A motivated seller is basically someone who needs to sell his/her property very quickly due to circumstances beyond his/her control.

These circumstances could have arisen through for example divorce, death or debt.

When anyone experiences any one of the above, they may be forced to sell their house and more often than not will need to sell very quickly. Its this speed of sale that is more important to the seller than the final price achieved. This is why a sale via an estate agent may not be the best option for the vendor of the property.

These motivated sellers often turn to adverts in local newspapers to look for prospective purchasers of their property. If youre not advertising in that paper, you could be missing out.

If you are financially constrained, dont buy a half page colour advert! Try a small black and white advert first. Ive known simple monochrome adverts to work just as well as their colour equivalents.

Test the market by changing your headline every week until you find one that works best for you.

When first deciding on the wording of your adverts, it is best to look at what your competition is doing. Try and find adverts that appear every week and emulate their style. These adverts obviously work otherwise they wouldnt be used over and over again.

One thing to try would be to literally copy a successful advert that appears every week. All you need to do is change the contact number at the bottom of the advert. Done effectively, you will legally steal half of the original advertiser's market!

When it comes to advertising in the paper, please be aware that success will not come overnight. You need to be persistent in your efforts, and continually test your strategies.

Also, an advert that may work very well in one paper may be a dud in another. You can avoid making expensive mistakes by continually trying different variants of your advert. I cant stress this enough.

Once you have a successful advertising strategy, you will find that you are dealing primarily with motivated sellers. This will enable you to grow your property business very quickly and with very little of your own money.