My Buy Essay

Archive for October, 2007

Joint ventures can turn your competition into your companion!

What are they and are they profitable?

You can benefit greatly from sharing the costs of your advertising and promotional campaigns, while doubling the size of your target market.

How can that be so? It’s simple! just look at it like this, you are in the coffee business, you have identified your major competitor, he/she is currently servicing a good portion of the customers you wish to attract. This competitor has been servicing these clients for many years and has built up a strong following. Do you think it would be easy for you to “take these clients away” from their trusted provider? Of course not.

What if you offered to give your competitor free access to your client base? Do you think he/she would like that? Or if your competitor offered to do the same for you, would you like that?

YES, YES, YES!

A joint venture is simply offering to promote your fellow business persons product or service to your client base and in return they do the same for you.

You can use tracking URLs to determine what sales are made and then split the profits or commissions in whatever way you both agree to.

Another advantage is that if you sell to one of your fellow business persons clients you will be able to add them to your mailing list. We all know how valuable that can be.

So next time you see a competitor, STOP and think of a way you can make him or her into your companion in success!

I sincerely wish you good luck and happiness

Bill Boyd

The second dot com boom is well underway, with thousands of individuals and industries flocking to the Internet to start web sites that will promote their business or that they envision as a business in itself. The fact is that many Internet marketing opportunities operate along the same lines as businesses in the real world, and many investors are making several mistakes when it comes to their hopes of creating a web based business. These mistakes will often depend on if the business is concerned with providing customers access to their product through the Internet or if the individual is merely wanting to drive traffic to their site. In both cases, there are several mistakes that need to be avoided.

Individuals who begin on the web with visions of dollars in their heads need to remember that in order to be successful they will need to establish repeat visitors. Many individuals are currently absolutely gung-ho about the concept of search engine optimization. It is true that all individuals on the Internet visit a search engine sooner or later in order to find a specific topic. It is also true that most Internet companies are well aware of this marketing concept, with the result that many of the big search engines are beginning to have links to other search pages, which does nothing to help the customer in their quest for information or ideas except lead them deeper into a labyrinth. Additionally, focus on keywords or phrases will often result in articles that are impossible and boring for the individual to read, and customers will become so frustrated that they will not come back. Article posted on an individual website should be informative and fun to read, not exchanging keyword density for interest.

Many aspiring Internet Marketers also suffer from information overload, and begin trying too many things at once, with the idea that something is likely to stick. The truth is, there are lots of people doing Internet marketing, and it is far better to spend energy on one task, and master that task before moving on to other ideas. Building one hundred bad websites won’t have the long term value of building one good one. Don’t spend all your time trying the latest new marketing gimmick. Instead, focus on solid business fundamentals, and building a brand identity that will keep customers coming back for more. The successful Internet marketers are those that realize success depends upon winning the marathon, not on winning a short sprint. Nearly all of the get-rich-quick schemes end up costing more than they earn, or, at best, end up generating only a short term cash flow.

Websites should always be appealing and updated, but this does not mean that you need to overload the capacity of your potential customer’s connection. Avoid cluttering your website with unnecessary graphics that not only detract from your services but also mean that it takes more time for your page to upload. The key to success on the Internet is speed and convenience, and if your customer is waiting for your page to upload for a long time, they will not be back.

A new form of Internet advertising has exploded and it is receiving a lot of response lately – pixel advertising. Essentially, it is where people purchase a set of pixels on the homepage of a Web site, inserting their company logo that links back to their own site. Potentially, the end result can be increased Web site traffic to both the pixel site and the advertisers placing their images there.

As a potential advertiser seeking unique online exposure and increased traffic for your Web site, use precautions before spending your money on just any pixel advertising Web site.

Don’t be impulsive with your advertising dollars. Do some comparison shopping online first. Take a few moments to browse different pixel sites, read the content on their sites about their company and what makes them unique among other pixel ad sites. Compare their pricing, the sizes of pixel ads available, the placement of your ad on their homepage, and the length of time your ad will be placed on their Web site.

Choose pixel advertising sites devoted to a charitable or worth while cause…Alex Tew, a UK college student, started MillionDollarHomepage.com (the first known pixel advertising site) so he could save enough money to go to college. There are others like him out there whose primary goal is to use pixel advertising as a way to donate to a charity or help others who are less fortunate. Sites like BannerCanvas.com by owner Chad King were started to raise money to help tear down his mother’s old dilapidated trailer and build her a brand new house on the same property. These sites are definitely worth checking out first.

Seek out pixel ad sites whose owners already believe in natural search engine optimization, and are paying an SEO company for natural and ethical search engine optimization. How can you tell without directly asking? While it may not be the best indicator, one method is to look for keywords in the META titles, META descriptions and META keyword tags on many pages of the Web site. Look for those same keywords throughout the content on the site.

Find pixel advertising sites who will genuinely keep its word on leaving your ad on their Web site for the 5 or 10 years as promised. Many of these new pixel sites popping up everywhere will no longer be around one year from now, because they will have taken everybody’s money and stopped paying for their domain and hosting fees. You do not want to advertise on a fly-by-night-take-your-money-and-run type of pixel site.

Before paying for a pixel advertising site, actually contact the owner of the pixel ad site by phone or email and get to know him or her. Ask that person questions like what he intends to do with the money generated from pixel advertising, or what percentage (if any) will be donated to charity. What charity will the money be donated to, or what individual or family will be the recipient of the donations?

Pixel advertising is fast becoming the latest online trend. As a potential advertiser, first take the time to shop around before choosing which pixel advertising site to pay for, and find out who will profit from your advertising dollars.

Although Chitika has been around since 1993, not many pople were aware of them in the website marketing business, in fact, I myself didn’t realize of there existence until I saw people start bragging about how much money they were making of off them, even over Adsense.

So, what’s the big deal? You may ask. Well that’s pretty simple actually, Chitika has invented a revolutionary ad-type called eMiniMaills. These eMiniMalls are banner sized shopping cart displaying items that you choose by keywords, and you get paid for every click on the ads.

Chitika introduced eMiniMalls in June of ’05, but people really started to utilize them quite recently, and started to realize the true power that they held over the common consumer. From most, if not all, reports that I’ve seen, most people’s Chitika earnings have surpassed there Adsense earnings by a large amount, and this is no small feat.

Now that I’ve made you all aware of how it all works, and true power of eMiniMalls, let’s get into the nitty gritty. You’ll obviously want to start out with a website, or a blog, in fact, any median will do, and is needed. You’ll then want to sign up for an account here. (https:chitika.com)

Now that you have an account, you’ll want to create the adds that you’ll be displaying on your site, this is almost like your creating your adsense ads and the same rules apply, we’ll discuss this more a little later. Unlike adsense you can’t save color schemes so you may want to write the colors down so you can use them in the future for any other ads.

When deciding colors for your adds, you’ll want to try your best to blend them in to your existing website, color wise. It has been proven that those people that have successfully blended there ads into their site via good colors, have has a higher click-through-rate, and thus higher earnings. Try your hand at this and see how it works out. If you’d like an example of how I did the colors compared to my site, you can visit Super Justin.com. (.superjustin.com).

Another important factor to take into consideration is ad placement, I find that the better ad placement, the better click-through-rate. It’s hard to determine which would best suite every site, because every site is different, so you’ll want to test this out as much as you can through trial and error. Some key things to consider is that you’ll want to have your ads in high traffic areas, such as menus as well as site articles.

In closing, don’t forget to use chitika’s great referral program after you sign up, and give your friends and relatives, so you can earn money from them as well. Click here to sign up. (https:chitika.com)

Internet marketing is the new face of marketing strategy. It is phenomenon taking place everywhere these days. However doing marketing online is not all about just having a website. Of course this is the first step towards internet marketing online, but there are numerous other elements to this. In this age of mounting competition, it is imperative to have a web presence to sell your goods and services. Internet marketing online is one of the paramount techniques for you to optimize your website.

Literally internet marketing means buying, selling and advertising of goods and services in the internet. A recent study undertaken by a principal research organization shows that more and more people are making use of search engines to find the product or information that they are looking online. Such finding makes it all the more important for your website to feature at the top of search engine rankings. Your internet marketing online site must be able to bring prospective clients to your site.

There are different ways which you can adopt to make your website presence felt everywhere in the World Wide Web. Writing articles and submitting them to website is one easy method to advertise your online site. You can write an article about your online business and at the end of it advertise about your product or service.

One more way which you can carry out is to advertise about your site in other websites. This is an extremely effective internet marketing strategy. All you need to do is find a good website where you want to advertise about your site. Most websites will charge a certain sum for advertising your site. Visitors to the website will in reality see your advertisement there. This will surely prompt some visitors to check out your site.

There are many benefits of having a website as part of your marketing strategy. First of all internet marketing is instant. No body likes to wait for later or tomorrow for anything they are searching for or want to buy. Visitors will come to your site, see your product and buy it instantly if they like it. Instant purchase and gratification is what customers look out for.

Second of all internet is accessible to anyone 24/7. All the prospective buyer needs is access to a computer with internet connection to buy your products. So your online storefront is practically open to customers any time of the day. Internet marketing online works round the clock for you and helps in generating business leads. Internet marketing is also very cheap compared to the other methods of marketing. Internet marketing has a global reach. So now you can have global customers for your products.

Internet marketing online is not a sure shot marketing strategy for your business. On the other hand if you undertake internet marketing in the proper way, you are sure to gain heaps of profits from your business. Internet marketing is here to stay and setting up your storefront online is surely going to bring profits for your business. More and more people are entering to the field of online internet marketing, so it is all the more important for you to have a distinctive website for your products.

Do you have an inner burning desire to understand the internet marketing system and be part of the group that says, “No Experience Necessary! Earn 5 Streams of Auto-Pilot Income Working At Home?”

Before I saw this Ad I had tried dozens and dozens of make money at home endeavors in my spare time–opportunities that didn’t go anywhere, mainly because there was no instructions on how to take the necessary steps to accomplish my goal.

One day I hit upon, “The Home Biz Guy’s PluginProfit Site,” where you are promised to receive the help you need to make money online. To my way of thinking I had the computer sitting there why not use it to help earn extra dollars. Besides, this Ad promised a free Website setup. I have wanted a Website for a while now, but lacked the necessary knowledge to set it up. I am still working on my personal website that I hope to publish one day. When I saw this Ad, something inside me came to life and I had to signup. I think it also helped that the startup fee was low.

Well Stone Evans doesn’t just set up the website and then leave you stranded. He follows through on what he has promised. He actually has developed a 30 day online course to teach you how to take the necessary steps to earning auto-pilot income on the internet. Your Website comes all setup to go, as well, you are connected to another PluginProfit Site that you promote which helps you earn ongoing residual income. This offer had all the information I would need to learn to make a success of an online marketing business. The reason why the website is called a PluginProfit Site is because it is setup to bring in 5 separate streams of income.

This course leads you through all the necessary steps it takes to setup and run an online marketing business. We get to practice as we go along. There is also a neat Host4Profit Forum where we have the opportunity to talk to other people of like mind.

This is one of the best setup courses that I have come across and I feel it is a must for anyone who wants to learn the internet marketing business and has the courage to make the commitment to do the 30 day course. It is setup with tons of information referrals for making money online, learning the process of email marketing and steps to promoting your own website home page.

If you are one of those people who wants to be part of the online marketing business, Stone Evans’ 30 Days to Success Program is a must!

For more information go to: ( .pluginprofitsite.com/main-13885) and check this out for yourself.

The answer is yes and no. Of course there are many individuals who’ve created a considerable amount of wealth in a short time period, but let’s be realistic, that’s not going to happen to most of us. Today, many online marketers claim to offer “easy” strategies to earn income, when the truth is like any other way of making money, it takes WORK. The only difference is that with this type of work you don’t have a clock to punch and the most physically demanding task required is typing. You have to understand that most people (including myself) are generally lazy. We all want something for nothing, we dream of having the lifestyle of wealthy people, but few are willing to do what it takes to actually make it happen. Marketers know this, and they simply capitalize on this truth by creating advertising that appeals to our greed, and many of us led by laziness and sheer desperation fall victim to such claims–because we want to believe them. I know because I’ve done it!! I mean, who wouldn’t want to make money by barely lifting a finger?? Well I’m here to let you know if you think it’s that easy, you’re kidding yourself.

Now obviously I’m not stating that all claims of wealth creation online are false, however I do believe that too many marketers oversimplify the task. The truth is that there are thousands of ways to make money online; the hard part is finding a strategy that works for you and sticking to it. Lots of people end up spinning their wheels for months jumping from idea to idea or quitting if desired results aren’t achieved with a short time, and eventually give up after pulling their hair out and become discouraged. Don’t pull your hair out, find something that you have an interest in; for example if you want to become a drop-shipper, only focus you efforts on drop-shipping research and strategies. Adequate research is the key to making it online. Once you find your niche, conduct research on it. I also strongly encourage finding others who are in the same field, as it will benefit you to seek the guidance from vets who’re making money already; you can have all the motivation in the world, but without any direction, you’re left turning circles.

Lastly, don’t just stop at one source for information-which is how a lot of people set themselves up for disappointment. Instead, use different sources related to your topic in order to provide yourself with a solid foundation; once you have a starting point search other resources as well in order to develop a well-rounded strategy to start your business. For more articles and free information on how to earn a living with online income you can visit: .e-wmn.com.

Millions have tried, millions are trying right now and millions will continue to try in the years ahead. There is so much misinformation out there regarding making money online, that you can easily be forgiven for thinking that all these millions are enjoying unbridled success.

The real truth of course is that the vast majority are failing. Their hopes of earning a healthy living from home are usually shattered before they have even begun. There is no single reason for this. It’s usually down to a combination of factors, and I intend to look at some of the reasons for the now infamous quote, “95% of people fail in their online business”. Some of the things I list below will doubtless be contested by many people but the harsh facts are that making money online, whilst entirely possible, is not the cakewalk that a lot of people will try to convince you it is.

So, let’s get down to debunking some of the nonsense – hopefully this will save a lot of people a lot of time and frustration.

1) Affiliate Marketing – so much rubbish is spouted by so many people who have never made an affiliate sale in their lives. The affiliate marketing model is indeed a powerful one and has made a number of people very wealthy. However, you are very unlikely to succeed with affiliate marketing without going through an arduous and sometimes lengthy learning process.

A huge swathe of articles you read about affiliate marketing are no more than rehashed PLR articles being used by lame hopefuls who are incapable of writing anything original on a subject that they are hoping to convince you they know all about. You can spot these peddlers of fifth hand information easily enough – look at the sites they link to, check their traffic rankings. Ninety Nine times out of a hundred you will find a cookie cutter website just like thousands of others or a direct link to an affiliate program that they foolishly believe you will sign up for having read their blindingly convincing pitch.

Are they the people to look to for advice? Think before you answer…….

2) Freebie Seekers and Freeloaders – this encompasses so many people it’s laughable. They talk about their “business” and seriously expect others to follow their blind lead. The term “business”, at least to my mind, indicates some sort of investment on behalf of the owner of that business – both in terms of time and money. Those most guilty of this faux pas are usually those who sign up to a free program, usually in the network marketing or MLM arena, and use every useless and pointless form of promotion as long as it’s free.

Much is said regarding failure rates in MLM schemes being so high, but one of the biggest is the freebie mentality. Don’t get sucked into believing you will ever make money online this way. The freeloaders are kidding themselves, but don’t let them kid you. The programs they sign up to for free often offer a paid upgrade and they live in hope (if they ever manage to recruit a single person of course) that they will grow fat on the subscriptions of others. Naturally this rarely happens, simply because they advertise to other freeloaders who have no intention of spending any money on their “business” either, and so the vicious circle continues.

If you don’t believe me, visit any free traffic exchange and look at some of the webpages circulating there. These people are dreamers – they will never make money online until they accept that they are eventually going to have to spend money to make money. Let’s get real here – when you’re looking for potions or energy drinks or some other latest greatest product that is no more than a copy of an already well established brand, is the first place you think to look going to be a free classified site on the internet? Maybe you’d head for the closest traffic exchange? Think – you don’t have to do it for more than a few seconds to see why these things do not work!

3) Throwing up a blog on a free platform and filling it up with Adsense or other PPC ads is unlikely to deliver much success. This applies whether we are talking one blog or fifty blogs. Adsense is great, but it’s also a numbers game – you need big numbers in terms of pages and visitors to make big returns. By big, I mean big – tens of thousands of pages receiving tens of thousands of visitors and you will probably start making a nice income. Throwing up fifty, a hundred or more useless blogs or splogs won’t work even if some people tell you that all you need are a couple of Adsense clicks a day on each one and you’ll be raking in the money. Great theory, but you won’t get the traffic to even generate those occasional clicks in the first place. Throwing up such poor quality free pages will achieve nothing – in fact, you’re more likely to get banned from Blogger and Adsense to boot if you’re not careful. Oh, and don’t think you’ll be smart and use auto surf sites to rack up huge numbers of impressions – using any kind of traffic exchange in conjunction with Adsense will get you banned very quickly.

Our freebie seekers of course will tell you otherwise, expecting you to believe that their PR0 blog with no comments is really generating a thosand dollars for them every month, and that all you need to do is visit this or that site, where you can learn to do exactly the same. You will naturally be directed to a page through an affiliate link – Clickbank or similar – to purchase an ebook that the freebie seeker has naturally never laid eyes on, let alone read.

4) Making millions with PPC advertising. This is a no brainer – all you have to do is pick some keywords, write a snappy ad, link to an affiliate program and gve your credit card details to Google, Yahoo, MSN or whoever. You will wake up rich beyond your wildest dreams.

OK, maybe too heavy on the sarcasm, but it’s really not that easy. Ask anyone who has rushed blindly into PPC and lost their shirt in the process, paying for a truckload of clicks but generating nary a sale. I have a little more sympathy for these types than the freeloaders; after all, they have accepted that they need to spend money to make money, but unless you do your homework, it’s likely to prove costly. Even if you do your research beforehand, there are no guarantees that PPC campaigns will work for your business. Having said all that, PPC can be a very profitable tool, just don’t believe overly hyped claims from the totally inexperienced.

5) Start a blog and you will soon be collecting checks on a regular basis. Don’t believe this one either. There is a lot to be said for blogs as a marketing tool, don’t get me wrong. Blogs can and do increase your exposure tremendously, but apart from an elite few, blogs are usually not their direct revenue generators. A blog is a tool, and used wisely it will help an online business to grow, but it’s unlikely to pay the bills all by itself.

6) Article marketing – another area where a lot of ill informed and overly hyped prose is written. As a long term strategy, carried out correctly, article marketing can be hugely beneficial to a business of any kind, but it takes time to see results and there is a learning curve to go through.

I actually saw someone advocating the tactic of blanket bombing article directories with PLR articles and slapping affiliate links into the resource box. This was in an article submitted to one of my directories. They even went as far as to claim that this would guarantee a huge number of hits and sales. This is just one piece of foolish nonsense from a clueless fool, who, no doubt is wondering why article marketing is so useless, whilst trying to tell others how rich it will make them. It is a fact that most article directories do not permit linking directly to affiliate programs in the resource box! It follows that this is hardly the way to proceed.

7) Work from home opportunities have become a breeding ground for scams and hucksters the world over. Global oppportunities for peddlers of schemes and tricks to make themselves rich have never been more plentiful.

There are several “opportunities” circulating at the moment that are borderline illegal and when they disappear into the ether there will no doubt be plenty to replace them.

Promises of overnight riches rarely hold much water if you examine them even superficially. Just because you see a video of someone opening envelopes full of cash does not make it so. One “gifting” program of this nature has obviously sucked in a fair number of gullible souls who really believe that people will be queuing up to send them three thousand dollars just because they show them a poor quality video on a traffic exchange.

Have you ever managed to sell a product online for three thousand dollars or more? I’m guessing the answer in most cases is – probably not. If you fall for this kind of scam, you probably deserve to get rooked – after all, how difficult is it for someone to get three thousand in cash (there are plenty of ways), go to FedEx, mail it to themselves and then film it’s arrival and subsequent opening on a webcam. If that’s all the proof it takes to convince you, you have some painful lessons to learn.

Whenever you read outlandish claims offering boatloads of money and retirement before you’ve even started working, in conjunction with proclamations that you don’t have to sell anything, don’t have to advertise, don’t have to do anything at all really, other than sit back and watch the money roll in…..and you find yourself believing it – my advice is to seek professional help.

Making money with sites that pay you to read ads, emails, visit sites, sign up for free offers etc etc etc I’m not saying that none of them work but in terms of time expended set against financial reward, they are usually a dismal prospect. Would you go and do a job for $20 a month?

There you have just eight of countless things that you should not believe. Trust me there are plenty more.

If you are serious about making money online, you are going to need a plan. You are going to have to spend some money to get yourself set up to do business. You will need a website of your own for starters (unless you intend to buy a hundred ebooks and courses telling you how to succeed without even this most basic of needs). This means hosting fees. If you are starting from a position of very little technical knowledge, you will have to dedicate a lot of time to learning the ropes or you will have to pay for the services of others. With most things online, the sooner you bow to the inevitability of having to lay out a little cash as you go along, the sooner you will start to open up some real possibilities.

There are countless ways to make money online, there are many people who are living proof of this, but try not to get caught up in the rubbish.

I have not mentioned things like stock or currency trading simply because they are not scams. Trading online can be lucrative and you won’t need a website of your own for this kind of venture but you will need capital, and you need to understand the risks, which are not insignificant.

However that’s all a subject for another day. As grandpa said, free advice is often pretty much worth what you pay for it. Just be careful what you believe in your quest for online wealth and you’ll avoid a lot of wasted time and disappointments.

There IS plenty of free information on the internet and there are also plenty of free tools and software and services that may help you – but – you are starting a business and business means you will need some business capital to get off the ground. If you think otherwise and persist in looking for the elusive, no cost magic bullet, you are destined to fail and I don’t care what any rehashed nonsense some self help book tells you about irrefutable laws of nature or anything else. You need to do a lot more than just dream about online success if you wish to achieve it.

A closing thought – money may well make the world go round. If nobody spends any, nobody receives any. If you can find me something that disproves that 100%, tell me where to sign up.

intrepreneur ‘in-tra-pre-noor’, n. a person who organizes, maintains and takes responsibility for an internet business venture.

Starting any business is a somewhat daunting task, but to start what is now known as a traditional or offline business should only be considered if you have very deep pockets, a lot of patience or a unique and brilliant idea.

I say this because I have been running my own traditional style businesses for the last 17 years and to be perfectly honest, it is not getting any easier. On the contrary, it is actually harder if not impossible to earn a reasonable income now because of ever increasing overheads and diminshing profit margins due to unprecedented levels of competition both “on” and “offline”. Each year I have seen my expenditure increase as a result of higher rent, rates, water charges, electricity/gas charges, insurances, staff costs, telephones not to mention raw materials. What makes matters worse, if I increase my prices accordingly to compensate, I notice a dramatic drop in sales and so I have become the proverbial hamster in the wheel running faster and faster but going nowhere.

However, with the advent of the internet and in particular broadband, it is now so much easier to start and run your own business. Furthermore, what is especially interesting is that this can be done with very little overheads, no business premises, no stock and no staff. The business is open for trade 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. You can actually make money whilst you sleep. Now is that a good business or not.

But wait a minute, any business whether it is traditional or online requires hardwork and effort and if you are not prepared to give them this then I wish you well in whatever you do because it is unlikely you will make money working for yourself.

On the other hand, if like me, you are prepared to give it your all, your total commitment, your undivided attention, you too can become an intrepreneur.

Believe it or believe it not, setting up an internet business venture can be done by following the same blueprint that everyone before you has followed. It is not rocket science and you don’t have to re-invent the wheel. All you have to do is be committed, keep at it and do what others have done before you. This is very much the key to be successful online.

What I have found in my years of business is something which I have called the 10% rule and it goes like this.

90% of the world’s wealth is owned by 10% of its population.

90% give up easily and only 10% go on to be reasonably successful

of this 10% only 10% go on to become very wealthy

and the reason they did was because they followed the rules and stuck at it.

There is no magical formulae, no “holy grail”, just pure determination, commitment and with predetermined goals you and me can become one of the 10 percent.

All the information, tools and resources which you require are readily available to download from the internet itself.

I wish you every success and a prosperous future.

Gordon McAlpine

P.S. A website which I have found extremely helpful with an easy to follow step by step guide and everything you will need to become an intrepreneur can be found at .UltimateNetMarketing.com

This is an attempt to give you some ideas about cautions you should exercise and maybe even some thinking about whether it is such a good idea to take on all these responsibilities yourself. There are some good reasons for having a Licensed Broker or other real estate professional involved. It is not, however an absolute requirement. There may be some people who would take out their own appendix. Now you know where I am coming from and that I am unabashedly biased in terms of involving a professional when it makes sense.

Your friend Joe hasn’t been able to use his week at your resort for several years and has decided (correctly) that he should sell it. His price is reasonable and you agree to buy it. Your first step is to make sure Joe owns it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking he is such a good guy he wouldn’t lie to you. He may be absolutely honest, but we have just had so many cases where people were confused about what they owned, how it worked and what name they had used to acquire it. They may have forgotten that they put it into a trust or believe it really doesn’t matter that they did. If the paper work isn’t correct you might just as well have a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge. Fortunately, you don’t have to accuse Joe of lying to you (chances are he is giving you the best information he has). Just ask to see his documentation. He should be able to produce his Grant, Warranty or Quit Claim Deed, mortgage papers, the CC& R’s to the property, the most recent tax bill, the dues bill, etc. In addition, ask him if he has put the title into a trust or otherwise conveyed it elsewhere. The most common problem is that they will add their four kids (so the kids can call for reservations) to the Deed and record it. In most cases that creates a title nightmare all of which must be unraveled. It can also be indicative of more problems if you know what to look for. If not, it is probably time to bring in a professional, as you probably will sooner or later.

Next, call the resort and determine the dues status. It is not uncommon that people have not paid the most recent dues or even several of them. The minute you take title, all those bills Joe didn’t pay become yours. Congrat-ulations.

If taxes are collected directly from the timeshare Owner rather than through the Association, next call the Tax Collector for the county where the resort is located. Determine that the taxes have all been paid up to date. Many times this is an automated voice mail system and you can usually get an answer within a half-hour or so. You must have the Assessor’s Parcel Number from the tax bill to be able to do this.

How about the status of the exchange? Does he have weeks banked? Who is going to pay for the exchange fees? Does Joe want to give you the remaining Exchange Company membership or do you want to buy it? The Exchange Companies will not divulge Member information unless you pose as the Member and give them your Member Number. Hopefully this is part of the information you got from Joe.

Are you going to use an escrow? How about Title Insurance? Who is going to pay for these? In Southern California the Seller normally pays for the Title Insurance, but in Northern California the Buyer normally pays. These customs vary from state to state and even within a state. What is normal where you live? Should you even bother with Title Insurance? As a broker we won’t sell a property without it, but if you were only paying $500 for the timeshare title insurance would not be worth it. You are better off just self-insuring and if you lose, you didn’t lose much.

If a loan is required by the Buyer to satisfy the cash demanded by the Seller it must be obtained. There are lenders specializing in timeshare re-sale financing. Another alternate is that the Seller may be willing to take back a note as part of the purchase price. These need to be correctly drafted within the laws of the county and state where the property is located. Now what steps are required to protect the Seller against non-payment by the Buyer? All this gets pretty involved and is probably best accomplished by an escrow, para-legal, attorney, real estate broker or other professional. There are many pitfalls to doing these things yourself and then having them go wrong, the least of which is that you could be sued for more than the purchase price.

Assuming you still want to keep trying to take out your own appendix or that you simply can’t find a reputable broker who handles that property, your next step will be to order the TimeSharing Today Document Kit. Although it is generalized to cover all states (and probably beyond) it provides an effective checklist of issues which should be covered. It also provides adequate documentation to start the process. Also contained is a generous supply of forms and letters that may be used. It will guide you along the lines of what should be considered and provide you a purchase and sale document. Even this Do it Yourself kit recommends that you hire some professional help at this point whether it be a real estate broker, an attorney, a title agent or an escrow agent to handle the intricacies of closing. This is similar to doing your own tax return. Are you really taking all the deductions to which you are entitled? Are you setting yourself up for an audit? Good professionals usually pay for themselves. We all recommend that you do not handle the whole thing yourself. Too much specialized knowledge is required.

Now that you have done your homework, if you decided to forego escrow and title insurance, your next step will be draw a deed, get it signed and notarized by the Seller and swap the deed to the timeshare for a check for the money you agreed to pay. If the deed is incorrectly drawn or the check is no good, one or both parties may be out in the cold. As you can see, the licensed broker or professional does earn his or her fee.

After you have closed the deal, there is still much to be accomplished. The resort must be notified. In most cases the resort Management Company will charge a fee to make the changes in their records resulting from the transfer. The same is true of the Tax Collector and exchange companies.

Let’s say you have now decided against doing it yourself and plan to hire a broker. Here are the rules:

As a Seller, never ever pay a front, listing, appraisal or any other advance fee. As has been discussed here many times, this is almost always a clear signal of an impending rip-off. Check out the proposed professional. Are they licensed in the state where the property is located? Are they with the Better Business Bureau? Does the resort know of them? Can they give you referrals? What do the referrals say?

As a Buyer, insist on getting someone that really knows what they are doing involved in the details. Do the same checking on them that is recommended above for the Seller. You are better off bringing in this person relatively early in the process. (Say right after you have agreed on what the transaction should be). Discuss professional fees beforehand. Realize that if you choose to go without any professional help at all you may have saved money on the appendix operation, but the patient died.