The life of a real estate agent can be a tough life, running around searching for a buyers, looking for homes to list and trying to scare up a transaction or two. A key to agent success is to develop a real estate marketing-based business that generates a steady flow of new leads. Most real estate agents operate deal to deal, working very hard to get a deal, servicing that deal and then starting over looking for the next deal, it’s a “hamster-wheel” existence. When they do start over looking for the next deal, they often start looking for a quick fix. This is not a good way to structure your business or organize your life.

Here are 10 good signs you’ve fallen into the deal-to-deal trap:

1. You make excuses that the demands of your current clients don’t allow time for marketing and prospecting.

2. You get a listing and you start “marketing the property” and think that that’s actually marketing.

3. You’re waiting for your next commission to establish a marketing budget (and you’ve been saying this for your last four transactions).

4. The phones are silent, your web site isn’t producing leads, you just closed a transaction and you say to yourself, “I have to do some marketing.”

5. You’re on the Internet searching for the next great idea in lead generation.

6. You’re thinking: “Ah, social media. That’s cheap. I’ll just focus on that to generate leads and build my business.”

7. By the time you get to making calls to your sphere, it’s been a year since you last talked to everyone on your call list.

8. You get a listing outside your target market and all of a sudden find yourself prospecting around that listing and forgetting about your farm.

9. You need another deal so you decide to “do a mailing, send an email, start a blog, post on social media, door knock and make some calls” in a frenzied attempt to “do some marketing.”

10. You don’t have a written plan and if you were to write down your marketing efforts, it would be a pretty brief report.

If you are seeing yourself in a handful (or all) of these ten points, it’s time to look for a strategy to get out of the deal-to-deal grind and mindset. For agents, personal marketing is the way to break this cycle. Follow this link to read other articles on how to break out of this trap.

YouTube is truly an amazing marketing tool for real estate agents-posting videos of your listings, information about your area and basic information about buying and selling homes. Today’s successful agents are creating personal video profiles, posting them on YouTube and linking to their website, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites. Your personal video profile is a great way to get prospects to feel comfortable with you before they ever meet you. Remember that people like to do business with people they like. The goal of your website is to have the prospects who watch your video feel good about you and to like you after they’re done watching the video.

Think of the short 2-4 minute video clips that you see about Olympic athletes. These clips give us some insight into the type of person they are and helps to make them a real person in our minds.

As an agent, start with a brief personal introduction-who you are, your past, your family- and perhaps a short comment on why you decided to become a real estate professional or what you enjoy most about being a real estate agent. Don’t sell the second you start talking, saying what you can do for the person watching, etc., or you’ll instantly take on that used car sales persona.

When I create one of these videos for an agent, I talk about things like the themes we want to cover, the tone we want to create and develop a basic outline of topics, but we do not script it. If you read or recite a script, unless you are a truly gifted actor, it will come across stiff and uninteresting. When the camera starts rolling, you want to be both personable and professional. Smile…be friendly…and relax. I recommend not looking directly into the camera…but instead just off to the side as if you were being interviewed by Larry King.

It’s fine to use a cue card, where a subtle glance at key words can keep you on target. Don’t be afraid to use your natural humor; the key is to be yourself. The more relaxed and comfortable you are, the better you will come across on video. Record a few practice sessions and critique them with help from friends and family. But remember, it’s more important for your presentation to be authentic and personable than for it to be flawless. When you are ready to record the real thing, do three or four takes and select the best one.

Then post your video on YouTube, your real estate website, in social media, and everywhere else you can think of to begin marketing yourself with YouTube.

Straddling the border between France, Italy and Germany lie the Alps, a majestic spectacle to behold. But also an impediment to cross-border progress, it must be said. The vertiginous roads that wind and wriggle across these rugged mountains are hazardous to traverse, resulting in traffic jams, environmental damage and much gritting of teeth for all concerned.

It’s easy to understand why the governments of all three countries were eager to commission a passage to cut through the mountains. The Gotthard Base Tunnel, as it is known, burrows beneath the Alps, obviating the need to negotiate mountainous chicanes altogether. When it is completed, the tunnel will not only speed up the transportation of goods and flow of traffic, but could conceivably provide a new way for tourists to reach the ski resorts at the summit. The world’s largest elevator is being mooted as an accessory to what is already a gargantuan undertaking.

The 35-mile railway tunnel will be the longest of its type upon completion, overtaking the Seikan Tunnel in Japan. With twin tracks enabling high speed trains to hurtle through at up to 155 mph, commuting time between Zurich and Milan will be significantly reduced. Construction has been hastened by the building of four access tunnels, enabling work to be conducted on all four sections simultaneously, while a fifth has recently been added. The project, currently on schedule, is due for completion in 2016.

It may arrive on time, but it certainly won’t be arriving on budget – originally costed at £6.4 billion, that figure has now spiraled to £10 billion. Eight of the 20,000 workers involved in the tunnel’s construction have died thus far, leading some to question the true price of this mammoth undertaking. Not all of the problems affecting the project are subterranean either – last week 30 police officers were injured in clashes with protestors objecting to the rail link. Demonstrators near Turin gathered to draw attention to the area of outstanding natural beauty they claim will be destroyed by the line’s encroachment. Five people were arrested during the protests, which were blamed on the work of left-wing extremists.

With the accolade of ‘world’s largest’ often applied to Asia’s ever-growing construction industry, the Gotthard Base Tunnel will be Europe’s attempt at regaining one such crown – for now at least. Upon completion, the tunnel will be a truly impressive sight to behold – almost on a par with the Alps themselves.

Constructionbytes.com is a free construction news and resource site established by construction professionals for fellow industry members.

In August of 1914, as the world teetered on the brink of war, the Panama Canal opened for business. After decades of political wrangling, titanic construction work and a mounting death toll, the project had become the largest engineering project ever undertaken, encompassing almost fifty miles excavated through disease-ridden jungle. Its completion heralded a vital shortcut for trade routes between the Atlantic and Pacific. Over the passing decades, the number of vessels using the canal has increased exponentially.

Due to the numerical and physical volume of ships that annually traverse the waterway, in 2006 an expansion project was proposed to swell its capacity. It was approved unanimously by Panama’s National Assembly and subsequently by its citizens, who voted overwhelmingly for the project to be given the go-ahead. Originally, the canal consisted of two lanes at either end leading from the Atlantic and Pacific oceans into the canal’s artificial lakes.

The expansion project will see a third lane added to each side, allowing a greater number of ships to enter the waterway. On the Pacific side, this will incorporate the disused channels begun by the US after embarking on a similar development in 1940. In addition, the existing straits will be widened and deepened to increase the maximum dimensions of viable ships (a formula known as the ‘Panamax’). Up to 40,000 jobs will be created over the course of the project’s life cycle, most of which revolve around the building of the new lock gate systems and dredging the way for their construction.

Since work began, around 30 million cubic metres have been cleared from the lakes and synthetic firths. A primary challenge in designing the new lock gates was to ensure that the increased operating capacity would have no detrimental impact on the lake that feeds the canal. This was achieved by devising an automated system using custom-built hydraulics to recycle the water used in each stage of the lock. As a result, 60% less water has to be taken from Lake Gatun, in spite of the new canal’s larger lock chambers.

Fittingly, the expansion is scheduled to be completed by 2014, just in time for the canal’s centenary. Due to the spiralling costs, corporate infighting and allegations of bureaucratic corruption that invariably bug such mega-projects however, it remains to be see whether the new canal is ready in time. Whatever the case, there is no disputing that the Panama Canal expansion is one of the most ambitious engineering projects undertaken since the inception of this famous trade route.

Constructionbytes.com is a free construction news and resource site established by construction professionals for fellow industry members.

If you are interested to be an angel investor, here are some steps that you are suggested to do to be able to be a successful angel investor in the future. The first important thing or investing basics that you have to concern about is that you have to be a qualified angel investor. This is very important step for you to build a corporation with your clients, because mostly, clients will only find some angel investors who are accredited and qualified, because it is just the same as a good guarantee for them to give the huge risky in their business to the right person.

The second important thing that you have to concern about is that you have to have experience in dealing with angel investor. It will be very useful to start up your business as well as being an angel investor at the same time. And of course, it will be more qualified and accredited for you if you ask some legal counselor to help you supervise your business move. It is because there will be lots of legal documents in angel investors that you have to consult with someone who have enough experience in law.

The next thing you should concern in becoming successful angel investor is that you have to hire some kind of accountant. Accountant will be able to assist you in giving the review of all your financial in your business, so that you will have the transparent value and number of your financial. And the last important thing is that you have to understand about the chances in angel investment, by making a good plan and of course understand the strategies that you have to do to make your angel investment successful.

I have decided today that I would like to do something new. We usually get lots of questions everyday and sometimes it become impossible for us to answer them all.

In order to answer most of these questions, I would be putting up a weekly post to address some of these frequently asked questions.

I want to start by talking about hard loans. This topic deals more with the newbies who are planning of getting into real estate investment business.

The question, which we come across every other day, is: How much interest rate do you charge on an average lending?

This made me think…do these investors believe that to be successful, they just need hard loans with low interest rates?

Let me tell you the basic thing about hard money loans. They are lent for a short period of time and that’s why the interest rate doesn’t matter a lot.

The interest rate becomes extremely important if you will have a mortgage of 30 years but it doesn’t matter much for a 6-month loan.

Now, don’t take me wrong. I don’t mean that you just forget about the interest rates because whatever rates you’ll pay, it will directly influence the final profits after you’ve completed a successful deal.

Making a successful deal means that you were able to pay your loan off on time and the most important thing is the profit which you have made.

There are many investors who just focus on interest rates and they are trying hard to get a discount of one or two points, whereas they should be focusing on getting things done on time.

Getting work done on a property and selling it on time will have a major effect on your profit margins rather than the interest rates. On the other hand, if you want to look for low-interest hard loans, then you should build a team, which should focus on getting the project done on time.

Basically, it depends upon they way you approach things and that’s the only thing which make all the difference. You need to keep in mind that it’s not your typical mortgage but you are investing in real estate here.

Now, you must be thinking that how you would be able to build a team in such a short span or it would be a tedious job to do. But that’s the ONE thing, which will hold you from becoming a successful real estate investor.

You need to have a team of mentors or investors around you, who have a proven track record of success because you can’t become successful as a real estate investor on your own and that’s why, having a team is very important.

With creative real estate investing, you can make money from property in ways which are quite different from the conventional routine of getting a mortgage in order to purchase a house and then selling it when you get a right price for it.

The most important thing to note about creative real estate investing is that it does not generally carry the negative connotations. One of the primary examples of this kind of investing is an option. This works in an identical manner to options employed for less tangible financial assets like stocks.

When dealing with an option, there is an involvement of an agent and property owner. As a property owner, you sell the right to purchase a house on or before the deadline at a set price. The purchaser of such an option would hope that there is going to be an increase in the market prices before the deadline arrives, giving him an opportunity to conduct the option and then instantly sell the house to book a profit. If you happen to be the seller of the option, you are at risk of missing out on a bigger price.

On the other side of the coin, wholesaling is all about purchasing three or four properties at a time and then selling it once the market condition is in your favor. For this purpose, you may need to get involved in the bulk buying houses that financial institution has got through foreclosure. After buying it in bulk, you need to sell these houses on an individual basis at a low price. In such scenario, you will find that the individual sale price is going to be lot less than the current market value. As a wholesaler, your profit is going to come from the fact that the financial institution will have approved an even lower price to give discount for bulk buying.

Another common source of creative real estate investing are tax liens. The whole concept is based on the fact that a county government has a power to automatically get an interest in a property, widely been regarded as a lien, if the property holder does not able to pay property taxes on time. Number of counties will sell such liens to investors. From that moment onward, the investor gets a right to get the outstanding tax money in addition to interest, along with the possibility that homeowner may not be able to pay.

             Many people think that the chance to win the sweepstakes or lottery is not be able to predict. But actually, the role of winning the sweepstakes or lottery can be predicted by using statistical analysis. But the next problem, not all people is able to use statistical analysis to see their chance to win the game. Learning the statistical tricks to win the betting games can be your best opinion to gain more cash from the game. It is actually easy to do. When you are ready to play betting, you can go to the site and after you submitted your application, you will get email notification for each competition or international games that will be held by the site. So, you can choose the kinds of betting game do you want to play, bet more, and then earn more prizes and money.