Calendar of  holiday weeks to 2008                Notes on Prices and Pricing             Website performance and promotion

Origins of site

I set up the site autumn 2004 to provide a vehicle to advertise my own weeks, when I did not want to use them, it made sense to open it up to other people otherwise the general costs would have been uneconomical  (  The "pay-by click" advertising costs for July 2005 for instance exceeded £100 ).

The site runs independently from Shakespeare Classic Line ltd, though with their approval help and cooperation for which I am grateful and without which I would not have been able to get the project off the ground. More recently they have also contributed £500 towards costs of expanding the site to cover Houseboats as well - their new enterprise. So while  I do not work for them directly,  I do have an interest to declare.

Financially I will be very happy if the site breaks even, over the first year, though I regard this as an unlikely prospect as set up-costs and the costs of learning have been quite high. For the future while I have no objection to making a profit the site is more likely to be run for it's utility value and as a hobby.

                                        Performance and sales   (also see link at top of page )

At the end of 2005 14 narrowboat weeks had been sold and 14 remained unsold having passed their start date.

Most of the unsold weeks were off season

Houseboats (a new venture) have yet to show a sale.

From current performance demand has been  high for the summer holiday weeks (-  Late July to Early September ) and I would expect most, if not all of these to sell.

May to July weeks  also generated a fair number of enquiries.

Some weeks prior to this also sold.

The worst period being October to January

While not claiming that all these sales were  made exclusively through the site, I would expect the site to have contributed something to all of them in terms of information, advice or support with maybe 75% being sold via a contact generated by this website.

I would not want anyone to consider this site as a sole and certain means of achieving a sale, however I think it is probably more cost effective to pay £30 for a year's advertising on this site than to spend the same amount on say newspaper ads - my last enquiry to a Sunday paper put a single insertion of a 4 line advertisement  at £80! Local newspapers or specialist  magazines are considerably cheaper, but do not have the same circulation.

Use the site as part of a promotion package for your week, which includes all the available free adverting you can access (work notice boards, free ads, society newssheets,  whatever..) speak positively about your holidays on the boat to your friends, neighbours and acquaintances and do consider using Ebay if all else fails.

Ebay works for some, but need a collection of interested competing parties to get the price up. A good advert, the right timing and the correct pricing in terms of "Reserve", "Starting price" and "Buy it now" etc all help.

If you are going to use Ebay get in touch first, I may be able to give some advice and I may be able to help prevent  similar weeks being auctioned at the same time.

If your ads do generate more enquiries than you need do please pass them on to other people and don't feel embarrassed about trying to negotiate a small commission for yourself as a contribution towards your advertising costs - you have earned that!

Consistent sales are made by the people who make the effort to research the market and  present  their item well, at the right time and in the right place. This does not happen accidentally very often.

Do consider the benefits of sharing and pooling your efforts. Getting together with someone else to share the costs of a newspaper/magazine advertising campaign can be very effective and this site can help give you the contacts to do that. You may be in direct competition, but the demand seems to be high enough to cope with that and the problem is less of whether there are people out there who would like to hire the boats,  than reaching them through effective advertising.

Good ads generally bring in more than one response, poor ads none.

Finally do try and vet your customers, to some extent, they are your "guests" and in extreme circumstances, in theory at least, you could be held responsible for their shortcomings.

Site popularity

The number of "Unique" visitors to the site has increased month on month from about 800 in January 2005 to  over 2500 for July going up to just under 3000 for January 2006, about 40% through "Pay by click " ads and the rest mainly through search engines and links from other sites.

Search engine status has improved quite dramatically since January 2005 as the result of ongoing site "Optimisation" and an increased number of inbound links.

Links from any sites you have access to are most welcome and I will happily reciprocate if they are vaguely related to this website's context.

Dogs

Shakespeare Classic have had to review their approach to dogs because of a lot of complaints from allergy sufferers and associated problems. Generally assume they are no longer catered for, in exceptional  such as a guide dog or perhaps a "hearing dog" for a deaf person I  think it is possible an exception might be made, but make no promises before discussing the matter with Gemma at Shakespeare Classic Line ltd.

Min Ages of crew

Do be careful that you emphasise the need for a minimum crew of 2 Adults over 24yrs and one over  16yrs - I lost a sale by not doing this in August.

A boat went down in a lock last year, the suspicion is that if it had complied with this requirement the problem would not have occurred.

Sensibly, going through a lock you need one adult at the tiller, at least one on the quay and a third  generally on standby and supervising the rest of the crew who by implication are under 16yrs.

Frustrating though this must be for some more experienced crews there is some sense in it.

Queries again to Gemma Harris at Shakespeare Classic

Best of luck

Ron