Thats My Landlord.com

Well 2008 has been a big year here is my year in review – 5 things we will see more of in 2009.

1. The Credit Crunch – in 2008 we saw bank failures and basically a credit collapse. This probably isn’t news but we will see more of this in 2009. We still have a lot of “option arms” resetting. There was just as many of these as there were regular arm loans that we have heard so much about in 2008.

2. Bailouts – 2008 definatly was the year of bailouts. I have a feeling the bailouts are not over. I don’t think Obama will let any huge employers fail. The economy won’t get a whole lot better, because credit will still be difficult to get.

3. Social Networks – Facebook, Myspace all the other bigger ones will just keep getting bigger. The internet as a whole will get more interactive and social.

4.  Micro Blogging – Twitter – It got big in 2008 and 2009 is just going to be a bigger year for them. Ofcourse like everything else, we will see hundreds of competitors popup. But Twitter is just too far ahead.

5. Foreclosures – There were a lot of foreclosures in 2008 – but in 2009 there will be even more. A lot of people are just barely hanging on. We will all see more people we know in 2009 filing bankruptcy and going into foreclosure.

Most of you know if you are trying to make money over the internet and you are reading blogs, all of them talk about finding the best affiliate programs, conversions, click thrus, traffic, blah, blah and more Blah.

How many times can we really listen to the same stuff over and over. Now I am sure there are some of these guys who have made a decent amount of money from this.

Now I have tried affiliate marketing. At some point I might even stick up some adsense of affiliate ads on this site. I shouldn’t say it is all a waste of time, what I should be saying is the way most people are pursuing it, it is a waste of time.

Once I started building site after site driving insurance leads, mortgage leads, apartment leads etc, my brain immediatly started going “ok…..if they are paying me $10 a lead…..how much are they getting paid?”.

This created a huge problem for me and my ego. I really don’t like working for “the man”. So I started going on looking to create my own “Local Affiliate” or marketing partners. This is when my business really turned the corner and I started actually building a business.

I have several posts on this planned for the next few weeks, all are full of useful information about what you need to do to start actually building a business not just a website!

so sign up for my feed so you will be sure not to miss a post.

I keep seeing this question or variations of this question on forums. So I decided I would answer this question with a blog post.

Well $50 isn’t really enough to open an Ameritrade account and Wall Street probably isn’t where you want your money anyway. I want to give you an idea that is scalable that you can do over and over and it make sense and you are able to get your money back. Plus I want it to be an idea you can do from anywhere.

The first thing I would do is buy a Godaddy, hosting account. Now I say godaddy, because most of the re-sale domains out there are registered with godaddy. You can buy an account to host an unlimited number of domains for about $7 a month. They also have a lot of software like wordpress that can be installed by just clicking a few links.

I wouldn’t register a name with godaddy just yet. The reason I say this is because there are a ton of decent domains out there people are wanting to dump for just a couple dollars. I would search forums and ebay looking for these. If I were doing this I would want to start out with financial domains, local city domains or real estate domains. I would try to pick up a couple of these. Its very possible, I have bought awesome re-sell real estate domains off of eBay for less than $3 and they still have 9+ months left on the registration.

For each site I bought I would build a small nich 5 to 10 page website targeting a small geographic area, with unique content. The reason I say a small area is because you will probably never rank for the term “foreclosures” but you have a great shot at ranking for “Orlando Foreclosures”. Then I would do a few days of intense link building.

I would put up some adsense ads on them and then just sit and wait. If you picked a small niche in a real estate or financial field adsense should pay a decent amount per click. In a few months with just a couple click here and there you will have made enough money to get back you initial investment, now you can go out and buy more domains and create more websites.

Of course you have to know when to quit with some sites also, a rule of thumb most people us is if they are not paying for themselves then don’t renew them.

The biggest upside in this plan is, you have sites sitting out there in Google supporting themselves. As they age in the search engines they also gain value.

I was asked this question a few weeks ago and of course I have thought about it. I think about it every time I write a check to pay one of my student loans.

For me it is a hard question to answer. I Graduate with a Bachelors of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications from Winthrop University. I went to college basically because I didn’t really know what else to do.

As far as an education the college I went to was a medium sized school near Charlotte, so it was a great atmosphere and close to a lot of stuff.

I have been out of college for almost 5 years now, but I was very different than most of the people I graduated with. I never went out and actually looked for a job. I already knew I wanted to work in a niche area of real estate and was confident enough to just go out and start doing it on my own. By doing that I quickly realized how the Internet was going to play a huge role in shaping the future of the industry. The industry still has a long way to go.

But for me college was worth the money, not for the education I got in the class room, but for what I learned outside of it. Personally I grew up in a small town and going off to college exposed me to a ton of new people with different idea and ways of life. Like many kids in the US I basically grew up with the same group of kids I started Kindergarten with.

College taught me how to meet people. If I wouldn’t have went I would probably be still hanging out with the same group of kids I grew up with and never went outside of my original group of friends.

The people skills I learned in college have been priceless.

So in short, yes college was worth the money. Plus I did learn a lot of the finer points of marketing and creating full integrated marketing plans and saying that is kind of what I do, I guess it did serve its purpose.

Having worked in real estate and being a landlord this story really interested me.

I wondered what exactly the future of Social Networks like Myspace and Linked In? would be I guess the future may be larger than I could imagine at least.

Way back, in say, November of 2008, most process servers had to serve people in person. So if you were being foreclosed on or sued you actually had to be served in person. Depending on the judge you could be served by publication but that was after all attempts to server someone in person were exhausted. A process server could even serve you at work or while you at the gym.

But as MSNBC reported an Australian Judge ruled a mortgage lender could use “Facebook” to deliver foreclosure papers to a couple.

Of course this has not happened in the United States, that I know of? But of course it is just a matter of time before this becomes common practice.

I feel sure the Fair Debt Collection Act will have to be amended to include this, but my question is will it in the future be a requirement to participate in social networks? Will checking your Facebook, Myspace and Linked In account be necessary like checking your mail box everyday?

Being a process server really doesn’t seem to be a difficult task for the most part. You track people down and hand them a stack of papers. The only variable you have is what their reaction will be. Which in most cases I’m sure they are not happy to see you.

My question is, if this is going to be a new trend? Who are the people who will be deemed the on-line process servers?

Serving people online through email and social networks should be a piece of cake. How can I get in on this?

Well this is my first post, which happens to come the day after Christmas. First post are always a must, no one really know exactly how to start these things. Useually they are fairly meaningless and pose no real purpose, except being the first post.