Archive for June, 2009

How To Market Your Vacation Rental

Wednesday, June 10th, 2009

The Free-Rentals.com business model is to put the vacation rental industry back into the hands of individual vacation home owners. What that means to the average vacation home owner is this… Free-Rentals.com offers you tools and services to actively market and promote your vacation rental.

In contrast, the big stalwart companies that currently control the Vacation Rental industry do so simply because… they got there first. So before you pay $150 USD PER YEAR just to have your vacation rental property listed at one of these corporate websites, ask yourself… what are they DOING with that money to actively promote MY rental unit?
 
My guess is that they using your money to fly themselves around business class to attend various internal meetings.

 At Free-Rentals.com, we DO NOT require a payment to host your vacation rental unit. We simply ask members to consider a donation. In return for their donation, we offer services to actively market and promote their rental unit. Specifically:
 
1.) 80% of the money you donate is spent to purchase Google Ads, directed at your specific property listing. Here is a how a sample ad appears. These ads run on Google Search Results and Google Partner websites.  

2.) We publish your listing to our dedicated regional sister website. While Free-Rentals.com attracts an international clientele, our dedicated sister websites are 100% laser focused on a given regional area. Here for example is our dedicated Costa Rica website: http://www.rentals-costa-rica.com/
 
3.) We publish your listing to Vast.com, Twitter.com/freerentals, RSS and other affiliate websites that accept our feed.
 
4.) We publish your listing on free classified ads websites such as craiglist.org, kijiji.com and several other such sites.

5.) We have a few other tactics concerning how we drive targeted traffic to your listing but we need to keep that information confidential, as we have not yet found any other vacation rental company deploying the same tactics.
 
So in summary, if you want a team on your side to do the heavy lifting for you in marketing and promoting your vacation rental, give us a try at Free-Rentals.com

Posted in Advice, Vacation Rental Industry, Vacation Rental Websites | No Comments »

Long Term Renters Beware Of Fake Landlords

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

Even long term renters have to be aware that the landlord who rents you a place may not actually be the landlord. With the amount of vacant and foreclosed homes in todays market, at least one scumbag tried taking advantage of it by posting as a landlord and renting out units to unsuspected renters.

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - After KRQE News 13 reported on a phony landlord renting foreclosed homes as his own property more people are coming forward claiming they’ve been scammed.

At least six people now have told News 13 that Ernest Garcia, who also is known as Ricardo Lombardy, offered to rent homes to them.

Three women interviewed for Thursday’s report said Garcia took deposits and rent for homes that were vacant from foreclosures. Two of the women said Garcia took money from them separately for the same house.

The third renter described a real estate agent telling her to get out of her home after she’d paid Garcia $1,000.

The renters said Garcia would go to the back of the house and let them in the front door after apparently breaking in through the back.

They say once he collected the money for a deposit or rent, he then gave them the slip.

Posted in Scams | No Comments »

HomeExchanger Boycotts VRBO

Friday, June 5th, 2009

The blogger HomeExchanger has announced a full boycott on VRBO and is trying to round the troups. Her first grip is that websites such as VRBO that allow people “to list a swap home for rent introduces commercialism into the equation. It also puts a price tag on individual homes which further erodes home exchange’s egalitarian ethos.”

HomeExchanger goes on to say:

What really annoys me about VRBO’s bigoted owner is his disingenuous claim that he is only discriminating against “unmarried” people. He knows full well that gay Americans CANNOT legally marry in the USA. I am against VRBO because I am annoyed by hypocrisy. Boycott VRBO. 

We don’t have any strong opinions about the dispute, but as a general rule of thumb, we take sides with the more tolerant of sides in most disputes.

Our sister site Homewelcome which offers Home Exchanges as well as Free-Rentals.com certainly does not discriminate against any group wanting to rent or exchange their home. Furthermore, both websites do not allow it’s users to post discriminatory descriptions regarding who they seek to rent the hourse to or exchange the house with.

Posted in Vacation Rental Websites | No Comments »

Bing Travel Search Rocks

Thursday, June 4th, 2009

Microsofts new search engine Bing looks promising. Not sure if I’m ready to move from Google to it, but will continue to give it a shot.
 
On the other hand, their travel search engine Bing Travel rocks. I’ll certainly be using it first and foremost for all my flight needs. Other websites I will continue to use are expedia, mobissimo, sidestep, kayak and priceline.

Posted in Travel Destinations, Travel News | No Comments »