TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

My Income Property: Two Years Later

Two years ago, I received the keys to my first income property. It has also been exactly 2 years since my last update on it. This post will get you caught up to speed with what went on during those 2 years since my last post and also on Arizona Air BNB Company.

First off, I will tell you right now that purchasing an income property was the best business decision I have ever made, by far and all thanks to a Business Recovery and Insolvency Advice expert who helped me out of debt. This update will not touch on the appreciation or profits though, as I have that planned for a separate upcoming post. So, while you may (and should) feel some pity for me due to some of my recent depressing blog posts, this is one of the few things that have actually made me a significant amount of money. Then when buying a new property, it’s essential to complete a snagging survey as there are always lots of errors and defects which are found in the survey so will always save you a lot of money and hassle.

And I absolutely love everything about property investment too. I love the math and analyzing of numbers. I love looking at properties. I love the negotiation and purchasing process. I love improving properties. I just love real estate. And so it’s frustrating that I’m not making money anymore as there’s nothing I’d love more than to go out and purchase another income property. Instead of seeking investors for Votesy, I should have been seeking investors for a share of my property holding company instead (where I could actually give out real shares, too).

Market Explosion

While I won’t be talking about the appreciation in this post, I have no problem sharing the rent increase.

The market here has skyrocketed since I purchased my property, which in turn allowed me to increase my rents as well. When I acquired the property, it was bringing in $1,650 a month in rent. It is now bringing in $1,900 – a 15% increase over 2 years. If that trend continues (I expect it to slow down slightly, but probably still very high at 10%), in 4 years that would be $2,500 a month. If you need help managing the finances of your real estate business, or any other business for that matter, a business financial management firm could be your best bet. If you want need some help to handle your finances as well, you must want to check out,  the official blog from James Kawas.

In addition, I will be increasing the lower unit’s rent either at the end of this month, or else when the current lease expires in 6-months, by around $100-$150, so the rental income is nearly at $2,000+ already (which, by the way, if you plugged that number into the equation above, in 4 years the rent would be $2,900+).

Vacancy is also low at 0% (although I did have to deal with an eviction and 1 month of non-payment). The rental market here is crazy, and if my property manager put the unit up for availability, she’d get like 40 inquiries in 24 hours.

But the money is not in the rent. The cashflow essentially just covers all costs. This has always been a holding property. The real value is in the property itself through appreciation. But more on that in an upcoming post.

Crazy Lower Tenant

At times it seems like I’m throwing money away by using a property manager, but at other times such as from the story that follows, I am so grateful that I did.

The lower tenant that came with the purchase (we didn’t choose her, in other words), ended up being a tenant from hell:

Didn’t Take Care of the Unit

The carpet was in poor shape after she left, and a professional cleaning didn’t improve it much. Fortunately, the carpet is only a small portion of the unit and the rest is tile. There was also some minor damage to the drywall and paint. All in all, this was not dramatic though, to be honest.

Snuck a Pet In

She got a puppy without asking permission or notifying us (which was part of the reason the carpet was in bad shape).

Crazy Shenanigans

She was a druggie and according to the upstairs neighbours, people would go banging on her door in the middle of the night screaming at her and spit on her face.

Thief

She stole stuff from the shed, as well as the upper unit’s belongings such as some tools and a PS3 and would pawn it for money. When the upper units confronted her about it (to which she always denied), the next day the PS3 was magically replaced with an Xbox.

Late Payments and Eviction

Later on, she would start giving late payments, and we’d (and by we I mean my property manager) have to shake her down to make sure she paid. Eventually we had to evict her, and this process did not go well: she was being very dramatic and sending my property manager long e-mails saying how she’d be out on the street, etc. She even went so far as to threaten or insinuate suicide of we proceeded with the eviction.

Fortunately, I was only out 1 month’s rent and she was replaced with an awesome tenant (one that we picked!)

So yeah – I’m definitely happy I didn’t have to deal directly with any of that crap. Property manager all the way.

Lots of Improvements and Fixes

I’m the dream landlord 🙂 The first thing I did when I obtained the property was start going down the checklist of things from the inspector’s long report, and addressing them one by one. I ended up addressing about 85% of the things mentioned in the report, only ignoring the super minor stuff that wasn’t important.

I’m recently having issues with the plumbing system and need expert plumbing services, for this we hired a plumber in Cupertino, CA for professional plumbing services. I was looking for more info on the best plumbing and I had a lot of improvements done to the property, including: an emergency drain cleaning, getting a new hot water tank (the old one was broken so we had it replaced through services like water heater installation in Edmonds, WA), added plumbing through experts like this Anaheim plumbing company and the best pedestal sump pump I could find, bought a new stove (old one broke) upstairs, had broken lights fixed, and a bunch of minor things fixed by a handyman the property manager has on call. For the best plumbing services, read about Sarkinen Plumbing so you can call their attention if you need their great service. I also contacted the best plumbing company by visiting sharpplumbing.com. Don’t forget about the well pump maintenance as well. If you need well pump services, you may contact a specialist in well and pump service in Snohomish, WA. And if you need professional pipe relining services, you might want to consider hiring a professional in pipe relining services in Mill Creek, WA.

I was notified of a “water leak” from my property manager that the upstairs tenants had contacted her about. I was terrified until I saw the photo and learned the source of the “leak” – it was rainy season and the back door simply needed new weather stripping – whew 🙂

The dishwasher that was installed. They didn’t have one in black, and I wish they had filled or covered that gap to the left… oh well.

Broken Fence

One of the very few things I didn’t address from the inspection report – a couple of rotten fence post supports – ended up biting me in the ass, as one entire side of the backyard fence blew down on a windy day.

Hello, neighbour!

It required digging and new cement supports and posts to be put in place. Fortunately, the next door neighbour was an awesome lady and split the costs with me 50/50, and we got it done properly and quickly for either $1,000 or $1,200 (I can’t remember) total. We were able to re-use most of the wood which cut the costs. The fence is strong now and should not pose me any more problems for as long as I own the property (at least that side of the fence anyway ;)).

Summary

Overall, things have gone pretty well despite a fair bit happening during the first two years. I expect things to dramatically quieten down now though, since I’ve taken care of all the repairs and improvements to the place and now have new tenants in place.

While I have a property manager, I still have my hand in the property as I still have to make decisions at the end of the day.

Stay tuned for my upcoming post where I talk purely about the numbers and appreciation of my income investment. You won’t want to miss it.

BizProfits CPA Network Review

The following is a paid review for TylerCruz.com written and reviewed by Michael Kwan. It is completely of Michael Kwan’s opinion and is not influenced by being paid. If you’re interested in having your site or product reviewed, please view my advertising page

Affiliate marketing is nowhere near as obscure as it was once was. It’s no longer shrouded in a cloak and dagger mystique. If anything, affiliate marketing has become much more mainstream and far more accessible than ever before. This means that just about anyone can get started with it and affiliate networks are competing harder than ever before to attract the best advertisers and publishers.

One company that has been receiving more attention lately is BizProfits, which strives to be the premium CPA network that connects “top converting publishers with advertisers who have the most lucrative and exclusive CPA offers online.” Do you want to make money online?

Main Features of BizProfits

BizProfits aims to set itself apart from other affiliate networks in several ways, four of which are explicitly highlighted on the company’s main page.

First, they strive to provide advertisers with top quality traffic. This starts with a rigorous publisher selection process to ensure that affiliates are legitimate and won’t provide junk traffic to advertisers. The strictly monitored traffic guarantees compliance, delivering quality clicks, actions and leads.

Second, to please publishers, BizProfits populates its database with a “huge selection of the highest converting, exclusive affiliate offers.” If you’re going to put in the same amount of effort to attract quality traffic and clicks, you may as well be rewarded as handsomely as possible.

Third, the robust platform on which BizProfits is based is able to deliver real-time data and analytics for both advertisers and publishers. This performance tracking empowers affiliates to adjust their campaigns on the fly, optimizing for clicks, conversions and commissions.

Fourth, the company operates with a data driven approach. This means that the selection of each offer in the CPA affiliate network, as well as the selection process for which publishers can promote them, is dictated solely by data and insight. The numbers don’t lie.

Why Promote with BizProfits

When you consider that there are so many affiliate networks on the Internet today, it can be difficult to decide which one you should work with. BizProfit lists several reasons why you should become a publisher with them, above and beyond the four pillar points described above.

Some other CPA networks focus on just one industry, but BizProfits offers affiliates a variety of verticals to promote, all of which are populated with high converting, direct, and international offers. They work toward providing you with the highest EPC (earnings per click) in the business with regular CPA offers, as well as CPL (cost per lead), straight sales commissions, and free trial offers.

Another motivating factor is that BizProfits guarantees it makes payments twice a month. These timely payments give you the confidence of cash flow so you can continue running your campaigns without hindrance. These payments can be delivered via PayPal, Epese, Paxum, WebMoney or as a wire transfer with no more than a 2-day hold.

Beyond the first action, you can earn more money with 2nd step orders, upsells and cross-sells. You also gain access to 2nd-tier commissions where you earn an extra 5% of all the commissions generated by the publishers you refer to the network. The 24/7 support and account management means help is always just a click or call away.

Four Main Industries

Even though BizProfits says it provides publishers with a variety of verticals to promote, the offers in the network can be (and are) largely divided into four main affiliate programs: health & beauty, financial & loans, binary options, and sweepstakes. They have a range of subcategories for the health and beauty vertical as well as the loans vertical, such as payday loans, personal loans, auto-title loans, among other types of loan CPL offers. They have even come into an affiliation with financial experts at IVA tv and have put out offers pertaining to debt consolidation.

Unlike most other networks, however, you don’t have to sign up with BizProfits in order to browse through the list of affiliate offers. This can give you a very good sense of not only the types of advertisers and offers in the network, but also the kinds of payouts you can expect.

This isn’t just a simple “teaser” listing either. Clicking through on any individual offer reveals a preview of the landing page, a short writeup description, and specific information about commissions, payouts, geo-traffic supported and offer type. There’s even a paragraph for why you might want to promote that particular offer.

In the public listing of offers, you can drill down to look at some of the more specific sub-categories. Under the umbrella of financial and loan offers, you’ll find further categorization for personal loan offers, auto title loan offers, credit repair offers, and mortgage loan offers, for example.

Once you log into the affiliate dashboard (which we’ll discuss further in just a moment), you gain access to a similar listing, but it’s nowhere near as visual and the categorization hierarchy is not as clear. That said, you can still sift through the hundreds of offers, filtering for only beauty offers or only mobile CPA offers, for instance. It’s really up to you.

Into the HasOffers Dashboard

If you have been in the affiliate marketing industry for some period of time, there’s a good chance that you have encountered the HasOffers platform with at least one other network before. It’s what powers BizProfits too, so you’ll be in familiar territory.

The dashboard is exactly as you’d expect it with the main navigation listed along the left column. This includes the contact information for your dedicated account manager. The level of guidance and support you need is entirely up to you. If you’re new to affiliate marketing, your manager might help you decide which offers are best for you to promote and how you might go about promoting them. If you’re more experienced, you might be able to work with your manager for better payouts or more creatives to use.

The quick stats for the last seven days give you a good sense of your performance at a glance for the preceding week. You also see your payout for the year to date (YTD), which can serve as a terrific motivator as the year goes on. Are you meeting your targets?

You’ll also notice the list of recent notifications. Many of the offers in the network do require approval, either from the advertiser or from BizProfits as they are direct CPA offers. I would have liked if these notifications were such that I didn’t have to click through on them to see which offer was approved.

Beyond the main dashboard, you can use the navigation along the left to access all your reports and tools, as well as sift through the offers in the network. The payout range is considerable with some offers starting around $1 CPA, whereas others get into the $300+ range. It depends on the vertical, the advertiser and the offer.

Big Profits from Online Business

It would be unfair to expect BizProfits to completely break the mold for what an affiliate network is. Instead, it makes more sense to determine whether it is doing what it should be doing, and doing it well.

With a good range of offers within four large industries, broad geotargeting, generous commission rates, semi-monthly payouts, and 24/7 access to support, BizProfits ticks a lot of the boxes. Ultimately, it’s up to you how much money you can make. Fill out the publisher sign up form and someone from the BizProfits team will be in contact with you soon.

So What the Hell Happened? Part 2 of 5: Dog Sitting!

Continuing on from where I left off in part 1 of my “So What the Hell Happened?” series, let me set the scene: I am depressed and trying to cope with my relatively recently acquired Meniere’s disease, while also being depressed about my affiliate campaigns tanking and my Votesy venture failing to take off. I am tired of the Internet and need a change.

At this time, our golden retriever, Zipper, was around one-and-a-half and so our house (which we had just purchased just under 2 years prior) was already doggy-proof. I’ve also always loved dogs and always used to toy with the idea of running a doggy daycare or providing some other type of dog-based service. Also, I found a really good Bobby Bed that he enjoys sleeping on. I wanted to work with something I enjoyed doing, and so naturally the idea of running a dog-sitting business came to mind.

If you are in the market for a particular kind of dog accessory or item for your own pooch, you will want to take advantage of checking out some dog accessories reviews so you can get all of the information you need about a particular product. This is a good idea for anyone who is going to be purchasing any kind of dog product and you want to be sure that you are getting your money’s worth. Checking out dog accessories reviews is also a great idea if you are interested in getting the best deal possible on a particular item such as a dog harness or a dog bowl. By checking out a few different ones you will be able to get a clear picture of exactly what each company has to offer.

It was such a drastic change, going from working online for the past 12 or so years, to dog sitting, and it’s incredibly embarrassing to share this with you, but this is what happened (and I have the photos to prove it!). When you’re in a tight spot and need money to pay the bills, you will do whatever is necessary to do so, whether that’s taking a job at McDonalds, washing dishes at a restaurant, or looking after other people’s dogs in your house. Getting a real job would have been the easy answer, but my Meniere’s disease would not allow this.

Starting the Business

I didn’t do much – I created a GMail account for dog sitting and posted ads up on Craigslist, Kijiji, and another local classifieds site, and also put up flyers around town (yup… it actually resorted to that!) although the flyers didn’t bring in any leads.

Fortunately, it was late November or early December when this happened and so we actually had a fair bit of interest despite minimal advertising, since people were going on vacation for the Christmas holidays and needed somebody to take care of their dog.

Living with Dogs

It started with 1 extra dog which went fine. Then 2. Then another. And another, one of them is sick and I had to buy his medicines at https://www.discovermagazine.com/sponsored/the-best-dog-joint-supplement-buyers-guide. Then, we also had to Buy Natural Pet Food.

“Happy”, the smaller dog, being unsure of living with 3 big dogs in the house.

Keep in mind that these were all long-term stays – between 2-4 weeks! So, they slept in my bedroom with me. And if you’re looking for a new bed for your dog then you should get one of these amazing personalized dog beds as you can use your own photo or design, so you can design it as you’d like.

We had to set a limit at 4 dogs as we felt that we couldn’t reasonably take care of any more than that at the same time, especially since each dog had special issues! I started giving them hemp infused dog treats to calm their nerves and treat their tumors. We all know that CBB does great things, just look at how many products https://pacificgreens.co/ offers.

For example, one dog (the Weimaraner above) was fantastic except she had separation anxiety from her owners and was very skittish and alert to any noise which is one of the reasons why the doctor prescribed CBDDY: delta syrup.

She also barked like you wouldn’t believe, and had the loudest bark ever. At night she would bark at the faintest noise and go crazy at night – the first few nights were the toughest. Thankfully, there’s cbd for dogs to help calm her down.

The larger Golden Retreiver above (Benji) was the sweetest dog EVER, but he was extremely old (around 13 or 14) and had trouble walking and getting up, so he needed extra care. He needed supervision when using the stairs, we would hand feed him sometimes since he had trouble standing up, etc.

The corgi mix above (Happy) needed to be given medicine twice a day and the medicine made her pee on the floor a few times! She also had some odd alpha dominant behaviour towards the other, bigger, dogs, and our dog Zipper was ignoring it for the most part, but I could see that he was at the end of his rope and was not going to take it for much longer. Learn about the japanese chin toy dog breed if you’re planning to get one.

Dogs everywhere!

Crazy Owners, Crazy Dogs

I ran into a couple interesting situations where I had to turn away the dog after they showed up.

In the first case, it was a tiny puppy that was extremely timid. But the problem wasn’t the dog so much as it was the owners – and after meeting the owners you could quickly understand why the dog was so timid. Granted, it was a puppy and they were new owners, but they babied the dog like you wouldn’t believe – despite our dog being friendly, it would hide behind his owners and the owners would pick it up and coddle it, and basically were helicoptor parents – always within inches of their dog, ready to swoop him up in an instant, and that’s why they use an harness, since a puppy harness and leash set isn’t going to be as large as the one for bigger dogs.

I explained to them that it probably wouldn’t work out since they obviously didn’t feel comfortable leaving their dog with us. By the way, they were at our house for over 2 hours making sure their dog would be okay being left with us.

Zipper and Dewdney chilling

In the second case, the guy had contacted me a day or two prior, stating that Rottweiler was super friendly and loved other dogs and was just a big “puppy” and wouldn’t hurt a fly. I was nervous about at first, it being a Rottie and all, but decided to give him a chance as I’ve heard that Rotties can be one of the most lovable dog breeds out there.

When the guy arrived, I could see him struggling up our driveway. First, keep in mind that this guy was a massive, tough looking giant, with tattoos, leather jacket, and the works. He was probably at least 6’3 and just simply huge. Yet, he was being not pulled but dragged up our driveway by his dog. That was red flag #1.

Red flag #2 was when I saw the Rottweiler, and he was one of the biggest dogs I’ve ever seen in my life! And pure muscle! His claws were simply ridiculous and literally looked like a bird of prey’s talons (I didn’t know a dog’s claws could get so big and sharp). He also had a studded choke collar.

Red flag #3 was when I had him take the dog to the back yard before I intoduced him to our other dogs and he still couldn’t get his dog under control. Remember, this was an absolute giant of a man and he couldn’t even get his beast of a dog to sit or even stand still.

Despite all these red flags, I could see that the dog was just excited and wasn’t really showing any aggressive behaviour, so I took out one of the dogs to let them meet (with him holding onto his dog tightly), and the other dog immediately jumped onto the other dog. It was a playful jump, but this dog was probably 150 pounds and it obviously not know how to play with other dogs properly.

Remember that the owner had drove 3 hours to our place and I had told him before that I could accept his dog (from how he described him to me via e-mail), but after all of this I had to build up the courage to tell him that I was responsible for the other dogs safety and had to turn him away. I felt absolutely terrible doing this because he did drive so far and would have to drive back 3 hours, and he had no other place to go since he was going somewhere for Christmas later that day and all the local kennels and places were booked solid. I felt so bad, but I had no choice.

Pros and Cons

It was such an adjustment to suddenly live with 4 dogs. Here are the pros and cons I found with dog sitting:

Pros

• Returning home was awesome; you got 4 dogs waiting to greet you, all super happy to see you. I will definitely miss that.
• It was cool to see different dog breeds and personalities
• They money was actually pretty good

Cons

• We always needed somebody to stay at home to look after the dogs, so my girlfriend and I couldn’t go out at the same time
• The smell in the house was ridiculous. It smelled like a barn. You didn’t notice it though until you left the house and came back
• All dogs had certain issues. This makes sense though, as if a dog was perfect, they would like be placed with friends or family
• Our dog was young and had at the time showed some aggression towards other dogs in the recent past, so we had to screen the other dogs to make sure he could live with them safely
• Some dogs or owners are simply crazy (more on that in the next section)
• There is the fear in the back of your mind if something happens to somebody’s dog

Let sleeping dogs lie.

How Was the Money?

The money was obviously not remotely close to the type of money I was used to, but it was actually not bad considering it was just dog sitting.

Here were my rates:

1 hour: $10
1 day (up to 8 hours, otherwise $10 per additional hour ): $30
2 days in a row: $40 or (overnight): $50
1 week: $175 or (overnight): $200
1 month: $500 or (overnight): $600

However, we only ever had dogs for long term (our shortest stay was 2 days, overnight), so if we looked after 4 dogs for 3 weeks, that would be $2,400.

The longer you have the dog, the easier it is as you build a bond with the dog and learn about the dog, and most of the time they will be sleeping, so it’s actually a really easy way to make $2,000-$3,000 a month. However, we only did this over Christmas (Zipper began to attack the other dogs so we had to put an end to it), so my numbers are quite skewed. At the same time, we were brand new and didn’t have time to build up a real business, so there was certainly potential for growth.

Even without long-term stays, taking care of 5 dogs for 1 day would yield $150. If the dogs get along, this is not insignificant money.

Zipper and Dewdney were actually really close friends…

…Until Zipper attacked her over a bone misunderstanding and drew blood!

No More Dog Sitting

Due to Zipper becoming aggressive towards other dogs (he probably missed having the house to himself), we had to stop the dog sitting. We only did it for around 6-7 weeks. Zipper is also now in school for his aggression and has come a long way.

It was interesting though. It’s certainly a viable way to make money if you have a house appropriate for it.

I’ll leave you with a few more photos before I finish:

Zipper and Benji – the two golden retrievers. With all their hair, they always prefer lying right on the ground instead of a bed.

Unfortunately, Benji passed away close to a year after staying with us.

Dewdney is such a diva…

My bedroom in the middle of the night.

Stay tuned for Part 3 of my “So What the Hell Happened?” series. It is a real doozy.

Upgrading My Office Chair Wheels to Rollerblade Wheels

I was cleaning my office a couple weeks ago when I noticed that my office chair’s caster wheels were completely clogged with dog hair from my golden retriever. Despite spending 45-minutes with pliers trying to clean all 5 wheels out, there was still dog hair in there that I couldn’t reach, and the wheels would not rotate freely anymore.

I did some research and found out that there are now rollerblade style wheels that you can purchase to replace the ones that come with your office chair. It’s interesting that office chairs are so expensive (I paid about $250 for this one), but they all come with the same cheap 100% plastic caster wheels.

Anyhow, I ordered a set of 5 rollerblade office chair wheels from Amazon, and received them 2 days later.

Here’s a short video I made showing the difference between the built-in regular office chair wheels and the rollerblade style wheels I bought. You can skip to the 4-minute mark if you want to go straight to the comparison:

(Note: You may need to visit the post directly at TylerCruz.com if you’re reading this via e-mail or RSS in order to see the video.)