In a recent conversation with an owner phoning to renew his subscription last week, he described My Favourite Holiday Cottages as ‘The site for savvy owners’.

Naturally, we invited him to explain his reasoning. His position is that we’re one of the few sites in town placing more importance on click-throughs or referrals to his website than enquiries, saving him time and money. His view is that the more people that visit his site, the more genuine/high-quality enquiries he is likely to get (far more than coming from an advert).

Then (he said), enquiries from his site convert to bookings more often than those from an advert. Aside from the fact that a website offers a more trustworthy source with more information, he feels it is also because enquiries from an advert are from people sending out the same message to lots of properties at the same time. He’s fed up with spending hours replying to

We noticed a healthy increase in the percentage of online bookings coming through from owners’ websites. That’s good news for those MFHC subscribers with an online booking option, as our aim is to drive potential bookers to your website and encourage them to book from there. As one of our subscribers told us, “I’m away in January, so I cannot answer the phone to enquirers, but with my online booking facility and plenty of visitors to my site, I’m not losing any bookings.” If you haven’t got an online booking function on your website, you may wish to consider it. If you’d like further information on this subject, we’d be happy to offer some advice. Ask here about online booking facilities.

This month, we've been taking a look into the world of Instagram. If you haven't already heard of it, Instagram is a popular photo-sharing app that you can use if you have a

Our major success over the past year has been to reach page 1 on Google for 2 major keywords, 'holiday cottages uk' and 'UK holiday cottages'. This has seen our traffic skyrocket - On our busiest day so far, we received 815 visits to the site (on the 30th of September), - a target which we intend to smash in 2013. If site traffic continues to increase as it has been, we aim to continue careful growth and welcome more members to the My Favourites family of subscribers.

As a present to you, we thought it would be useful to provide a single email with links to all of our previous marketing articles. Many of you won’t have seen articles that were written earlier in the year, having joined us after they were published. All articles are designed to help you get better value for money from your holiday property. Take a good look at them over Christmas as you plan your marketing for 2013 or for guidance in

First of all we would like to make everyone aware that over the next couple of weeks, we will be starting to transfer My Favourite Holiday Cottages to a new server. Don’t worry. You won’t need to do anything or, hopefully, even notice anything. Over the last few months, the number of visitors to the site has enjoyed a significant increase, so much so that we are approaching the capacity of our existing server, resulting in some people experiencing slower download speeds and odd little glitches – all symptoms of a situation about which “something must be done” before it puts our hard fought for search engine rankings at risk.

So, we are moving the site to a bigger, faster model. The move will fix the glitches and give us oodles of capacity so that the site will run better and faster. We are testing the transfer system with a couple of smaller property sites to check everything works before transferring My Favourite Holiday Cottages. We

Our popular winter photo competition is making its return for 2012, and this year your photo could feature as the cover image for our Christmas Card. We're on the hunt for the perfect winter image, something distinctive that says, “I want to be there this winter”, so send your images in!

The winner will receive 3 months of Featured Favourites or 6 months of County Featured Favourites listings as a prize, which will greatly increase the amount of traffic that gets sent to your website. Alongside this, your property will gain some extra publicity from being featured on our blog, plus your details and weblink will be printed on the back of each card.

More details about the competition can be seen on our blog here, and all entries need to have been emailed to us by 5pm on Friday 9th November.

As we're now entering a quieter part of the year for bookings, now's a good time to take

Although there’s still time, the ‘Indian Summer’ doesn’t appear to have made an appearance (in North Devon, at least!), so we’re throwing ourselves into Autumn and looking ahead to gain those end-of-year bookings whilst planning for 2013...

We’re still inundated with enquiries from bookers looking for short breaks during September, October and November, so keeping your listing seasonal can always gain a few extra click-throughs from your ‘My Favourites’ listing to your site. If you have any Autumnal photos of your property, you can add them at any time. Indoor images of hot buttered crumpets on a plate in front of a roaring fire look good, as well as trees in full autumnal plumage. Alternatively, if you have any particularly stunning shots, email them to info@mfhc.co.uk, and we’ll feature them on our Facebook page with a link back to your listing.

As a consequence of

Planning a large gathering of the clan? Suppose you’re looking for group accommodation to celebrate an anniversary, hold a reunion or share with other families. In that case, a large holiday cottage can be the perfect way for groups of friends and extended families to find a venue that can accommodate everyone in style. 

Instead of the traditional hotel option, large holiday cottages with many bedrooms and a choice of living rooms allow guests the freedom to let their hair down and relax without disturbing other guests.

We’ve picked out five large self-catering properties in a rural location from across the UK that can fit everyone in for a group get-together or family gathering, so have a look through, and if one of the properties really catches your eye, then click through to see more details about it.

One day, this could be all yours (for the weekend). Tempest and Triumph in the

If you have any late availability listings on the site which have since been filled, please remember to log in and delete them (if they haven’t already expired). We’ve been experiencing an incredible rush in last-minute summer holiday enquiries, but occasionally find that available properties have since been booked. Update your Late Availability Listings, or if you have any vacancies for September, feel free to log in to add them.

As social media continues to grow in all forms of marketing, we’ve put together a few articles on improving your online visibility via social media channels. Improved visibility means more visitors to your website, which ultimately translates to more guests.

Our first article is all about optimising your Facebook Page. By this, we mean increasing the number of visits to your page and the resulting increase in the number of visitors clicking through to your website.

Rick recently posted an article on the excellent Lay My Hat Forum about what would make the perfect rainy-day pack of activities. As well as being an excellent forum for holiday property owner information, why not read Rick’s post and add your suggestions? Here’s the link: https://www.laymyhat.com/. The aim is to collect and share as many ideas as possible. If it’s going to rain, you’re much better off in a holiday property than a hotel as you can do far more indoors (and make more noise). We’re going way beyond board games and jigsaws here; until you’ve tried these games, for example, you’ll have no idea how much Paper Dart Olympics or Balloon Baseball can contribute to a fun-filled family holiday until you’ve tried them. We’d love it if you could contribute your ideas, and we will summarise the best suggestions in a new blog post.

Continuing the above theme, most of you will have learned that including a