Do you REALLY want to Rent or Sell your timeshare?

[GateKeeper]

For Sale By Owner is just that...by owner! So, if you are serious about selling or renting your timeshare, you need to think a lot more about "self promotion" resources available on the Internet.

Some time ago I posted a question on this forum about search engine optimization and whether the exposure premium ads get on the home page actually had any value. After all, we don't want to suggest that something will yield results if there's no chance of it materializing. I put a simple example in the post about El Cid La Ceiba Beach in Mexico. It was listed at the time as a premium ad on our classifieds web site. There wasn't much thought about this post actually becoming a keyword sensitive post, and it was more a question to find out if any SEO types would actually respond to the question. Well, nobody responded, BUT, check out this search result from Yahoo! If you rather try this yourself, just type "Buy El Cid La Ceiba Beach" (no quotes needed) in the Yahoo search window.

The point to take away from this is that the original post didn't need a lot of discussion, it just needed to put some reasonable information into an environment that search engines can read. So whether the post got a response from any viewers or not is really not important; the search engines clearly thought it was worthy.

So what does this mean to you? If you're serious about "For Sale By Owner", you need to seriously consider the value of self promotion in your marketing effort. Write a review! Or start a discussion about the resort you are tying to market. The more you talk about it, the more someone or some thing (read as Search Engine) will probably be reading!!!!

If you still think that paying someone a fee for an ad is a solution, and that this addresses your challenges of how to market your unit, please look at this information carefully. For sale by owner is not for everyone, and I suppose that is why the paid advertising sites continue to do well. But if you're up to the challenge, take advantage of these "FREE" services and help yourself succeed:
1. Write a review and this will have a positive result on your efforts. It may not be immediate, but neither will your sale, so take advantage of this time to really add some momentum to your efforts.
2. Add your resort to "My Yahoo!"; this has the positive result of automatically adding this same information to Yahoo's RSS directory. Here's a link to how to do this.
3. Post to this timeshare forum! Don't sell the power of a little talk short. As you saw in the example above, it was several months ago that this information was posted here. Suddenly it shows up in the number three spot on Yahoo. If you've placed an ad, start a new topic about your resort, it costs nothing, you don't have to be an expert writer, and what you write will only add to the potential of this site to attract the vacationers looking for a place just like yours.

Happy Trails,
GateKeeper

[GateKeeper]

I just checked again today. Yahoo now lists TimeshareGateway at the number one AND number 3 spots for the above mentioned search term. We will continue to encourage our readers and members to get actively involved in the marketing of their timeshare. Remember, you're competing with developers that have millions of dollars to spend to market theirs. You have to do what you can to compete, and the tools offered here are FREE!