead to an increase of traffic. Intelligent bloggers know to take  advantage of every tool that can increase their blog appeal to search engines. More  listings for your blog in search engine’s results equals more trafficking and if you are  selling something, then it means a rise in customers.

SEO Optimized Images

Here are some tips on how to use images in your blog posts and increase your traffic through SEO (Search Engine Optimization):

1. Naming it right

Just because your camera names the pictures you take “DSC_0236.jpg” that does not mean is the best name for that picture. Search engines will not find them and even if they do, they wouldn’t know what to do with them. Optimize your photo and image file-names by renaming the file to something distinguishable like “funny-cat-eating-burrito.jpg” before uploading it to your site. The image name has to be descriptive, but do not overdo it with a 10-word title.

2. Use Alternate Text

In addition to being helpful form an usability point of view, search engines use the alt attribute field to determine what is the image about. If the field is left blank, search engine will not know what to make sense of that image and probably ignore it. If you are using WordPress, it is simple to change the alt information. Upload your image using “Add image” function, and then in the “Alternative Text” field write information about the image, again using your descriptive keywords.

3. Title Tells it All

The title is what shows when your cursor hovers over an image. Fill that information in the same manner as the alternative attribute field, using the same method form the “Add Image” function in WordPress.

4. Use The Keywords

Some bloggers, or should I say many of them, tend to forget to use the keyword in the main body of the text. If it’s in the title and image names and attributes it is not enough. If your blog is about earrings made of ivory, then you should mention that phrase several times in the post, and illustrate it with photos ivory. The photos and images should be named and title attributes, should all support that keyword phrase. SEO is common sense. If you think what people would type into Google, Bing, Yahoo or other major search engines, to get to your site or post. Use that phrase or keywords without overdoing it.

Using LinkedIn groups is a great way to be found on LinkedIn because you must be found in order for it to be effective. You must be found! If you don’t, then anything that you have to offer or contribute isn’t being taken advantage of, isn’t being utilized,

1) Using the group function is one of the best ways on LinkedIn to get found. Find the groups that interest you and join them. Some groups are open to all, others you will need to be accepted first.

2) You use the groups to find conversations to join and comment. Go to the groups that have the same type of interests that you do, or where you believe your best clients and customers are going to be hanging out. If they’re hanging out there, the likelihood that they’re asking questions is good. If they’re not asking questions, they might be commenting, so you want to comment too.

3) Take a look at the questions that people ask and find where you can add value. You can go in and answer questions. How many times have you searched for something online and found an answer that someone else provided? It ma not even have been from an authoritative site, it just may have been on Yahoo answers and it was the answer that solved your problem. Find the questions you can answer, and that you can answer in line with your product or service. Become known as an expert in your field

4) Ask the questions yourself. I’m sure there are things in your business that you don’t have the answers to. None of us have all the answers. Go in and ask questions of people; how they’re doing, and you may find that you get a wealth of information. People loved to be asked questions about their product or service. I know that when I ask questions, I get people coming back and telling me their problems and concerns, then I’m able to answer them for them. So, ask questions, it’s very powerful.

5) Support and syndicate others’ content. You know how you feel when you make an absolutely great post or a great comment and it appears like no one is looking at it or doing anything with it. Well guess what? That starts with you. Go out there, find the information from people in your niche who are doing something that’s complementary to your product or service. Support and syndicate their content. Tweet someone elses’ comment. Comment on their comment. Use DIGG, Facebook and 100’s of other platforms available at the click of a mouse. Syndicate and support those people who are in your niche in a complimentary area.

Why Pinterest?

One word – traffic. Shareaholic posted a study of referral traffic in January 2012 from more than 200,000 publishers with a combined total of over 260 million unique monthly visitors. The top five social referrers were Facebook, StumbleUpon, Google, Twitter, and Pinterest. Note that Google in this reference is only for referral traffic from products, not organic search or AdWords. This means that Pinterest beat YouTube, Reddit, Google+, LinkedIn, and Myspace combined for referral traffic.

Site Traffic

As for their own traffic, Google’s DoubleClick Ad Planner shows an estimated unique visitors (users) for January 2012 as 21 million worldwide. Their demographics information is summarized as follows:

Hitwise also shows that the top 10 social sites for the week of February 11, 2012 are Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Yahoo Answers, and Pinterest in the United States. This means that Pinterest beat LinkedIn, Tagged, Google+, Myspace, and Yelp.

Facebook App Usage

The Pinterest Facebook app, according to AppData has over 2 million daily average users. The app’s monthly average users has grown from over 6 million to over 9 million in the last month.

Pinterest Pin It Button Usage

BuiltWith also shows the Pinterest Pin It button is being added to a growing number of sites daily in the following industries.

If your site has lots of great images but no Pinterest share button, get it on the Pinterest Goodies page. It’s called the Pin It Button for Websites, and it’s about halfway down the page.

Pinterest vs. Tumblr

One of the most common debates that seems to surround Pinterest is whether people should be using Tumblr instead. According to Google Trends, Tumblr is leading in overall traffic, but Pinterest is quickly gaining on them.

Tumblr is currently winning in traffic volume globally, but Pinterest is slowly edging ahead in the United States. Alexa shows Pinterest’s rank as 19, while Tumblr’s rank is 23 in the US. Pinterest also seems to show a more engaged audience over Tumblr with a lower bounce rate percentage, meaning that Pinterest visitors stick around longer.

Brands like the Travel Channel that use both Tumblr and Pinterest may already be seeing higher sharing on Pinterest than Tumblr. Their latest post, a photo of La Digue Island, Seychelles (sourced from their own website) had 59 repins and 15 likes on Pinterest vs. 4 reblogs and 5 likes on Tumblr. The page on their own site only has 17 tweets and 7 Facebook likes.

Pinterest for Tech Brands

When you read descriptions about Pinterest, they almost always include the words weddings, crafts, and home decor. A recent article on TechCrunch gave 7 reasons why Pinterest isn’t ready for tech brands. So the question is, can tech brands find success on Pinterest? The answer is simply yes.

The fact is, tech is already on Pinterest.

• One popular user, Chad Syme has over 141,000 followers. His pin board on Technology has over 309,000 followers.
• Top tech brands like Apple, Microsoft, Intel, and IBM have images from their domains pinned by other users on Pinterest.
• Technology has its own category on Pinterest.

So what if you’re a tech brand that doesn’t sell products? Then you’re next best bet is infographics. Infographics are visually stunning images, and visually stunning images do great on Pinterest. You can see a sampling of the current infographics on Pinterest.

5 Additional Marketing Tips for Pinterest

Once you’ve created your profile on Pinterest, there are some simple things you can do get the most out of the network for increased brand exposure, traffic generation, and even online reputation management.

SEO 101 for Pinterest

I always love to check out the on-site search engine optimization possibilities with social networks. Some networks (like Google+), use particular parts of your profile as your profile page’s SEO elements (title, meta description, keywords, etc.). On your Pinterest profile, the on-site SEO elements are as marked.

This means that the name you put in your Pinterest profile is most likely to come up in search, and any additional keyword optimization for your profile will come from the names of your boards. And don’t miss out adding a link to your website on your profile, along with links to your Twitter and Facebook.

The following are the on-site SEO elements for your pins.

So far, the source URL for pins are dofollow, so the more pins you receive of images on your website, the better the link juice and traffic from Pinterest. Also note that whatever you enter as a description for your pin will also become the image ALT tag for the image you pin.

See Who is Pinning Your Images

If someone has pinned something from your website, you can find it by going to the following URL – just replace domain.com with your domain.

http://pinterest.com/source/domain.com/

You should do this for a number of reasons, including the following:

• See what images do the best from your website. A quick perusal of the images shared from the KISSmetrics blog shows that infographics are a hit!
• Thank those that have pinned your images. This is great for boosting brand loyalty as people love to be recognized by the people and brands they love.
• Look out for online reputation management issues. This pin of a product from Dell.com complains about the cooling system. To top it off, it’s pinned on a board called “Products I Hate” which makes it the equivalent of a bad review on any other social site.

See How Other Brands Use Pinterest

If you’re not sure how to use your Pinterest profile, check out other brands who are using Pinterest. This user has compiled almost 400 brands on Pinterest. Scroll through to see a brand like yours, then check out their profile to see how they use the network.

Always Use Images on Your Website

If you don’t already, be sure that every page possible on your website and every post on your blog includes at least one image. One of the comments I received about my latest post, The Ultimate Guide to Guest Blogging, was from Tom Treanor. He said…

By the way, I just pinned it to Pinterest, my current favorite curation tool. I’m glad you included a picture so that would work.

So be sure to include at least one image, preferably something people will find appealing or informative so they can add your content to their pin boards on Pinterest. This will increase the likelihood that you will receive traffic from Pinterest.

Teach Your Visitors How to Use Pinterest

If you want visitors to pin your images, you might want to start with teaching your visitors how to use Pinterest. It doesn’t have to be anything complex – just a simple visual guide (maybe as a blog post) on how users can sign up for Pinterest, add the Pin It button to their browser’s bookmarks toolbar, and add a pin from your website. The more users you can turn on to pinning your images, the more images you can have discovered on Pinterest.

Track Your Pinterest Traffic

Just like you would with any other social network you invest time in, you should track your Pinterest traffic in Google Analytics. If you use advanced segments to find out which online marketing strategy drives the best traffic, then add Pinterest.com to your social media segment. This way, you can see your Google Analytics data based on all social networking referrals, including Pinterest.

Look your social media referrers with your goal completions to find out if the traffic you are receiving from Pinterest, or any other network, is actually valuable for your website and your bottom line.

Are you using Pinterest for your business? What other tips would you suggest for anyone trying to get the most out of Pinterest?

When it comes to mortgage lead generation, you can’t take it lightly. This is because it can definitely make or break your business. If you got the wrong leads, then it means you’ve wasted not only valuable time, but also money and energy. If you go with the right mortgage leads, it means a boost in your profits and growth for your enterprise. Moreover, if you don’t already know it yet, you have more than an 80 percent chance of selling another product to your existing customers rather than finding new prospects. 

What you need then is a clear lead management system that allows you to be more organized when it comes to your prospecting efforts. There’s a small chance of errors and wasting your leads in the long run if don’t get organized. Here’s a look at what mortgage lead generation is all about, from tracking, managing, and implementation.

Lead Generation

The first step in lead management is lead generation. This refers to the act of gathering prospects. This is also where your marketing campaigns come in. After all, how can you entice your prospects to notice your business without some form of marketing? 

You do have several options when it comes to your marketing efforts. You have Internet marketing (which is the craze these days) and offline advertising. You can also ask for help or support from mortgage lead generation companies. It’s their job to look for leads for your business. They can often offer a number of lead options like annuity lead generation and the like. All you have to do is to get in touch with them. 

Other well-known methods of gathering leads include letting your prospects fill out questionnaires or survey forms. You can also join trade fairs or exhibits and let your visitors fill out a registration forms. 

Simply put, lead generation is the stage where you can acquire the initial information about your prospects. These are the names and contact details. Moreover, these data should be placed into a database. 

Now, you may wonder as to what type of database should you use. Would an Excel sheet do? A spreadsheet is a good way to start building up a database. However, you should keep in mind that as your business grows, your prospect list would do so too. So you don’t end up moving all your previous contacts to a much bigger database, you may want to settle for something that is already automated and stable. When we say “automated, ” it means that the database doesn’t just act as a repository for your leads, but would also be a good tracking system. You can easily sort out your contacts based on their status, for example. 

Lead Tracking

When you’ve procured your prospect list, it’s time to get in touch with them. This process is called lead tracking. This is a crucial step since most leads should be contacted as soon as possible. In fact, you should do so not more than 48 hours after lead generation. Otherwise, they begin to think that you’re not interested in doing business with them and may seek out your competitors. 

You can do lead tracking by using the details provided by the prospects. Usually, the best mode of tracking is by calling them on their preferred phone number. By then, you can instantly determine the level of interest the prospect has in your mortgage products. You can also send them a fax and follow it up with a call. Another way would be through their e-mail address, especially if they have been added to your database through the mailing list. The last would be direct mail. It will take some time before your marketing materials would reach your prospects. 

There’s one important thing that you should not do when you’re tracking: trying to sell them. This is not the best time to do it yet. What you should do is set up an appointment for a presentation. This way, you can have a better way of explaining your mortgage products and services to your prospects. And your closing percentage will be much higher in person.

Make sure, that you can let your potential clients know where you got their information. Some of them may have forgotten that they filled out forms or signed up on a mailing list. People don’t like cold calls, so make it a warm call.

Lead Scoring

What is lead scoring? It’s simply assigning values to each of your leads based on a number of factors. The point is that those who have higher values should be given priority first because they are more likely to purchase your products and services. 

What are these factors? These depend on your marketing method. For example, those who have visited your website once may be given 0 point. However, if the person tends to come back for the second time, you can assign him or her 1 point. You can give the prospect a much higher score if he or she decides to send an e-mail inquiry to you. 

You can also use any type of scoring system. You can utilize letters, numbers, or whatever character that suits you. Just ensure that all your sales people understand how the system works.

Mortgage Lead Distribution

Mortgage lead distribution refers to the segregation of your mortgage leads to your sales people. There are actually so many techniques on how to go about lead distribution, so at first it’s going to be a trial-and-error thing. Some implement the FIFO (first in, first out) method, where the first leads should be the priority of the sales team. Others impose the round-robin approach, where leads would be worked on by different sales people at different stages of lead management. There are also companies that would assign their high-valued leads to their best sales people. 

Any of these methods could work for you. However, if you want something that’s more of a sure thing, you may want to go for a lead distribution where the leads would be assigned to sales people who have been trained to handle them. For instance, if you have reverse mortgage leads, they should be worked on by salespeople who have been trained in reverse mortgages. 

A lead management system for your mortgage leads doesn’t ensure that you will have 100 percent high-quality leads. Some of those who signed up for the mailing list could just be interested on the free e-book you’re offering–nothing else. Nevertheless, having it in place is a very good way of squeezing out the best among the hundreds of prospects.

More Lead Resources

• Cheap Mortgage Leads
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• Debt Consolidation Leads
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• Commercial Mortgage Leads
  Marketers know full well that commercial mortgage leads can introduce significant improvements and initiate progress for a company, both new and established. That is why every firm will always do their best…
• Mortgage Broker Leads
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• Life Insurance Leads
  Understanding how life insurance leads help you make sales is an important part of being a successful insurance salesperson. This article will help you learn about how to get life insurance leads. The…
• Mortgage Loan Leads
  Being in the business of mortgage loans means trying to get as many mortgage loan leads and make as many calls as possible. As a result of this growing need, several new companies have surfaced that…
• Annuity Sales Leads
  What if I could promise you a hundred annuity sales leads that will actually lead you to consumers interested in buying annuities right now? What would you be willing to give me for their contact information?…
• Reverse Mortgage Leads
  What are reverse mortgage leads? What makes them so significant to your business? If you are a lender and you are offering reverse mortgage packages, you do need prospects or leads. These are the people…

Why would you need to know a person’s location?

Every Internet user is assigned an IP address that traces their steps on the Internet while they are browsing web sites. Generally, ISPs provide each user with a IP address that is either dedicated to their account or rotates as often as hourly, services such as AOL use a rotating IP address for various customer location ranges that potentially thousands of customers may be surfing with at one time.

There are many different reasons why you may need to know where a user comes from. Some web sites keep detailed records of who visits what pages, who views what for how long and who downloads something from a particular page. These statistics help determine a web site’s metrics as well as gage different factors for a web master who might be trying to figure out where to go next with ads, content or products.

For example, if a web master who sells pre-paid phone cards realizes that a particular value of cards is not selling to a certain population, perhaps, the web master will re-evaluate carrying those phone cards for another type that might do better in that area. These types of statistics can help set the tone and merit of a particular web site and cater towards a general demographic of visitors which in the long ran help keep the web site afloat.

Metrics play an important part in any web site that is seeing a lot of traffic. Everything from search engine optimization to marketing techniques can be determined by where your visitors come from and what they are browsing while they are there. This can help a web master determine the best route to go in marketing a product or service in a particular area for that specific demographic.

Other reasons for determining a person’s location can be simple or more discrete. Forum administrators and moderators may deal with problem posters on a daily basis who have been banned from their boards. Some posters feel the need to circumvent a ban, and IP addresses can determine if such a user is breaking a ban. This information can help administrators find the poster in question and report them to their ISP for the infraction should such action be necessary.

Web sites, forums and chat rooms that use date and time scripts can use a person’s location to determine the correct date and time to showcase. This information can also be helpful to determine when users are browsing from during a time of the day for metrics purposes.

Everything from e-mail to instant messages can be traced via IP with the right software. Every time you visit a web site, download a program or music file or even surf via a proxy server can be traced back to your original IP address with a little bit of detective work.

How do I go about determining a location from an IP address?

The easiest way to go about determining a location from an IP address it look it up in reverse. Web sites and programs can do this for you with little effort, but since most web browsers are not using a dedicated IP address assigned from their provider, more work is necessary to pinpoint their exact geographical region.

You can go to WhoIs.sc and plug in an IP address or web address and learn the details behind it. This, as illustrated, is the easiest way to go about determining where an IP address leads.

Most countries user their own country code domain, typically referred to as ccTLDs. Many countries even go so far as to list the city, region or closest metro area within the domain to track them further. A few examples of country codes include BH for Bahrain, DO for the Dominican Republic, HU for Hungary, LY for Libya and SN for Senegal.

With a little deductive reasoning, you can figure out from the canonical address where exactly in a given area a person is surfing from.

Let’s look at an example of a canonical address: dialup-4.155.253.110.Dial1.Baltimore1.Level3.net. Already, we know two facts about this particular user: First, this web browser is using dialup and hails from Baltimore. Chances are they are using a rotating IP address and hardly ever surf with the same one twice.

Another example, 70.129.13.254, when traced back via a WhoIs search reveals this resolves to Texas Womens University in Denton, Texas. If you were having a problem with this poster on a forum or web community, the WhoIs information will provide you with the necessary contact information to inform the university of problems should the need arise.

You can breakdown the IP address of any web user to find out facts about that particular address and figure out what part of the world they may come from, in the one example, down to the city and in the other down to a specific portion of the city.

Is it full proof?

Determining a web browser’s location from their IP address is by no means full proof. For most users, you can determine where they come from or who their ISP is with little problem. For more advanced Internet users, proxy servers and other tools of Internet circumvention may stop you from getting to the truth of a user’s location in the world. Users depend on proxy services and software to keep their identities hidden. Some users prefer to surf anonymously or they cannot visit specific web sites because their ISP prohibits it.

With a little bit of research and some practice, anybody can learn about their web site’s users from their IP address and use the information to their advantage. There are many resources on the Internet as well as in print that will guide you through more advanced procedures to track users and find out where in the world they come from. The more you learn, the more precise you will become at determining where an IP address leads. Taking the time to learn these techniques may just make your web site more profitable or keeping unruly chatters or posters at bay.