Showing posts with label AdSense. Show all posts
Showing posts with label AdSense. Show all posts

1/27/2012

6 Steps to Build a Blog and then to earn Adsense Revenue

Building a blog to earn Google Adsense revenue is one of the easiest and most popular ways to make money online. The concept is fairly simple and straight forward. You make a blog and place the ad sense code on it, anytime someone click on any of those ads, you get a commission from ad sense. Its a simple yet effective method for making money. Although it seems easy, it requires hard work and consistent effort. Here is a 4 step guide for building a blog specifically to earn money using ad sense on it:


Find a niche
First you need to find a good niche for your blog. A topic that is popular and you are passionate about. If its popular, it means you have a better chance of getting more traffic to it, and if you have passion for it, it makes it easier for you to write about the topic. Some of the most popular and profitable niches include making money online, weight loss, Relationships, Stock trading system and Blogging. For example, if you choose “making money online” as your niche, your blog will be mainly about topics related to making money online.

Get a blog
Although it sounds like it will be the hardest part, specially for non technical people like myself, it actually is the easiest part, thanks to free blogging platforms like blogger. Of course, you can use paid blogs as well. But, you don’t really have to. In fact, I encourage you to start with free blogs. You can always upgrade later on if you decide to. If you are going to use free blogging, I would suggest using blogger. It takes less than 2 minuets to create your blog, and with a few clicks you can install adsense on your blog (you have to be registered with ad sense), since it’s already integrated din blogger. Also, blogger is owned by Google, which makes it much easier to rank well for compare to other blogs.

Sign up for ad sense
If you don’t already have an account with ad sense, you will need to register with them. Of course, your blog will be reviewed by ad sense staff and if approved, you can then start earning money with adsense. After getting approved, simply go back to your blogger blog’s dashboard, and use their easy to use drag and drop system, to install ad sense on your blog. Ad sense then will serve ads relevant to the content of your blog.
If for some reason your blog didn’t get approved, don’t be discouraged. They will send you an email along with the reasons for rejecting your application, use it to fix the problem(s) and apply again. It’s really not that hard to get approved for Google adsense.

Write quality content
One of the most important elements of any blog build to earn adsense revenue, or any kind of blog or website for that matter, is quality and useful content. Without content your blog is nothing. If you want to make mo0ney with your blog, you have to provide useful information in order to attract visitors and keep them coming back. Make sure you publish new content as often as you can. The more (quality) content you have, the more chances you have of getting more visitors to your blog, and ultimately more clicks on your ads.

Drive traffic to your blog
Although you have built your blog, installed ad sense, have written good quality content, if you don’t let people know about it, no one will visit your blog. You need to drive traffic to your blog. There are many ways to drive traffic to your blog, both free and paid ones. I suggest sticking with free methods, as they last longer, and obviously don’t cost you any money. Some of the best free ways to drive traffic to your blog include commenting on other related blogs, publishing quality articles on major article directories with a link back to your blog, participating on related forums, using facebook, twitter, myspace and other social networking sites to spread the word and submitting your blog to major search engines and blog directories. the more traffic you drive to your blog, the more you can earn with ad sense ads on your blog.

Repeat step 4 and 5
You are not done yet! In fact, if you want to continue to earn ad sense revenue on your blog, you have to constantly post fresh and quality content and also keep driving traffic to your blog. You are not the only making money this way, there are thousand s of people doing that. So, if you want to not fall behind, you need to keep working on your blog to make it better and better.


It is important to know that, for the first few months or more, most new blogs with ad sense, wont make much money. It takes a little time and a lot of hard work to get there. But, once you get the ball rolling, you will be amazed to see how easy it is to make money with adsense on your blog.

To Make Money with Clicksor, an Alternative to Ad sense

What’s Clicksor and how do you make money with it?… Well, have you ever wondered if there was an easier and better alternative to ad sense? An alternative that could allow you to make more money with your blog with less restrictions and faster payouts?… Well, that’s what Clicksor is all about! Clicksor is a content-sensitive online marketing advertising agency, just like Google ad sense. It is a great way to monetize your blog or website. Its basically affiliate marketing in a different way.


How does Clicksor work?
Clicksor enables bloggers to make more money with their blogs by using inline text links. It uses the keyword-based contextual technology to serve ads that are related to the content of your blog. Which basically means, if your blog is about making money online, the ads displayed on your blog, will be related making money online. One of the biggest benefits of using keyword-based ads, is the fact that it increases your click-through rate, which means you will make more money.

How much money can you make with Clicksor?
According to the FAQ of the site itself, publishers are paid 60% of the revenue generated by their site. But, as with most other such sites, the actual rates depends on many different things like the geographic location of your site, market conditions, the amount of traffic your site pulls in and etc. Of course, the biggest factor in how much money you can make, is the amount of click through you receive. And since usually visitors who are actively looking for information represented on your blog, are more likely to click on ads, the more targeted traffic you receive, the more money you can make.

Earn 10% per referral
You can also earn some money by referring either publishers or advertiser to Clicksor. Every time a publisher or an advertiser who clicks on your referral link, and becomes a member of Clicksor, you earn 10 commission. If its a publisher, you get 10% of their daily earnings, and if its an advertiser, you get 10% of their daily advertising spending. So, you can easily boost your chances of making more money with Clicksor by simply referring others to them.

Style and the formats of advertisement
When it comes to the style and formats of advertisement displayed on your blog, you have different options. There are different sizes and formats that you can use to match with the general layout and style of your blog. We all know that ads that look as if they are a part of the blog, tend to do much better when it comes to click-through ratio than ads that look like something that don’t belong on that page.

How do you get paid on Clicksor?
One of the frustrating things about ad sense and its payout system is its minimum payment requirement, which is $100, and the fact that it takes so long to get paid. But, with Clicksor the payout minimum is lower and they pay on a bi-weekly bases. Which means if you reach the minimum amount required for payout, you will be paid every 15 days. Now that’s fast!
When it comes to the method of payment, Clicksor gives you 3 options:
1- PayPal With minimum payout of $50
2- Check With minimum payout of $50
3- Wire Transfer with a minimum payout of $1,000. You also have to pay $75 for administration fee.


So, if you are looking for an alternative to ad sense, or just trying to monetize your blog for the first time, Clicksor is a great site to go with. Register for free today, and make money with Cliksor on your blog.

Increasing Your Google Ad sense Earnings you should know 4 Important Factors

If you like hundreds of other people are working on the internet and trying tomake money from your blog or website, then you probably are aware Google ad sense program. By inserting a snip of codes in your website, Google ad sense will place advertisements from Google on your blog or website. Every time someone clicks on those ads, you get a percentage of what Google earns from its advertisers who’s ads are shown on your site.

Although the idea of making money with Google ad sense is simple, to make any decent amount of money, you have to put some hard work and effort into it. When it comes to making real money with ad sense, there are a few basic things you need to know about and work on. In order for you to make money with ad sense, you need to be able to use and apply these things correctly. When it comes to ad sense and ad sense earnings, the most important factors are:


Keywords
Google ad sense serves ads based on your content keywords. Another words, ad sense shows ad that are relevant to your content. And like any other type of advertising, some advertisers pay more than others, thus when someone clicks on such ads, you earn more money. So, researching and using high paying keywords is an important factor, if you want to increase your ad sense earnings.


Content
Of course to make money from ad sense, you need to drive traffic to your site, and without any decent content, there is no point in driving traffic to your site. You have to offer something of a value to people in order for them to visit your site.


Ad placement
While you may think placing ads anywhere on your site will work, its been shown that ads placed above the fold (the top area of your site, where a visitors coming in doesn’t have top scroll down to see the ad) are much more effective. Even the size and the design of ad sense displayed on your site is a factor in whether or not a visitor clicks on it.


Traffic
You have researched your keywords, created some great content, placed your ads on the best spot on your site, but if there is no one coming to your site, there will be no clicks on your ads. Here comes the hardest part of your journey, driving targeted traffic to your site. There are many ways to drive targeted traffic to your site, from article marketing, to forum posting and search engine optimization. But any webmaster will tell you that search engine optimization is by far the best method for driving targeted traffic to your site specially for the long run. SEO will take some time and effort, but its well worth the rewards.



Working on each of these individual areas will increase your Google ad sense earnings, but it may take you a while to master all four. But when you do, you will be really making money with Google ad sense.

6 Steps To Choose Profitable Google Adsense Keywords

Adsense is by far one of the easiest ways to make money online. All you need is a website/blog and traffic, and your on your way to make some money online. You wont make much, but it will be enough to give you the confidence and motivation you need to keep going. But, if you are serious and want to make real money with Adsense, then you need to prepare. The subject of your content and the Keywords used in it, play a big role in your Adsense earnings. To increase your Adsense earnings you need to choose the right keywords that payout big. Here is a simple 6 steps process to help you pick the most profitable Adsense keywords.
Find keywords with high CPC value
The first step is to research and find some keywords for your niche that have a high CPC value. Use the Google Adwords keyword tool or another tool that will give you niche specific lists of keywords to find such keywords. Save those keywords where it can be reached latter. Copy and paste those keywords into Google’s Traffic Estimator (you will need an Adwords account). This fantastic free tool will give you the estimated clicks per day and the average cost per click (CPC) for each keyword. Again save this information for later reference.
Estimating your maximum earnings
To get an estimate of your maximum earnings per click, Multiply the average CPC by 30%. The higher the average CPC, the more likely the CPC for the 2nd – 8th positions are high as well. Of course you would want to start with the higher average CPC, because if the CPC starts to drop off significantly after the 3rd position, your chance of getting high click earnings as an Adsense publisher will be diminished.
Estimating the 1st – 8th position CPC values
You will need to estimate the 1st – 8th position CPC values. You can do this by using tools like Adword Accelerator which will estimate the CPCs for each position and lets you see how much the CPCs drop off after the first position. Of course you can use any other tool that odes the same thing. This information helps your analysis for picking the most profitable keywords. If the CPC values stay close to the each other and to the value of the first position, then you will more than likely have a profitable keyword.
Determining which Adsense ads occupy which positions
Now you have to determine which Adsense ads occupy which positions. A simple and reliable way to do this is by searching on Google for your keyword, and looking to see which Adsense ads are generated in the search results and in which order they are.
You can also use the Adword Accelerator tool. It has a feature whereby Adwords ads are dynamically displayed for a given keyword you input into the tool to check. If the Adwords advertiser has used “Adwords for Content” in his advertising, these ads will be the Adsense ads someone else is displaying on their website.
Compare
Compare the ads you found in step 4 to the results of using the keyword check function of your software of choice. If the advertisers you find by doing this closely match those you found in step 4, the chances are that you will more than likely have a profitable keyword. But, if the advertisers are not he same, then the advertiser is possibly not using the “Adwords for Content” mode of advertising in his campaigns. This means that the keyword may not be the basis for the Adsense ads, which means it may not be profitable.
Traffic, Traffic, Traffic
This is the most important step. Without traffic even the most profitable Adsense keywords will not earn you a dime. And not any kind of traffic will do. You need targeted traffic that will click on those ads. There are many ways to drive targeted traffic to your site. The fastest way to drive targeted traffic is by using Adwords. If you decide to use Adwords, then you can simply use the keywords in your Adsense ads that scored well from the above evaluation.
To keep your expenses down, use lower cost per click keywords in your Adwords ads. Be careful with this! you don’t want your Adwords spending to be higher than your Adsense earnings. The difference between the earnings from the click you get on your Adsense word from the cost of the click you pay on your Adwords word will be your profit.
You can also drive traffic with search engine optimization techniques. It takes a while, but it certainly is worth it. When using SEO, make sure the keywords you choose have the highest KEI possible. KEI is the ratio of the number of searches for a keyword to the number of competing sites having the keyword. To get the best results, you need a combination of a high KEI and a high score from the above evaluation.


This simple 6 steps strategy will dramatically increase your adsence earnings, if you follow through. I know it all may sound time consuming and hard to do, but its all well worth it. Google Adsense is one of the best ways to make money online if you know how to use it and make the most out of it.

How Much Money Can we Make With Google Ads?

Google ad sense is one of the top ways to make money online. And without a doubt one of the best first monetization options any newbie bloggers/webmaster considers. I think most people are drawn to ad sense because of a couple of thing. Its easy to set up, it’s well-known and has been around for a log long time, and many people are already making unbelievable amounts of money with ad sense. But really, how much money can you make with ad sense, how much is possible?

Your ad sense Earnings will depend on several factors, such as your blog or website traffic (Impression), your blog/website contents, your ad sense implementation (Number of Add unit/Link unit used, Add unit placement, Add formats, Add Colors, Add Placement, Add filtering etc). However it’s important to remember that it takes time to build up your income.

One of the most important factors in how much money you can make with ad sense is your niche. Some niches are hot and very popular, therefore competitive. Advertisers pay Google more for showing those ads, therefore ad sense pays you more for each click generated from your site. One such a niche is Forex trading. There are keywords related to Forex that pay up to $100 per click! yes one click and you earn $100. However these are rare.

There is no one answer to how much you can earn from ad sense. Some ad sense users earn hundreds and even thousands of dollars per month. I know people who make a couple of thousand dollars a day from their ad sense optimized blogs. And then there are who make just a couple of dollars or less a day with ad sense. As I said it depends on verity of things. But I think the best answer comes from Google adsense itself:

The Google ads you are able to display on your content pages can be either cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-1000-impressions (CPM) ads, search results pages show exclusively CPC ads. This means that advertisers pay either when users click on ads, or when the advertiser’s ad is shown on your site. You’ll receive a portion of the amount paid for either activity on your website. Although we don’t disclose the exact revenue share, our goal is to enable publishers to make as much or more than they could with other advertising networks.
The best way to find out how much you’ll earn is to sign up and start showing ads on your web pages. There’s no cost, no obligation, and getting started is quick and easy.”

So, I would say the amount of money you can make with ad sense is up to you for the most part. But, there is no limit to how much you can make. If you choose the right niche, and commit yourself to providing quality and useful content to your readers, and work hard on doing all the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) works and the rest involved in making a blog successful, you are sure to make good money with ad sense. After all using Google ad sense is one of the top ways to make money online.

2 Ways of effective to maximize the Google Ad sense Earnings

For most webmasters and bloggers, Ad sense is the number one way to generate a worthy income. Most of them are always on the look out for new ways to increase their Ad sense earnings. Many bloggers and webmasters use techniques like using high paying keywords in every article they publish. But so many times they fail to increase their ad sense earnings. They do not succeed because they fail to realize that so many times the problem is not what kind of keywords they use, or how they implement keywords in an article. It simply is a matter of bad navigation and bad link description used to draw traffic in.

Having high paying proper keywords is one side of the coin, the other side however doesn’t have anything to do with keywords, but everything to do with how you get visitors to click on those high paying keywords.

Attention Grabbing Navigation Links
One of the most important things for keeping visitors in your site, going from one page to another, is a good navigation menu. A good navigation with attention grabbing links can help you maximize your Ad sense earnings. Most visitors scan the page for interesting stuff, until they see something interesting. While a good navigation will help visitors find what they need faster, it can also be used to funnel your traffic to pages with higher paying keywords. Simply make the links(to the page with high paying keywords) more attractive by using keywords related to what your visitors are looking for.

High Paying Keywords
The navigation logic can also be used in increasing your Ad sense earning, by using Adwords or any other source of PPC advertising you use for driving more traffic to your site. And if you are not using ppc because of the cost, this method can be used with a very low budget, depending on your niche.
First choose a page (or more) in your site that uses inexpensive keywords in its content. This will help you with using Adwords to
draw traffic to the page, without breaking the bank.
Now, using catchy and unique description, make the link to the high paying page(s) stand out. maybe use something like “free download of…” or “get your free…”. be creative and use attention grabbing phrases that will spark curiosity in visitors. Of course I don’t mean using anything to get people to click on your link, you want them to trust you and become a frequent visitor. So, use attention grabbing keywords that are relevant to the content of the page you are trying to get them to read.
Now use Adwords to drive traffic to the chosen page, by targeting your ads on the same low paying keywords you used in the content of the chosen pages (so you can bid on them with a cent or two). Almost 100% of the time, when visitors arrive at a web page, they will want to either leave or go to another page on the same site. But with your eye catching links, their next destination would most likely be the high paying page you are linking to. Which means more traffic (more clicks) on your high paying keywords.

Experimenting with different styles of link text, using links in different spots on your page, and monitoring the activity through tools like Google Analytics, will help you find the best way to get more clicks for your high paying Ad sense keywords, which ultimately helps you increase your ad sense earnings.

100 High Paying Keywords(google ads) Paying From $1 Up To $100 Per Click!

High Paying Keywords! Everyone is trying to somehow find a way to incorporate High Paying Keywords into their content. as you all know, keywords play a big part in how much you earn from your google Ad sense. of course you can’t just stuff your blog with high paying keywords that don’t have any relevancy to the subject of your blog or the content of it, and expect to get thousands of clicks on them. relevant high paying keywords used with quality content is the key to getting the most out your Ad sense. here are some of the Best High Paying Keywords With Payouts Of $1-$100 Per Click!
Expect to get paid for each click on any one of these high paying keywords, anywhere from $2 up to $100. yes $100 us dollars for a click. if you can incorporate these high paying keywords into your content, where it will be relevant and meaningful, you can expect to make a lot of money from even just one blog with a couple of pages filled with quality and informative content which have some of these high paying keywords incorporated into them.

1. Structured settlements
2. Mesothelioma
3. Acne
4. Life Insurance
5. Asbestos
6. Bextra
7. Bankruptcy
8. Car Insurance
9. Dental Plans
10. Private Jets
11. Debt Consolidation
12. Credit Cards
13. Canadian Pharmacy
14. Online Trading
15. Equity Line Credit
16. Loans
17. Mortgages
18. Pay Day Loans
19. Cash Advance
20. Equity Loans
21. Reduce Debt
22. Refinance
23. Jet Charter
24. Rehab
25. Wrongful death
26. Legal Advice
27. Taxes
28. Investing
29. Bonds
30. Vioxx
31. IRA Rollover
32. Refinance Quotes
33. Adult Education
34. Distance Learning
35. Alcohol Treatment
36. Depression
37. Drug Rehab
38. Extra Money
39. Cell Phone Plans
40. Calling Cards
41. VOIP
42. Weight Loss
43. Homeowner’s Insurance
44. Rewards Cards
45. Spam Filter
46. Lasik
47. Facelift
48. Teeth Whitening
49. Annuity
50. Anti Virus Protection
51. Adult Diaper
52. Free Credit Report
53. Credit Score
54. Satellite
55. Anti Spam Software
56. Dedicated Hosting
57. Domain Name
58. Need Money
59. Bachelor Degree
60. Master Degree
61. Doctorate Degree
62. Work at Home
63. Quick Book
64. Spyware
65. Eloan
66. Malpractice Lawyer
67. Lenox China
68. Cancer
69. Payperclick
70. Personal Injury Attorney
71. Lexington Law
72. Video Conferencing
73. Transfer Money
74. Windstar Cruise
75. Casinos Online
76. Laptop Computer
77. Online Banking
78. Borrow Money
79. Low Interest Credit Cards
80. Personal Domain Name
81. Cellular Phone Rental
82. Internet Broker
83. Term Life
84. Cheap Hosting
85. University Degrees Online
86. Online Marketing
87. Consolidate
88. Business Credit
89. Web Host
90. Death Insurance
91. Yellow Page Advertising
92. Travel Insurance
93. Register Domain
94. Credit Counseling
95. Email Hosting
96. Trans Union
97. Consumer Credit
98. Blue Cross
99. Helpdesk Software
100. Online Movie

Don’t forget, the more relevant quality content you have on your blog, the higher your chances will be for making more money with such keywords. after building your high paying keyword incorporated content, focus on driving traffic to your blog. the more traffic you generate, the more money you will make. but not just any traffic will work for you. you need to drive quality targeted traffic to your blog, where you have your high paying keywords waiting to be clicked on. since google Ad sense shows ads that are made of keywords related to your content, obviously a person(targeted traffic) who comes to your blog trying to find such information is more likely to click those ads which are made of high paying keywords,thus making you more money.

7 Ways To Make More Money With Google Ad sense

Google ad sense is an easy way to make money with your blog. If used correctly, Ad sense can be your most important tool for making money online. A simple change in color or style of the ad sense block you use on your site, may very well turn your ad sense from getting clicked on 5 times a day to 50 times a day, thus increasing your revenue from $0.50 a day to $50 a day or more. That’s why Optimizing Google Ad sense should be on top of your to do list when monetizing your blog or website. There are a couple of ways to do that. Here are a few simple but essential ways in which you can optimize your ad sense to perform better, and maximize your ad sense earnings.

Style of the ad sense blockA well designed ad sense block which fits the style of your website/blog can take your CTR ratio to a higher level. Obviously each website or blog is designed differently. So experimenting with different layouts, can help you find the best performing format. There are some styles of ad sense block that have proven to be the highest earners when it come to ad sense earning. Two of the most popular ones are:
A. a 160×600 Skyscraper with text ads, placed on the left or right side of the page.
B. a 336 x 280 big Rectangle with text ads, placed on top or middle of the page.

Colors of the ad sense block
An important aspect of a well designed ad sense block is it’s colors. While you may not want to trick people in any way, shape or form into clicking on ads, using the right colors and blending the ads with the content of your page, will make the ads appear as though it’s part of it, and not an unrelated subject. A simple example would be using a white background ad sense block with no borders, on a page with white backgrounds, which perfectly blends the ads with the content, thus giving your Ad sense an increase in click through ratio.

High paying keywords
Using high valued and reach keywords in your content is the number one way to ensure that ad sense will serve ads with high paying keywords, which means you will earn more for each click. Which would you rather have: a page with 10 keywords which pay $0.02 a click, or 2 keywords that pay $1.00 per click?… Of course that doesn’t mean bombarding your content with non related and nonsense keywords. Not only that will not attract any new traffic, but you also will risk losing your loyal readers as well. All that said, keep in mind to not write for ad sense, but always write with your readers in mind, with an eye on reach keywords.

SEO (search engine optimization)
Search engine optimization or SEO not only helps your site’s ranking and status, but it also can contribute to your ad sense earnings if done properly. Here are few example of SEO:
A. Robots.txt file- An often over looked yet very effective method for SEO.
B. Meta Tags- Use meta tags that defines the content of each page.
C. Site Map- Create a sitemap file for your site using Google webmaster tools or any other tools you use.
D. Meta Title- Using meta title will make it easy to know what your content is about.
E. Title- Using a short but very descriptive title for your article, which is one of the first thing search engines see, is considered very important.
F. Navigation- It has been proven that a navigation menu placed on the left side is more effective than the conventional top navigation.

Costume search boxBy having a Google search box on your site, not only you are giving your readers a convenient way of searching Google right on your site, but also you have the chance to earn money by any clicks generated by the users, on ads displayed on the search result page. It’s like having your own google search site, and getting paid for searches performed on it.

Ad links
A new feature that has been added to ad sense recently, is ad links. It can be a great tool for increasing your ad sense income. It displays a couple of different links, which are determent by Google to be the best and most relevant keywords for the content of your page. Not only that, you also benefit from its anonymity fact, which makes it difficult for many reader to distinguish the links from your content, therefor increasing the click through ratio.

Targeted trafficLast but not least, is of course the all important traffic factor. The more traffic you get, the higher your click through ratio will be. But not any traffic will convert into clicks. Quality targeted traffic is what increases click through ratio. Simply because these kinds of visitors are already looking for information offered by ad sense displayed on your site. There are many different ways to drive targeted traffic to your site. But the best kind of traffic is the one generated by search engines. Search engine generated traffic is more likely to increase your click through ratio, because these are visitors who are actively looking for such terms and keywords.


These are some simple but effective ways you can increase your ad sense earnings. But, you don’t have to stop there. As you go along, you will come to know and find more ways to make the most out of ad sense. Combine ad sense with a quality blog, and you have got yourself one of the best ways to make money online.Keeping an aye of each method’s performance can help you determine the best methods possible for increasing your ad sense click through, thus maximizing your earnings from ad sense.

How to: Real Estate Guide – Second Property Strategy

This is the second part of the comprehensive Real Estate Guide here at Simple Financial Freedom. In this part, we will focus on accumulating a second piece of property for purposes of investment and/or cash flow.

Borrowing Money

If your goal is to acquire a second property in addition to your primary residence, then the amount of money to borrow is an important question. If you don’t have the cash to complete a 100% cash buy (which most people don’t), you will need to be very cautious in your approach.
Your mortgage on your primary residence is an important factor. If you still owe above 50% on your primary residence, most people will be better off by focusing on paying off their first mortgage prior to buying a second property (or at least paying down a larger portion of the mortgage). My favorite approach and one that I think most people should pursue is to fully pay off the primary residence mortgage, then look for additional opportunities. By doing so, you can keep your debt levels manageable.
You will also need a sum of cash to be used as your down payment on the second piece of real estate. In today’s credit environment, you might need 10-20% at least in order to receive a loan. For non-primary residences, the down payment is typically even higher. For best rates and keeping your costs low, you’ll want to have 20% as a bare minimum for your down payment.

Fix Em Ups

Many people like to buy an investment property as a “fix em up”. While it’s very possible to make money on such a project, the days of certain appreciation are definitely behind us. If you can’t do much of the work yourself, it might be hard to recoup your investment. Unless, the home is an absolute steal, you might want to focus more on the homes that are move-in ready.

Other Things To Consider

If you’re looking to buy a home in order to rent it out, you need to consider the effort required to manage a tenant. Don’t underestimate the headache of acquiring a quality tenant. An important question to ask yourself is how long you can hold out without a tenant? What if you can’t find one? How long can you hold on to the house? This is another reason why it is great to have your primary residence paid off.
Furthermore, maintenance costs will be important to plan for. The amount each month or year will depend on the home, but be conservative in your estimates.
I would recommend against buying an investment home in another location. Travel time and distance might be a huge barrier to your successful management of the property. If you have a second property down the street, on the other hand, you can handle the management much easier.