Drowning in a Sea of Ads

How does a tenant find a place in the big wide sea that is now the Edmonton rental market.

10 years ago, we only had the Edmonton Journal, the Edmonton Sun, and the Home Renters Guide. No internet.
4 years ago, Rent Edmonton and Rentfaster were available, and were very good at attracting the tenant moving to town.
This spring, I cannot find the new out of province tenants.  Now there more than  25 public rental websites available for an owner like myself. I decided to test 9 sites this month.
The problem is which sites work and shows results. Here’s a bunch of them and how many rental ads they have.
Kijiji.ca: 7454
RentEdmonton.com: 628
Rentfaster .ca: 690
Gottarent.com: 107
Viewit.ca: 141
Rentboard.ca: 444
Hometrader.ca: 710
Criagslis Edmontont: 1210
Edmontonsun.ca: 53
The Edmonton Journal Classified section was over 2 pages just 3 years ago. Today it is less than half a page. What a shift. Seems everyone has gone from the Journal to Kijiji.
With 7400 ads, how do you stand out? The top of page 2 is only 2 hours old and a 24 hours old ad is on page 12.
Landlords must be busy rewriting their Kijiji ads every 2 hours to keep them fresh. Do Tenants look that far back in their search?
My internet guru says that if you are on page 2, your are dead. So Kijiji may be a bust for me, but time will tell. What is the current attraction? The cost if free, but if you posting every day, is it really free? What is your time worth?
Many sites allow the tenant to locate a place geographically, and price and size, but not Kijiji or Craigslist.
And I have not yet mentioned  the topic   ” quality of tenant”.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Advertising Rentals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Drowning in a Sea of Ads”

  1. Speaking of Edmonton’s Black Triangle…. | Chris Davies Says:
    April 12th, 2009 at 7:57 pm

    [...] the first week of the rental advertising test he’s run, as well as some thoughts on the huge number of options you have. Did you know on Kijiji that after 24 hours your rental ad might be on page 12? [...]

  2. Edmonton’s Black Triangle Presentation | Chris Davies Says:
    April 15th, 2009 at 7:49 am

    [...] The advertising tests that Brent is running can be found here: Testing Edmonton Rental Websites and Drowning in a Sea of Ads.  [...]

  3. no no hair Says:
    August 31st, 2011 at 1:04 pm

    You make some good points. I guess it depends on your standpoint. – Tradition is the illusion of permanance. – Born 1935

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