I'm Terry Kearns. I do web sites for vacation rental properties and I help owners understand how use the website to market their properties. I believe one extra rental a year will pay for your site. Even if you aren't interested right now, I've documented my research and opinions about the web rental process. If you are at all interested, let's talk. If you already have a site, I hope you can find something here to make it better.
Process
It's a joint process. For every hour I work, you may need to work two hours. It's your knowledge of the property that will make your web site unique. And the more we communicate, the faster we'll get it done.
The ball park price for my labor is about $500 but that depends .... You'll bear three more costs: a domain name and a hosting service cost about $145 a year, and placing web advertisements. Your labor is very important. The information you provide will make your site unique.
Folks always have good questions. I've tried to list some of them here and give brief answers. As with much of life many answers are, "That depends on your situation."
Here are the details and my opinions: Search engines, advertising on the web, pictures, example sites, answers to customer questions and more. You can't find this anywhere else on the web.
The web is by nature very impersonal. My goal is to make your website as human as possible by helping your guests enjoy their vacation. But that's just the website. To please your customers you'll need to communicate personally.
I really enjoy building websites and particularly rental sites. My philosophy is that your site needs to be more than a real estate ad. It needs to provide obvious and genuine service for your customers. Your site must help your customers enjoy their vacation. That will set your site apart and your customers will remember you for it.