subject: Why Are Real Estate Experts Taking Up Information Marketing? [print this page] Anyone who has been following the field of real estate investment for any length of time has certainly seen the websites of or received sales material via email from one of the many self styled real estate experts who has something to sell you. More often than not, what these people are trying to sell isn't property at all, but information, usually in the form of a guide to making a success of yourself in real estate investing.
These e-books, real estate systems and other material are often an attempt by these real estate investment "experts" to get a little more money out of the market; assuming that they have a background in real estate investment in the first place. They promise you that following the advice that they give you will make you enormously successful - but obviously, with the number of real estate investors trying to sell you e-books or other materials increasing daily, they can't all be able to deliver.
One thing which is well worth looking into is what motivates them to get into the information marketing business. There are a few different things which might drive these investors out of the lucrative (if they're really the experts they claim to be) field of real estate investment and into selling their insights on the web.
Something to think about here is that investors who take up this trade while seeming to have abandoned investment activities proper is whether or not these people were ever all that knowledgeable about or successful in the real estate market to begin with. It is always worth looking into the professional background of any real estate "guru" who has taken up a new career as an information marketer. There are plenty of frauds out there who have just dressed up their old (usually failed) marketing schemes with branding designed to appeal to real estate investors, so suspicion is definitely warranted here.
Another motivating factor for many of these real estate experts turned marketers is as old as the human race itself: avarice, plain and simple. Quite often, these information marketing efforts are born out of a desire to make just a little more money out of the people they do business with already. Certainly, I'm not discounting the importance of earning money from your talents and expertise, but someone who has managed to make a fortune in real estate already genuinely need to squeeze other, less knowledgeable investors for the relatively minimal amounts of money that these e-books and other informational materials cost?
However, this is not the most shameful display of greed that you'll see in the real estate world, at least in the online real estate business. The most egregious problem around are those people who may or may not genuinely be knowledgeable enough about the real estate market to have information worth paying for; their history (or lack thereof) as an investor is not at issue here.
So what is the problem? There are plenty of real estate sites promising to clue you in on how to become wealthy beyond your wildest dreams. A recent example, is a about leveraging Web 3.0 technologies. Before you reach for your wallet, it may be a good idea to Google this phrase. As you'll see, there is no agreement as to exactly what Web 3.0 will be or when it will be here; many of the technologies that people will mention in connection to this next evolutionary leap do not even exist yet or are in their infancy. After all, Web 2.0 is still relatively new and you'll find that not everyone is in total agreement about what this is as of yet.
This sort of hype is nothing new - it's something you see all the time in the software industry, where it has acquired the name vaporware; an apt name considering that many products hyped long before they're ready for market (and in many cases, not even in development yet). It's a tactic which works fairly well for these real estate information marketers; people in the real estate investment business, after all are not necessarily experts on the latest developments in web technologies. This is what these marketers hope to cash in on - again, skepticism is healthy, even recommended. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If the technology isn't there yet or isn't ready for prime time, steer clear.
Before you decide to hand over any money to a real estate investor trying to sell you their "wealth creation methods", just ask yourself this: if what they're offering is so powerful, wouldn't you have heard about this somewhere other than their own website or some written email sales appeal? Secrets don't keep well these days, especially online. If what they're selling really is as good as they say, you'd probably be hearing about it everywhere; you'd see it covered in the business pages of the daily papers, see coverage on Bloomberg News, CNBC and other media outlets which specialize in business news. If everybody's not talking about this product, there's almost certainly a very good reason - it's probably information which is freely available elsewhere.
There are plenty of otherwise reputable real estate experts jumping on the bandwagon, seeing others making money off of the credulity of beginning investors. As for myself, I'd encourage caution. Sure, some of these investors do have genuinely valuable insight into the market; but you can find plenty of people who won't charge you for this kind of information and believe me, there isn't anything you'll learn from the products the "gurus" are trying to peddle that you can't learn somewhere else. Turn to your local bookstore!
The kind of brokers you'd really want to do business with in the first place are happy to give you the guidance you need to make profitable real estate investments - without coming back to try to get a little more money out of you. Personally, I know that I do well when the people I do business with do well; it's why I'm happy to share my knowledge without asking a dime for it. Just look (and think) before you leap is what I'm trying to tell you. There's a lot of shoddy moneymaking schemes out there, so be careful as you get your feet wet in the real estate market.
