In This Issue:
Swap Talk
One Minute Survey
Meet a Member
Featured Listings
Special Notices
George's Spot
QUICK TIPS
CHECK YOUR EMAIL :
If you don't have a valid email address in your member profile, then you won't get full use of your membership! Check and double check your email address to make sure it is correct. Login to the HomeExchange.com site, go to your own listing and send yourself a test email to make sure everything is working. Also, you must check your SPAM and BULK email folders, especially those who use
EARTHLINK
HOTMAIL
YAHOO
Those three services are very tough on email, and many times a member will send you an email it will end up in your bulk email folder but you won't have any idea unless you check there regularly.
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MONEY ORDERS :
This not applies to our site, but any time you do person to person business on the internet. Say you are selling a car on the Internet and you get an email about sending you a money order for MORE than your asking price, and you can send the balance via your own check to their associate in Russia RED FLAG! Never accept MORE than what you are asking, and never send a check to anyone. If you are renting to someone, don't talk to anyone who asks about sending you MORE than the rental price, it is a scam! |
We NEVER sit still:
Do you know that we are at work almost 24 hours a day to keep HomeExchange.com at the head of the home exchange pack? We are constantly working on new features, enhancements and projects for the website to make sure that our members have the most exchange opportunities possible. We think we have the very best home exchange site available and we will keep working to make it even better. |
Featured Listings:
Andalucia - Marbella, Spain
sunshine coast, luxury holiday villa, gardens, terraces, fabulous sea and mountain views, secluded, private yet easy access nightlife
Oslo, Norway
Semi detached house in the outskirts of Oslo
Umbria - Castiglione
Del Lago, Italy
Restored 17th Century farmhouse with spectacular views of two lakes and the Umbrian and Tuscan countryside.
New York - Manhattan, New York USA
FUN, FUN, FUN--Spectacular harbor and downtown view, Time Square location, floor to ceiling windows, sun drenched apartment in a luxurious new building
PAST ISSUES
Newsletter #1 April 2006
Newsletter #2 May 2006
Newsletter #3 June 2006
Newsletter #4 July 2006
Upload Photos:
Members have told us that the first thing they look for in any listing is a photo. Did you know you can upload as many photos as you want to your Listing, and there is no extra charge whatsoever? Go to your member control panel and upload more photos today! |
Detailed Search :
Our new detailed search feature lets you search the HomeExchange.com site for any number of criteria. For example, you can search for a listing in Paris, that wants to go to New York and has a pool! |
Manners Matter:
Please remember that home exchangers are a very honest, courteous and generous bunch. When sending out emails to Members, make sure your listing meets their requirements. We don't like the shotgun approach to home exchange, and have limited the amount of emails Members can send per day. When you get an offer that doesn't work for you, a simple "no thank you" goes a long way. |
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Swap Talk From the President |
I usually like to take my space here to talk about the new things we have planned for the site and the benefits of home exchange, and a little later I will, when I tell you about my own home exchange coming up next week.
But right now I need to talk about something that is very important to all of us here at HomeExchange.com. As we strive to provide the best possible service, and the best possible experience for our Members, we still make every effort to protect your privacy and prevent you from being subjected to spam and any solicitations that are not valid home exchange offers. Your contact information is never posted on the site, our "blind" email system does not reveal your email address until and unless you respond to an inquiry, we have filters in place that help deflect obvious spam like those insidious Ni---ian (I can't even spell out the word of the country because doing so may trigger a filter), and have other measures in place that we hope keeps those intrusions to a minimum.
But the very nature of our site requires contact, and we can't prevent every unauthorized, unethical abuse of the system. We appreciate that most of you understand this, and your cooperation by letting us know when these abuses occur is very helpful as we work to safeguard the integrity of the system.
Recently a very few of you received a blatant offer to join another home exchange organization, Trade To Travel, under the guise that it was a home exchange inquiry. We uncovered the attempt almost immediately, and cancelled the access of the sender. For those of you who received the solicitation, we apologize, and for those of you who let us know that about it, we thank you.
We have a very specific and stringent Terms of Use Policy that must be agreed to each time an inquiry is sent. Our policy now is immediate and aggressive action against anyone who violates those Terms. We want you to know that we will be filing legal action for damages and penalties against the recent improper solicitation, and against any such violators in the future. Such action is costly to us, but we feel we must take a strong and visible action against anyone abusing our policies and bothering our Members. We consider other home exchange agencies "friendly competitors" as we all work to expand the market. But this type of conduct is unethical, illegal and a real inconvenience for our Members. We will continue to aggressively fight this behavior and urge you to avoid agencies that try to use our site to promote their own.
We are doing our best to prevent them, but please let us know if you get any improper solicitations by forwarding the emails directly to us. Do NOT respond to the inquiry.
We also learned that a spammer sent out a number of emails containing a virus that appeared to come from us.
It has the Subject WARNING MESSAGE: YOUR SERVICES NEAR TO BE CLOSED.
If this message got through your own spam filter, DO NOT OPEN THE ATTACHMENT.
Please note that we do not send any emails that contain an attachment, however we will send emails that contain links within the email. these are OK to open.
Now for the good news.
We are going on our own home exchange next week. One of my best friends' daughter is getting married in Grand Lake, CO. We really wanted to go, but the Lodge there was sold out and accommodations were difficult to come by. Now I have to back up a bit. We have a home by the beach in Southern California, and of course we get a lot of exchange offers. When we travel, if we are not doing a home exchange, we will almost always let a Member stay here for a number of reasons, company for our dog, we like to have the house occupied while we are gone, and even though we usually don't take advantage of it, there is always the possibility we can later return the favor as a non-simultaneous exchange.
A few years ago we were going away, and it just so happened that a Member sent us an inquiry that they needed a place to stay in Hermosa Beach for a wedding they were going to. So while we were gone, they stayed here, took care of our dog, and had a beach house for a base rather than a hotel. A good deal for all of us. You can probably guess the rest of the story. Their Listing is their second home, a fantastic little cabin in.... Grand Lake, CO! How about that? I emailed to ask if they remembered us (why of course they did) and if the cabin would be available for a few days around the wedding, which they could do, and we are all set.
They have been incredibly gracious, are bringing up an extra mountain bike and giving us lots of ideas about things to do in the area. My daughter is even going to be able to come in from San Francisco for the wedding and stay with us. Our exchange partners have another wedding to go to here in September so they will be staying here again. This is becoming like their second home. Yes, the system works.
I hope you are all having a great summer, and that a home exchange or two were part of your plans.
Hasta luego,
Ed Kushins
President
WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU
August Survey
CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE IN OUR NEW SURVEY
This months survey deals with expanding our search feature to include more information about the people who make up our member base. Do you want to be able to search for listings based on hobbies, activities, etc on the people behind the listings?
Results will be posted next month.
CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE IN OUR NEW SURVEY
Last Month's Survey
In July we asked you what new features you would like to see added to the site.
We want to thank the hundreds of you who sent in your comments and suggestions about what we can do to improve the site. We are continuing to get them in, and will be able to provide a summary, and what we hope to change as a result, in our next Newsletter.
If you missed our July survey asking you about what new features you want to see on our site and would still like to participate, click here SURVEY.
The Cabeca Family - Home ID #58701
Life had been excellent for us. I, a solo Gynecologist and Obstetrician with a successful woman's integrative health practice in a wonderful coastal southern Georgia community, and my husband, a successful builder with a subdivision under development. My step daughter Brittany came to live with us 2 years ago at age 15 years while I was pregnant with our third child. Our daughters Amanda and Amira are tremendous fun and energy, and always up to something. Garrett our son
was born September 8, 2004, and since the words rang out "it's a boy" our family was complete. Complete and joyous with constant excitement, adventure, and love.
Then tragedy struck our family March 12th, 2006, our 18 month old son Garrett died in a tragic accident. It is even too hard to write now and, no, you can't even imagine. It is a thousand times worse than anything you could possibly imagine.... We have been left to create another life for ourselves as a family, a family missing such a vital piece of itself - forever. We have thus begun on a healing journey. This is meant to be a time for us to focus on the love we have for each other and find ways to settle our souls and create a more significant togetherness.
We have begun to arrange our financial situation, pay off debts, sell the subdivision, have another doctor cover my practice, and begin on a year off around the world, beginning in October. I wish to take my family 'off the beaten path' and experience the world in the most natural sense, through its people and community. My mother always told me that our best education is through travel and meeting and living among the people from different places, and views, keeping an open mind and an open sense of adventure. I have had a taste of this in my life, and had traveled quite a bit, living with family in other countries.
We have already had two home exchanges and both have helped us in unexpected ways, and currently we have a family in our home exchanging non simultaneously from Aveyron, France, which we look forward to visiting this year. We first exchanged to Atlanta, I needed a specialized ear surgery and we put the kids in Circus day camp. We stayed at a home in Buckhead. It was our first experience in reciprocity with strangers, and our expectations were exceeded as we had family time together, away from home, not in a hotel, and felt kindness and love in their home.
We since have had a hospitality type exchange, and stayed with an amazing family in Colorado. They have a farm/estate with awesome sport horses and the cleanest stables I have ever seen. We would have been happy staying in the stables, and my girls certainly were hard to pull away from the horses. This family illustrated an excellent example of diligent, hard working and generous people. They are up at the crack of dawn to work with the horses and somehow, being with them in the arena, while the girls were having their horseback riding lessons, I just felt peace. The peace comes with sorrow and joy, and we are learning to handle these mixed up feelings together. But horseback riding in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, White water rafting down the Arkansas river, and hiking at 11,000 feet, provided us with a respectful awe, spirituality, and togetherness that encourages us on our Healing Journey. We have Home Exchange to thank for
these experiences and the wonderful people we have met along the way.
I hope that through Home Exchange we can really visit and feel all there is that the areas we go to have to offer. On our list of places we would like to see is the Australian coast and outback, old Europe, the rain forest, Portugal, Ireland, Thailand, Rio, and other places encouraging respect and awe of nature. Also there are the sacred places of the world like Stonehenge, Machu Picchu,Peru, the Tholos rotunda in Delphi, Bell Rock in Sedona, Arizona, Fatima, and Lourdes, Petra in Jordan, and Potala in Tibet. I've imagined learning meditation in an Eastern temple, going on an Elephant Safari, cycling along various countrysides, and am certainly open to suggestions. The kids want to learn to surf and snowboard, and continue their horseback riding. I will be taking Amanda & Amira out of school and home schooling as we go, furthering the challenge!
For us, now, I am seeking, and would like to hear from other home exchangers that might want to visit our wonderful south Georgia community and have suggestions on places we should exchange with and visit. If you're in love with your home and surroundings, most likely we will be too.
With kind regards and best wishes to you and your family, Anna
Home Exchange Blog
One of our very long time and very experienced Members has posted a home exchange blog at http://homeexchanger.blogspot.com/
It has lots of great tips and stories. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Julie@HomeExchange.com
Concierge
Tell a friend! Word of mouth is the one reason HomeExchange.com has so many exchange opportunities for our members. We are committed to giving you the best home exchange experiences possible, and we want to thank you for letting your friends know about us!
A reminder from last months newsletter:Please make sure that if you select the RV/MOTORHOME or the PRIVATE BOAT quick search designation for your listing, that you actually own a boat or an RV that you are making available as part of your exchange. We've noticed that some members who have marked their exchange listings with these designations do not offer a boar or RV in their actual listings.
The weather is great, the beaches are packed with people, and you are sitting there trying to edit your HomeExchange.com listing to create even more exchange opportunities for yourself.
In my lengthy history helping out HomeExchange members like yourself, I have come to understand what most people come to look for in a listing, and also certain tips and hints to get improve your listing's performance as a sales tool to help sell others that your property is the one they want to exchange with.
Here are my TOP TEN TIPS on putting together a great HomeExchange.com listing.
10. PROOFREAD YOUR LISTING
As they say, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. You can easily type up any part of your listing text into your word processor, give it a quick spell check and then cut and paste it back into your listing edit page for saving. Also, scan the listing yourself for errors that might not get picked up by a spellchecking program. Now you might think what is one wrong keystroke going to do to make a bad first impression? Well, if you have 1 cat but you accidentally hit that ONE key two times, suddenly you have 11 cats and not even the deranged lady across town with the 14 dogs would exchange with you.
9. ITS ALL IN THE DETAILS
Pretend that people reading your listing know nothing about you, your home or where you live, because more than likely they don't. Anything you add in there is going to help someone reading your listing to make a decision about emailing your or not, and all those extra details in your listing add up to a much more well rounded and informative listing. If I am thinking of going to your home, I want to hear all about you, your house, and especially your neighborhood. All too often people don't go into enough detail about the town they live in, which is ironic because the people you exchange with are going to be spending most of their time in your area, so let them know all about it! Spend 10 minutes a day adding detail to your listing and after a week you will have super listing, capable of bringing in more exchange requests!
8. LET THEM KNOW WHERE YOU WANT TO GO
Like many HomeExchange.com members, you might be open to going wherever an exciting opportunity awaits. But that doesn't mean you don't have a first, second, third or even a fourth and fifth choice. Entering cities, states or countries into your destination field will only HELP more members find your listing. Lots of people make use of the reverse search feature to see who wants to come visit them, and if you have nothing named in the destination part of your listing, people will have one less way to find your listing.
7. I WANT TO KNOW ABOUT YOU
Now I know this is called "Home Exchange" but you cannot forget that there are people on both sides of the trade who work out the actual details of the swap. If you totally ignore the People section of your listing, you are just making it that much harder for people to find and make a connection with your listing. I like to know about your hobbies, your job, what you do for fun. I find all that immensely interesting, and it helps me to locate listings that I feel a personal connection with. I love hockey, music, movie props and old TV shows, and if I find a listing where the members shares some of my interests, we already stepped past the stranger stage into becoming people who have something in common. Anything that breaks that invisible wall between members who don't know each other yet is a good thing.
6.TELL IT LIKE IT IS
If your home is not spotless, then I would suggest not using that term in your listing. Not everyone needs a model home to exchange with, but the point is that you need to remember to be as accurate as possible when you write up your listing. If you are really not "steps to the beach" but a couple blocks away, that can be a very important distinction to someone with limited mobility. Save the real estate speak for the realtors, we like it much better when you use words that accurately describe your listing.
5. BE FUN AND TALK IT UP
There is nothing worse to read than a listing full of one word descriptions written in a very short and abrupt style. We allow you to enter a long description of your listing because we have found this the very best way for people to get a feel for you and your property just from reading some text you wrote. Let your personality shine through: be funny if you are funny, talk about your job, your friends and anything else you think is important. If you want to tell a story, go for it! This is your chance to shine and let your personality come through. Get creative and be yourself. Our listings format allows for individual creativity to blossom while still maintaining a common structure to each listing so you know that every listing will have the same info in the same location.
4. CHECK YOUR EMAIL
You could have the greatest listing in the world but if no one can email you about it, then it won't do you any good! Make sure your email address within our system is up to date, login and check your account settings. You can also login to our website and then view your own listing and send yourself an email. What you want to do is to make sure that email is getting through your own SPAM filers and your own email protection. Often times what you use to keep out junk mail also restricts legitimate email, so be sure your email address is not only correct, but that the emails are getting through to you.
3. BE ACCURATE
If you don't have a recreational vehicle, don't check that tag for your listing. If you don't have access to hiking trails or a beach, make sure you don't select those items to describe your property. If you have children in your exchange party, don't allow smokers or have a cat, you need to let people know. Anything that you would find important when deciding which listings to write to are also important to people looking at your own listing. If you have lots of stairs, make mention of it. If you have extra wide hallways and a one story home, certain members will want to know, so please be sure to be 100% accurate when writing up your listing.
2. CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK YOUR LOCATION
Not everyone enters their correct city, state and country when they first fill out their listing. Make sure you check your listing edit page and ensure that the correct names are where they should be. Nothing will make it harder for someone to find your listing that if you accidentally chose FIJI instead of FINLAND as your country. Also, if you are from a country that we use the state/province designation, you want to make sure that information is accurate as well. Having bad info in these fields will make it very hard for someone to find your listing.
1. MORE PHOTOS IS BETTER!
Nothing will turn off a potential home exchanger more than looking at your listing and you don't have one photo available to view. Second worst is having some really out of focus or super tiny images you got off your cell phone camera. The one MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do to increase the chances of a successful home exchange is to upload as many photos into your listing as possible. And I want to see it all: you, your home, your city, your street, the local park, downtown, your car, you guys fishing or playing soccer: people are visual, they need to SEE what you have to offer. You can upload an unlimited amount of photos to your listing at no cost whatsoever. Just login, click on edit photos for your listing and upload as many as you have. Nothing says "come to my home" like a fantastic set of photos with nice titles and descriptions. Listings with photos get much more activity then those without. Don't delay, go login and upload some photos today!
- In Summary
Your listing is what everyone will see before they ever communicate with you. If you can sell your home and your area within your listing text and the photos you upload, then potential home exchangers will be much more likely to contact you and propose an exchange!
Enjoy the rest of August, get to the beach, hit the lake, get out and enjoy yourself!
-George
switch1@homeexchange.com
P.S. Thank you for all the birthday wishes. My family and friends and I all had a fantastic time on Catalina Island off of California. Anyone who wants to race Seadoos just let me know, I am addicted now!
We hope you have enjoyed reading this issue of "Switch". Please feel free to send your friends a copy.
Bon Voyage!
The Staff of HomeExchange.com
Ed, George, Judy, William and Julie
www.HomeExchange.com
800.877.8723 Toll Free
310.798.3864 International
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