Free websites to advertise?

[Dordogne Granny]

Hi there,

I guess that someone has already post it, but i wonder if there is any list of the uk or other websites you can ad your gite for free? In france you have www.homelidays.com which offers a 1 or 2 months for free, but i don't know about other websites...

Many thanks in advance to all of you!

Cheers

Sabine
www.en-toutes-saisons.com

[mascamps.com]

There's not a list and you can't really rely on finding them by searching for "free gite listings" or something similar as many of the free ones aren't indexed on google etc. very well.

Net effect of the above was that even with me spending a couple of hours on Sunday afternoons looking for free/cheap places for us to list I still found more sites each Sunday after doing that for getting on for a year!

Having said that, in practice I've only got bookings from two free sites over the year ie they're generally speaking worth what you pay for them. Of these two (www.chambres-hotes.org and www.ourinns.org), only ourinns has a gite counterpart, www.ourgites.org .

I always go for the "free for X months" sites but again haven't had any bookings from them yet and that's even with me being so stingy that I apply for them at about the optimum time ie they get a full run at a holiday season in the free period.

Aside from the totally free sites, I've a personal preference for those that operate on a commission basis. It may work out more expensive over time but it seems to me that the interests of the people is more in line with my interests ie no bookings for me means no income for them. Of the ones like that applicable to gites, I've been getting a lot of enquiries from www.ownerdirect.com lately (something like 10% commission plus US$100 per year).

 

 

Arnold

 

[Le martin-pêcheur]

Hi,

The only true free sites at the moment are as above. Thanks Arnold for your efforts for us all.

We did find that www.holidayhavens.co.uk and www.holidaylets.net  offered 3 months free advertising on their sites. Easy interface to work with and almost full control over content and pictures.

Between the two we had 10 weeks booked before we paid up for a full 12 months advertising. Both offered good service, fast response and we consider good value for money.

Hope the info helps.

We have no connection whatsoever with the companies mentioned other than being an advertiser with them, but if you contact them by all means mention the fact that we referred you. This helps everybody who has a website and helps us all find value for money.

Best regards,

Tony and Sue www.flyfishinginfrance.com

 

[Dordogne Granny]

Mant thanks to both of You for these answers!
That's reallu helpfull.
Cheers

Sabine

www.en-toutes-saisons.com

[Paolo]

[quote]Hi, The only true free sites at the moment are as above. Thanks Arnold for your efforts for us all. We did find that www.holidayhavens.co.uk and www.holidaylets.net offered 3 months free advert...[/quote]

"The only true free sites at the moment are as above."

Not at all. Those are sites that Arnold is associated with but there are many free listing sites.

There is a useful thread with a list of free of listing sites and discussion about them at Lay My Hat here:

http://www.laymyhat.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=569

There is also a very amusing thread where the owner of self-catering-breaks.com, which is a very big free listing site, tells us that we are a bunch of whingers and whiners! I have never heard someone address their customer base like this and the interesting thing is that several people liked the honesty and signed up with the site (except that it doesn't work all that well, hence the whinging).

My view on free sites is that you get what you pay for. They are the cherry on the cake but personally I would not think of them as part of my marketing portfolio. Don't rely on them!

I would recommend the free 3-month trial on holidaylets.net as this is a 'proper' site. They are re-thinking the free trial so get on while you can. perfectplaces.com and vacationrentals.com have free trials and they are also large, established sites, albeit more likely to attract American users.

Paolo

[mascamps.com]

Excellent listing by your poster, Paolo! Now, if only some nice kind person would run up a similar listing for B&B type places

On the whinging front, the flack that visitfrance were getting here a few months was what prompted me to sign up with them (not free though). I figured that it would prompt them into getting their act together.

My view on free sites is that you get what you pay for. They are the cherry on the cake but personally I would not think of them as part of my marketing portfolio. Don't rely on them!

For sure! I only mentioned those above as they are the only free ones out of perhaps fifty or sixty free listings that I have which have actually produced bookings. On 'tother hand presumably some people are getting bookings from the free sites so you sort-of feel that you should be on them.

 

Arnold

 

[mascamps.com]

I couldn't find a B&B equivalent to that excellent free listings site that Paolo's poster created so I've made a start on one: www.ourinns.org/freesites.htm .

As usual, there's next to no overlap in the sites on the B&B and gite worlds; I'm adding this post here as I know that a number of the B&B folk visit the gite world from time to time.

Anyway, if there are freebie sites that you know of which aren't on the list, let me know and I'll add them on.

 

Arnold