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Online Mortgage Broker Training
Recently I bought a house, and I was not surprised to find that my mortgage broker worked from home. Being a mortgage broker is a great work from home opportunity. You do not need a college education to become a mortgage broker, however, you are required to have training. One of the quickest and easiest ways to get training is with an online mortgage broker training course.
When you work as a mortgage broker you help people wanting to buy property find a lender to finance that property. You will meet with your clients and asses their needs. What type of property are they buying? What can they afford? What types of loans do they qualify for? Which loan will save them the most money. Once you have determined your client’s needs you search for the loan that is the best fit for them.
Once the loan is identified you will need to work with your clients to help them with the paperwork. You need to educate your client about the mortgage that they are applying for and make sure they understand everything they are signing. You then need to make sure that all the paperwork is filled out properly, all applicable laws are followed, and that you get the best loan for your client based on their needs. If you are a mortgage broker it is very important that you are knowledgeable about all federal and state laws pertaining to lending. You are personally liable for the integrity of the loans you sell for the life of the loan. This is why it is very important to receive up to date training on a continuing basis.
There are many ways to get training. For some people the classroom is still the preferred method of getting training. However, many people are finding that online training fits their schedule better.
Online training can be webinar based, where you view pre-recorded videos, or it can be instructor led, just like a classroom. However, there is no travel required, just a good internet connection.
Working as a mortgage broker can be a great way to make money working from home. There is a lot of training required, however, you can make quite a bit of money without a college degree.
Business Phone Systems
For the most part, working from home does not require any specialized telephone equipment. But for some people, their small home based business will grow to the point that their regular home phone system will no longer do the job. That it might be time to look at Business Phone Systems by Comtech.
Comtech offers telephone systems and business phone repair services for both home based, and office based businesses. They will help you choose the right phone system for your business and work with you to get it installed and working. They sell both new and used phone systems, and will even buy your old phones from you.
Comtech Phones has been in business since 1982 and offers a 2 year warranty on both phone sales and repair services.
Entrecard Traffic Brings 0:00 Average Time On Site
To my readers who come to my blog for my musings on the Telecommuting lifestyle, please bear with me a moment as I take a momentary diversion. I promise the next post to be back on topic.
As a means to drive new visitors to this site, I’ve added the Entrecard widget to the right column of this page. This service was created expressly for bloggers to network with one another and drive traffic to their sites. Compared to other services with a similar aim, Entrecard has shown some promise and I have seen a dramatic increase in traffic for this blog which was launched only two months ago.
I won’t go into the basics of the Entrecard model, which you can learn more about here. What I wanted to talk about for a moment is the quality of the traffic I receive from the service. Traffic for traffic’s sake should not be the goal of any website owner. You want people to find your site and make use of your content. If you are trying to make some revenue from your site, you also want them to find and click on an ad or affiliate link.
The best indicator for site visitors making use of your content is the Average Time on Site statistic (I will abbreviate it as ATS). This statistic is available via Google Analytics and can be displayed per traffic source. Here is my direct traffic (bookmarked or type-in) ATS number:
Notice that for this traffic source, the ATS is 5:28 while the site average (all traffic sources combined) is dramatically lower at 1:36. The reason for the disparity is due to the highest traffic source for my new blog – currently Entrecard. You can isolate the ATS for a particular traffic source by clicking on Traffic Sources in Analytics on the left and then by clicking on Referring Sites. After isolating the referral traffic driven from Entrecard (entrecard.s3.amazonaws.com and entrecard.com), I can see that the ATS is zero:
I’d rather it be something closer to my direct traffic ATS figures.
A lot of this phenomenon is due to the fact that at least half of the traffic comes from other Entrecard users – other site owners trying to drop their card and gain credits. What I think is happening is what I will call “Chain-dropping” and this is what leads to a zero ATS:
- Click through to my site from my Entrecard ads or from the Entrecard site
- Find my Entrecard widget on the page
- Drop the card
- Click on the ad 2mm above the drop area and move on to the next site for another card drop
Once you get a rhythm, the above process takes less than a second to perform. Since site owners buy ads (campaign) with credits gained partially from dropping cards, it is a very fast way to collect credits. Since site owners want to purchase ads on the highest profile or highest-traffic sites, it can cost a lot of credits so they need to click on a lot of ads to collect them.
I must say that I have only put the Google Analytics tracking script into the blog a few days ago so my sample size is admittedly small, but I’m confident that the trend will probably continue until something material is changed with the Entrecard model. A suggestion I would have for Entrecard would be for them to delay the clickability of the ad for several seconds after a card drop. This would force Entrecard visitors to do something while they wait – read your content. However, I think it would result in an implosion in traffic, available credits and ad costs so they probably won’t do it. I think Entrecard users are mesmerized by their newfound traffic and would lose interest if the traffic dropped substantially, regardless of the quality of that traffic.
That all being said, I am certain that I have received new regular readers via Entrecard as I have seen some comments left on my posts from other bloggers using the service. I’m keeping an open mind on Entrecard and will keep the widget on my site and bask in the newfound traffic, even if the traffic comes with an * asterisk. I welcome other thoughts on my analysis and your thoughts on Entrecard.