Chez Nous

[Paul Carmel]

Hi,

Last year we tried to advertise with Chez Nous and were told no ( In a rather off hand fashion I might add )  because we are in Corsica, which as you all know is part of metropolitan France. Now they are starting a Corsican section and, oddly enough, they seem to want my business! Just how effective are they? We have our own site and are on over 100 or so others, some paying but most of them free......if they get the results I don't mind paying, but what is your experience?

 

Cheers

PC

[Jmp]

I have just seen a posting on another forum which says that the Chez Nous brochure will not be available for sale in any high street outlet (including WH Smith) this year. I don't advertise with them, or receive their newsletter, and couldn't see an announcement on their website and so I cannot verify anywhere. I just wondered if their advertisers were aware.

Can anyone confirm if this is true?

[Paolo]

'We have our own site and are on over 100 or so others, some paying but most of them free'

Blimey! Over 100?! How do you manage this, is it worth it in money and time? Or do you have a fairly automated process? Any good free ones you'd recommend?

Sorry, not related to Chez Nous, but I'm impressed!

Paolo

[Miki]

[quote]'We have our own site and are on over 100 or so others, some paying but most of them free' Blimey! Over 100?! How do you manage this, is it worth it in money and time? Or do you have a fairly automa...[/quote]

Paolo, Impressed by 100 

I'm astonished, especially if 75% of them are of any use. Never knew there were so many free sites. We know of many but ..............................nothing wrong with using freebies, nothing ventured and all that but (and here comes a cliché) in general terms you get what you pay for and we have found you do need to use some quality sites, those that hit the front page or at least in the early pages in the search engines, to get the bookings.

Spill the beans or at least, give us a clue as to which ones actually work for you.

 

[Paul Carmel]

Hi Miki,

You're right, 75% of them don't bring in any bookings, but that's not the point - they all help with our own site ranking (5 out of 10 on Google at the mo  but the best paying one for us is www.holidayrentals.co.uk and the best free on is http://www.allerencorse.com/  And yes, we work hard at it and are constantly looking for new sites which takes a lot of time - but in the winter we are lucky that we have a lot of time on our hands and feel, for us, the effort and tediousness involved is worth it.

Anyway back on topic, does Chez Nous work? I am more interested in their web site as opposed to the magazine.

Cheers

PC

http://www.corsicanholidays.com

[Miki]

Paul,

I would have thought that having a place on Corsica was pretty much specialised and quite easy to market, no ?  Yes, we know holidayrentals from the mid 90's, now extremely large and I can see how it works for you.

Chez Nous works for many and not for some. The problem you have, if indeed as it looks, you only have one place to let, is keeping the cost of advertising to a fair ratio to your possible returns. We have had Ads in CN ranging from an eighth to a half page. The bigger the Ad the better it works, well that is the principle but, not always so, and for one letting place, how big an Ad can you afford, before it becomes too expensive for the return gained?

Website, well personally I think it is one of the worst on the net, especially in comparison to its massive 530 odd page brochure. It barely has a presence for its "patrons" on the search engines when you seek holiday accommodation in France.

Like so many things, yer pays yer money etc

 

[Paul Carmel]

Hi Miki,

Point taken, Maybe that's why French Connections was wash out for us.

 

Cheers

PC

[Danglar]

[quote]Paul, I would have thought that having a place on Corsica was pretty much specialised and quite easy to market, no ? Yes, we know holidayrentals from the mid 90's, now extremely large and I can see ...[/quote]

Hello!

This is interesting. Could you advise me on how to find out a website ranking, please?

I'd be curious to know what mine is doing, even though it has lost some of its shining recently.

What are the steps?

regards

[Miki]

Danglar,

I haven't a clue but hopefully someone will know. The method I use is, if we get bookings and are doing OK, then the website is working !!

Not very technical am I ?

 

[Paolo]

Danglar,

That ranking you asked about is Google's PageRank, which is a score out of 10 attributed to a webpage. It is supposed to be a measure of the 'importance' of a webpage.

What it measures is the number and quality of links to that page. The thinking is that the better a page is, the more other sites will want to link to it - each inbound link is like a vote for a site.

The higher the PageRank of a page linking to yours, the more valuable the link is (in Google’s eyes). There are other factors, for instance if the linking site is in the same sector as yours. A really great link for us would be from the homepage of British Airways. At the other end of the scale, a link from a local restaurant.

A higher PageRank is supposed to boost you in Google’s search results. That’s why Paul is please with a PageRank of 5, which is good for a personal website. Presumably he has achieved that by linking to his homepage from many of the 100+ ads he runs.

People do tend to agonise over their PageRanks, but there is a lot of talk amongst those who care about these things that you should now just ignore PageRank altogether, because Google have let it slide. I like Miki’s method better!

If you want to see your PageRank or that of other sites you have to download the Google toolbar here:

http://toolbar.google.com/

I have it on my machine and I like it. It puts a little Google searchbox in the grey bit at the top of your browser window, so you don’t have to go to over to Google to do a search. It blocks pop-up ads if you ask it to. And it displays the PageRank of whichever page you are on. It’s free by the way.

Paolo

[Anton Redman]

[quote]I have just seen a posting on another forum which says that the Chez Nous brochure will not be available for sale in any high street outlet (including WH Smith) this year. I don't advertise with them,...[/quote]

I thought there were two copies in WH Smith Sutton this afternoon

[Jmp]

I think that the posting I saw was referring to the distribution of the new magazine for 2005 season. As I said I don't advertise with them - just thought that anyone considering it should ask them to clarify if there is going to be any change to the distribution for next season.