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1. Advertising with EscapeLets
What are the benefits of EscapeLets advertising?
We provide property owners with a means to increase their rental income through effective on-line advertising, for free. Advertisers on our site are private owners who let out their property for either part or all of the year. Owners receive booking enquiries directly from our website visitors. EscapeLets do not charge a commission to either owners or renters. We carefully target our marketing to maximise the potential of all our owner's properties.
What service do you provide to advertisers?
Owners gets a full colour page advertisement for their property, together with slots for up to 10 colour photos, an availability calendar, a location map and a contact form so that booking enquiries can be forwarded to them directly by email. Advertisers can also display other contact information such as telephone/mobile/fax and a link to their own website. All properties are indexed in our website search engine, visitors can then browse to find homes to rent by maps, location or features. As we concentrate on maximising our rankings in the major search engines, we aim to attract large volumes of traffic to individual property advertisement pages. Advertisers can login and make changes to their advertisement whenever they want and as often as they want.
Why don't you charge and how do you make an income?
We believe the Internet should be free, and this philosophy extends to property owners wishing to promote their properties. Renters, when polled, indicated that they believe that property advertising fees (at other websites) are simply passed onto themselves through the rental rates, and in effect this acts as a disincentive to use some websites - We want to make renting holiday properties as open and transparent as possible, for both the renters and owners.
Therefore there is no charge for normal property advertisements on the EscapeLets website; these are all 100% free. This will be the case until the website is properly established, and has a comprehensive selection of properties listed, and even then we do not anticipate making a charge for the standard advertisement for owner's properties, listed on the website.
However, running a website is expensive, so we offer a 'Spotlight' and 'Featured' premium service, which is available to owners who pay a small fee. 'Spotlight' and 'Featured' listed properties, are guaranteed a higher placement in results of country, region and district searches made by holiday makers. All basic listings however, will always remain 100% free are there won't be any obligatory fees or commissions payable to list properties at EscapeLets.com.
As the site is run by a group of holiday property owners, who donate their time free-of-charge, we always welcome cash donations to help cover the website hosting costs. If you feel you would like to donate a small amount towards the running of this service, please send us any amount you feel you can afford, by cheque, made payable to "EscapLets.com", and send to: Waterford House, 6 Sunnyside. Ridge, Wareham, Dorset BH20 5BQ.
How do I join?
Joining is simple. Just following the steps below:
- Click the 'Free Property Listings' link in the left hand 'Property Owners' menu.
- Fill in your contact details and then press 'Submit Registration' button; you will be prompted to create a 'Login' name and password so that you can login to your account at a later stage.
- You will be sent an email to confirm the email address supplied for the login is correct. This allows us to re-send your password if you forget it in the future.
- When you log in, you will be taken to your 'Owner Area'. This is where you manage your details, properties and bookings.
- Select 'Add a new property' to begin entering your property location details. Follow the instructions to complete the wizard.
- Once you have added your property you can then select it from your property list and complete each of the remaining: Property details, location, features and tariff information by clicking each of these tabs on the Property Advertisement page. (Don't forget to press the 'Save' button once you have 'edited' each of these sections to prevent data loss).
- You can then add photos by clicking the 'Browse' buttons in the Photographs area.
- You can review your advertisement before you commit to activating your account, which is done via the 'Request Activation' button on your main property edit screen.
- Thats it... Once you have completed, you can add additional properties if you require, but please don't duplicate them.
We will then validate your advertisement, activation of completed adverts is normally within 24 hours. However if possible we will aim to validate advertisements within two working hours. If you need any assistance during the process we are more than happy to help. You can ask us for assistance at any time using the 'Contact Us' page on the website.
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2. Adding Photos
What if I don't have my photos on my computer?
You can post photos to us at: 6 Sunnyside. Ridge, Wareham, Dorset BH20 5BQ. We can then scan these digitally for you and add them to your page. Please enclose a stamped and addressed envelope if you would like these returned. We do not charge for this service which includes up to 10 photos.
How should my photos be configured for the best results?
Photos should be landscape in format (4:3 aspect ratio) otherwise they may be reformatted to fit the spaces provided. All image files must be gif, jpg or png files (image files end with .gif, .jpg or .png). If you are able to set or resize the images we recommend setting them to 295 pixels wide by 221 pixels high (though if they are larger than this, the upload process will reformat them automatically for you). Keep the file size as small as possible, ideally smaller than 1600 pixels wide or 1200 pixels high (roughly equivalent to a photograph from a 2.0 mega pixels camera). Larger images can be uploaded, but these will take a long time on most computers. You can edit your images on your computer using image software such as Paint, Paint Shop Pro or PhotoShop. If you struggle to sort your photos into this format you can email them to us at: admin@escapelets.com
Can I change content or replace photos in my advertisement?
You can login to your account at any point to add or replace previous photos for your advertisement. To replace a picture, just click the 'Images' tab on the Property Advertisement page and use the 'Browse' buttons to add pictures or over-write the previous image.
What types of photos are best suited for my advertisement?
The first image (Image number 1 in the 'Listing Preview' tab of the Property Advertisement page) is used for your advertisement "thumbnail image" (small image) appearing in visitor searches. This image represents your property so we recommend picking the suitable photo for this position. Exterior shots work especially well here. Ensure your photographs are selling your property to its best ability. If your chosen photo does not scale well to a thumbnail image, it may not "sell" you property well. Try cropping the image to utilise the available space. Ensure you have a good mix of internal and external photographs that are well-lit, and fairly represent your property. Visitors like to see what the interior looks like before even thinking of committing to a booking. They will also be keen to see any attractive scenic shots from the property or nearby landscapes; this will help sell the area to the visitor. Please ensure you do not mislead visitors with images not related to the property.
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3. Managing your EscapeLets advertisements
Can I make changes to my advert once it has been published?
When you register with EscapeLets you choose your own Login user name and password. You can login at any time to manage your account details, manage bookings, add or edit properties, add/replace photos or request activation of property advertisements.
If I don't have access to a computer, can you make changes for me?
We don't offer an advert maintenance service to advertisers due to the nature of our site. We provide an easy to use site where owners can manage their own advertisements and to maintain the best value and effective holiday home advertising for you. If you have any difficulties with the site however, we are more than happy to help explain how it works or sort out any problems - simply contact us using the Feedback form provided.
How do you calculate the "View Count"?
We provide a "View" counter in the owner's property pages, so you can see the number of holiday makers who have viewed your listing. This counter will only increment if a searcher views your property details, once displayed, subsequent clicks on the tabs or any of links on your property details page will not increment the counter further.
If an EscapeLets.com administrator views listings, or if you, the owner (providing you are logged in) viewing your own listing, the counter will NOT be incremented. In this way, the counter shows a true representation of the number of visitors actually interested in your property.
Note: If you are not logged in, and you view your own listing, the counter WILL be incremented, as you will appear to the website as an anonymous user looking for a property to rent.
How can I increase the exposure of my property?
We offer 'Spotlight' and 'Featured' property advertisement areas which display selected properties on ALL visitor accessible web pages. 'Spotlight' and 'Featured' advertisements are randomly selected for display from the currently featured properties. Any listing can be included in these areas for display, but this feature is a 'premium' service, and as such will require owners to pay a small fee for inclusion in these areas.
How can I get the best response from my advertisements?
There are many things you may be able to do to increase the response or effectiveness of your property advertisements:
- Provide as much information as possible on your page.
We recommend including as much information about your property and the surrounding area as possible. If you mention skiing or golf, visitors looking for these activities are more likely to find your property when they search. Be sure to include words and phrases that you think potential visitors may search for during their EscapeLets searches.
- How well are you selling the best features of your property?
Remember the objective of your page is to sell your property - don't miss off any important attractions or features of your home.
- Make good use of the 'Description' (short) field when completing your property details page.
This field is shown to visitors on the search result pages; it is here they decide which properties to look at in more detail.
- Is your property priced realistically?
Take a look at other similar properties in the same region or province, to see that your are competitive, and not overcharging.
- Is your information up to date?
Regularly review your tariffs, update your availability calendar, facilities and give accurate directions of how to get there. If there is an cost effective way to get to your property such as a budget airline provider then tell people who they are and where they fly from. If visitors' can't find the information they require, they won't always contact you to ask, they just move on to another property that does supply the information.
- Provide alternative contact details.
Some visitors prefer not to use the enquiry form, so if you haven't supplied an alternative telephone number, they may not contact you. Ensure you include the languages you speak; a booking could be lost because you have failed to tell them you can speak to them in their native language.
- Location, Location, Location!
It is important that you have selected the correct country, region and province for your advertisement. This will allow your advert to appear in visitors searches, when they are looking for specific areas. Take a look at how other advertisers in a similar location have listed their property. We provide additional search Keywords for regions and provinces, so if a visitor doesn't know the name of your town but you situated near a better known town, it is likely that your advertisement will be listed during a location search.
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4. Troubleshooter
Why am I having problems completing registration?
The owner registration form is intended to gather owner information which will be used by both holidaymakers and EscapeLets.com to contact you. It is therefore important that you fill in mandatory fields. If you miss something, clicking the 'Submit Registration' button will display tips to help you complete the form.
The second part of the process is used to ensure that your are who you claim to be. Upon receipt of your registration, an automated email will be sent to the email address supplied, with an activation link which you must click to complete the activation of your account. If you do not recieve this email, check that your email spam filters are not blocking mail from EscapeLets.com. If you still do not recieve an email, try and re-register and double check the email address provided.
Why can't I login?
There can be many reasons for a login failure:
- You may have entered your user name or password incorrectly.
Click your browser's 'back' button and try again.
- Does your browser accept cookies?
On your browser click on Tools, Internet Options, then click on the Privacy tab. Now click on the "Edit" button and where it says "Address of website" type in www.escapelets.com and click the "Allow" button. This will let your browser accept cookies from our site only. Please note that you need to then close any open browser windows and open a new one for these changes to come into effect.
I can't upload photos to the site. What can I do?
Are you trying to add photos that are too big for the EscapeLets website to accept? You ideally need to use an image editor to resize you images to just 295 pixels wide and 221 pixels high. Although we can accept images up to 1600 pixels by 1200 pixels (roughly equivalent to a photograph from a 2.0 mega pixels camera), these can take longer to upload. Failing this you may need to try to email it to us at: admin@escapelets.com, with your owner and property IDs so we can manage them for you.
Why are changes that I make not always saved?
All web servers have a page "time-out". This causes problems when carrying out online editing over an extended period of time. If a page is not refreshed or posted frequently, your "session state" is abandoned by the server, for this reason, saving of edits can fail, as the server doesn't recognise the request (the timeout is set at about 20 minutes or so, to which we have no control). We recommend creating and editing your narrative using a word processor, then copying and pasting it to the advertisement edit screens once completed. This allows you to check the spelling and grammar of the text more easily, than using the small on-line edit boxes.
Who can I speak to for help?
If you ever have any problems with our site, please use the contact form, send an email to admin@escapelets.com or call +44 (0)1258 455033 (9.00am-5.30pm GMT, Monday-Friday).
Note: When contacting EscapeLets, always remember to quote your EscapeLets Owner and Property IDs.
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