So you want to sell your home, but you don’t really know how to go about it. Perhaps you want to avoid using a realtor and want to sell your home on your own to save money. This is definitely a possibility, but you will need a way of “showing” your house to potential buyers even when you can’t do so physically. What is the perfect answer you need? The answer is a flyer box with flyers printed with all the information a potential buyer might want to know about your home. Consider the flyer design and layout the information in a way that is easy to read and understand. You don’t want paragraphs of written material on your flyer but rather lots of bullet points and maybe even a picture or two of the best parts of your home. Highlight everything that is great about your home or that someone else might consider great.

Recently renovated bathrooms and kitchens are always of interest as well as how many bedrooms, bathrooms, storage, square feet, and asking price. Include your contact information like phone numbers and email address so individuals can get in contact with you. It really is important to get people’s interest up front so that you can sell your home quickly and easily.

Flyer printing is really not all that expensive if you have it done at a print shop and they can help you choose bright colors, fonts, and the like to make your flyers look excellent. If you are creative and want to save a little money then you can engage in flyers printing on your own. As long as you have a computer and a good printer then give it a shot. When you have flyers readily available you will pique the interest of those house hunting and they just may contact you about your home.

Be sure you provide contact information and even hours that you have an “open house” for people to tour the home and yard. Doing this will bring people back to your home with very little effort from you upfront. All you have to do is be ready for them when they call or show up so you can sell them the home. Flyers are a great way to spread the word about your home for sale as well as outline the many attributes the home has. Give it a try and you will be surprised at how well it works!

Food items are a great item to base a business around due to their popularity and buying frequency. I recently came across an article about using E.D. Foods for fundraising and got to thinking about the different ways an individual could sell their soups if they wanted to start a soup business. Here are the 8 different methods I came up with:

1) Resell the buckets or packets to others looking to start a home based business

You’d be like a playing the role of product provider/wholesaler to other aspiring home business owners. Give them the soup and the preparation instructions and ingredient list so they can make their own labels (if they want). And keep in contact with them so they’ll continue to buy soups from you to replenish their stock.

2) Put soups in your own packaging and sell the packages individually

You can sell them online, put them on the shelf or on display in a local grocery store (with the owner/manager’s permission), sell them out of your home via catalogues/business cards/flyers or local publicity or classified advertising.

3) Put repackaged soups into a “Get Well Soon” gift basket for the sick

Since soup is such a popular food to eat while sick, here’s the perfect opportunity to make some money. You can also include get well cards, some crossword puzzles or other items they can easily do while they’re just lying around recovering, and maybe even a sweet treat or two.

4) Resell the soup buckets to local restaurants

Once again, you’d be acting as product provider/wholesaler. Prepare a serving of soup and offer the person in charge a sample to taste. If they agree to offer it to their customers, then you can work out the transaction details and give them the preparation instructions. You may even be able to make an arrangement to sell the soup as individual servings in the restaurant for a split of the profits, if you don’t want to sell whole buckets.

5) Put repackaged soups into a “care package” for parents to give to their college kids

When I was at Mercer University, we had care packages that our parents could buy for mid-term and final exam time. They’d be filled with treats like candy and hot chocolate for us to consume while we crammed like crazy. You could do something similar for your soups.

This could work even during the non-stressful times for students, because a lot of them like to have simple foods like Ramen noodles in their dorm room anyway when they don’t feel like going to the cafeteria to eat. You can give them a more diverse alternative with a soup basket for college students.

6) Resell or repackage and sell soups at a flea market

Set up a booth and display your soup packages. Definitely try to prepare some soup for people to taste, if you can. You can put a couple of tablespoonfuls inside cups when they request to try it.

7) Prepare these soups yourself and start a soup catering service

Offer your soup services for parties and other get-togethers. You can advertise your business locally through free publicity and classifieds in cooking and home/garden publications. You’ll especially want to get the word out during holidays.

Sell the soup (in buckets or packets) along with information on starting a soup business

Basically, write a booklet with information on how you do your own packaging, ways you can advertise, the different ways you can sell the soup (like this article), and even the legalities like getting a business name and license and keeping track of your profits and expenses for tax (and tax-cutting) purposes. All of this information you can research and put together, or actually go through the process of starting your own soup business and then sell the information based on your experience.

If you have a passion for cooking and would like to try selling soup, then using E.D. Foods as your soup source and combining it with your business desire and creative imagination is one of the best opportunities awaiting you. Use any of the above ideas or come up with your own for a soup selling business model that’s right for you.

If you are selling real estate in any form then you need to know about internet marketing. Do not spend your time with marketing methods from the past. Do not deal with Realtors who are stuck using old marketing methods.

The marketing methods for today and tomorrow are on the internet. You need a web marketing strategy for any type of property you are trying to sell. If your Realtor doesn’t have one for your specific property, then you must get someone else to do it for you, or get a different Realtor.

Often I am asked what is included in when we do customized Total Web Marketing Strategies for real estate properties for sale.

Below is a sample list of the types of things we recommend you do for properties after creating a custom website apart from Realtor or FSBO websites.

Sample Custom Internet Marketing Plan

- Website Marketing

- Onpage Optimizing with Keywords

- Search Engine Optimization

- Search Engine Submissions (Over 200 search engines)

- Authority Sites Back Link Development

- Email Marketing Campaigns to Targeted Buyer Groups

- Automatic Followup System – Setup & Maintenance

- Custom Flyer Creation & Distribution

- Buyer Contact List Building

- Video Marketing of Your Property (20 online video sharing sites)

- Audio Marketing of Your Property (30 online audio sharing sites)

- Press Release Distributions

- Google Local Search Engines Setup & Optimization

- Creation and Promotion of a Listing on Google Search and Google Maps

- Local Internet Directory Submissions

- Blog Creation & Blog Postings

- Real Estate Forum Postings

- Social Account Creation

- Social Bookmarking Submissions

- Article Directory Submissions

- RSS Feed Submissions

- Content Management

- Website Content Writing

- Graphic Design

- Property Branding

- Online Promotions

- Pay Per Click Advertising Setup & Maintenance

- Podcast Production & Marketing

- Webpage Sales Copywriting

- Web Traffic Analytics Setup & Analysis to Determine Website Traffic Sources

- Ongoing Monitoring to Determine Most Effective Channels for Marketing Your Property

After working for two postcard printing companies (and dealing with many more), I’ve learned quite a bit about the challenges real estate marketers face when using direct mail postcards. I’ve also learned the best practices of real estate postcard marketing, the kinds of techniques that can increase your response rates.

The problem is, many of these challenges and best practices do not get communicated to the individual real estate agent using the postcards. It’s not that the postcard marketing companies are being deceitful. It’s just not in their best interest to share certain facts of postcard marketing with their real estate customers.

So I would like to fill that educational void. I’m sharing this information to give you a realistic picture of real estate postcard marketing today, and also so you’ll know how to get the best possible return on your postcard investment.

Here are three things real estate postcard companies won’t tell you (but probably should):

1. Postcard Marketing is Hard

You may be under the impression that marketing with real estate postcards is easy. After all, you just fill in the postcard template with your information, have the postcard company print them and blanket the area with your message, and then sit back to watch the leads roll in? Right? Wrong. If it were that easy, every agent who ever used real estate marketing postcards would be a success story. But clearly that’s not the case.

Real estate postcard marketing is not a simple, one-size-fits-all approach. It’s a numbers game, a game of attrition. The more mistakes you make along the way, the lower your end numbers (responses) will be. If you don’t optimize every aspect of your real estate postcard campaign — from the initial idea to the final offer — you will probably be disappointed with the results. The problem is, most real estate postcard companies cannot offer their customers the individual attention needed to maximize their results. After all, they have logistical limitations. With a dozen or so staff and thousands of customers, how could they offer such individual attention?

So, you’ll have to educate yourself about the many aspects of real estate postcard marketing. You can arm yourself with this knowledge before you even approach a postcard printing company. That way, you can bring the marketing strategy, and let the postcard printer do what their best at (printing and mailing your postcards).

2. Bad Mailings Do Not Get Better With Time

“Be patient and persistent. Success will come after a few mailings.” If I had a dollar for every time I witnessed a postcard company use this line, I could pay off my mortgage. Well, almost. Some postcard companies will tell you that a failed postcard mailing (one that produces zero responses) will get better with time and repetition. They’ll convince you that you’re staying “top of mind” with your audience, and that eventually these people will wake up to your message and contact you.

Sorry, but that’s not likely.

It is extremely rare that a weak postcard mailing gets better simply by repeating it. Repetition is not a cure for a bad postcard campaign. Usually, it will remain a failure, no matter how many times you repeat it. But here’s the good news. If you start off with the best practices of postcard marketing, and adapt them for real estate purposes, you will enjoy good response rates from the beginning.

A postcard mailing that produces zero results should never be repeated. If you repeat such a mailing, you are wasting time and money. Such a mailing should be modified until it does produce results. Then it can be repeated (and tested, adjusted, optimized, tested again, and so on).

3. Templates are Usually Less Effective Than Original Postcards

Sure, real estate postcard templates are easy to use. You just select a template, plug in your name and photo, and you’re off to the races. Right? But here’s the problem with postcard templates (and you’ll realize the logic of this after I explain it). When you use a real estate postcard template, you are making your postcard look like every other real estate postcard. That’s exactly what templates are — a stock layout used by many people.

Now ask yourself this: “If my postcards look like those of other real estate agents, what happens to my ability to stand out?” You already know the answer. It kills your ability to stand out!

In his book Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable, marketing expert Seth Godin uses the analogy of brown cows. Brown cows are certainly not unique. They are everywhere. And as a result of their common appearance, people hardly notice brown cows. But what if you passed a purple cow standing in a field? You’d notice that cow, wouldn’t you? That’s because a purple cow is remarkable. It stands out and generates buzz.

Real estate postcard templates will not get you a purple cow. They produce brown cows, the kind of thing that’s common to the point of being invisible.

* You may republish this article online (unaltered), if you retain the author’s byline and the active hyperlinks below. Copyright 2007, Brandon Cornett.