Google – Run your Real Estate Business for Free

Google is incredible.  I have to say it.  Maybe them having access to tons of personal information is dangerous.  Maybe they are going to take over the world.  But until then, I’m enjoying running my real estate investing business for free!

The Google Cops were after me, but I never got caught so I’m able to get you this post.  You can see a lot of the products that they offer for free here.

I want to give you a list of the products that I actually use from Google and also give you a reason of why I use them and what I find them helpful for specifically in my real estate investing business.

These are in no particular order of usefulness or my love for them – I love them all!

1. Gmail  – google mail.  The most common.  But great because I can archive emails and search them google style.

2. Calendar – I have a calendar for my personal use and one for business.  I can share the business calendar with my business partner and we can both add items and we both see them in real time.  It also syncs with my phone that uses android!

3. Sync – this is an app for my phone.  It automatically syncs my calendar items and my contacts with my phone and vice versa.  So any time I create a new contact on my phone, I can access it from my computer at home because of google sync.

4. Docs – word documents and spreadsheets where we can share ideas, to do’s,  and costs for our investment property, rehabs, etc.

5. Toolbar – it’s a firefox extension.  My favorite part of it is bookmarks.  You have to sign into your google account, but this also means that you can access your bookmarks from any computer with an internet connection.

6. Voice – you may have heard the buzz about this.  It’s a free phone number with its own voicemail that can route to the phone(s) of your choice.  Great for marketing an investment property where you will get a lot of calls.  I let them go to voicemail (or you can answer them).  It’s your choice.  You can tell that it’s someone calling about the property because of the number listed on the caller ID.

7. Chrome – this is google’s own browser.  I use it to check my personal email, as you can’t have 2 gmail accounts opened in a browser at the same time.

8. Maps – pretty similar to other map sites, but I can see a street view of a potential investment property and decide if I want to even go out and have a physical look at it based on what I see on the screen.

9. Analytics – Google provides an incredible free analytics program that is easy to install on your websites in order to track your traffic.  I use this product on all of our real estate investing websites.

10. Local Business – You can add your local real estate investing business in google’s listings.  If you add video, website, photos, you can get ahead of your competition.

1. Picasa – they have a web album program and also a free software for editing photos.  I sometimes use for an online album of investment properties to send out to investors.

Wow, I use a lot more google products for real estate investing than I thought!  And I use others less often that I didn’t even mention – goog411, iGoogle, google news, checkout, etc.

By writing this post, I actually stumbled upon a new one that I am excited to try!  It’s called google wave. Now it’s looking like I can share with a small group of a people a project or idea — we’ll all be able to see it in real time, communicate, assign tasks, etc. – similar to combining a multitude of other google products into one to make it easier to use – excited to try it!