With the economy the way it is, having a successful vacation rental season may make or break some people that own second homes, so follow along and learn how to market your vacation rental property like a pro.
I wrote an article several years ago on advertising vacation rentals and figured it was time to update it. But instead of rewriting that one, I figured I’d write a new, more meaty one here. Plus, like having more than one vacation rental listing, having two articles on vacation rental advertising is better than just having one.
Why should you listen to my advice?
I have offered a free vacation rental advertising service in my local market that makes hundreds of second homeowners tens of thousands of dollars in income every year for the last 10 years. Literally millions of dollars in the last decade have been made by second home owners from this free local service.
I have promoted all of the big “paid” vacation rental listing sites as an affiliate for years on several of my other websites, where I get paid for each vacationer inquiry. From my affiliations with these vacation rental listing websites, I know what vacation rental websites work for property owners and which websites don’t produce bookings.
I get paid real money from paying clients to give them the same kind of advice that I am going to give away for free in this article. So if you want to learn how to market your vacation rental property online, read on.
The Basics
Much of this is internet marketing 101, but since most vacation property owners are not internet marketing pros, we’ll cover some basic principals here to give you a good overview of how to go about marketing your vacation rental listings the right way.
Be aggressive
Seek out all the places where you can advertise your vacation property. There are numerous websites, both free and paid, where you can advertise your vacation property, gain some bookings and make some money. The most important thing about your listings (both paid and free) is that they show up in Google and other search engines.
Pro tips for advertising your vacation property
When you add your property to different websites, or make your own vacation rental website, don’t be lazy. Vary the text and descriptions you use to describe your property from site to site and listing to listing. Make them all unique.
Do not use the exact same title and descriptions on each site.
If the site gives you multiple fields to fill out, take advantage of it. The more information you provide the better off you’ll be.
The more descriptive text you use, and the more unique that text is across your various listings and websites, the more weeks you will book. This is the single most important thing you can do and is really a very simple way of increasing your online exposure.
When adding pictures, use images that portray a nice, clean, welcoming property. Also, take your pictures in nice weather. There’s nothing worse than a picture of a rental property under a gloomy, grey sky. Remember, the people you are trying to get to rent your property will be hoping for nice weather on their vacation. Make your property look bright and sunny, both inside and outside.
Creating the content for your listings
Take some time to gather your ideas for these unique property descriptions before jumping in to add your property. Use a text editor like notepad or Word and write different titles and descriptions to use on all the different sites. Also write some good keyword rich paragraphs that mention amenities and nearby attractions to use in your property descriptions.
Mentioning nearby attractions will include these keywords in your text which is great for obtaining visitors from internet search engines via keywords such as “vacation rental near nearby attraction“. Use location specific keywords in your property descriptions.
Detailing your property’s amenities is also a source of great keywords for your property descriptions. Keywords like bbq grill, hot tub, swimming pool, internet access, wifi, deck, walk to beach, outside shower, private yard, quiet neighborhood, close to golf course, swimming pool, kid friendly, pet friendly, etc… Many vacationers will include these keywords when searching for their ideal rental property.
How to properly manage your vacation property listings
While adding your property to each site, make a note of the sites URL (link) and any login information you will need to edit your listings later on. It may also be handy to jot down the length of time the ad or listing will run for each website, so you can stay on top of your renewals. You can easily set up a simple spreadsheet to keep track of this information.
Notice how the editing functions work as you enter your information and create your listings. Make a few notes for each site. This will come in handy later on when you need to edit your property information or update your availability calendar on the various rental listing sites.
Where to list your vacation rental property
Build your own vacation rental websites
You should also set up several personal websites for your vacation rental. You could go ahead and buy a domain name and get a real website for your property, but if you aren’t into that, you can get a free webpage or a blog at Blogger or WordPress to host your personal vacation rental site.
Free blogs are great to use as a personal vacation rental website because they are simple to manage. You can upload your property descriptions, pictures, visitor testimonials, etc… very easily to a free blog site. This will allow you to show as much information and as as many pictures as you want to, since some of the paid listing services limit the amount of pictures you can use.
Other places where you can setup free personal vacation rental webpages include Google Sites, Weebly.com, Yola.com, Wix.com, Tumblr.com, etc… Your internet access provider may also offer a free personal site with your monthly subscription as well.
If possible, link some of your listings together. The more links you can get to your listings the better your online exposure will be. Many of the paid services will allow you to link to a personal website from your paid vacation rental listing. On your personal website, you can link to all of your paid listings, where potential renters can see all your listings and guest reviews, etc… Indicating that your property is listed on several different websites will give your vacation property instant credibility.
Think of it this way, every webpage you set up about your property is another doorway for potential vacationers to enter. Not that you need to have hundreds of websites for your rental property, but there are literally thousands of places you could set up free websites for a vacation rental property.
Paid Vacation Rental Listing Services
You’ll need to first establish your advertising budget and select paid services which have a good reputation for “return on advertising investment”. One important thing to remember is, the longer you keep your paid listings running the more visitors you will get from Google and other search engines. Your vacation rental page on these websites will age and with age comes authority and more visits.
The paid services below all have a strong search engine presence and a large visitor base, which is very important for getting your vacation property seen by vacationers on the internet. I have been an affiliate of these services for years, and can recommend all of them as places that you should definitely list your vacation property. A few of them offer free trials so you can test them out first and see how it goes.
Homeaway
Perhaps the most widely known and trafficked vacation rental website, HomeAway has delivered millions of inquiries to owners, and receives over 85 million traveler visits each year. Homeaway also offers a risk-free “No Booking, No Fee Guarantee”. “Your subscription is completely risk-free on HomeAway.com. We are so confident that you’ll receive bookings from our site, we guarantee your success. When you list your property for one year, we guarantee that you will receive at least one booking, or you will be eligible for a full refund.”
Vacationhomerentals.com boasts that they get the most visitors per listing in the industry. Vacation Home Rentals listings include unlimited photos, availability calendar, hit counter, currency converter and optional link to personal site. Vacation Home Rentals also offers a free 30 day trial, so you can try it out for 30 days with no risk of obligation.
VRBO is one of the original online vacation rental listing websites. More than 95 million travelers visit VRBO each year and members receive an average of 90 inquiries per listing per year. “VRBO.com guarantees that during the first year of your first VRBO one-year membership, you will receive paid rental bookings from your Vacation Rentals by Owner listing equal to at least 10 times the cost of membership. If you do not receive bookings equal to 10 times your membership fee from your first one year of membership, notify VRBO.com, and your membership will be EXTENDED six months FOR FREE.”
FlipKey is the exclusive provider of vacation rentals on TripAdvisor, which receives over 25 million visitors each month. Showcase your property with unlimited photos, link to your website, complete property description, guest reviews, and much more. The average homeowner property listing on Flipkey is currently receiving more than 75 inquiries annually. With access to Tripadvisor’s member base, Flipkey boasts the most genuine vacation rental reviews through their guest review platform. Try it free for 60 days.
There are numerous other local and regional vacation rental listing services and websites that may be worth getting listed on as well, but that’s well beyond the scope of this article. You may be able to ask your neighbors who they list with locally and whether they have had success with local listing services. Local real estate and rental agencies can also be a good source of vacation rental bookings, but be prepared to pay commissions of 10%, 15% or more to get your property booked through them.
Free classifieds
There are many places to advertise your vacation rental for free. Websites like CraigsList, OLX and Kijiji can be very effective and if you are aggressive and crafty enough with your listings they can often outperform paid services.
Some free listings may only run for a short period of time and may require re-listing often, or periodic editing to keep your ad up on the site. All of these sites will show up for Google searches, but the majority of free listings will expire quickly without letting you reuse the same URL (web address). If you have specific openings, specify those in your classified ads.
Dealing with last minute cancellations
The best time to take advantage of free classifieds sites is when you get stuck with last minute cancellations. The listing churn on most free classifieds sites is high, meaning that your listing will get buried after a day or two, so it is best to list timely offers.
Sites like Craigslist have been good venues for those last minute bookings, like when you have somebody cancel a couple weeks out. Keep this in mind in case you get stuck with some last minute weeks due to cancellations.
If you are trying to book a cancelled week or a last minute opening, make sure you create your ad using the specific time slot in the title of the ad, this will grab the attention of people that are looking for that particular vacation week in the sea of other vacation rental classified listings.
Other vacation property advertising sources
Pay Per Click advertising
You can also drive potential vacationers to your online listings by purchasing Pay-Per-Click advertising from Google Adwords or other similar services. If you are going to use PPC ads, send the visitors to your personal website and not a paid listing. You don’t want to pay for clicks and then send the visitor to a site with numerous listings similar to yours.
The thing to remember here is to refine the keywords that you target. Don’t just bid on “city vacation rental”. That search is much too broad, it will cost you alot of money and you will not get the right targeted visitors.
You are better off choosing keywords like “town/village name rental”, “nearby attraction rentals”, “rental close to nearby beach”, etc… Also target the specific weeks that you have available with keywords. Something like “city rental week July 4th”, “city rental second week of August” is much more targeted to a visitor’s specific criteria.
You may not get as many clicks and visits as “city vacation rentals” but the visitors will be much more likely to rent because they will be much more targeted to your property and the weeks or time slots you have available.
There are two things to remember here: It will cost much less to use highly targeted long tail keywords and phrases rather than simple broad range keywords and the competition will be less for keywords that specify certain weeks or time slots.
Offline advertising
As far as advertising your property in guidebooks, newspapers, etc… Don’t waste your money. This has been a loser for many folks I have talked with. Usually the person picking up a guidebook is “already there” and likely has a place to stay already. They might look for a restaurant, or maybe a hotel room, but not a weekly vacation rental. There is the chance that the guidebook may be brought back home and referenced at a later time, but don’t count on it.
Good luck with your vacation rental season. May all your weeks be booked up solid.
If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.
To answer the rising popularity and the growing need for a local Cape Cod group deals or social coupon site like Groupon and Living Social, the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce launched a group coupon site with Try It Local Cape Cod. Are local group deals a good idea and will it pan out for local Cape Cod businesses? Read on to find out.
With the growing popularity of social coupons or group deal sites like Groupon and Living Social, the Cape Cod chamber is hoping to get on the group coupon train with their Try It Local Cape Cod offering. The chamber chose TryItLocal for their local deals program. Try It Local is a company based out of Louisville, KY that runs group coupon websites for local and regional chambers of commerce.
Try It Local Cape Cod
Below are a few notable comments and some details from the Cape Cod chamber on the announcement:
As group coupon websites like Living Social and Groupon have soared in popularity over the past year, Kristen Mitchell noticed a worrying trend.
“It always bothered me personally to see people going off-Cape to redeem the vouchers,” said Mitchell, the vice president of tourism marketing for the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. — Cape Cod Times
I have to agree with the strategy here. While you can get group coupon deals for big brand stuff like Red Box movie rentals or national chain restaurants around here, most of the local deals offered by the large group deal sites like Groupon and Living Social are only redeemable up around the Boston area. So there is a void on the hyperlocal, Cape Cod, MA area level.
“Try It Local is an innovative way to explore new businesses and experiences on Cape Cod, while at the same time supporting the local economy and Cape Cod companies,” said Wendy Northcross, Chief Executive Officer of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. “The Try It Local program not only supports local retailers themselves, but the work of the chamber as well.”
The first deal will arrive on Wednesday, March 23, and a new deal will be released every Wednesday thereafter, featuring businesses like 586 Bistro & Bar, emBargo Restaurant and Alberto’s Ristorante, all located in Hyannis; The Riverway Lobster House in South Yarmouth; and Wimpy’s Seafood Café in Osterville. There is no cost to businesses to participate as a featured deal. The company keeps 70 percent of the day’s total sales and is responsible only for determining the deal and meeting the increased demand for its product or service. — Cape & Plymouth Business
The timing of the Try It Local Cape Cod offering by the Cape Cod chamber is spot on since as I noted above there is a group coupon void to fill in our local area.
The key here is going to be marketing. Right now as I search for “Try It Local Cape Cod” I don’t see the tryitlocal.com/CapeCod/ website or the chamber website anywhere, not even in a paid advertisement. Somebody needs to up their seo and online marketing game if this is going to work.
Try it Local
I spent some time clicking around on the tryitlocal.com website and I’m a bit disappointed. Once you get off the tryitlocal.com/CapeCod page it it loses the local chamber branding. The tryitlocal.com website should probably be set up on subdomains like capecod.tryitlocal.com so the local branding could be consistent throughout each local “site”.
The website’s search engine optimization is lacking to say the least, so it’s really going to be up to the chamber to get traffic to the tryitlocal.com/CapeCod site and make sure it gets found in the search engines. I would encourage them to click here for help.
Local Group Coupon and Social Deals Competition
It would be very easy for Groupon or Living Social to ramp up they’re hyperlocal deals game. With the Groupon IPO estimated at over $25 billion, which is more than Google’s IPO, going hyperlocal is very likely to happen for Groupon, and soon.
Facebook just made a move into the group coupon, or in this case the social deals space with Facebook Deals which just launched recently. With over 1.7 million people (age of 30+) in the Cape Cod and Southeastern MA area, Facebook has a big advantage on the hyperlocal social coupon game out of the gate. Facebook also has a huge small business base already, with most local businesses already using Facebook pages to market their offerings on Facebook pages.
Are Group Coupon Deals Good For Local Businesses?
Of course the group coupon sites themselves are full of local business success stories, but are sites like Groupon good for local small businesses? There are mixed signals and not all are good. There are stories of small local businesses getting hammered and studies of local business that used group coupon sites show less than stellar results. In a hyperlocal market such as Cape Cod, group buying deals may work better for local businesses because of the smaller scale. Some of the small business Groupon horror stories I have seen resulted from the small business being overrun with the volume of group coupon customers.
What Kind of Customers Do Group Coupon Deals Bring In?
Another thing for local businesses to be aware of is what kind of customers will you get from social deals? While you might get some new loyal customers out of the deal, the following passage is a sentiment that I have seen in a few different places.
The truth is that people who use Groupon-type deals are the last kind of customer your business wants. They are coupon chasers, running around their respective cities with no loyalties and no long-term business value. They rarely return to YOUR business. They just go after the next best deal. And why shouldn’t they? Groupon offers them a staggering discount on almost anything. — source
Conclusion
With all the different players vying for position and the jury still out on whether group coupons will be good for local small businesses on Cape Cod, it will be interesting to see how the hyperlocal group buying and social couponing space unfolds here locally.
I think the Cape Cod chamber is making a bold move here with Try It Local Cape Cod and by executing the right marketing plan it should work for them and for the local businesses that get on board with local group buying coupon deals.
Local lead generation is a local affiliate marketing service that supplies new customer leads to business clients. Using online and offline sources, the local lead generation company will acquire leads targeted to the client’s business niche and sell them to the business client.
Most often these are flat fee per lead agreements (like you will find with CPL lead affiliate programs), but there are other models as well. The other one that I use is the commission based model (where you get paid a percentage of the profit on a closed lead like CPS affiliate programs). There is also a hybrid model (the client pays for the ad spend and the leads) and the setup and maintenance model (get paid to set up and maintain lead gen campaigns only).
Leads are delivered to the client via email and/or phone via local or toll free tracking numbers.
Your local lead generation education starts here
Here are all the local lead generation resources that I have bookmarked over the last few years, more or less in the order that I found them. The links below cover the entire local lead generation business model, both the good and the bad.
Below are the slides from Ad Hustler and Amanda Orson’s presentation Local Lead Generation – Heaven & Hell at Affiliate Summit West 2011. I didn’t go to ASW11, so I’ll have to wait until it comes out on VHS to hear what was said. Eric Nagel posted a recap of the session at ASW11 Session Recap: Local Lead Generation.
Local Lead Plan
I was waiting to see who was going to be the first to release an info product on local lead generation. So, when Chad from CDF Networks released his “Local Lead Plan” ebook last year, I got it right away.
I highly recommend this product for anyone that is serious about starting a local lead generation business outside of my area. I am also sure that all of the people that wrote the posts linked to above would tell you the same thing.
18 chapters, 115 pages, 23,000 words long. It’s a complete local lead gen education.
Extremely low one time price.
Covers everything from top niches, landing pages, traffic sources, pay per call, tracking, billing, scaling etc…
Below are some tips that I have learned and applied from the links above and a few things that I discovered through my own trial and error.
I have been doing local lead generation in one form or another since 2000. After being a Servicemagic affiliate for a few years and driving national leads to them for like $5 each, I built my own local lead gen system in 2005. The only problem with that was, during that time, where I live, everyone was so busy in the trades that nobody was interested in more leads or phone calls. Subsequently the local lead gen system got shelved and just sat idle. I have built alot of web projects on “spec” over the years and like irons in the fire, some get hot some do not.
Fast forward to the economic problems that started a few years ago. All of the sudden the people that I had talked with years earlier were coming out of the woodwork contacting me saying: “Hey Darren, We’re kinda slow, you still getting those leads you were talking about a while back?”. Around this time local lead generation or local affiliate marketing also started to become a “next big thing” buzzword with affiliate marketers. So I revisited my lead gen system and because of the renewed interest from the locals, I have been building it out quite a bit.
Since the economic fail, quality trade leads are worth good money locally. Having known many of the clients I deal with personally for years, I often negotiate commission based deals for exclusive leads on major stuff like home remodels, additions, garages, etc… Working on commission requires a high level of trust. Keep that in mind when setting up commission based deals and try to plug any holes in the commission chain beforehand.
Since I live in kind of a unique area, the trades people around here are used to paying commission based referral fees to each other and have been doing so for years. I get into how the trades and services work around here in some comments I made on Amanda Orson’s blog where I over-commented a bit…
Someone called me last week and said some carpenter on Craigslist was advertising that he would pay 10% on any jobs he was referred, so there are definitely people out there looking for work. Be advised, Craigslist is not the best place to look for clients however.
Getting clients
The hardest thing I have found with local lead generation is finding local business clients that “get it”. They know they need to be online and they might have a website, but do they really “get it”? Old school businesses that stand by the yellow pages and newspaper ads might be a tough sell at first, but this can be overcome, sometimes. Teaching them about their advertising ROI and customer acquisition cost can be a good ice breaker.
Do a some research on the client’s business niche before you go meet with them to negotiate a local lead deal.
Try to figure out who their ideal customer is. There are a few online tools that may give you a hint at the business’ demographic, but if you don’t know for sure, you can find out from the business owner later on. They will know best.
Research competing businesses, see where they are advertising and see what else they are doing to generate leads.
If you are planning on using paid advertising sources, figure out what your cost per click and ad spend is going to be for the demographic and keywords you will need to target.
Try to find out what the national lead generation services are charging for similar leads.
Locate all the possible channels available to you for generating leads (Adwords, Facebook, SEO, local listings, classifieds, newsletter and website sponsorships, radio, bulletin board tear-offs, church fliers, bandit signs, other offline sources, etc…)
If you are planning on getting into a niche you are unfamiliar with, but you think has potential, run a few hyperlocal targeted test ads on Adwords with a quick landing page and see if you can get a few email and phone leads before you try to get a client for that niche. Even if you have to blow off the test leads, at least you know you can get them. (Sorry, I think you have the wrong number…) Landing a local lead generation client is no good unless you can generate leads, so test first.
Once you have done your homework, you’ll have an idea of what kind of money you will need to get for the leads to make it profitable.
When you meet with the client to negotiate a deal, ask them a few questions first. Ask them what a new customer is worth to their business. Ask them what they think their customer acquisition cost is through their other forms of advertising. The answers to these questions will give you a good idea of how in touch the client is with their business and whether they will be a good client for you money wise.
Then, instead of telling the client what you need to get for the leads ask them what they would be willing to pay for the leads first. They might offer more than the figure you have in your head. If not you can always negotiate up to a profit margin you are comfortable with.
If they are a tough sell, but they “get it” and you think they will turn into a good client, you can offer them a few leads up front to see how it goes.
Phone leads are generally worth more because the close rate is (and should be) higher. Sometimes this depends on the niche, but more often it depends on the person that answers the phone at the business (can they close). Pay-per-call or flat fee phone calls are usually qualified as a lead by call duration. In other words, only calls lasting over a certain time period, 30 seconds, a minute, etc… are billable as qualified leads.
If your lead quality is high and the clients are “closers”, they will stay with you for fear of losing your source of leads to the competition. This is one thing that is good about a quality local lead generation service. If that client doesn’t work out for whatever reason, you can just move on to their competition. This can also give you some future renegotiating leverage if need be.
Where to host the landing pages or lead gen websites
This really depends on your resources. As has been said elsewhere, using the client’s website to host landing pages can have its advantages with Adwords quality score, domain age for seo, it can be quicker, lower costs, etc… But in my opinion, to build a sustainable long term lead gen business, you should be building out your own network of lead generating landing pages and websites.
When you are in charge of your own network, you can split test and switch what client you send leads to with a few mouse clicks and a few lines of code. This is a major advantage over using the clients website. Plus, the horrifying thought of having to do everything through their “web guy” if they wont give you access to the server is a major red flag for me. So host your own stuff.
Keeping track of leads
Email leads are easy to keep track of. My setup has a database that stores all the email form leads and also bcc’s me with any email leads that come through the system. Then I just label them in my email with the client’s name. A bit of redundancy never hurts.
Tracking phone calls will require a third party application. At the very least you could use Google Voice as Chad lays out here and in Local Lead Plan. There are many other phone tracking services as well. Most of these services can supply either local or toll free 800 numbers for phone tracking use. Some of these services can be quite expensive and I was fortunate enough to get on board early with a particular phone tracking service and can get basic tracking numbers and reporting for around $6 a month each (along with a pennies per minute usage fee).
Phone tracking for local lead generation is essential with the growth of mobile. One of the niches that I chase leads in has an extremely high amount of mobile users that drive a huge percentage of the phone leads to the client’s business. In that niche, phone leads outdo email leads by about ten times every month.
Scrubbing leads for quality
With commission based lead generation deals this is not an issue, but with flat fee per lead arrangements you’ll need to scrub irrelevant leads to keep your lead quality up. With some of the niches I deal with, I get jobseekers filling out the lead forms looking for work. You will also get spammers that will fill out the forms offering website ranking services and other crap. Bogus leads and employment inquiries are simply not counted at billing time.
Scrubbing phone leads in pay-per-call lead deals is done by call duration as mentioned above. Any calls over x amount of time are billed as leads. Based on the client’s business the call duration required to qualify leads will vary. This is something you will have to work out with the business owner.
The bottom line is, if you can acquire good quality leads, they are worth money.
CapeLinks owns hundreds of domain names and operates several different websites, so my contact information is all over the internet. Every day I receive hundreds of spam and scam emails for all sorts of offers.
Many times these scams target me through the websites and domain names that I own. They get my contact info from the domain name WHOIS database or fill out the contact forms on one of my websites. My email spam filter is pretty good, so many of these get thrown in the spam folder and I never see them, but a few get through to my inbox.
Here’s one “domain registration expiration” scam that I came across recently:
This email came in from the email name “Registration Expiration” so I was curious to see what this was about.
Attn Lastname, Firstname
This letter is to inform you that it’s time to send in your search engine registration for DOMAIN.COM.
Failure to complete your search engine registration by Jan 8, 2011 may result in the cancellation of this offer (making it difficult for your customers to locate you using search engines on the web).
Your registration includes search engine submission for DOMAIN.COM for 1 year. You are under no obligation to pay the amount stated above unless you accept this offer by Jan 8, 2011. This notice is not an invoice. It is a courtesy reminder to register DOMAIN.COM for search engine listing so that your customers can locate you on the web.
Order Now! Secure Online Payment
Notice the language. Basically they were looking to get $75 out of me for a one year search engine submission, but trying to trick me into thinking it was for a domain registration that is expiring. I have received letters in the postal mail that read similar to this email as well. Total garbage.
One thing of importance to note is that:
I did not click on any of the links in the email and I do not click on links in any of the other sketchy emails that I get.
I did mouseover the links to see the link URL which looked similar to this:
The string of random numbers and letters at the end of the URL is a tracking code that identifies your email address as an active target (or sucker). If you click on the links in any of these emails you will get hit harder with scam offers and other junk.
Don’t click on the links in any emails that you are unsure of.
With my experience I knew it was some sort of scam before I even opened and read the email, but if you are a business owner or hobby webmaster that only owns a domain or two, you might get sucked in to an offer like this “search engine registration” not knowing that it is a scam. Even worse you could get duped into a phishing scam where crooks are trying to steal your personal or financial information.
Every now and then I get an email or a call from a client or friend asking me about similar emails for many different scams relating to a domain name or website that they own. Many of these emails are “we can get your website higher up in the search engines” types of offers/scams.
Anyone that is soliciting you blindly through email offering these sorts of marketing services is probably trying to scam you or get you to buy something you don’t need.
The sad thing is, so many people have been burned by unscrupulous outfits offering marketing scams like this one, that they are gun shy. This makes it much harder for legitimate internet marketing companies that can actually help your business and not just rip you off.
With emails like this, the safest thing to do is to hit Delete.
If you are unsure whether an email similar to this one is a scam, or whether it is something you need to be concerned with, forward the email to your “web guy” or contact an experienced webmaster who can help you out.
On December 18, 2010, I heard a report that a boat encountered a very large great white shark (reportedly 20+ ft. long) that was entangled in fishing gear a few miles off the Chatham, Massachusetts coast.
Great White Shark off Chatham, MA December 18, 2010. The shark looks to me like it may have been dead for some time before it was hauled up.
I am a commercial fisherman myself and I know all the local fisherman. So, after some digging around, I was sent three cell phone pictures of the monster great white shark from an anonymous source. The pics were taken while the crew freed the dead shark from the gear.
Why all the secrecy?
Well, great white sharks are a prohibited species and have been for years, which means that they are illegal to land (bring in to shore). Which I would think, has limited modern study of the species. Since no one is landing any Great White sharks (even ones that are caught incidentally), researchers are probably not examining many Great White sharks, even though there is little doubt that Great White shark numbers are on the rise locally.
Management: In the Atlantic, white sharks are a prohibited species and if a white shark is caught, it must released with a minimum of injury and without taking the animal out of the water. — NMFS Fact Sheet (typo and all)
Cold Water Great White Shark. Lobsters love dead sharks.
Now with the shark pictured here, it was already dead and had been for some time. The crew was not fishing for sharks; they were hauling groundfish gillnets, which is a fixed gear bottom fishery, meaning that the nets are anchored to the sea bottom and stand up about four feet off the bottom. They are marked on each end with buoys at the surface. Once in a great while, a non-target species, such as a shark, will get tangled in fixed fishing gear. This is known as an incidental catch.
Monster Great White Shark off Chatham 12/18/2010
After the incident a few years ago where a live humpback whale was released unharmed from fishing gear off Chatham, the captain was charged with a crime for releasing the unharmed whale from his gear. That captain faced a $100,000 fine and jail time for releasing the whale. While he didn’t get fined or go to jail, he did end up with a substantial legal bill from the incident.
So, you can see why the the boat involved in the December 2010 monster shark incident wishes to remain anonymous.
While entanglements and incidental catches like this are rare off Cape Cod, great white shark entanglements are even more rare, especially in late December. It is snowing here right now as I write this and Great White sharks are usually a Summer/Fall visitor to Cape Cod, so this will likely qualify as a super rare event.
Last Summer, Great White Sharks were seen in Pleasant Bay
It has been widely reported that great whites have been off Chatham for several years now, drawn to the area by the ever expanding seal population. In the Fall of 2009, five great whites were tagged with satellite tracking beacons, one of which ended up in Florida last January. There were reports that last Summer, great white sharks were seen inside Chatham Harbor and all the way up into Pleasant Bay.
Why did a great white shark get tangled up in the fishing gear?
We will never know the exact reason the great white shark was entangled in the nets. Only a necropsy could yield the answer to that question. While I am not a marine biologist, I have been a commercial fisherman since 1986. So, here are the two most likely scenarios:
It is widely known that seals dive to the bottom and feed on the fish that are caught in fishing nets… and Great White sharks feed on seals. So, it is possible that the shark was feeding on seals that were feeding on the fish in the nets, leading it to get wrapped up while in pursuit of the seals, where it subsequently met its demise.
The other possibility is that the shark died from other causes, sank to the bottom and got tangled in the nets as it rolled along the bottom with the tide. I did not get any details beyond the pictures, but the shark to me, looks like it may have been dead for some time.
Why this whole incident was an epic waste
It’s a shame that this monster shark, which was already dead when the fishermen encountered it, could not have been landed without a legal hassle and/or a hefty fine for the crew. Instead of becoming a cool news story and learning something about why great white sharks are still this far North in late December, a really big great white shark is rolling around on the sea floor right now, rotting away and being eaten by bottom-dwelling scavengers. Although I am sure that shark is covered with lobsters right now, that’s not really doing anybody any good.
In the old days, we could and would tow a shark like that in. Biologists would be notified, and it would be hung, weighed, measured, examined and dissected in the name of research. Now all incidental catches are discarded and very rarely reported for obvious reasons.
Things we will never know
Why are there great white sharks off Chatham a week before Christmas when they supposedly prefer warmer water?
How big was the shark and how much did it weigh?
Was it a male or female great white shark? How old was it?
What actually killed the shark? Was it diseased?
What was it eating?
It is really too bad that nothing was learned from this opportunity, except for the fact that fisherman are leery of reporting these incidents because of the risk of prosecution.
There were no winners in this story
The fisherman lost, the shark lost and most of all, science lost a great opportunity to study this animal. What a shame. This incident is a perfect example of the ongoing practice of wasteful fisheries management and regulations.
In incidents like this, commercial fishermen should be able to land the animal in the name of research and be exempt from any legal or regulatory hassles. The study of this animal, which was already dead, would have benefited the species as a whole and expanded our knowledge of the great white shark in New England waters.
