In the recent layoffs over at CSI you would think they were in a hiring freeze.

Oh, that is not the case.

They are hiring for the Louisville office right now. I guess that kills my idea that they are closing that office down.

I wonder what the base salary is without the commission?

Also in their Monster.com job posting indicates they are “a leader in vacation rentals“. I think HomeAway would take issue with this.

Sounds like Rentals.com likes to spin their job posting copy as much as I do with my copy on this blog!

Now you see her:
http://www.consumersource.com/mgmt/gallo.htm

Now you don’t
http://www.consumersource.com/management.htm

From Business Wire:

“ATLANTA, Jun 18, 2007 (BUSINESS WIRE) — PRIMEDIA Inc. [PRM] , the parent company of Consumer Source Inc, the country’s leading publisher and distributor of free apartment, new home and auto guides, today announced that Steve Huey has been named senior vice president and general manager of its Rentals.com division. “

On the Rental.com site, they make the following claim on their pricing page:

“More Renters: Over 3 million renters visit Rentals.com every month. Why not reach even more with the Network of Sites?”

I don’t have access to their log files, so of course I could be wrong here – but I think that claim is way over- inflated. First of all having all the CSI sites achieving that number each month would be amazing, let alone having just the Rentals.com site do that all by itself.

1. RentClicks.com 472,000
2. RentalHouses.com 410,000
3. HomeRentalAds.com 223,000
4. Rentals.com 217,000
5. RentList.net 37,000
6. RentList.com 30,000
7. Other misc sites such as Clevelandrents.com, Georgialandlord.com etc. 10,000

Total = 1,399,000. That is not even half of 3 million as advertised. The numbers above are coming from Compete.com and are for unique visitors. CSI might not be using unique numbers here – so they really might be right if they count every spider that hits their sites.

The reason I use Compete.com is because their numbers are always very close to the unique visitor count I receive personally in my log files for RentVine.com each month.

But when you use the word “renters” – to me that implies a unique visitor for the entire month.

Don’t get me wrong, having 1.4 Million unique visitors is just an amazing number for this niche industry we are in – but I would like to hear from someone at CSI that these numbers are in fact correct.

Again, I do not have access to their log files, so I could be wrong.

CSI will be using WebTrends for their family of sites. The press release is here.

I used WebTrends analytics many years ago and I was not impressed at all, in fact I hated it. However that was many years ago and I am sure they have made a ton of improvements since then.

For WebTrends to put out a press release like this I gotta think that CSI is paying a ton for this analytic package. More cost to pass on to the customer.

I am guessing Mike Child, chief technology officer for CSI is up to something with this change. Perhaps we might see some structural changes to the family of sites soon. Perhaps Mike is going to take all the sites and consolidate them on to one rack of  servers instead of them scattered around the east coast.

With all the changes that have been happening over at CSI (company that owns RentClicks, RentalHouses, HomeRentalAds and Rentals) I wonder who is in charge over there?

I have been in the middle of company transitions like this one when I was an acoustical consultant and I can tell you many of the employees don’t have a clue who is running the boat.

I have a few guesses who is in charge of all these rental sites; Steven Huey or perhaps it is Jamie Gallo. Steve Huey appears to have the most experience with mergers, but Jamie Gallo has been with the company since 1997 and has the most experience.

All I know with all the people leaving and people being hired, I wouldn’t want to be in the middle of what is going on over there. There must be a ton of people running power plays to grab more power while the opportunity is available.

Consumer Source Interactive purchased all these sites in the past year and now has declared Rentals.com their flagship product – my question is if you are CSI and have deep pockets would you try your luck on Radio and TV ads for the hot rental markets like Denver, Orlando and Phoenix?

I will guess that they will give it a try this summer – perhaps in the month of July when the rental market peaks for the year.

But before they do, I will guess they need to move the RentClicks back end over to Rentals.com so people coming to the Rentals.com site to post a rental ad don’t get confused by leaving the Rentals site for RentClicks.

I got a tip that if you look on Monster.com for “Rentals.com”, to see they have 6 positions open right now:

• Charlotte sales rep
• Dallas sales rep
• Seattle sales rep
• Orlando sales rep
• Las Vegas sales rep
• Minneapolis sales rep

I guess those are some hot rental markets right now.

I find that a little strange. I would have thought they would be letting some of their sales force go with the consolidation that has happened lately.