A Look at Real Estate Sales

I have always wanted to become a real estate agent, but I have never taken the time to actually go about taking the courses to do so. This is one of those careers that could lead to a huge paycheck with very little training, but it could also lead to a big loss in a short amount of time. A real estate agent is an interior designer, a marketing coordinator, a project manager, and a salesperson all in one. This is not the career for everyone, especially with the recent fluctuations in the housing market. Nevertheless, it could be a career to keep in mind because of how easy it is to get into. Let's take a look at this job as a whole to determine if it is a good fit for you.

What Do Real Estate Agents Do?

Real estate agents carry a lot of responsibilities on a day to day basis, to the point that I would consider this one of the most stressful jobs out there. Every real estate agent that I have ever worked with has always been juggling five different tasks at once, all while giving me the customer service I needed to assess a home. Common job duties for real estate agents include:

• Showing homes to prospective renters or buyers
• Marketing homes online and in print media
• Answering questions that clients have about a home
• Overseeing the cleanup work on a newly purchased home
• Assessing the housing market for good buys and property prices
• Finding appropriate homes for clients
• Making sure that homes are taken care of before a sale

Real estate agents have to take on new tasks with every property, so this is not the kind of job that can get monotonous – ever. If you want to work in a field that is never boring, this could be a great option for you. You just have to be able to handle the stress that comes along with it.

Who Much Money Do Real Estate Agents Make?

Real estate agents have the potential to make a hellacious amount of money every year, but a lot of them don't because they lack well-paying customers. Here are some common statistics to keep in mind:

Salary by Years of Experience

• Less than 1 year: $18,937 - $65,889 per year
• 1-4 years: $20,033 - $179,399 per year
• 5-9 years: $23,834 - $117,962 per year
• 10-19 years: $24,190 - $213,046 per year
• 20 years or more: $20,608 - $172,197 per year

Salary by Industry

• Real Estate Sales: $20,608 - $197,265 per year
• Residential Home Construction: $35,593 - $64,275 per year
• Real Estate Property Management: $23,331 - $74,066 per year

Salary by Certification

• Arizona: $36,973 - $92,500 per year
• California: $26,039 - $176,945 per year
• Florida: $35,759 - $240,826 per year
• Illinois: $26,858 - $60,137 per year
• New York: $19,797 - $93,814 per year
• Texas: $12,255 - $120,805 per year
• Virginia: $29,479 - $71,216 per year

As you can see, there is a wide range of salaries that your future pay could fall into. You may make a fortune as a real estate agent, and you may barely get by. You never know until you try though. Look into some of the real estate classes in your area and see if you could gain entry into this career. In a few weeks' time, you could be a certified real estate agent ready to tackle the world.

Have You Thought about Becoming a Marketing Coordinator?

There are many different positions within the marketing world, and every one of them is vital in ensuring that a business is well promoted. One of the first jobs you may go into after getting a marketing degree is that of a marketing coordinator. A marketing coordinator is a person that is in charge of a small project within a marketing campaign. This person works under a project manager to monitor the operations of a small team of people or a small set of tasks. This may not be the most lucrative business career out there, but it is certainly one worth exploring. The marketing coordinator job description below should help you figure out if this is a line of work you want to be in.

What Does a Marketing Coordinator Do?

Marketing coordinator job duties vary by position and by project. One coordinator may be in charge of the schedules for a marketing team, and another may be in charge of a specific ad campaign a company is launching. As a whole, marketing coordinators must work with one another and a project manager to keep a plan running smoothly. This requires a lot of multitasking and time management, but that is the case with any marketing career. Coordinators take over small projects that support a large project. That's the easiest way to look at it.

How Much Money Do Marketing Coordinators Make?

Marketing coordinators don't make a ton of money, but that is because they make up the entry level of the marketing world. Don't expect your salary to buy you a Lamborghini in this career, but you should at least make enough to support your family. Then you can work your way up to the high paying positions later on. Here is a look at how much money you may be able to earn as a marketing coordinator:

Salary by Industry

• Marketing, Advertising and Media Management: $28,021 - $50,090 per year
• Manufacturing and Distribution: $30,545 - $55,431 per year
• Information Technology Services: $29,492 - $55,666 per year
• Healthcare: $29,472 - $54,107 per year
• Architectural and Engineering Services: $30,846 - $56,741 per year

Salary by Degree

• Master of Business Administration: $30,093 - $59,132 per year
• Bachelor of Science in Business and Marketing: $29,011 - $51,063 per year
• Bachelor of Business Administration in Business and Marketing: $28,985 - $46,875 per year
• Bachelor of Arts in Communications: $29,739 - $50,730 per year

Salary by Company Size

• 1-9: $22,744 - $47,306 per year
• 10-49: $27,898 - $48,558 per year
• 50-199: $29,982 - $52,194 per year
• 200-599: $30,042 - $55,150 per year
• 600-1999: $30,880 - $56,049 per year
• 2000-4999: $32,649 - $59,938 per year
• 5000-19999: $33,112 - $58,909 per year
• 20000-49999: $32,739 - $57,931 per year
• 50000+: $32,156 - $77,371 per year

What Does It Take to Become an Marketing Coordinator?

In order to become a marketing coordinator, you will most likely need a degree in marketing, advertising, or business administration. You can go into this field without any formal education, but you will have a hard time getting hired. Ideally, you need to get a bachelor's degree in one of the aforementioned subjects, just so you can have a foundation of training to build on. Then you can work with your employer and project manager to learn more about marketing in the real world. With a little bit of education, you could be a marketing leader in no time.

The Makings of a Good Car Salesperson

I have bought a lot of cars in my day, and I have worked with good and bad salesmen alike. I say salesmen instead of salespeople because I have never actually had a good experienced with a female in this industry. I'm not saying that it is impossible for women to do well in this industry. I actually think I would make a damn good saleswoman myself. For all intensive purposes though, you just need to forgive me if I write salesman more often than not. If you have been thinking about becoming one of these workers that I have been rambling about, you need to know whether or not this is the job for you. Here is a brief look at the makings of a good car salesperson.

A General Knowledge of Cars

This should be pretty obvious, but a lot of people just assume that they can sell a car if they know how to sell stuff in general. That is not the case. You may be able to reel in an unknowledgeable buyer that way, but you aren't going to convince someone who knows what he or she is looking for. The second that your customer realizes he or she knows more about a car than you, you have lost the sale. I guarantee it.

I have owned four Mustangs over the last few years, and I have looked at many others. When I went shopping for one about a year and a half ago, the salesperson was trying to figure out which cars were GTs and which ones were base models. I was immediately able to point that put from the back because of the differing exhaust pipes and faux gas caps. The salesman was impressed by my knowledge of cars, and I was disappointed with his. He worked at a Ford dealership, and he should have easily been able to tell one Mustang from the next. Needless to say, I didn't buy a car from him.

The Ability to Assess What Someone Wants and Needs

As a car salesman, you have to be able to find the right car for every customer. This will depend on the amount of power, luxury, and fuel economy a person may be looking for. You wouldn't want to put a 70 year old woman in a Corvette Z06 unless she asked for it, just like you wouldn't want to put a millionaire in a base model Honda Civic. You can't always judge a customer by the way he or she comes across, but you should be able to ask the right questions to understand what someone is looking for in a car. Then you have to do whatever it takes to find that car for the person.

A Set of Quick Learning Skills

The cars on your lot are going to change from day to day, and in some cases, they will even change by the hour. You have to be able to learn about the features of a vehicle the second it comes in so you can try to sell it to one of your customers. If you just want a job that you can repeat over and over again, this is not the line of work for you. You have to constantly learn about new products and sales pitches so you can be as successful at your job as possible. You might as well learn how to become an elementary school teacher if monotony is what you are looking for.

If you possess the skills above, you may do quite well in car sales. Talk to a dealership in your area and see if they have any positions available for you.

Would You Do Well in Cell Phone Sales?

One of the easiest sales positions to get into involves the sale of cell phones. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and every other phone company out there needs hard working individuals to help them promote their phones and plans. Not everyone is cut out for cell phone sales, so you need to assess this position carefully before you jump right into it. You could be one of those people that are better off selling something else entirely. Let's take a look at some of the factors that go into selling cell phones so you can determine if this is a good career path for you.

Do You Like Technology?

In cell phone sales, you will usually be selling more than just cell phones. You may be selling laptops, tablets, mobile web devices, and much more. Thus you have to be prepared to learn about different forms of technology and communicate the information you know to other people. If you have to call the Geek Squad to help you turn on your desktop at home, you may not be cut out for this industry. You will need to be at least somewhat tech savvy if you decide to work in this field.

Can You Learn Quickly?

You will constantly have to learn about new phones that come out if you decide to work in cell phone sales. Any time a new device comes out, people are going to have questions about it. You have to be the one that promotes these new items, but you can't do that if you don't know anything about them. If you only know about phone models from a year ago, you will quickly lose all possible chances of making a living in this field.

Do You Know How to Read People?

A salesperson in the cell phone industry is sort of like a match maker. You have to be able to pick up on characteristics of a person's life and relate them to a phone at your store. If you fair to pair up a person with the right phone, he or she may not come back to work with you. There are times when people come in knowing exactly what they want, but those times are rare. You cannot up-sell a phone because you have a quota to meet, and you cannot sell only high priced phones because you want the commission for them. At the end of the day, you have to select the perfect device to complement your customers' lifestyles and goals.

Do You Mind Working on Commission?

Most cell phone companies do not pay their workers by the hour. You will still be required to work a set of hours and help people with technical problems during that time, but you will not be able to make any money if you do not sell any cell phones. This is something you can expect out of any sales job, but most people don't think about that until they actually get to work on the first day. If you don't think you are charming enough to sell a lot of phones, you may not want to work in this industry.

Cell phone sales may not be for everyone, but who's to say they aren't right for you? If you can effectively learn about phones enough to sell them to other people, you may be very successful in this career. The only thing you can really do to know for sure is to get a job in this industry and see how it pans out. Hopefully it turns out to be the successful pursuit you envisioned it to be.

80 Video Sites for Internet Marketing

If you are planning to do any kind of video marketing for a business in the near future, you may think that YouTube is the only site you can do that on. While YouTube may be the largest and most well known video promotion site on the web, it is far from the only one. I have compiled a list of 80 of the best video sites for internet marketing so you can explore other options in the near future. If you happen to get your videos out on all of these, you should have no trouble attracting attention to your business.

12Seconds Blip CnetTV Jaycut Mojiti Multiply Photobucket ShareOvi Stage6 OneWorld VideoJug MySpace Rambler Vision VodPod 4Shared 5Min AniBoom Archive Atom BabelGum

BigThink BlogTV Break Buzz CollegeHumor Crackle Current Daily Motion Dalealplay EngageMedia ESnips EyeSpot Famster FireAntTV FreeVlog FunnyJunk Funny or Die GameTrailers GetMiro

GorrilaMask GrindTV Heavy HowCast IAmBored Imeem Joost Jumpcut JustinTV KyteTV LiveLeak LiveVideo ManiaTV Metacafe Mogolus MotionBox Ning OneTrueMedia ooVoo OurMedia

PandoraTV PureVideo Ramp Scivee SevenLoad ShowMeDo Shred or Die Spike StupidVideos TeacherTube TinyPic Truveo UStream Veoh YouTomb

The list above is fairly extensive, but it is only a small portion of the video promotion sites on the web. I figured 80 would cover the basics though, so feel free to look over the sites above to see what you think. If you don't like what one site has to offer, move on to the next one. There are obviously plenty of them to choose from. Whether you're launching a new business on the web or you are starting your software developer career, you should be able to find some way to put the list above to good use in the future.

5 Effective Sales Techniques that Work Every Time

There are tons of different sales techniques out there, and some of them work better than others. Some people try to shove a sale down a customer's throat hoping they will swallow it and sh*t out some money in return. Others speak to people for hours on the phone without ever actually making a sale at the end of the day. These techniques aren't usually effective, but there are some that can work to get you the highest commission checks possible. Here are a few techniques you may want to try the next time you go to make a sale.

1 – Establish Trust

The ultimate key to making a good sale is to get the person on the other end to trust you. Trust goes a long way in sales because it determines how willing someone is to give up his or her money. If you can get the person to feel like he or she can give you money without having to worry about possible problems in the future, you will make a sale every single time. This is hard to do if you are new to the business, but you will get better at it over time. You just need to perfect your charm and figure out a way to get people to truly have confidence in your abilities.

2 – Lead with the Positive

When you start talking about something you want to sell, you need to start by mentioning the positive aspects about the item or service. Think about the things that your potential buyer would most likely want to learn about, and then you can catch his or her interest from the start.

3 – Be Honest

If there is a potential problem with a product you are trying to sell, let someone know about it. That way you keep your sales techniques transparent and you gain the person's trust in the end. For instance, if you are trying to sell a car to someone, you may want to mention problems that some people have had with the gas mileage on the car or the electrical components going out after a certain amount of miles. You need to show people that you want what is best for them. That will lead you to a sale of some sort every time. If you come across wanting to sell something just to get the most money possible, you will turn away buyers in an instant.

4 – Connect with a Buyer

Try to establish a personal connection with someone you are working with before approaching him or her about a purchase. Take an interest in the person's work or residence, or ask about a person's family. The goal in this is to try to create a mini-bond between you and the customer so that he or she feels more comfortable working with you. If you can come across like a friend rather than a salesperson, you will have a much better chance at success.

5 – Avoid Aggression

Buyers can get very reserved very quickly if they feel they are being pushed into a sale. You can't let that happen. If a buyer needs a chance to think something over, give him or her the chance to do so. Do not force that person to make a decision right then. If you give the person your contact information, he or she will ultimately go to you if he or she decides to buy something. If that person decides not to buy, you at least won't waste your energy on a bad lead. You have to be willing to give people some space if you want to do well in this industry.

A Look at Search Engine Optimization

If you are thinking about working in internet marketing, you are going to come across the process of search engine optimization. This is a somewhat complicated process as a whole, but I will try to explain it as simply as possible. The overall goal of SEO is to improve the way a site shows up in search engines. If you run a dating site online, you would want your website to show up on top when someone looks up "online dating site." With the right SEO practices, the site could do just that. Here is an overview of search engine optimization so you can understand how it works a little better.

Keyword Research

The first step to a good SEO marketing strategy is keyword research. This process involves trying to figure out what keywords someone would use in a search engine to find a site. Sometimes this is as easy to figure out as looking up comparable keywords to the obvious ones. Other times it takes a little bit of digging. The trick is to find popular keywords that don't have a ton of competition. Once you can successfully tackle those keywords, you can move on to ones that may be a little more flooded.

Competitor Research

Another step in search engine optimization involves researching a site's competition. If we were doing a competitor analysis for Google, the competitors would be Bing, Yahoo!, AOL, etc. The purpose of a competitor analysis is to see what a site is up against, in essence. When you know who your competition is, you can figure out what marketing practices they are using that are bringing them traffic. Then you can try to use the same tactics with improvements to make your site stand out from the crowd. If you don't know who the competitors are, you can't define a site's image on the web.

On-Site SEO

On-site SEO involves optimizing the content on a website so it shows up best in search engines. This could be something as simple as inserting keywords on a page, and it could be as complex as making a site function in a favorable way. Photo optimization and design optimization are both components of SEO, and they can determine which sites show up the best on search engines. On-site SEO provides the foundation for an overall internet marketing campaign.

Off-Site SEO

Off-site SEO involves any marketing content that a site may use off the site. This may include internet marketing, social networking, video marketing, and much more. Most off-site marketing campaigns will focus on link building, which is the process of putting links on the web that go back to a certain site. If I put a link to ScholarshipsHQ.com in here, I have just created a backlink for that website. That is a component of link building and thus a component of SEO. There are plenty of other examples of off-site search engine optimization, but that should give you a rough idea of how the process works.

Conclusion

Search engine optimization is a loaded process that can take on many roles for a website. Nevertheless, it is one of the most important principles to learn if you want to become an internet marketer. You have to understand how search engines work and then do what it takes to make their formulas work in a site's favor. This is tricky at first, but it is far from impossible. With the right research, tactics, and luck on your side, you can make any website a success in no time.