In reply to dbmeyer

The free version does have annoying ads placed at the bottom of each of your web-pages – this is how they cover their costs – you get free hosting and a free “domain name “ of the type :

wwww. XXXXXX.iowners.net ( where XXXXXX is a name of your choice). If you just want to showcase your property with more information and photos etc a link to this is great but it is limiting in that you are effectively linked to the iowners site.

To have some independence I purchased my own domain name through them – As it was a couple of years ago I think the cost was approx $50 US for setting up hosting on an independent server company and purchase of the domain name. I've since renewed my domain name through Go Daddy ( a US company) at a cost of £15.53 ( Pounds GB) approx $25 US

Back to the annoying ads – when I initially completed my free website – one of the first things I did was to pay £24 ( Pounds GB) approx $38 US to have “No more Ads”- my reasoning was that I wanted a website to draw clients in, offer more information, and hopefully convert into a booking. Having the ads at the bottom could actually take clients away as quickly as they came- if they clicked on the ad they were gone. I wanted them to linger

The website building concept had proved itself to me – I was very pleased with responses from colleagues about design, ease and speed of access and I could now direct my “ advertising” - word-of-mouth, business cards, web-sites like OwnersDirect and Homeaway etc to this site

I needed more “clicks” so I purchased my own domain name. Its taken some time but I now appear on Google searches for my area ( this is where the Statistics option comes in – it gives No of unique visitors, referrers, search terms used to find my site, and source of enquires etc) I can't remember how much this cost me – not much

The Languages and Optimisation options cost me £72 GB together ( approx $115 US ) They can be purchased separately. The Language option would probably only be suitable for property owners in Europe as the only languages offered as well as English are Spanish, German, Italian and French.

Overall I consider I've built quite a sophisticated website, with a good web presence where I have complete control of content that I can modify very easily - all for very little money and I'm no computer wizkid.

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With reference to the RentalSytems online booking calender and payment engine- its owned by the Daily Mail newspaper group over here in the UK. As far as I can see it can be used to accept secure card payments of any currency from anywhere - doing away with having to set up a merchants account. If you have a website its very easy to set it up on a web page. I picked it as living in the UK we are outside the Euro zone so I had difficulty with banking Euro cheques, length of time clearing, potential clients having difficulty sending money, bouncing cheques etc. This middleman provides security for both client and owner

Its linked to a website called VillaRenters which is like HomeAway etc . To use RentalSystems you pay a one-off activation fee of £50 GB ( approx $ 80 US )  this also includes an advert on the Villarenters site

Each property gets a central online booking calendar so that customers can check availability, book and pay online. The moment a booking is placed your calendar is updated and you are notified via e-mail. If you accept the booking the system takes the customer through the entire booking process – dealing with deposits, contracts , balance due reminders , arrival instruction etc. I like to vet the bookings but the booking process can be made automatic if the dates are available

The costs are :-

If a booking comes from the advert on the Villarenters site you pay 10% commission

But if you generate a booking and use RentalSystems to process the booking ( all the above- card payment, contracts etc ) the commission drops to 2%

(You generate a unique link – you send it to the client- they access your RentalSystems online calender- and the system knows you generated the booking)

For more on RentalSystems see the link at the bottom of my web page

http://www.calabria-vacation-rental.com/pricing.html

When you get to the directed RentalSystems page there is more information towards the bottom.