What order to do things?

[wallypott]

I will hopefully be the proud owner of a 6 bedroom beach house on 12th May, all being well, fingers firmly crossed.
I was planning to do:
1. the outside pics this summer, (whilst living in the property visiting local attractions and gathering nec. info for the web site), then
2. do the inside pictures after the rennovation was finished, near Christmas.
3. Then do my web site, choose a name
4. Get lots of bookings

But now having read some of the older threads, I see that some of you worry if you have not got bookings in November for the following summer.

So, my timetable seems to be rather laid back. What order should I be doing these things, and, while I have great pictures of the beach, even the outside of the house is going to have doors, dog kennels, new patio etc put in so any outside pictures I do now will also be inacurate.

What order should I do these things in and how do I get round the photo thing?

Thanks, lovely people, for any help.

Wallypott

[Ju]

Don't worry about those of us who like to get booked up early, it is usually because we rely on rental income to live, so no bookings = no dinner.

In our first season we put the website together in early spring, with an architects sketch of the property and little else, and was still fully booked for the summer.

I suggest getting some advertising out before Christmas, but that could just be on a listing site such as Owners direct.

If the outside of the house isn't attractive, then don't photograph it until work has been done. If you can get at least one room finished inside so you can photograph that, and clear up the garden and photograph that in mid summer (very difficult to do in winter)

Ju

[Normandy Cow]

I see that some of you worry if you have not got bookings in November for the following summer.

I'm once again going to churn out my old mantra: "It's not where you start it's where you finish"

I never have bookings so far in advance yet always manage to be fully booked for most of the year, and it doesn't matter how far in advance the people book, as long as they are in there when the time comes.

As my daughter would say: "chillax"...!

[Margaret]

I would certainly start thinking about your website immediately, starting with the url and looking at other websites to see what works for you and what doesn't - but not copying anything as websites the copyright of their owners. As long as you keep flexible, I think it is a good idea to have some idea what information you want to collect so that you don't end up with lots of material you don't really need. Also, at this stage, you are still fairly 'fresh' and can hopefully still see things from the point of view of the potential renter - later on you will become more jaded and it will become harder to see things with an outsider's eye!

I agree with those who say it is better to get your website going before you have the final photos. It took us 3-4 years to build up to the position we wanted on searches so I don't think an early start can do any harm - as long as you don't take actual bookings until you are sure you know when the place is going to be ready.

[wallypott]

NC I just looked at your booking calendar. You seem to get nigh on 30 weeks a year, from what I can see. You must be doing something seriously right. I am so impressed, particularly in view of the gale it is currently blowing outside! Do people not mind the weather?

[la vache!]

post deleted

[Normandy Cow]

Actually, over the past 3 years we got 38.5, 37.5, 38.5 weeks booked.

No, the people don't mind the weather. In the winter we advertise it for "cozy log fires and Christmas markets", and as we are just 2 hours from Calais, people can come over for a weekend. (Oh, and in my calculations for number of weeks booked above, I have calculated weekends as a 0.5 of a week).

The trick is to make the house really cozy and full of games etc, the sort of place people want to snuggle down in.

I find that people who live in places like London just love to get away into the countryside and don't mind the rain* when they are on holiday in the winter. After all: "we're British - there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing )

*Apart from when we spent two weeks at our house in August 2008, when it rained (stair-rodded) every single day and it was so cold that we didn't get to eat one single meal outside. I was so depressed. Thank goodness it was while the olympics were on because we just spent most days indoors watching TV...

[ccazes]

Even if you don't have any photos I would start building the website now. If you do it yourself it is very time consuming to write up all the info and arrange page order etc. Then you have to get your head round SEO if you are not familiar with that.
That will be one less thing to do when you are in the throws of setting up the house and the 1000s of other things to be done at that point.
A couple of years back I was looking for a rental villa in the USVI. I happened apon the website of a couple who had just bought and were renovating their villa. The website featured everything the villa would have and local info and then they blogged about the renovation process. They weren't finished on time for me to book but they were taking provisional bookings for after the renovations. I am sure they had quite a few followers of their renovation blog and it was a good way of generating interest for their villa.

[Don Ciccio]

As Margaret has said, I think its worth starting to plan out what you want on your website already (and thus work out what you want to call the site and purchase the URL early on)

Having a clue as to the eventual images you want to use on your website will help you take them later on. Try doing a very quick 3d mock up in Google Sketch-up (PM me if you want help on this) and then move the 3d model around to get an idea of likely angles that flatter the property etc and help you work out the angles to photograph.

Getting the bare bones of a website or even home page up and running (if you are doing it yourself) will give you a chance to begin getting used to publicising your property. Okay so it's not ready to rent yet, but it takes a while to get your site noticed and ranked by Google etc, so why not start writing the content and getting it online - it's not going to do any harm is it? And if you do put a few current external pics online with a note that rennovation is underway - people may start to make enquiries about next year anyway. And you'll learn a lot of webskills and editing shortcuts in the process.

Once you get the pictures you can add them to the functioning site and hit the road running already.

Just me humble opinion...

[escape2charente]

Definitely get your website sorted a.s.a.p and work on the seo when you can, that way by the time you're ready to rent your site is already out there indexed and you may even get some bookings under your belt.

I did this before we even bought our place to test the market and got quite a few enquiries even without photos of the property!

[Austria]

Yes get your web presence up and going asap. It takes a while for the search engines to find you. Also consider doing a blog linking to your website, it all helps to raise the profile.

Articles could cover the build and purchase and why it is such an amazing area to visit.

Good luck

[kendalcottages]

I would second all the comments about a website. I naiively left this until I had some photos of note to show, but really I should have got more of the bare bones in place earlier.

Once other tasks kicked in, such as choosing furniture, getting a telephone line, buying bedding, etc. etc. I got so distracted that the website was 'on hold' until I had more time. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been better to create a basic site with some 'photos coming soon' gaps and some spiderable content that the search engines could at least start getting their teeth into.