Where Do I Get My Bookings From?

I was asked last week where do I get my cottage bookings from. Well over the last 3 years I have learnt some hard lessons about where to and where not to spend my money on advertising.

For Windyhill cottage 100% of the bookings have come through either my site or through a directory, I have certainly not paid any commission to an agent for the bookings. I think I've saved around £6000 this year in commissions. With this in mind I have invested around £1200 in advertising and marketing which still means I'm about £5000 better off. Hillview Cottage I still rely on some agency bookings but for 2007 I would say 70% of the bookings have come through my site. Actually because of the contract I have with English Country Cottages it costs me every time I make a booking because I have used my quota up. For 2008 I have changed agency to Wilderness Cottages who do not limit how many weeks I can sell myself.

So apart from the agency bookings the rest of the bookings come from either enquiries on my site or from directories. I would say the split this year has been 80% emails from my site and 20% from directories. However I have seen good amount of traffic come from some directory sites. Looking at my site stats about 50% of the traffic comes from directories I advertise on and the other 45% from natural searches in Google, MSN, Yahoo and 5% from Google Adwords.

I have listed the top performing directory sites that my self catering website receives traffic from.

• www.scotland.org.uk/cottages/ I find that there map seems to work very well
• http://holiday-cottages.scotland.org.uk/ I also get a lot of good traffic from this site.
• www.scotland-inverness.co.uk this site does very well in Google
• www.cottageguide.co.ukThis site is OK but because they add a frame when people click to see your website it takes a way any link value. So only worth it if you get enquiries

There are more directories but these are the main ones, I will list shortly other directories that may not send you traffic but do help, by increasing good links into your site and can start to push your site up search engines results.