Wow! The following (from an apparent insider) showed up on a comment to a recent post.
Everyone,
As you know, effective April 3rd our Standard and Featured ads will increase in price. In addition, we will no longer offer Money Back Guarantees or Free Yard Signs. The yard signs will now sell for $19.95 each.
We want our customers to know that change is good and that we’re constantly working to offer them newer and better features and tools, but change is not always easy so we’ll be offering special pricing for the month of April only. The regularly priced $69 Featured ads will be available at the discount price of just $59.
Since these changes come right after Jamie Cylmer’s entrance I am guessing he is the one writing this memo.
That makes me laugh, “We want our customers to know that change is good“. I am not sure I would want to sell that idea to my customers that a price hike is good. I wonder it Robert Metz knows what Jamie Cylmer is doing.
I want to know what the “better features and tools” are – does that include translating the listing to Spanish? That is the only new feature I have noticed in a long time. Are the reps informing the property managers of the higher prices and then softening the blow by telling them that their listing can be translated for an extra fee?
Again, I can’t confirm this post. But, if true, this is huge. Why is it huge? Because in the Internet world, just like the computer industry prices go down not up – it is almost a death sentence to raise prices.
I can tell you as a rental listing site owner, the pricing has little to do with the companies expenses. The price is determined by what the market can bare.
I have very little expenses so it would be very difficult for me to go out of business. I would guess the majority of Rentals.com expenses are in salaries and rent. In my company there is just one employee (me) and I work out of my house. Just think if I were the #1 ranked site in the US, I could actually lower prices and kill off CSI.
I am watching the Rentals.com site today to see what happens.
I wonder what David Borden would think of what is happening to his old company? David Borden is the one that set the pricing for the whole industry when he started RentClicks.com. The $39 price was determined from one lost day of rent on an average-priced rental.
By the way, you can list with RentVine for the low low price of $38 a listing!! And that is for 40 days not 30.
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Looks like their sister site “RentalHouses.com” is raising their rates too…
http://rentnice.com/blog/2008/04/02/rentalhousescom-increases-ad-prices/
RentalHouses.com increases ad prices
Well I knew it was about to happen, but wasn’t sure just when. Now, RentalHouses.com raised their ad fees an additional $10.
It is now $49.oo for 30 days, $79.00 for 60 days and $109 for 90 days.
See our home rental ad rates and you’ll wonder how long they can do this to customer, especially in this economy.
I suspect Rentals.com to be next — they are the umbrella company that includes RentalHouses.
Lester,
Thanks for stopping by and also thanks for mentioning my site on your blog.
Yes, you are right I do beat up on Rentals.com a lot don’t I?
I think your estimate is a bit high of 60%-70%.
With a name like RentNice.com I guess you can’t beat up on your competitors on your blog.
My readers like that I give them a hard time. Just look at this poll I did awhile back. I like to give my readers what they like. In fact I have had many Rentals.com employees tell me they love this blog.
Hi Doug,
Just wanted to clarify somethin for ya…RentNice.com is not my blog, sorry! The info popped up in my daily e-mail alerts so I just wanted to pass it along since I read your blog from time to time. (If you click on the link you can see the article that RentNice.com posted…their hard work and research, not mine.)
I don’t have a blog, just a member in the apartment rental industry.
Are “rentnice” and “rentalads” owned by the same person?
Rentnice mentions Rentalads on there home page. but then Whois for rentnice only advertises “web hosting” and “buying domains”, Kinda confusing for a customer doing research on a website they may possibly poet there rental property on
I did the same search too. To me you lose a lot of trust on a site if you can’t find the person running it.
Sorry Lester about the confusion. Which site do you work for?
Hi Doug,
Sorry I don’t even have a website.
I work for an apartment community in Nebraska. And, as you can imagine, there ain’t much happenin here!
Take care,
Lester
Looks like apartments.com now feeds to rentalads?
http://www.rentalads.com/rental-properties/Florida/Jacksonville/
I understand you make money form the clicks on the site. But I think this takes so much away from a nice website like rentalads.com
your thoughts Dave?
“Because in the Internet world, just like the computer industry prices go down not up – it is almost a death sentence to raise prices.”
Interesting quote you had in your post. I’m just wondering where prices are going down with regards to online advertising? In fact, if you look across the major verticals of the newspapers the amount of money being placed online is growing 20% year over year with no slow down. As the amount of money drifts away from the papers / magazines advertisers will spend the money if there is value in the product. If property managers believe $49 is valuable to them renting there owners houses they will pay for it. This is just my 2 cents and would be interested to see what you think?
“Josh”,
My wife read my post and also brought up the same point as you did. You are not alone.
Here is what I am thinking; once you start out with a price that has been fixed for years and then goes way up (in percentage) those people using the service will question why the increase.
If you are an airline and have fuel costs increases that is understandable, but if you are an internet company, let’s say Comcast and you raise your broadband price people are going to wonder why?
Computers, servers are all dropping in cost. So that leaves salaries. Salaries for a sales force.
“Josh” – you and I have debated the sales forces issue before and you know where I stand.
Rentals.com finally took some of their banner ads off their home page so it could load faster. I guess they are listening to me.
check out the rentnice.com site. It’s actually not a bad service. We inquired with them to list our apartment complex, so we’ll see how it goes..
Who ever said the service was bad?
Dave and I just question the “whois” information provided for the domain registration of the website.
I stumbled across yoru site while looking for a place to rent and got caught up in your blog. I got a great laugh about it.
Here you are the one horse shop taking on the “big guys” and not understanding what they are doing. Perhaps that is why your business hasn’t grown past the one horse shop. You only have yourself for ideas.
While I too wonder why a price increase would every be good.
If you lower your prices, could you put CSI out of business? Gee. try it and see what happens. It’s only your income that you’d be risking. But then again, Craigslist is free… and you and CSI are as well as a bunch of others.
I originally came here to find a place. What does it for me? How many relevant listings in my area.
I am glad you got a good laugh out of it.
Pardon the misspellings in my posting. It’s my typing…
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