Archive for March, 2009

Find Apartments and Houses for Rent

Thursday, March 19th, 2009

Rentbits is a search engine focused on helping people find apartments and houses for rent, but it has released a new feature that allows users to see the average and median rental prices of properties in 4,000 cities across the United States. 
 
Rentbits has analyzed 7 million rental entries in its database, compiling historical graphs displaying the general pricing trends in each region (unsurprisingly, few of them seem to be heading upwards). Users can choose to view averages related to the entire market, and can also narrow it down by the number of bedrooms they’re looking for (there’s also an option for houses for rent).

RentBits launched in March 2008, and is headed by ex-Googlers Dan Daugherty Tim Moynihan

How to add photos of my vacation rental?

Friday, March 6th, 2009

Q: I am trying to upload images of my vacation rental property to Free-Rentals.com, but they do not upload, why not?

A: Here are the most likely reason why your images are failing to upload….

1) The size it too big. Please shrink images down to 900kb or smaller before trying to upload.

2) Only JPG images are accepted, no GIF, no PNG, no BMP, etc..
 
3) Uploading an image is a 2 step process. First, you select the BROWSE button, then seek out the image on your harddrive and select it. Then, you must hit the button to UPLOAD that image. You must repeat this step for each of the images you upload, you can NOT batch upload all 10 images at the same time.

Free-Rentals.com makes TechCrunch

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

Ms. Leena Rao has a great article about an up and newcomer to the vacation rental industry… AirBedandBreakfast.com, who recently rebranded as airbnb.com. Part of what makes the article great is that she mentions Free-Rentals.com as one of the main established competitors.
 
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/04/y-combinators-airbed-and-breakfast-casts-a-wider-net-for-housing-rentals-as-airbnb/
 
Air Bed and Breakfast has a great website, slick interface and originally started out as the name suggestions, with people offering to blow up an (air mattress in the livingroom perhaps) for an extra guest to stay for a few nights.
 
The guest benefits by getting accommodations far cheaper than a hotel and by getting to stay with locals and live more of the local lifestyle while on vacation. The host of the airbed gets a bit of extra cash for hosting the guest, not to mention, his or her companionship for a few days.
 
It’s a great idea, and couchsurfing, one of the more established players in this market is doing something similar.

By re-branding, Airbnb is now expanding out to include the vacation rental market. We feel they will have a hard time captivating the vacation rental market for the sole reason that they charge a hefty 7% commission on each booking.

The problem is not so much about the commission as it is the logistics come with becoming the broker between the rental seeker and the vacation rental home owner, and dealing with cancellations, discrepencies between the features and amenities listed and what is actually present in the rental, etc..
 
We wish them luck, and welcome them to the VR industry.

Objection: I will not link to a vacation rentals website that shows my competition

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Here is an objection we get often concerning why owners of individual websites that promote their vacation rental units will not link to the free-rentals.com website…. “I will not link to a site (such as Free-Rentals.com) that offers hundreds of competitors for a potential guest to view”.

First, for some background… When you sign up your vacation rental property listing on Free-Rentals.com, we offer you the chance to list a link pointing back to your own personal website, which further promotes your vacation rental.

It is important to note, when you post your vacation rental ad on Free-Rentals.com, you post it free, we do not try charging you for your rental listing ad. Furthermore, we give you a field where you can post a link in your ad, back to your personal website, and again, we do NOT try charging you for doing so. We also do NOT require you to link back to us in exchange for us linking to you.
Let me make this very clear: You can post your vacation rental ad on Free-rentals.com for free. We will not try to charge you for it. And your ad can include a link back to your personal website, again for free, we do not try to charge you for it. Nor do we require a donation, nor do we require you to link back to us from your personal website.
 
All we do, is kindly request you to *consider* linking back to us, if we link to you. There is no requirement, it’s just a request…. AND, we offer incentive, and benefit to those who do link back to us, by giving them points. You can read elsewhere how points benefit those members, but that is not the purpose of this post.
 
The purpose of this post is to diffuse the objection of… “why would I link to your vacation rental directory, when you show all my competition?”.
 
The main reason WHY you would link to us, even though we display your competition, is because it earns you 1000 points. And the more points you have, the higher up your listing appears, and the more traffic you will get, the more prospects you will get viewing your holiday rental.
 
Now, we do not have exact numbers on this, but for sake of discussion…
 
Assume Person-A with Vacation Rental Property A has a link on his website back to Free-Rentals.com, and therefore has 1100 points. Perhaps he gets 100 people viewing his listing each month.
 
On the other hand, person B with Vacation Rental Property B has only 50 points, because while we link to his website, his website does not link back to Free-Rentals.com. So therefore, his listing is at the back of our directory, and he only gets perhaps 10 people viewing his listing each month.

In this scenario, those who link back to Free-Rentals.com will get 90 more visitors per month than those who do not. 
 
The question is…. at what price does it cost person A? And is it worth the price?

We can not answer this question, because it vary’s for each vacation rental owner with their own website. We will address this topic in more detail once we get some concrete datapoints established on it.
 

Objection: I will not donate to a free vacation rentals website

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009

Here is an object we get frequently… “I will not donate to a website that is suppose to be free”.
 
Our response is… Ok that is fine, you do not have to donate. We simply and kindly ask you to *consider* giving us a donation if and when you benefit from having your vacation rental property advertised on our website.
 
However, there is a bit of a chicken/egg scenario playing out here. Donating members benefit from their vacation rental ad on Free-Rentals.com significantly more than our non-donating members.
 
When you donate, 80% of the money you send us is used to pay for ads directed at your property listing. In other words, when we receive your donation, we use 80% of that money to pay for 500 or more Google Adwords Pay Per Click ads that are specifically aimed at your rental property, using keywords and keyphrases specific to your rental property, and bringing relevant traffic directly to your rental property listing.
 
The posting and hosting of your property listing on Free-Rentals.com is 100% free, and will remain free. The reason we keep 20% of your donation money, is so we can cover our costs of implementing your Pay Per Click ad campaign for you.
 
Our PPC experts know the most efficient and effective way to promote your rental property, and we can get you the most bang for your buck. Our value proposition is this….
 
When you donate $169 USD to Free-Rentals.com, we will spend $135 USD towards a dedicated PPC ad campaign that targets your property listing, and sends you the maximim amount and highest quality of leads possible.
 
Not only do we save you the time of having to create your own PPC account and create your own campaigns, but since we specialize in this area, we are confident that we can send you far more leads and higher quality prospects than you will be able to do your first time running a PPC campaign. Because it’s only through extensive trial and error do you begin to learn what does and doesn’t work for PPC ad campaigns.
 
Well, we have this extensive experience, so in the end, we believe you will get far greater value by letting us spend your $135 USD on a PPC campaign for your rental property, than if you spent $169 USD doing it yourself.