Name of your website?Sol Maya Vacation Rentals
Your name?
Andrew Leigh
Your Location (city, etc)
Puerto Aventuras
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Provides listings of condos and villas for rent in Puerto Aventuras, Playa del Carmen and Akumal, Mexico. Area information including dining, recreation, historical spots and helpful links are being added as well.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
My wife and I had been in the restaurant business for over 25 years. We were approached by a developer/friend about doing on site property management for a condominium complex under construction in Mexico. We always loved Mexico and have traveled extensively within the country. We also got married in Cabo san Lucas (with sixty friends and no one brought their kids!)and had always fantasized about living here. When the question was put to us we were a bit shocked at the reality of the idea, but took the proposal under consideration. In the meantime, it only made sense to launch a website that dealt with property management and property rentals. This would help to inspire us as well as give us the "head start" time we needed to build and promote a web based business.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Our first website was launched in 2003. It was for our first business outside the restaurant industry. We started a a home based business with low overhead (very important), called Paw Power. It was a pet care/housesitting operation that involved us and our employees taking care of peoples pets and homes in their absence. In two years time we retained over 120 clients (people) and even more of their pets. Selling it was extremely hard as we would miss the animals and sunny Colorado more than the owners!, but it enabled us to move to Mexico and buy a house with a small view of the ocean. The website is still up www.fourleggedlove.com. Our motto was "EAT WELL, PLAY BALL, TAKE NAPS"
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We wanted something that had a sound of the area that we were to live in and the choices were limited as there are a lot of rental companies who have snatched up every name under the sun. I feel we got lucky with our choice as "Sol" is "Sun" in Spanish and Maya is the name of the indigenous Indians that dwelled in this area. It is a nice fit for our style, try to keep everyone happy and enjoy doing it
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
I am not sure what make the site different as there many quality sites that do what we do and have been doing it longer. I would have to say that when you get past the site and actually deal with us on a personal/business level upon an inquiry, it is our level of personal service and attention to detail that really comes into play. We try to match clients with what THEY want out of a vacation rental and not what might generate the most income for us. There are many options in the area from sleep on the beach all day, to family quality time to rock in the clubs till dawn. Sometimes clients don't realize the area they are wanting to rent in is not really what they want. It is important to us that they have a great time and come back again. Client retention is important.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
We have not really set along term goal yet as we can see the income potential as being quite good, but have yet to have the traffic needed to realize how good. I suppose keep it for income would have to be my answer at this point as I am not sure what sort of selling formula would be applied to the business. Besides that, we just moved here to Mexico to begin the next chapter of our lives!
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Right now, we have much more time and money invested than our ROI is yielding. That is how it goes with new startups. We use our time as wisely as possible and limit our expenditures to the highest priority. We put as much of post tax profit back into the business as we possibly can and hope for the best.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We would still try to grow organically and a pace that is manageable. However, we would search very, very carefully for a great SEO person, we would utilize print advertising, sponsorship of specific events( ones that benefited the environment or humanitarian issues), and clearly devote some good time to volunteer work as we would be doing less development!( is Ed McMahon going to show up at our door soon?:)
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
That is tough one. Our business is about customer service, booking available inventory, and having quality service on the receiving end. We certainly have the experience with all that after being high end restaurant owners, in that business you have to be ready or you are not in business anymore. We have our team in place, which by the way, is not an easy task in Mexico. We do not have to deal with any production or shipping problems and do not sell a tangible item that, if inferior, would need to be returned for refund. So i would say yes we are ready and would do whatever it takes to keep up with demand. We have always worked hard and I am one of those guys who can't sit still.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
In a nutshell, the headache would be the ever changing dynamic of the web. When we started this site/biz, all the information told us to have good keywords, good keyword phrases, good content, a easy to navigate, quality site and promote in a "white hat' manner. For the past two years we have done that and yet our traffic is minimal. We hired a small SEO oufit in CA. to help and they helped us tweek our site. We have proceeded in what we thought was the right direction for the past two years waiting for business to slowly gain traction. Only recently did I find out about page rank, links,absolute links, relative links, inbound links, reciprocal links, indexing, algorithms, robot txt., site map, xml site map..... see where I am going? I am a people person and the guy who gets "things" done. This is like learning Latin to me, takes an enormous amount of time and I am not sure if I am even doing it right.
The cost would be the one we could not afford, in hiring a SEO person who could do this for us. Even then, I am told, traffic is not guaranteed.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Definitely moving here to Mexico and getting the business up and going physically. We sold most of our household goods, seventeen years worth, and brought what we could and wanted to keep here to Mexico via a truck and trailer. Cleaning out a house to rent and packing a life up to drive 4000 miles into a forgien country with a forgien language and a bureaucratic system that makes a tortoise look fast is no easy task. But settling in we are excited to be here, the weather, food, sun, ocean and people are great!
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
That is hard to tell. I give business cards out to all I see and know and have done the standard web stuff. If i ask people how they found our site, they usually can't remember, so i have stopped asking. Besides that, they are looking and thinking about beautiful Mexico and not how they found us. The reason I submitted my site is to hopefully have another type of successful method.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Not really, the only thing is we are not data driven so when we want to make changes or new content, I need to send it to my web developer/partner (this is a side gig, pro-bono for him) and wait for him to post it. I wish we had started with data driven in the beginning so we could make changes/additions in our spare time. There are times of the day/night when inspiration comes and writing is easy, like now. Being able to add photos and scan items and all that would be great for me to do. If I had know about data driven in the beginning.......to change it now is a cost we can't afford, but will eventually!!
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
A little over two years. We intend to keep it going for the foreseeable future. We moved form the states to try and find a more laid back lifestyle and we have found it here.Everything in the US is get it done yesterday. People here have large emphasis on family, friends and leisure time, sometimes a bit too much. There are more holidays in this country than you could imagine! We do however love it here and intend to kick some butt in business. There is a lot of low hanging fruit on the property management end as absentee owners are frustrated with management that has the "manana" attitude. We like nothing more than having a "to do" list and crossing things off.
Is it time for you to go back to work now or would you consider this work?
Yes and Yes!
What is your website address?
Sol Maya Vacation Rentals
