Alfred & Emily Glossbrenner's
Vacation Rental Secrets & Sources
Quick Overview

Let’s talk “secrets.” People keep secrets for all kinds of reasons, but ultimately, every secret consists of knowledge that someone has and doesn’t want to share. Your “signature” recipes are an excellent example.

If you’ve researched, tested, and perfected a recipe for an incredible cocktail dip, why should you blithely hand it over to every guest who asks for it, knowing full well that they are certain to use it at their own parties? (We actually know one confrontation-averse hostess who will happily hand over her recipes—except that she always manages to leave out one or two key ingredients. Seems like a character straight out of Lake Wobegon on Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion radio program.)

Similarly, there are authentic “secrets” concerning how to make the most money from your vacation-rental property—with the least amount of aggravation and effort. And these are precisely the kinds of things that real-estate agents, property managers, advertising sites, and those with competing properties can’t—or won’t—tell you about successful “by owner” vacation rentals.

Why?

Ignorance and laziness are certainly major reasons. You can’t reveal what you don’t know. And you’re not likely to be motivated to dig into the subject if—like many rental agencies and property management companies—you’ve been coasting for as long as you can remember.

There is also the matter of income protection. It could be the owner down the street or down the hall—the one with the identical house and pool or hot tub—who has figured out how to remain fully booked in a highly competitive market. Or it could be an exceptionally smart and energetic property management company. Or it could be somebody else. The fact is, no one else has any interest in sharing what they know to help you stay fully booked. They want those bookings for themselves!

The VR “Advanced Course”

As more and more people discover how to put their second homes to work by offering them as vacation rentals, the competition for bookings is only going to grow. That’s why we created our Vacation Rental Secrets & Sources CD series.

The first volume is ready now. Others are in the pipeline at various stages of development. If our book/CD “seminar-in-a-box” (How to Make Your Vacation Property Work for You!) is the foundation, the Vacation Rental Secrets & Sources (VRS&S) series is the “advanced course.”

When you’re just starting out, you shouldn’t be spending your time and energy creating a Web site for your property, investigating the latest in keyless locks, or putting together an online photo album. You should be focused on preparing a crackerjack listing for the leading online VR advertising sites. And you should concentrate on building a network of local cleaning and service people you can contact from afar when you need them. 

It’s a question of priorities: Establish a solid foundation, and then build on it. Don’t do it the other way around.

However, when you’re ready to build, the VRS&S series can be an excellent guide. Here you will find in-depth, freestanding articles on a wide variety of advanced topics. Each one of them is packed with secrets, sources, and seasoned advice that is simply not available anywhere else.

And, as completely independent vacation-rental experts, our interest—our only interest—is giving our readers the best information and guidance possible. So you can bet we name names and make specific recommendations without fear or favor—just as we have done for more than 30 years in over 60 books on many varied subjects.

“Here’s What You Get”

FullyBookedRentals has gone electronic! Just as it makes perfect sense to offer our 300-page “seminar-in-a-box” as printed pages in a three-ring binder with a CD in the front pocket, it makes perfect sense to offer our VRS&S articles on CD (and as downloadable PDFs). With an average length of about six pages, articles are “bite-size.” So you can read them on your computer screen, or print them out for later viewing.

Perhaps most important of all, there is the advantage of being able to offer each article in full color—without the cost of printing in color. But, as noted, it is easy to print an article in color or black and white if you choose.

We also love the fact that electronic articles can be searched. The CD contains both PC and Mac versions of Adobe Reader, the program—with a built-in search function—that you’ll use to read and print the articles. And, of course, all the links to products and services we talk about and recommend are clickable, so you can read the articles on your computer screen and go directly to the Web sites for more details.

When you put the VRS&S CD into your drive, it will automatically call your Internet browser and run a file that will present the disk’s menu.

Here are the articles you’ll find on the menu for Volume 1:

The cost is $49.95 for the CD, $5.95 for individual downloadable articles.