Being a real estate can be tough if you can’t get enough leads of motivated sellers. Investors face a multitude of challenges these days considering the soft housing market and tighter lending requirements.

With thousands of layoffs being announced and a dismal economic forecast locating motivated sellers is like taking candy from a baby. There really isn’t. How is it possible to get them contacting you?

I think you’ll find that one of the most powerful resources for finding motivated sellers is the internet. If you look around even a little you’ll find plenty of services offering motivate seller lead lists. I’m suggesting a total online solution that allows the owner to control. Basically, a motivated lead funnel, or website, that you own.

So how should put a solution like this into practice? It starts with an excellent web presence. It must go far in showing you as a serious business with sufficient capital and knowledge to solve the problems of motivated sellers. It should be made public that your company has resolved issues of other motivated sellers. Be sure it has compelling copy writing that induces the visitor to want to give you their information. The site should contain various portals that allow them to send their property information and contact details.

The first step is to create an excellent visual design or pay a graphic designer to do it for you. Or you could substitute a template that you’ve customized. It will take some coding skills to make something from scratch or even modify a template. You must have capital to hire someone. You need to make the decision about what your time is worth. Is your time worth $15 an hour to construct the site yourself? Do you have more time than money?

Testimonials are convincing and should be included. Transfer your offline credibility kit that you use with sellers to your website. Use actual quotes, actual numbers and photos if you have them. Audio testimonials are an excellent option. Happy customers have proven, time and time again, to be the most persuasive part of sales.

Implement compelling copy to induce your visitors to submit their information. Dan Kennedy is a super resource here and I recommend following him where possible. He may be unequaled in the field of writing copy. Buy his book, The Ultimate Sales Letter, and rad it thoroughly. Each page should include a compelling call to action.

Finally, include plenty of lead generators. These are online forms that your visitors complete. The fields on the forms will capture important property and contact information. Some database programming here is necessary to link the form fields to the database records.

Now that your site is live the last step is getting motivated sellers to see it. A great way to do this is to advertise using Yahoo Search Marketing. You can succeed with this by using pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimization to get traffic. Once you start receiving traffic you may find that you’ll need to tweak your copy. If it turns out that you’re not getting as many leads as you would like try having your copy critiqued for improvments. Increasing your conversions can be accomplished by using squeeze and landing pages.

You’ll be able to use paid listings and SEO to gain sufficient traffic to capture motivated sellers on your website.