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From the “John does Linux” files (see the last episode; okay, so that was Unix)…

This site is now running on a Virtual Private Server from RimuHosting. Who cares? No one but me.

What a deal!

RimuHosting is a nice upgrade from my TotalChoice account, both in terms of sheer “horsepower” as well as flexibility. Not only do I get 4GB of disk space and 30GB bandwidth for $20/month, but I have root access to the VPS and all the privileges that affords me.

DIY hosting

Well, almost.

I’m used to web hosts that include Cpanel and/or Web Host Manager. RimuHosting gives you nothing of the sort — which is fine by me. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve spent hours pouring over Apache documentation and testing various configurations. I only had to ask Joe for help a couple of times.

Amazing support

None of this would’ve happened without RimuHosting’s friendly and helpful support team. I’ve emailed them at all hours of the day and night, and they always get back to me within a few hours. Keep up the good work, guys.

Jason Wright and Mark Kettenis have spent much of their time at the c2k6 hackathon finishing up support for UltraSparc III processors on the OpenBSD/sparc64 architecture. A number of months ago Henric Jungheim put in several weeks of effort reverse engineering support for the UltraSparc III, then OpenBSD creator Theo de Raadt [interview] put more time into cleaning up the diff and comitting much of it to the source tree. Halfway through the hackathon, Jason and Mark have taken what was not-quite functional code and have it successfully booting into multi-user mode. A couple of years ago there was an unsuccessful attempt to obtain documentation for this processor from Sun [story], so this current effort has had to use the FreeBSD and Linux UltraSparc III implementations as references. Theo explained, "Sun released CPU docs, but that's useless. It is kind of like trying to fix a car engine with the owner's manual. The rest of the hardware is not documented."

Jason points out that not only does OpenBSD run on the UltraSparc III processor, but it is also "self hosting". In other words, it is possible to build an UltraSparc III kernel on an UltraSparc III, and then reboot to that new kernel. This is important, Jason explains, because GCC is very memory and CPU intensive, "it really hits a server hard". He goes on to add that for this reason all the different OpenBSD architectures are built on their own architecture, and that this policy often catches bugs that could otherwise be missed.

Disclaimer: This post is about (gulp!) the Internet. If even the idea of putting up a real estate website for lease options leads makes you sleepless then wait for the next post on Hotlines etc that don’t require you to even have a computer. :-)

How to use the Internet to attract buyers for your Lease Options:

There is a pretty big section in most newspapers, week after week, called Rent To Own in the Real Estate Section. Some newspapers call the section Lease Option also.

You will also see ads targeting to prospects with bad credit saying something to the effect that if you have been turned down by the mortgage companies – call us to get the home of your dream.

As a side note I am not a big fan of Land Contracts in Michigan. The foreclosure process that is required to kick out a non-paying Land Contract buyer who bought your home and then defaulted is long and governed by the same laws in Michigan that govern a bank foreclosures.

Although in certain circumstances (property being vacant) you can accelerate the eviction and some astute investors who play in the Land Contract world have told me that they add a eviction clause in their custom made Land Contracts – I have yet to see one contract in reality.

So some of the companies in Michigan who advertise and focus especially on bad credit / home ownership themes might be selling a 12 / 18 month Land Contract deal which gets the seller cashed out at a later date via a refinance. So keep that in mind when you are reading these ads.

Rent To Own Ads are pretty much 100% Lease Option ads and it is a good idea to check them out in your local newspaper before you do anything so to get a feel of the marketing.

Very very few real estate investors use the Internet to market their lease options which if you choose to do so does gives you a pretty good advantage over your competition in your local city. This is how it works:

1. Run advertisements consistently (more on classified ads later) in your local newspaper. I said “local” and “consistently” – two very important and precious words to keep in mind. Also you want to run these ads EVEN when you have NO house at the moment to Lease Option (more on that strategy later also).

2. Direct your prospects to your website.

3. Your website has pictures (lots of them), virtual tour if you want to really blow them away, description of the house with the list of all the upgrades you have done, any promotion you are running (free appliances, gift gas card etc), lease details such as monthly payments, Option number and finally the most important thing of all….

4. An invitation to join your Lease Option Buyer List. So lets say 10 people come to your website as a result of an ad that you ran in your local newspaper.

Well technically you can only sell your 1 home to one out of 10 but the other 9 are still in the market to buy something. May be they don’t like “that” house but who is to say that will not like the second house that you put up next month.

Entice them and ask them to join your Hot Lease Option Upcoming Houses Notification List so they get priority notification even before the house hits the classified section.

Sort of a Pocket Listing Invitation if you want to use the REO slang.

Understand that this strategy is advanced and mostly not used by anybody. Everybody wants to wait till they have a house or worse when the house is done.

The term you need to remember in real estate is Build To Suit – if you doing this, week in, week out your market will tell you what kind of houses you should be looking for.

This is the beauty of having a website and use it for more to tell you what the market wants in your local Michigan city instead of thinking about your website as something to sell that ONE house that you have right now.

I know it might sound hard to believe at first try but really most investors get so tied up in “doing” that deal that they have burning a hole in their head that they forget to build a business.

Nothing personal – just a fact of life. All entrepreneurs go through it. I did too in the beginning.

5. These are some of the things that you should be asking at your site from your site visitors – name, email, number of bedrooms in the house they want to get, basement preference, brick or frame, garage preference, city preference, if you are operating in a city which is comparatively big – it would help to ask a more specific question for example if you see Detroit ads they will mention something like East Side or West Side preference.

Where can you advertise on the Internet to get leads?

1. Detroit Craig’s List; at http://detroit.craigslist.org Free

2. Google Base: http://base.google.com Free

3. Google / Yahoo will be a pain the rear to do and get some leads because you are competing against everybody and their mother selling a $20 book on how to do lease options. Very hard to do Pay Per Click ads and get some leads out of there – not to mention expensive.

4. The thing that I am watching closely is the evolution of Google Local ads that will let you target and run really local ads on Google, which will be really effective for our kind of business.

5. For Sale By Owner sites: cheap prices for the most basic packages. Owners.com is a good example. The whole idea is to get people come to your Lease Option website.

6. EBay – will cost money to run - $150 at least. Plus my feelings about EBay are that it is more suited toward building an Investor List than attracting local homebuyers.

Where can you advertise offline to get Lease Option leads?

I am very old fashioned when it comes to real estate leads. May be the reasons that the damm $26 ads have made me so much money. Real estate is a Local game.

Seriously doubt that a guy in L.A. is thinking about buying a 3 bedroom in Redford. But there are renters in Redford with kids in Redford schools and mom & dad working in Dearborn and Sterling Heights.

They are reading the Sunday’s Free Press and Redford Observer – may be a small percentage looks on the net – may be it is a big percentage; there is a no hard data available anywhere that can pinpoint where most of the people are looking for Lease Option deals.

But I would suggest to you that do both – with 1-2 Knockout punch:

Punch #1: Use the free resources – Google Base; Detroit Craig’s List initially till you close on some deals, put some new money in your business checking account and then think about spending some money on the Internet. Since both of the above are free (at least for the time of writing this)

Punch #2: Spend you money where it will get you the biggest Return on your Advertising Dollars – your local newspapers. In the above example – run small ads driving people to your website in BOTH newspapers – Detroit News and Redford Observer – I repeat run ads in not one but both newspapers.

Sometime I get emailed about the cost of running these ads – well I worry about what comes back to my bank account and not too much on what I have to spend.

As long as coming in number is bigger than going out number – all is good. You can charge the advertising on your business credit card and pay it once the house is Lease Optioned off.

Or you can close one deal and take $500 off right from the top to spend it on advertising on your next deal. The real big mind shift that most entrepreneurs never make is not to think of advertising / marketing as an expense but as investment to build their business.

There are 2 big things in my business I spend money like it is going out of style – my education and my advertising. As long as I feed these two dragons, all is good in Planet Ijlal.

Website Domain Name Tips:

Spend some time thinking of a good and short domain name for your website. Rule of thumb is that keep it within 21 characters with the dot COM thing so it fit in one line.

Newspapers classified sections have a notorious tendency to break down the name in 2 lines if it is long and put a hyphen in the middle. I don’t have to tell you that that becomes a different name.

I had this experience personally one time when my ForeclosureTour.com ad became Foreclosure-Tour.com in two lines. Suffice to say that I did not get any leads that week.

So keep it within 20-21 characters and you will be in the limit. Also you don’t have to use www moniker anymore. I don’t use it anymore. www.MarkIjlal.com or MarkIjlal.com work the same way.

Also I hate long winded domain names – abcpropertyinvestmentsgroup.com is a great tribute to your LLC’s name but come on…. One of my coaching group member Lou Provanzano got a cool name recently for his Detroit deal – www.DetroitOnTheMove.com which gets full marks for originality and sounding good when you say it, print it and leave it on your voice mail.

And yes I am guilty of having long names in the past too – some of them are so crappy that I am actually embarrassed to share them here.

But the point is you want to have a good name; should spend some time on it, make a list of 10-20 names; ask your significant other, if you are in my coaching group, email me the names before you blow the insignificant amount of money needed to reserve them via Godaddy.com. Get a second opinion. This is how the world will see and your business. It is worth spending some time on.

How to get your Lease Option Website Designed:

This is the part where most will hesitate because they are still thinking big dollars when it comes to websites. In 2006, websites are so cheap that there is no excuse left for not to have one.

Where can you get a decent site made?

1. Do you have kids? Do you have neighbors who have kids? Do you have nieces, nephews, and little cousins? Know anybody who goes to a high school??? Every High School in America has a clique of geeks who can design a better-looking site than most web design firms out there.

I have personally hired 16 year olds – one time even flew one from Denver, CO to Michigan to work for two weeks on a business that I used to have. I had one 18 year old actually move to metro Detroit from U.P. to work on a project.

These kids were smarter, harder working and had a better work ethic than most grown ups I have worked with in the last 10 years. They get it. And they love doing this stuff and putting it for the world to see it.

I met an 18-year-old two years ago who was designing websites for Detroit Hip Hop acts – his sites could go heads up with a $50,000 site – he was doing this for $10 per hour.

Ask anybody who is going to high school and is between 14-18 in your life. They know a geek who can whip up a world class website for you in 7 days for probably pennies.

2. You can always go the outsourcing route and use a website a www.elance.com or www.rentacoder.com which will let you post up for free what you are looking for; bunch of companies (most of them in India / China and Eastern Europe) will put up competitive bids. They all have reviews on the previous work they have done; read them and give one the site to do.

If you are totally lazy and don’t want to do anything at all – then spend couple of hours trolling Google and Yahoo and find a website on lease options that you like and then tell whomever is doing your site to make your site look like them.

And for crying out aloud don’t copy blatantly but use it for inspiration and ideas. Most people like me use a copyright protection service that trolls the web looking for lift offs.

When we find somebody cutting and pasting our stuff – we get him or her shut down. I did that to bunch of bogs already that were just copying and pasting my content on their sites.

Next Part 5: How to figure out your Cashflow Payments, Exit Strategies that nobody wants to hear about but they sure do work, the absentee owner thing.

Not to complain....because I love receiving resumes and am glad when someone is considering a career at Microsoft. I'm not under the ridiculous impression that everyone reads my blog before sending me a resume. But on days when I am looking through hundreds of resumes, the mistakes that applicants make with resumes, many of which I have mentioned before, are still popping up.

There's one underlying point with my advice, based on a simple fact. The fact is that, similar to in-person meetings, you have a short amount of time to make a first impression. The recruiter is viewing your resume to make a yes or no decision. The decision may be whether to share the resume with a hiring manager, whether to schedule a phone interview, etc. Regardless, they are looking at a large number of resumes. When viewing each, when they get to the decision, they move to the next resume. There are certain things they are looking for on the resume, which varies depending on circumstances. Your goal (and my underlying point) is to provide the information required to make you a quick 'yes'. I can't tell you what experience the recruiter will be looking for, but I can tell you the types of info they are looking for and why.

One other thing I wanted to point out before I launch into resume writing advice (again), is this: if someone tells you that the resume is dead as a medium for selling your skills, stop listening to that person. As I write this, there is no generally accepted substitute for the resume. Portfolios are great if the recruiter has already determined some initial interest by reading a resume; otherwise they take too long to look through (caveat: creative roles excluded). Video resumes don't fit nicely into applicant tracking systems and aren't searchable using key words. And unless you are a CEO of a Fortune 500 company and the recruiter, who also works in the same industry, would be an idiot not to know you and your skill set in some detail (in which case, get down with your bad self), you do indeed need a resume, irrespective of your ego. Even if you are hot stuff, making others kiss the ring isn't attractive. I'm obviously only talking to a few with this point...it's the attitude that's the turn-off more so than the lack of career documentation. You won't always be asked to create a resume, especially in the very early stages if you are senior. But having one sets the stage for a valuable conversation with the hiring decision makers. And you should always have an updated resume...always.

OK, on to my resume writing advice, which may or may not bear some resemblance to resume advice I have given in the past:

-Name your resume attachment intuitively...that's intuitively for the recruiter, folks! If I'm looking at a bunch of resumes and adding the ones I like to a folder, how many should I expect to have a name like 'resume2006.doc'. Renaming is an extra step for the recruiter. Also, not naming intuitively increases the possibility that the recruiter will not be able to get their hands on your resume in a timely manner, if they saved it as-is. Use your name in the title of the document when you save it.

-Don't put your contact info in a header/footer. Right now, we are recruiting folks to come to a local event we are hosting. So I'm trying to find people local to Seattle. So the address or phone number do matter. Uncovering it in a header takes a couple extra clicks. Also, keep in mind that many recruiters do local recruiting either because there's a rich talent pool in a specific location (for tech talent, Boston would be a good example) or because they don't have an extensive relocation budget to work with. Make it easy for them to find out your general geographic location. If you are planning a self-funded move, include it in your contact info ('Self-funded relocation to Seattle planned for September 2006')

-In your resume, when you describe your role at each company, say what the company does. Say what division you work(ed) in too. Do not expect the recruiter to know this information. Recruiters will generally track a certain number of competitive companies as well as some interesting start-ups. Your entire previous employer history might not be on the radar of each individual recruiter. Assume that you have to education them at least a little bit on each company.

-Do not send recruiters away from your resume if you can provide the information on your resume. Linking to previous companies, as a substitute for explaining what the companies do isn't well advised. Once you send a recruiter off of your resume, the chances of them coming back go down. I'm sure it's not very 'web 2.0' of me to say this but I don't recommend you link in your resume unless your role is primarily creative and you need to provide work samples (someone else might have other fields that this applies to but in the world of business, limit linking). If you state the name of your company properly, the recruiter will find it if they want more information. And you can always offer to substantiate any references, awards, organization leadership. Keep the recruiter eyeballs on your resume.

-Keep the best stuff above the fold. What I mean by this is know your value proposition and make sure it's the first thing the recruiter sees. If you just graduated from a full-time MBA program, your education section goes on top. Work for a hot company? Pull work experience to the top. I've said before that I think the 'objective' sections aren't required on a resume, but if you can use it to communicate your personal value proposition (and can't do it clearly in the other sections), do it. What this takes is a little introspection, which might require you to acknowledge your own strengths and weaknesses, but you will be better off for it.

-I'm not a big fan of graphics and photos. I find them distracting and something we have to work around to scan your resume into our database. Many international applicants for US based roles are more accustomed to the culture where they reside, which is very accepting of adding a picture. It's not standard protocol in the US unless you are a fashion model like me (I kid). Also, your height, weight, age, marital/family status and ethnicity are not generally accepted elements of resumes here in the US. Recruiters cannot legally use that information to make a decision. It's best to leave it off when applying to US-based positions.

Some other recruiters might want to jump in here with some other resume boo-boos they are seeing these days. These things aren't deal breakers, but like with other decisions made in the business world, you want to help the decision maker get to yes as quickly as possible and be thinking happy thoughts while they are looking at your resume.