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Dear HomeExchange.com Newsletter Subscriber
Welcome to the resurrected and revamped ExchangeHomes bi-monthly newsletter. Unfortunately, our previous newsletter came to a halt a few years ago because of family commitments, but I'm happy to report that things are back on track again now.
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ExchangeHomes Website
A Complete Re-Write
Our Programmers have just begun work on a total re-write of the web site. Their estimate for completion date is around the last week of October. Hundreds of changes and upgrades will be included, but the major differences will be:
- Two levels of Membership will be introduced -
- Full Member - Exactly the same as at present
- Associate Member - Which will allow visitors to register and make contact with Full Members. Associate Members will be required to upgrade to a Full Membership in order to list and display a home for exchange themselves.
Until now, we've resisted making this change, but research and listening to feedback from both members and visitors has indicated this is what you want and expect.
When you sign up with a Home Exchange Company, your primary concern involves the number of inquiries you receive, and limiting your range to fellow members only, is not in your best interest.
As a company we want, and need, satisfied members and in this case, majority opinion has ruled!
- Members will be able to leave feed-back on their exchange partners for fellow members to read. Again, this feature has been requested for some time.
- Members (Full and Associate) will be able to store a list of their "Favorite Listings" in their Members' Area.
- The area for Members composing contact emails will be greatly enhanced by a number of new features.
- There will be no limit on the number of photographs members can add to their listings, plus they will display in a much larger format.
- As well as displaying a Member's current Join/Renewal date and expiration date, a listing will also display when they first joined.
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Photographs In Your Listing
 It's noticeable - and I've had it pointed out to me by visitors to the web site - that a percentage of members is always reluctant to enhance their listing by adding photographs.
At the risk of sounding very cliched, I will say again what I must have already said a thousand times - a picture speaks a thousand words! It's absolutely true, our site logs don't lie. Week after week, month after month, year after year, our reports confirm that listings displaying photographs get clicked on five, six, even ten times more that those that don't.
This statistic becomes even more obvious in areas most highly represented by listings. Why bother with a listing whose owner hasn't bothered to illustrate it when there are dozens more where they have?
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Home Exchange On Rainy Days
First Published in the ExchangeHomesBlog 07 July 2007
 Where I live we've been hit very hard over the past couple of months with extremely heavy rain. When I looked out of the windows this morning to see yet more of it falling, it brought to mind one of the major benefits of home exchanging.
When you plan vacations and trips you cannot predict that far ahead exactly what weather you are likely to encounter. For the past two years my area has endured a severe drought, but this year has already seen more rainfall than is normally recorded in a full twelve months.
Image the predicament of a family with young children stranded in a hotel room while the rain poured day in, day out. How on earth do they entertain them?
On the other hand, if they are home swapping with a family that also has young children, their situation immediately becomes entirely different.
The children will have toys and games to play with, books to read, plenty of space to move around in, probably a TV in a separate room to watch or play games or videos on. Mom will have the kitchen where she can prepare snacks and drinks. If they go out and get wet or muddy, clothes can be popped straight into the washer and dryer and won't be left hanging around as they would in a hotel room.Having to endure awful weather while on vacation is bad enough, but having to put up with in while cooped up in a hotel room makes it even worse. In an exchange home a family can at least spread out into more than one room.
It's also very likely that there are neighbors with young children. The exchange family will have probably informed them of your visit to their home and quite possibly all the children can play and entertain themselves together.
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Home Exchange Academy
A brand new e-book devoted to home exchanging has just been brought to my attention - Home Exchange Academy.
The author - Athena Rickby - has indicated that her intended audience is both the novice home exchanger, still deciding which club to join, and those of you (and there are many), who have already joined, but are probably making very limited use of your listing.
Athena is undoubtedly drawing upon genuine experience to write her e-book. She and her family are veterans of 40+ exchanges over the past twenty five years.
To quote her:
"My family and I began home exchanging back in 1982. We had two young children and very limited funds for family vacations, so when I read about home exchange in a magazine, the opportunities for travel that it presented seemed almost too good to be true....."
As I've only just heard about the book, I've only had the opportunity to read it once, but I'm certainly impressed. Athena does a thorough job of walking her readers through every possible aspect of setting up and utilizing their home exchange listing to maximum effect.
Home Exchange Academy contains excellent samples of the agreement forms you are likely to use in a home exchange, as well as an extremely detailed sample Home Exchange Book which you would put together and leave as reference for your home exchange partners. Purchasers of the book can download working copies of these samples from the HomeExchangeAcademy.com website.
From my first impressions, I would recommend this e-book to newbies, and also to any home exchangers who have already set up a listing but feel disappointed with the results you've so far achieved.
For more information, click on the book logo at the top of this article, or go to:HomeExchangeAcademy.com
My Rating: 10 |
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ExchangeHomes.com is a home exchange company that's been continually in business since 1986. This newsletter is published bi-monthly. Links to update you email address, unsubscribe and forward this issue to a friend can be found below.
Sincerely,
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Anne Pottinger
Editor
ExchangeHomes.com
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