How many listing sites?

[Giddy Goat]

I currently advertise with four (paid) listing sites, after much trial and error over two seasons of renting, and about to enter our third. I don't have any other form of advertising - just the internet. One of my listing site subscriptions is on the brink of expiring, and I've decided not to renew it as my experience now seems to indicate that, once you have found the sites which work for your particular market, three should just about do it. But what has your experience been?

[Fraise]

Hi GG. I used 4 sites ( paying ) initially but am down to 2 for this year as last year the other 2 just didn't cut the mustard. Those same 2 sites were pretty good in our first year but then maybe our prices were too low and anyone could have sold our site I haven't had any less bookings so far with just the 2 sites. I am also on a site that takes 12% should they get any bookings but they haven't taken any yet and it doesn't cost me anything ( I can refuse a booking from them if I wish) to sit there,this si ( "si ??" I'm still bouncing around from just having returned 10 mins ago from Judi Dench/ Simon Callow/ Alistair Mcgowan in The |Merry Wives- brill !! ) my first year with them and it's a bit of an experiment really ( I pulled the plug on Villa R's sharply as they stopped sending the money up front so that wasn't for me !) I suspect different countries produce different results, as well as different types of properties within the same country so it'll be a bit " how long is a piece of string" ish. Interesting non the less.

[roxytoo]

I have used 4/5 in the past but this year am going to use 2 with maybe a third, it's which one for the third that I can't make my min up!

[la vache!]

Lots more than all of you at the moment although a couple will not be renewed in the next 2 months. 7 major ones and 5 much cheaper ones including 2 specific French sites. The 7 will be reduced to 4 or 5 soon due to under or no performance, the cheaper ones are all value for money and will stay. I have no holy grail of rental sites as I get bookings from all of them, although some provide more than others. I do run mine as a full time business and living, so expect to spend around 4 - 5% of turnover on advertising.

[roxytoo]

I've just counted the non paying ads and can't believe I am on 110 sites!!!! Out of those about 4 actaully give me bookings but I suspect that a few of them will start charging soon!

[centime]

Hello GG: I am a case in question with 2 capital city properties and one villa in the south of Portugal and like you don't have any other form of Internet advertising, and yes I did have to choose different sites for advertising the different locations. After 1 year of payed sites I continued the H-R for all three and added OwnersDirect for the Algarve villa and HolidayLettings was tried for all 3 because of the good sampling of Lisbon properties. Another 2 sites were added for the city properties but not for the villa because of location, price difference and potential renter catchment. A couple of others were tried this year as they offered a special rate or you could try them for a short period. At the end of all of this credit card swiping and feeling the bank account decreasing at a rate of knots, came the crunch decisions. In November I had done an assessment of how certain sites had performed, to my surprise PerfectPlaces was really worth it, having given me the necessary small, but well paying bookings last year plus the idea that I could renew the 3 properties for about the cost of one listing on another site and the payment was in US $ - okay! Homelidays is a new addition for the Lisbon properties and that was a surprise as about half an hour of them telling me my ad had gone live I got a booking in from Australians, now I am planing just when to update my listings to hit the different time zones - what you have to do to bump up your bookings. Things do change from year to year though, the ChoosePortugal site, the sister site to ChooseSpain is a free site and performed quite well last year but with the increase of properties, mine are getting lost in the numbers and I don't expect it to do so well this year, so if I had to pay for it this site would definitely fall by the wayside - but I can only wait and see with this one. I really think it is a bit of a guessing game that you don't really know the answer to until you have given some sites a good try. Last year I had a trial period for about 6 months on Click4HH, price was right and the apartment should have flown off the shelf so to speak but the site did not perform even with the good reviews from the COHR site - just refused to work with mine!!! Ah GG I see that you have listed on both Holidaylettings and Holidaylets.net can you give me the low down on which performs better as Holidaylets was on my short list for the Algarve property but did not choose it as it as it did not seem a good bet for the city properties!

[Jimbo]

Hi GG

Our experience is similiar to yours - approaching our third rental season only using (paid for) internet advertising.

One rental site has produced good results over the last two years - albeit with the odd annoying gaps. (We were with another site which 'vanished' half-way through the first season - LMH is a great help in identifying the cowboy sites). This year, we decided to add another site (after following Paolo's guidelines) but, after much research, two sites floated to the top of the pile and it wasn't possible to get a knife between them, so we decided to go with both - plus our original site. I think this is a reasonable advertising investment for 3 gites renting from March to November. The new sites have been live for only 48 hours, one has produced a two-week booking and the other an multi-gite enquiry for 16 people, unfortunately for a period already booked. So a good start.

Note to rental site owners: I know that 'results are everything' but (from my experience) some rental sites are much easier to upload material onto than others. Some are not particularly intuitive or require knowledge that a beginner isn't likely to have to upload successfully. All sites stress the importance of good photographs but some sites display them more effectively than others. Being able to preview your ad before going live is a tremendous plus for me.

Jim

[Mouse]

hi GG

good thread - as I was thinking of opening up another account for us - mainly to pick up the early/late part of the season. We're currently with only 1 site (OD) which has had us booked up for the last 2 years. But as our season is short and next year we're hoping to only rent out for 10 wks I'm not sure it's worthwhile (I'm still pondering)

I kind of got the impression when starting out that OD plus HR were the key ones for our market...but HR were too expensive & have too many properties in Ibiza.

A friend (already with OD & HR) has also gone with holidaylettings so I'm interested to see how that goes. Homlidays sounds interesting...wonder how they do for Spain?

Mouse (reading with interest)
x

[Big Sis..]

Hi All,

Im on loads

Six.... Paid for, quite a few freebies..Free trials etc.

Trouble is that they all seem to be performing about the same so I will have to bite the bullet and discontinue a few...

As we have 2 props and most of the sites let me advertise them as one lot I dont mind paying out a bit more .

I still think OD is good value...
I get a lot of Enq from H Lets[more than the others] but not so many bookings??.
Just started with Choose Spain & H Lettings and theyre doing OK...but its early days...
Im still with Rentinspain which was very good the 1st year[phils great hes been very helpful all the time]and the only one I used initially...
but has tailed off recently...[Mind you my Xmas booking was from Phil Directly as theyd written to him to suggest a place where 2 families could go and he contacted me and gave me theyre details and as this seems like it might now be regular....so that was a real bonus its things to think about

Click 4 did OK last year..Portside about the same...

[brenda]

Our Daltonsholidays.com ad expires in February and we won´t be renewing - only a handful of enquiries with just 1 booking.

[Big Sis..]

Hi Brenda

It might be me but when i tried to click on your OD link on here it came as a cant find.......

[centime]

Mouse: what you can do on Homelidays is take a look at the testimonials of other similar properties as it lists where the renters came from. Homelidays is also in various languages, I know I did a bit or research on some other properties and discovered there were quite a few renters from Spain and Italy including the French ones for the Lisbon properties. I did pick up a few enquiries from Spanish renters - a bit last minute though on this site - free but seems to work for me 6. http://www.rent-holiday-homes.com looks like they have 17 on Ibiza.

[Mouse]

thanks for that Centime...I'll take a look. I do like the fact that it seems to hit other nationalities.

Mouse
x

[Big Sis..]

hit other nationalities

Hi Mouse

I had a free trial on Homelidays[think fora couple of months] and was really impressed with the amount of Enq I got...I think you would do well with them[specially if theyve still got the free trial offer]

[Guest3]

I've just counted how many listing sites I have advertised our villa with....12!

6 paid listing sites
4 free
2 on a free trial period

We were lucky in that most of our peak weeks were booked before October 2006. Seems like the exposure has paid off!