Giving Stuff for Free is Damn Hard Work!
After months of developing our Vacation/Holiday Rentals directory I thought the hard work was finally over. The concept was simple… allow owners to upload full details of their properties to Travel Library with all enquires going direct to them. For us charging owners just isn’t interesting because our main goal is to provide our visitors with the largest selection of rental properties in the world. If we charged we might not get that little breeze block condo to rent in Azerbejian and besides we still earn money from our Google adverts on the page.
So I start out contacting some owners to tell them about this opportunity. I thought it was a no brainer. All they have to do is upload photos and everything else about their property. In return they get free exposure and hopefully lots of enquires and bookings. The problem? You’ve got to be the Pope to convince them there’s no catch (we’ve asked and he’s not currently looking for commercial work). To try and solve this I began calling owners rather than just emailing them to explain how it worked in person. That works better but I still get people everyday saying after ten minutes of explanation “yeah ok, I really like the idea sounds great …. so I pay when?”….. argghhhhh.
Pierre the Pixel freak is currently hunched over his Mac producing a nice page which explains in even more detail that we are free.. honest.. no really. If anyone has any ideas on how we can get the FREE message across I’d love to hear from you. If we get it right we’ll be able to offer the most useful resource in vacation rentals. No more surfing through loads of sites to find the right place.
I’ll finish on a good note which is that despite the scepticism shown by some the directory is growing a good rate and we should have 3000 properties by December. As more and more people are referring us we expect this to jump to over 10,000 early next year.
December 1st, 2005 at 10:17 am
Hi Duncan,
I understand your point, but you are doing a great job. I found your website on the internet at the beginning of october while I was looking for something similar to tripadvisor, which I don’t like because to me it is terribly confusing and clearly built to earn from adverts.
Then I found your website which is clean, clear, easy to surf and nice! I thought this is what I would like from a website. Obviously when you run yourself a website you start to think: if things can be so clear, easily organised why I didn’t think to arrange the content in a similar way when we made our own? Than you realize that the easy things are the most difficult to do, and that somewhere in the world there are people who are just better and faster to find solution.
I think people now understand the meaning of your website and they are comfortable about your policy and mission. I have already listed 4 accommodations in Rome and Florence part of our network and I’m going to convince other innkeepers to be part of your travel-library - it is not going to be hard .
Just a suggestion for the future: since your site will be a fast growing one don’t make a mess out of it!!! Don’t put too many links on the home page and leave that relaxing white space between the sections. Please don’t follow the tripadvisor example: that is not a point of arrival!
Complimenti and good luck,
Gianluca - Rome, Italy
December 1st, 2005 at 5:19 pm
Hey Gianluca,
Thanks for your nice comments. I’m the guy responsible for keeping the “relaxing white spaces” between sections. Tripadvisor is actually one example i didn’t want to follow, although their content is massive and useful, it’s way too cluttered.
Pierre
PS: And YES!!! Our website is free!!!
December 21st, 2005 at 4:35 pm
Hello,
I finally found some time to set up an ad on your site. As a vacation rental owner who has tried or looked at many venues, I must say your is delightful in it’s clean and efficient design. I also checked and saw the Google PR of 7, and eye-popping 263,000 links pointing to Travel-Library! I will definately be adding 5 more listings as soon as possible.
Richard,
CityOasis Vacation Homes,
West Palm Beach Florida
www.city-oasis.com
October 24th, 2006 at 5:20 pm
Yes, travel-library feels more modern and friendly than Trip Advisor, what a surprise I got reading the terms and conditions!
Great work, keep it up.