Thread: Can I get your feedback?

I'm in the midst of launching a new website aimed at creating listing for vacation rentals. There are already a lot of them out there in internet land and honestly, now that it's been built it's a little daunting thinking about the marketing aspect and trying to push the site out there.

I'm going after the Mountain Town communities (think Whistler, Mammoth, Vail, Banff, Canmore) - communities that are based in the mountains and offer mountain sports/communities. The name of the site is Mountain Town Vacation Rental: Mountain Town Vacation Rental. I would like to target the more adventurous traveller that would be into skiing, mountain biking, kayaking, climbing, etc....

I'm offering free basic listings (3 photos, a Google map, a description of the rental and listings of features and amenities). The listings can then be upgraded to offer more photos, videos, written reviews from travellers that have stayed at the said vacation rental. There is also the ability to be a featured listing for your given area. I'm a little lost with pricing on this. The big guns charged several hundred dollars for a basic listing. They have been around a long time and are very established with a very loyal following. I'm trying to figure out tactic or sales pitch that would compel owners to come over to check out my new listing site. I'm starting to doubt myself and wondering why they would want to even check it out. I was also thinking about offering free listings for the next 6 months just to get traffic and listings on the site. Would this be a dumb move or ????

I also created advertising space of the side of the listing for local business to advertise their products and services. The advertising can be set up so they can advertise to all website users or to target it to specific geographic locations. Again, I was thinking that I might open this up for free for the next 6 months so that businesses can start to use the service.

I've been to a few websites with only a few listings or products and I pretty much left the site feeling like it wasn't really maintained or wasn't doing so hot.

My advertising budget is meagre, so it will be hitting up forums and a few bucks spent on an Adwords campaign.

I'm trying to be positive with this and I was psyched when I started, but now I'm starting to wonder what I've gotten myself into and what I spent my $$$ on.

Any ideas of feedback on the site would be appreciated. I'm still working out a few bugs and the landing page still needs a little work.

I currently own 2 rental units and have been in tourism industry for over 15 years.

Thanks everyone!

Thanks. I tried that in a different business venture, but it was a lot of work keeping track of sales and taking a % off. In the end I decided it would be easier if I just let the VR owner and prospective client figure it out themselves. PayPal has a business service that will take off a % of a sale and send the appropriate amount to the sellers.

I have many ideas, but for now I need to run with what I have and then when I generate some $$$ I can start to play around with some of the other features I would like to implement.

Cheers,

Scott