The Direct Holiday Lets Blog

Free Advertising Coming To An End

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:01:00 +0000

Just a quick post to let you all know that although we were doing free advertising for owners on the site, we are going to have to bring this to an early end for a number of reasons.

We have been inundated with new registrations and have had lots of properties added. Unfortunately a lot of these have been of a poor standard probably due to the FREE nature. I feel that this can only reflect badly on the site as people want quality when looking for a holiday home and not some shack out in the boonies. Some of the ads that have attempted to be added have been almost laughable and I cant imagine that for one minute these people can truly beleive that they are going to rent them out.

It would seem that people only really value something when it costs them money.

So from June the site will paid only. The new price is going to be 75 Euro's per year for the initial property and then 45 Euro's per year for each additional property. This still represents great value for owners as we are still getting lots of traffic to the site. We are also creating more and more content on the site which should help to bring even more interest.

I wish you all a good summer and hope that your advertising is successful.

Rob

Update on free advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Thu, 08 May 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Thought I would make a quick post in order to give everyone and update on the state of play with Direct Holiday Lets.

Its only been a week or so but we have already been inundated with owners adding their properties which has been fantastic. Keep adding them, the more the better.

Don't forget that for just 20GBP you can make your property featured on the site, giving it lots of exposure.

Also, please, if you have your own website and are using my free service, please place a link back to Direct Holiday Lets. It is appreciated and will help us all. It doesn't take long to do, so please help us now that we are a free service.

I would like to say one thing though. If you think FREE means that you can just add any old crap then you are sadly mistaken. If any listings are not complete in any shape or form, for example, poor quality photo's, lack of info(one sentence followed by "take a look at www.xxx for further info", no rates and poor use of the English language, they will be removed in a HEARTBEAT!! You will recieve no explanation and no warning. Don't waste your precious time or mine.

Just because we are offering free advertising does not mean we want crap properties OR dirty old bloody caravans listed.

Anyway, just wanted to get that off my chest 8-)

Free Advertising on DHL

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:01:00 +0000

Its been a tough year as a holiday rental listing company and for those who have noticed, we have been changing our pricing structure some what during the last year in order to try and get a feel for the industry and obviously try to attract as many owners as we can to advertise with us.

We have now decided that we are going to offer free advertising. Thats right, absolutely free!

The reason for such generosity is that we feel that the market is so competitive and it is becoming increasingly hard what with the UK credit crunch and Euro to GBP currency exchanges for owners to advertise effectively on multiple listing sites as some are charging so much money for the pleasure but not providing enough value for that money.

We feel that by offering free advertising we can offer holiday home owners what will be the best value advertising on the net. Its free after all, so you can't get much better value than that. This does not mean that we will not be promoting the site. We will be working as hard as ever to make sure we continue to rank well for our major keywords on google and the other search engines as well as marketing the site in other ways online.

We still have one of the most user friendly sites on the web for holiday rental listings and feel that Direct Holiday Lets will soon be the major player in FREE online holiday home advertising.

Don't forget that we also have 3 extra portal sites that we use www.directholidayfrance.co.uk, www.directholidayflorida.co.uk and www.directholidayspain.co.uk all of which list the holiday rentals for their respective countries directly from Direct Holiday Lets, so if you add a property in one of these countries you will get even more exposure on the web.

We will also be allowing agents to advertise on the site which has not really been the case in the past. All of these changes should take place within the next few days.

All in all we feel that there are going to be some good times ahead for owners and holiday makers alike. Stay tuned and join us on our journey. Free of course!

Direct Holiday Lets just got cheaper!

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:28:00 +0000

Hello,

Just a quick post to let everyone know that we are now offering advertising on the site for just 25 GBP per year for all properties. This is a saving of 10 GBP from our previous price.

The reason for the change is that there is so much competition within the holiday rental listing market I felt that trying to follow suite and do as the big boys do would be neither practical nor financially viable as a lot of the big sites are owned by large corporations and have large marketing budgets to play with.

So, I felt that it would be better to offer what I still believe to be a very good service at a really competitive price. Lets face it, 25 GBP per year is not that much money considering we are still getting around 20,000 visitors per month. I think this does represent great value for money.

This does not mean that we will be working less on the site and promoting on the web on a regular basis. I will be working even harder to reach as many holiday makers and owners as possible in order to show both that Direct Holiday Lets is probably the webs most cost effective form of advertising and a great source of quality holiday home rentals.

If you need to contact me, please use the contact form on the site. I am only too happy to hear from you all.

Have a good day.

Rob

New Holiday and Travel Forums

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 11:40:00 +0000

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick post to let you know that Direct Holiday Lets now has its very own holiday and travel forums.

Hopefully these forums will serve many purposes and will be of great use to both our holiday home owners and to travellers and holiday makers in general.

So go to forums.directholidaylets.com and start making some new friends. I hope to see lots of visitors and posts in the coming weeks.

Have a great day!

Rob

New Destination Guides

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 12:13:00 +0000

Good Afternoon,

Over the coming weeks I will be adding a series of holiday destination guides to the site.

I have already added a guide to France and also a guide to Italy. I hope to added many more guides to the most popular destinations very soon.

These guides are mainly for renters but hopefully they will be of some use and interest to all.

Have a good week!

Rob

Scam attempts and how to deal with them

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:22:00 +0000

Firstly, I would like to wish all of our owners and renters a happy christmas and very healthy, peaceful and prosperous new year. I hope you all have a wonderful time.

Now on to my favorite subject. Scammers.

It does appear that the more successfull that Direct Holiday Lets becomes due to our excellent rankings on the major search engines, the more we will all become targets to internet scammers looking to rip off holiday home owners.

Although we do not receive too many scam emails(and all listing sites do) I have decided to create a brief guide on what to look for and how to deal with such attempts.

Please read our "How to identify and deal with scam attempts" page so that you are aware of what these look like and how to approach them.

I wish everyone every success in the new year.

Happy New Year!!!

Rob

Home and Away Acquires Owners Direct

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:33:00 +0000

Evening,

Wow, I cant beleive it. U.S based Home and Away Inc have now purchased http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/ which is their fourth holiday listing site acquisition in less than a year!! Read it officially here http://www.homeaway.com/index.cfm/tgt/od_press_release_100207

This means that they now own a whole host of holiday rentals sites inlcuding holiday-rentals.co.uk, vrbo.com, abritel, cyberrentals and many others.

My thoughts on this are how is this going to affect the online holiday rentals market? And more importantly from an owners point of view how is this going to affect you?

As a lot of you know that Direct Holiday Lets is still a relatively young site as it was only established in early 2007, but already we have almost 200 properties listed which is great(big thanks to all you owners).

My main concern though for an owner of a properties listed on one of these "mega sites" is "Will they ever be seen??". Afterall, when a holidaymaker has the choice of hundreds if not thousands of properties in there chosen country or region how do you know whether yours is going to get the exposure you want and not lost in that proverbial haystack?

I think that having too many properties listed on a listing site can also have an effect on the holidaymakers whole search experience.

We already know that a lot of the big sites have special deals for placing your property further up the listings or making them more prominent on the site but WHAT NEXT with these "mega listing sites"? Well, you know about Google Adsense dont you and cost per click? Yes Mr and Mrs owner, have your property listed across our 500 sites pay per click style!!

Think im kidding? It could be the only way you will be able to have your property consistently viewed on these sites in the near future. Pay more dear owner and someone will actually see your rental property!!

Im proud to say that Direct Holiday Lets still only costs 35 GBP per year for the first property and 25 for each subsequent property. Now, that I think is great value! Oh and your property will be found!

Just a thought!

Rob

Special offer - 6 months free listing if not successful

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 13:03:00 +0000

Hello,

Good afternoon from sunny spain.

I thought I would take a few minutes to let you all know that we are now offering all owners 6 months FREE listing on Direct Holiday Lets in the event that you do not acquire any new bookings through our site after registering and paying for a years advertising with us.

So, this means that If in the unlikely event that after a year you have not had any bookings via our site, simply let us know and if we are satisfied that this is the case, you will receive 6 months advertising completely free.

If you have any questions in regards to this, please contact me via our contact form on the site.

Happy renting.

Rob

Holiday rentals listing sites and the dreaded spammers

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:22:00 +0000

Morning All,

I just wanted to talk about the increasing amount of spam being posted on the net not to mention an increase in phishing and scam email activity and how we all need to be on our guard in fighting this menace.

Its only natural that Direct Holiday Lets will also become a target for such attacks and recently the contact forms have been abused by these scum bags(yes you, you know who you are!) Although we are able to combat this to a degree, a few of these emails will get sent to the owners. Please be carefull when dealing with any enquiries.

Fortunately enough the scammers and spammers do a lack.....how can I put it? A brain. Most of the scam emails that have been sent via our forms look like they were written by my 2 year old!!

Things to look out for in scam/bogus emails:-

Written in all caps(Spammer obviously doesnt know how to turn this off)
Terrible punctuation(Never went to school)
Start by introducing themselves and include their age(Probably lieing like the rest of us on that one eh?)
Stating that they are away on business at the moment(meaning that they are unable/reluctant to speak to you by phone)

Once again please be careful. If you are in any doubt about an enquiry, please contact me as I am happy to help you and advise the best I can.

Well, thats my rant over with for today. I hope you are all doing well both owners and renters and that you have a pleasant spam free day.

Rob

Florida portal site added www.directholidayflorida.co.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:51:00 +0000

Hi All,

Another update to say we have now added the Florida portal site that contains lots of information on florida including articles, news and books. The site can be found here holiday rentals florida. Any owner with a property in florida who has it advertised on directholidaylets.com will automatically have it advertised on this site also for free.

The same applies to owners of properties in spain and france who have already advertised on directholidaylets.com. As stated in our previous posting we have also started two other portal sites www.directholidayspain.co.uk and www.directholidayfrance.co.uk

All of these sites will be updated some more over the coming few weeks. Please take a look.

Have a great day.

Robert

2 new portal sites added for France and Spain

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 09:25:00 +0000

Hello All,

I just wanted to let you all know that we have added another 2 websites to the Direct Holiday Lets network of sites. holiday rentals spain site and holiday rentals france site.

These sites serve a number of purposes. Firstly it gives all of you advertisers of holiday rentals in France and Spain the added bonus of having your properties shown on another website of ours at no extra charge. Secondly, the two new sites will help to attract more viewers to the main Direct Holiday Lets website giving all of our rental properties even more exposure.

The sites also provide lots of information on their respective countries including news, articles and books and will be of interest not only to holiday home owners but also to people currently living in France and Spain or planning to make the move.

I hope you all find these sites of great use. There will be more and more content added over the coming weeks.

Good luck.

Robert

Online Scams - Please be carefull

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 14:27:00 +0000

Hello Everyone,

Once again, I know that a lot of you are aware of online scams and that its very important to keep your wits about you when dealing with all enquiries.

I just wanted to make everyone aware of the following email address which is being used by an abuser of our contact forms and who you may have been contacted by. The email address is tbrown_work@yahoo.com

This "person" has been trying to scam a few of you by pretending that he has paid too much money and that you need to send him the difference back. Needless to say if you are contacted by this individual do not entertain him.

Always clarify that payments have in fact been made into your account and that funds have cleared etc before ever paying anybody any money back. Its also advisable to get them to fax a copy of their bank transfer receipt to you as proof that money has been sent. In all cases when dealing with online payments get as much information as possible from the enquirer.

If you have any worries or concerns about any of the emails that you receive please let us know.

Thanks

Robert

Featured Listings

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:54:00 +0000

Hi All,

You can now make your holiday rental stand out from the crowd by having it as a "featured listing".

This means that for a monthly fee you can have your property occupy one of only four featured listing slots on the site. These slots are prominent on the main page as well as many sub pages and show properties regardless of whether a visitor has done a search or not.

There are two options to choose from. Shared featured listing and Exclusive featured listing.

The shared option means that your property will be rotated within one of the slots with no more than 2 other properties. The exclusive option means you have the slot to yourself and your property will not be rotated but will be fixed.

These options give your property even more exposure on the site enabling you to gain more enquiries and bookings.

Please see http://www.directholidaylets.com/featured-holiday-rental.html for further information or email us.

Robert

Direct Holiday Lets Directory

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:30:00 +0000

Hello,

We now have a directory of travel and holiday home related businesses and websites at www.directholidaylets.com/useful-links.html

If you have a business or know of a business or website that you feel could be of great use to all of our owners and visitors to the site, please feel free to email us with your suggestions.

Of particular use are property management companies, airport transfer companies, locksmiths, plumbers, pool cleaning and builders etc.

We would like to list as many as possible so get your thinking caps on and send us your suggestions.

Thanks

Robert

Website design for holiday rental owners

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 15:35:00 +0000

Hello Everyone,

Just another posting to let you all know that we are now offering a new web design service for all of our current owners.

How would you like your own private website to show off your holiday home/homes in order to gain even more bookings?

There´s no doubt that having your own private website to showcase your holiday home is a great way of gaining the edge over your competitors.

Our package includes:

Professionally designed website
1 years website hosting
Domain name/web address of your choosing
Your site will be fully optimized for the search engines
Email address
Email contact form for all those enquiries
Availability Calendar

All this can be yours for just a single one off payment of £249.

We also offer the hosting of your website and your domain name for just £20 per year. This represents fantastic value, and we are confident that you will not beat this price anywhere.

Further details can be found at our web design page here

Have a great day, and hopefully I will speak to some of you in our forum

Robert

Forum now added

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Fri, 08 Jun 2007 09:47:00 +0000

Hello,

I have now added a forum to the website that can be found by clicking on the "Our Forum" link in the main menu or by going directly to www.directholidaylets.com/forum/

Please feel free to register in the forum and share your ideas and experiences with each other.

If you have any suggestions on making the site better in any way, please use the support and feedback forums.

Robert

Bogus Email Enquiries

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:01:00 +0000

Hi,

I know that some of you owners have been renting holiday homes for sometime and are aware of the amount of hoax/bogus emails that can appear in your inbox from time to time.

I just wanted to take a minute to suggest that everyone be carefull when receiving email enquiries. Some bogus emails are quite obvious and others not so.

If the enquirer doesnt want to speak to you via the telephone directly and gives you some kind of pathetic excuse about not being able to deal with you other than via email, please dont deal with them as they are more than likely not genuine enquiries.

We do our best to deal with any abuse by using the "captcha" letters and numbers on the forms but this will only prevent automated spam attacks. We are unable to prevent people entering information manually.

If you feel that any email that you get is bogus, please contact us using the contact form on the website and we will deal with the issue the best we can.

Many Thanks

Robert

2 Month Free Holiday Home Advertising Trial

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:38:00 +0000

Hello,

Good news. We are now offering a free 2 month holiday home advertising trial for all new registrations on the Direct Holiday Lets site. Hurry though, as this is a limited offer and wont be around for ever.

In order to receive the trial, all you need to do is register on the site, log in,click on "edit my details", then enter the promotional code(stated when you log in or at http://www.directholidaylets.com/admin/register.html)

Then add your property with description, photo´s, rates and availability and once done click on "activate". You will then see a link "click here to claim your free 2 month trial". Just click on it and your done.

Hopefully within your two months you will receive many enquiries and bookings and will decide to pay the small yearly fee and extend your advertising for further 12 months. And dont forget, we are still one of the cheapest holiday home advertising sites around!

We are currently receiving around 10,000 visitors per month which is growing all the time(We are still only 3 months old) and there are many enquiries and bookings being made for our existing customers. Why dont you join them and give us a chance to show you that advertising with us should be a major part of your advertising strategy?

Whats stopping you?

Happy Renting!

Robert

Bed and Breakfast Advertising

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Wed, 30 May 2007 11:04:00 +0000

Hi,

Just a quick update to let you all know that you are now able to advertise your bed and breakfast rentals on Direct Holiday Lets at the same price as holiday rental ads.

You just need to add your properties as usual via your admin area. When adding a bed and breakfast property your rate options will change to price per night or per person.

If you are the owner of a bed and breakfast I hope you enjoy this new aspect of the site and are very successful with your advertising.

Robert

Sorry but we are no longer a free service

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Wed, 23 May 2007 21:40:00 +0000

Hi Everyone,

Im afraid that advertising on directholidaylets.com is no longer free, meaning that any properties you wish to add from now on are charged at ₤35 per year for your initial property and then ₤25 for any additional properties added.

We beleive that ₤35 a year to advertise your holiday home rental is great value when compared to other similar web sites charging in excess of ₤100 per year.

We are now growing at a rapid rate and are receiving in excess of 6000 unique visits per month meaning that your properties are getting plenty of exposure to holiday makers. Considering that the web site is only around 2 months old this is a great achievement, but are looking to reach around 10,000 for next month.

Increasing traffic to our web site on the internet is always an on-going challenge that we are working hard to achieve as we know that it is vital to have a good level of internet viewers in order to gain the enquiries and bookings that we all want.

Please dont forget to keep sending in your emails to us letting us know whether you are happy with the site and whether it is living up to your expectations or not.

We are always happy to hear from you all.

Best Wishes

Robert

Some changes including viewable stats and search functionality

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Thu, 10 May 2007 09:56:00 +0000

Hello Owners,

Just to let you all know that you are now able to view the amount of viewings that your properties have had including the number of email enquiries sent to you.

You can find these stats by logging in and and clicking on the "stats" link which appears next to each of your properties.

We have also added some other simple changes to the site including the ability to now search by property id from the search fields which makes it easier for viewers to find a property instantly on returning to the site.

If you have any queries on how to use the website or any suggestions as to how we can make your experience on Direct Holiday Lets more pleasant please email us using the contacts page on the website.

Have a great day.

Robert
Direct Holiday Lets

Rates can now be added in different currencies

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Wed, 09 May 2007 16:39:00 +0000

Hello All,

I am happy to tell you that you can now add your rental rates in euro´s, dollars or uk pounds.

This was something that we were aware of and obviously needed to rectify in order to make your adverts more user friendly.

Please log in to your account on the website in order to change your rates if you need to.

Robert
Direct Holiday Lets

Testimonials and other bits and bobs

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Sat, 05 May 2007 21:24:00 +0000

Hello Everyone,

As Direct Holiday Lets is still in its infancy and yet still growing rapidly in terms of properties added daily, search engine rankings and daily website hits It would great if you owners would take a minute and give me your opinion of the site so far and how easily you find it in terms of ease of us, funtionality and general website content and appearance.

It is so important to us that we get your feedback so that we can constantly update the website and make your visit to the site as stress free and as pleasant as possible.

Please email us at info@directholidaylets.com with your opinions and suggestions. Also if you have had success in renting your property via this site why not tell us about it by emailing us. We can then add it to our testimonials page. We would love to hear from you all.

On a final note. Please make sure that your adverts are complete. I have encountered numerous adverts with property descriptions such as "Sleeps 4, nice views and five minutes to beach"!!! Come on. Even I can be a little bit more creative than that. Im pleased to say though that this is definetely the minority. Most of the ads on the site so far have been done very well and include some great pictures.

Its also good to see that you have been adding properties in different parts of the world which is fantastic.

Good luck to you all with your advertising. I would love to hear from every one of you in the near future.

Robert Griggs
Owner - Direct Holiday Lets

Bugs to be fixed in website

noreply@blogger.com (Robert Griggs - Director - Direct Holiday Lets) — Fri, 04 May 2007 08:43:00 +0000

Good morning all,

Just to let you know that we are aware of a couple issues.

One of the issues we had was with the sending of username and password details both when signing up and also when going to the owners page and clicking on the "Request Password" link.

Emails should be received fine now. If you wish to receive an email reminder to keep of your password details please click on the "Request Password" link on the owners page.

The other minor issue that we are having is with the title(displayed in the big blue box at the top of the page) being displayed incorrectly when doing a search. The database search is correct and all properties are being found that match the search criteria its just the title that is being displayed incorrectly sometimes.

This will be fixed shortly along with any outstanding issues outlined in this and other previous posts.

Have a good day.

Robert