The use of the internet cuts out all the overhead of start ups that were big investments and gambles in the past on getting a business going.
Prefer to write from personal experience and not talk about theorys of what might work.
We started out with the idea that we could rent homes to tourists and short term visitors, furnished as an alternative to motel, hotel, resort stays in Arizona.
First house we tried a $125.00 classified in the daily paper. 2 calls no rental. Decided we put it in the wrong classification, so ran it again in different classification. Zero calls.
That did it, $250.00 down the tube and have not rented a single home/ Therefore we decided we can not do this with this kind of overhead.
We decided it all had to come from the Internet. Or it was not feasable. We already had listed with several listing services such as http://vrbo.com which charged us like $200 per house per year.
We did a little trick here, we did not put a calendar on the page like everyone else so when it was booked (the one listed) we showed them we had 11 others.
That way we did not have to advertise all 12 at $200 each. We also advertise on other listing directory’s but few results.
We made our own website for them to be referred to, my son made the first one and the current one has just been added to
When the respond on the internet with a response email from a listing or from a craigs list ad we answer their questions and refer them to our home rental site. http://arizonavacationhomerental.com
or http://azvhr.com for pictures and full details.
This would have been like a pamphlet or flyer had been in past years that we would have mailed. Here we had not postage and no waiting; they could take a look instantly.
If we had a change in rates or anything at all we could change instantly. No waiting for the printer to turn out more expensive full color pamphlet.
Now, in the past we did in most businesses a follow up mailing and we do that here. If we have not heard from them in response in a few days, we send a second email response that says I forgot to mention so and so and here is a little different look at our 12 Arizona vacation rental homes. http://arizonavacationhomerental.com/slides.htm let me know if I can answer any unanswered questions.
After you have answered questions for a couple years you eventually learn to answer almost everything with and on the site.
Then they just call to book, Actually the bookings are done in my office 1200 miles away, and I tell them Missy handles our bookings and she is in 8 to 5 Monday thru Friday Chicago time.
The web site IS to most people our office. About once a year someone asks if they can stop by my office. (actually if they were in SD they could) but this business is in Arizona, and so am I most of the time.
I just say I work out of my home and you are welcome to stop by. That is pretty well accepted now days.....
The web site is our mailing piece. It is our catalog. They never lose it so we do not have to mail another. They can send it instantly to someone they have coming to Arizona with them and needs to be in on the decision, as "will this work for you" and which home should we rent?
They can print out a map on how to find it they can see what the temperature is here right now while it is ten below out their window.
This has a lot of things on it you do not need, and we will discuss this later in other articles as to how to use the net.
Click around the sites and see what all information we include. We hope that we have answered every question and motivate them to call us, they deciding from the web site, that we know what we are doing in renting and maintaining vacation homes they sit and run 24 hours almost cost free.
Now when we get inquiries, it doubles your response rate if you answer them within an hour. Twice as good as that, even, (the ultimate) good, twice as good as an email is a very prompt phone response.
One of the reasons for this is you may be one of the first they responded to and if you are the first to respond back, they will often end the quest right there and go with you.
If you wait or fail to respond till they get ten sent and even a few back, likely one of them will get to them before you do and have them booked up and you are DEAD,.
We will tell you over and over, the key to success is timing. I learned that trying to sell the rest of my Christmas tree inventory December 26th.
What I am working on in the back of my mind is a video tour with me explaining what they see. Send that maybe the fourth day. I try to develop a personal relationship with my customers and readers.
Now we have a problem almost like the airline with an empty seat. Once it is gone empty, it is like my December 26th Christmas tress it is worse than worthless.
We book homes the exact days they want, often as much as a year or more in advance.
We wind up with days in between empty....our empty seats. We are the only one that does that we offer after the first of the month up to 2%% off for last minute bookings. If you have to take part of the days in one home and more in another we give you 5% additional on overall rental.
These were throw away days that were lost for income. Any income we get there is FOUND income. We had a small company in this spring and summer, wanting to rent a home for their employees while here, for the project they were on and had to move 7 times but wound up with those unbooked in between days, at a great rate but earned us a lot of EXTRA money on the same homes that would have been empty and the ability to earn gone otherwise.
Actually they had to move to a hotel three days. Those three we had everything booked. Now keep in mind summer is our slow season, but we have learned, (thank heaven) how to keep them booked year around. August is our extreme test of our ability. Often 120 degrees here. Especially difficult to rent then are the four homes we have with no swimming pool.
In case you are interested we will do a story on how to do the home rental business in the future. Not want to tell our competitors all our techniques and secrets.
By the way, we have no phone book listing. We have no office, our house cleaning is contracted, our yard work is contracted etc. Missy is a 20 year employee but she works on our newspapers, web publishing and many other things besides booking home rentals.
When she goes home, she transfers the company phone to my cell phone 1200 miles away. The cell phone is a local call there, since it is a SD area code. Rings here toll free. Isn't science wonderful? My SD employees can call me from home etc or anywhere toll free since my cell in Az is SD cell phone number. My Az employees have Az cell phones and we almost never have long distance calls. My residence phone we pay $20 extra for unlimited calls anywhere in US.
That was just a little information side on phone set up suggestions...
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We may link you to information sites that do, but that is incidental, we do that only because we think they have information you may find useful.
We do get income from Google ads, which they decide what runs and it pays our internet bills. Keeps the internet press
running, (pays the ISP).
But stop trying to figure out what we are pushing or selling, cause we are not. We are a 42 year publishing family, switching to the internet. Hoping we can help thousands more then our many small newspaper editions ever did.
Got a question, contact us personally anytime....anything we have researched or been through, we are glad to answer questions about our conclusions and views. You should find them time saving and helpful.
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