I'm tired of all of the Internet sites that charge a fee to advertise
my timeshare for sale or rent. I've read other questions here that
would indicate this is a wide spread issue. There has to be a better
way to get the word about about timeshare resales without having to
pay, especially since they all seem to do the same thing, take a fee
and go away.
Are there any sites out there that don't take an up-front fee to
advertise and don't charge an arm and a leg on commissions?

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Clarification of Question by answerbud411-ga on 05 Apr 2005 14:57 PDT

Clearly the folks posting their comments here are simply pumping their
sites. I have done a lot of research on this since posting the
question and those reading this should take this to heart. The no
up-front cost concept exists on several sites. Bidshares charges a fee
but only after a sale. Not a bad deal for $50.00. TimeshareGateway.com
doesn't charge a fee ($4.95) until an offer is presented, and caps the
total cost of an ad at $24.75 (less than half of Bidshares). If I
price my timeshare to rent or sell appropriately, I could sell or rent
it for an advertising fee as little as $4.95 (a 90% savings over
Bidshares). I guess I'll try both since TimeshareGateway.com doesn't
cost me anything, I might as well put my hat in the ring and see what
happens.

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Clarification of Question by answerbud411-ga on 05 Apr 2005 15:03 PDT

I might add (pardon the pun!) that I registered and had my ad online
in less than 5 minutes on TimeshareGateway.com and did not have to
present any payment information to do so. Great concept; much like the
sponsored ads all over the net these days, but there's no bidding,
just a realistic results based system.

You have stock "apartment days/weeks" which have a shelf life - once
the due dates are past, there's nothing to sell.  So, you have to find
yourself in a place where people go to buy your commodity.  There are
countless numbers of sites attracting holiday-makers by creating a
portfolio of properties in your area or of the type which you are
offering.  They have expenses too - they don't get to the top of the
search engines without spending time or money.  So, it's a trade-off -
being in a site that is well marketed and which attracts people with
money, or doing all your own marketing.  (There is still a good
argument for advertising offline.)

People do advertise timeshares on eBay - that's another place where
there are people with purchasing power :)

The other option is to learn all the best search engine tips yourself
and improve your web site's results in the search engines.  That will
take a few months to bear fruit.

I hope that helps.

You can rent your timeshare with no upfront cost and no commisson -
place a free timeshare for rent ad at the following website address:
<a href="http://www.alltimeshare.com/rentinv.html">Free Timeshare
Rental Classified Ads</a>

You can rent your timeshare with no upfront cost and no commisson -
place a free timeshare for rent ad at the following website address:
www.alltimeshare.com/rentinv.html

sablehost-ga. Your site looks like another roose! No information about
your pricing. Just another form to fill out so you can horang the user
with calls and pressure them to sign up. From the looks of it, even
though your site operates in stealth mode with regard to pricing,
there is a fee for your services, up-front, which is what I oppose. I
found a site today on MSN that looks like what I'm looking for. Why
not look at this site and tell me what you think?
www.timesharegateway.com. Their model looks more like the kind of
thing I'm looking for.
Thanks all the same for your feedback. By the way. I think if you try
to input html code in your replies as a way of building a link to your
site, it will be deleted by the board monitor. Cheeky!

sablehost.ga:

I never even look at the timeshare classifieds, nor do I call the
advertisers. They are totally free. We have no upfront fees whatsoever
of any kind and never have. Regarding the the html I was trying to
make it easy for you to get to the site because some people don't know
how to copy and paste. Gheesh!

sablehost.ga:

I just looked at timeshare gateway site. I see that they charge
whereas www.alltimeshare.com/rentinv.html is free.

I also see that timeshare gateway has a google page rank of 1 out of
possible 10, whereas www.alltimeshare.com/rentinv.html has a google
page rank of 3 out of a possible ten.

But since it takes a lot of exposure to successfully rent, you may
want to place rental ads as many places a possible.

I would check http://www.postaclassified.com, you can place free ads there.

i had a similar problem with my site 
<a href="http://www.algarverentalapartments.com">Algarve rental
apartments</a> my way around it was to get my site "optimised" so i
did quite well for niche phrases. Otherwise its a really tricky one
and the best advice is just to get some key advertisers going, monitor
them very very carefully using your stats and go with a select few.
hope it helps
Neil

Everyone wants to get Google to "link" to their site, go figure! Not
much help for me. Ok, so if I can't beat them, join them.
I settled on two websites that do what I wanted.
http://www.timesharegateway.com
<a href="http://www.timesharegateway.com">Timeshare For Rent and Sale</a>
and 
http://www.timeshareparadise.com
The postaclassifieds website didn't work for a broad enough reach,
although it is a good idea. Can't say I'm impressed with any website
that doesn't post their pricing, OR simply try to collect information
from a user so they can call them later and pressure them into
something they don't want nor wanted when they placed their ad.
Thanks though!

My wife and I own two timeshare weeks and we have bought and sold a
few others over the years.  We have also rented a couple of our weeks
out as well as having rented other peoples weeks.  EBAY works but the
fees are huge.  Bidshares is a great concept but we never really got
all that many people that looked at our auctions there.  The timeshare
dealers of the world are likewise out to make a living off you!

In that context, I recommend that you look at TUG2.COM which
translates to the timeshare users group.  Now, I am also trying to set
up my own timeshare website that I would love to have you visit as
well...  http://www.timeshare-holidays.com

My website will be for resort reviews as well as forums for people to
buy, sell, and trade units or just a week.  I just got the website
this weekend so there understand that there isn't a whole lot of posts
yet!

Good luck with your venture. TUG charges a membership AND a fee for
advertising. I don't see how they're any better than others taking
fees for this service. I'm quite happy spreading my ad all over the
Internet, so long as the cost model is acceptable. So far
timeshareparadise.com, timesharegateway.com, and hotdeeds.com are the
only ones that show up on my radar. The others are either trying to
extract contact information that they can use to extract a fee later,
or some other form of soliciation of fee based program.

I see today that TimeshareGateway.com has introduced a free timeshare
user group forum as well.