Talking on the phone with potential guests, it seems that folks are always trying to visualize the layout of the house. So, I spent a few minutes tonight sketching the floorplan (using my specialized software: MS Word). It is not quite to scale, but hopefully my potential guests will have a chance to visualize the house better and be able to make an informed decision about whether or not it will suit them.
Here’s my floorplan:
Categories: advertising
Parent Map is a local print publication that I see all over the place around Seattle. It is published monthly and has lots of great stories, events and ads. I have been working with their staff to create an ad and have it run in the August issue. We made a slightly different ad to show up in the bi-annual publication called: Baby Map. Here are the ads:
Categories: advertising
I thought it might be nice for people to be able to call me. I surely didn’t want to post my home or mobile phone online, so I searched around for a toll-free number which would just record voice mail or something. I didn’t really realize the great options there are for this type of product. You can buy a toll-free number and record your own greeting, let it save voice mail, have it forward to different phones at different times of the day, get multiple mailbox extensions, save faxes, make outgoing calls… There are just a ton of features.
The company I settled on is Ring Central, since they seemed to have a really good web interface for managing all this stuff, and it only cost $10-$15/month for their basic plan which includes about 100 minutes (1 minute charged per 1 minute of talking… I guess that some companies charge 2 minutes for each minute talking since they are really connecting 2 long distance calls to make it all work). My number is 888-636-2305, in case you want to call.
After 2 weeks of using their service, I can say that I have been very impressed. Firstly, I am surprised at how many people want to call and talk to me instead of just sending an email. I personally prefer to send email when contacting someone, but I guess I do feel better when I see a toll-free number listed for somebody. It does kind of make me want to call them. But, their service is very nice and fast and seemingly reliable. I can customize the greetings and call forwarding in almost any imaginable way.
I’m sure the technology itself isn’t too amazing, but I’m glad that they have been able to bring it to the masses for such a reasonable price.
Categories: advertising
If someone wants to rent a waterfront vacation home near Seattle, what are their choices? Well, they could stay with me, of course. But, since I want my potential guests to have all the information they need to make their decision, maybe I should show them all of their choices.
Well, here we go:
| name | location | water? | BD/BA | sleeps | pets | flexibility in summer | weekly summer rate (inc. cleaning) |
| The Seaside Chalet | near Alki | Puget Sound, across the street | 3/2 | 5-6 | no | 5 night min | 2150 |
| Wisteria Hollow (multiple homes) | near Gig Harbor | Puget Sound, private beach | 7/5 | 4-24 | no | 5 night min | 1200-3000 |
| The Salish House | near Gig Harbor | Puget Sound, private beach | 2/1 | 3-5 | yes | 7 nights, Sat-Sat | 1750 |
| Vashon Island Cabin | Vashon Island | Puget Sound, high bank, private beach | 1/1 | 2-4 | yes | 3 night min | 1000-1400 |
| The Lucian | West Seattle | Puget Sound, 1 block to beach | 3/2 | 2-6 | no | 5 night min | 1485 |
| Waterfront Cottage on Lk Sammamish | Lk. Sammamish | Freshwater lakefront | 1/2 | 2-5 | no | generally require 1 week | 1550 |
| Waterfront Escape | between SeaTac and Tacoma | Puget Sound, high bank | 4/3 | 8 | no | 5 night min | 2900 |
| Waterfront and Beach Cottage (2 choices) | Magnolia (in Seattle) | Puget Sound, beachfront | 1/1 | 2 | no | 6 night min | 980/1575 |
| Lk Wash Waterfront rental (shared home with owners) | near Renton | Lk. Washington, lakefront | 2/2 | 4-6 | no | 3 or 7 night min | 1400 |
| Lowman Beach House | West Seattle | Puget Sound, public beach across the street from house | 2/2 | 4-6 | no | 5 night min | 2045 |
| Lowman Beach House | West Seattle | Puget Sound, public beach across the street from house | 1/1 | 2-3 | no | 5 night min | 1495 |
| House Boat | Seattle | In Lk. Union | 1/2 | 4 | no | 1 month | |
| near Alki Beach | Alki Beach | 1/2 to beach | 2/1 | 2-4 | yes | 1 week | 1200 |
| condo at Alki | Alki Beach | ? | 2/2 | 4 | yes | ? | 1200? |
| Alki Beach condo | Alki | 1/2 to beach | 2/1 | 4-6 | no | ? | 1200 |
| The Captain’s House | W. Seattle | Puget Sound, 1/2 block to beach | 3/1 | 6 | no | 1 week | 1300 |
| Home Above the Bay | ?? | Puget Sound, high bank, private access | 7/3 | 14 | no | 1 week | 3425 |
| Edgeriver Estate | Near North Bend | riverfront | 3/2 | 5-6 | no | 1 week | 1700 |
| Alki Beach House | W. Seattle | 1/2 block from Alki Beach | 1/1 | 2-4 | no | 1 week | 1200 |
| Duck House | Seattle (15 min north of downtown) | private freshwater lake access (Bitter Lake) | 2/3 | 6-7 | yes | 3 night min | 1700 |
| Waterfront Luxury home | Lk. Sammamish | private lake access | 5/3 | 10 | no | 1 week | 3700 |
It looks like there are only 4 Seattle rental houses in VRBO on a freshwater lake: 2 on Lk Sammamish, 1 on Lk Washington and ours. None of the other ones allow dogs. The two on Lk Sammamish have a 1 week minimum, and the one on Lk Washington is a shared rental (i.e. the owners live upstairs). All the rentals in W. Seattle & Alki have a street between the house and the water. There seems to be some private water access for some of the Puget Sound waterfront homes – but those are pretty far from the city (which might be a good thing if that’s what you’re looking for)… but only really hardy swimmers go in the Sound since it is so cold.
There you have it. It seems like The Duck House is a unique place to stay: private lake access, close to downtown, dog friendly, 3 night minimum.
Categories: advertising
Alright, now that the website for the rental is live, its time to get some guests! I spent some time comparing the big vacation rental websites, and found that VRBO seems to still be the biggest destination out there. Some of the other sites have nicer search interfaces, and look more modern, but vrbo still gets most of the traffic. For the Seattle area, they had about 80 rentals, while the other sites had less than half of that number. Maybe if people start renting and liking our place, then we can expand to the other places as well.
To get the ad running on VRBO, I had to decide how high up on the list to go. The way you get higher on the default list is to post more photos, and they charge you a base rate of $179/year plus $24/year for each additional photo. beyond the 3 included photos. They also have a nice little table which shows you how many photos you need in order to get higher in the list. Here are the values from that text table in a chart. You can see that the more you pay per year, the higher your ad placement. I chose 4 pictures, in order to get me about halfway up the list. From there, it didn’t seem worth the extra money to get higher. Maybe if this turns out to be a success I can pay more money to increase the prestige of the place.
As for google adwords, I made a text ad and decided to pay a decent amount per click for the first couple weeks, with a moderate daily budget (about $5) for some popluar keywords like “seattle vacation rental,” until I start getting bookings. I’ll turn that down in a couple weeks.
Finally, I posted an ad on one of my favorite sites: craigslist. I just grabbed an excerpt from my main web page and put it in the ad with a link back to my web page.
Maybe in a week, I’ll see where (or if) I get more traffic and bookings!
Categories: advertising · website
