rental Website confusion

[sunny fields]

Could someone please enlighten me on how Home to Go works. I see that it is a server and shows what sites a property has been listed on by the owner.
So if someone has listed on Owners Direct, have they also paid to be on Home Away, VRBO and Vacation Rentals? Or does it incorporate the others. I am sorry to be so vague on this as I am finding it hard to fathom across all the sites.
To be quite frank I am overwhelmed by it all and commenced this at the beginning of the year but bogged down and let five months slip by without bookings. Shame on me!
I am not living on site. Getting the money paid also daunts me as I don't want the credit card process.
Could some wise, experienced owner please help this newbie out. It is such a shame not get the property having some use and some value.
One more concern, people loading up the car with the property's goods for the cost of one week's rent has always worried me. We would not know for days as the cleaner does not always come immediately.
Doubting, confused and hesitant Sunny
loirevillageescape.com Richelieu Touraine France

[Hells Bells]

Renting out your much-loved second home involves an element of trust from both guests and owners, especially so when you are an absent owner.
If you don't want credit card (and guests like it, again because of trust), there's always Transferwise if there is a foreign currency transaction involved. Bank transfers can be slow and cumbersome across continents. Waveapps is a simple credit card process which may be worth looking at too, and doesn't cost a lot.

If you have no bookings, get some listings on cheap or free sites. Some will charge commission, only you can work out if that is affordable or not. Examples are AirBnB, Homeaway (you should have listings with some of their other sites if you are on there already, you can find out in the dashboard of the site you are listed on), and Trip Advisor. If you have payment issues you can set up an online payment with some of these.

For France, and French guests, I recommend France Voyage which is cheap and brings in bookings. French prefer a bank transfer to a French account for easiest method of payment.

[Hells Bells]

Home to Go is a search engine which scrapes info from many other websites. Anyone wanting to book a property through it will be redirected to the site the advert came from.

[zebedee]

I've sent you a pm

[e-richard]

...
To be quite frank I am overwhelmed by it all and commenced this at the beginning of the year but bogged down and let five months slip by without bookings. Shame on me!
I am not living on site. Getting the money paid also daunts me as I don't want the credit card process. ...

You know, I remember being in exactly those shoes some 17 years ago. I live 1,000 miles from our rental, where they speak a different and hard to learn language, and our guests come from all over the world.

We started with an Agent and let them do all the work dealing with guests, payments, booking forms etc. All we had to do was furnish the home and arrange cleaning services. 2-3 years later, I learned all the ropes, the knots and the complexities of the ever changing listing sites and finally went it alone.

I can really recommend that approach to begin with. Sorry, I cannot suggest any agents in your area, but hopefully others can and may also echo my suggestion. There's a lot to learn, but its not real hard.

Good luck

[sunny fields]

Thank you everyone for those little gems of the long road travelled of owning rented properties. I need to get more pro-active with this little bolthole. We are going over from June till the beginning of August, so it is almost a project for next year's rentals.
I need to do more research and make a couple of quick decisions on what is actually worth doing. 16 000 kilometres away does have some drawbacks!!
Have a great season,
Sunny