The first step is entering all of your listing information.  You can begin this step by logging into your site and finding the “New Property Listing” or “New Complex Listing” link on the left hand navigation bar.   You will be asked a handful of information about your property including general info (name of property, contact person, phone/email), location (address and city), and info about the property (bedrooms, bathrooms, monthly rent, deposit and amenities) as well as allowing you to enter a description, or anything you would like into a free text box.  When you’ve completed this page, use the submit button on the bottom of the page to enter this listing into our database.

The second step will allow you to upload photos (currently up to 5 photos) for your property that will be displayed in the search results.  You can add photos in two ways.  First, right after you submit your new listing, you’ll find a link to “Add/Edit photos for this listing” which will take you to the photo manager.  Second, from the “Manage All Listings”on your lefthand navigation, you will find an “Add/Change Photos” link above the listing you’ve just entered.  Once you enter the photo manager for your listing, you can upload photos one at a time, and choose which photo will be the default for the listing (meaning it will show in the search results).  Your photos will not be activated immediately, however you can usually expect to see them available within a few hours.

Last, you will want to activate your listing so it appears in the search results to the sites visitors.  You can find a link to activate the listing in the same places you found the “photos” links.  Depending on your account, you may have the option to choose how long your listing is active.  If you ever need to deactivate a listing, you will find a button for that on the “Manage All Listings” page.

That’s all there is to it…  when you complete these 3 easy steps you will have your property listed in the MyCTRentals.com online directory for all visitors to see.  You will be able to keep track of your listings’ page visits from your “My Account” Control Panel as well.  If you ever have any questions on listing your site, please contact us and we’ll be more than happy to help!

Stay tuned for new features coming in the next few weeks!
David Pagini
on behalf of:

The MyCTRentals.com Team

Brian & Dave

More Exposure
The most notable change we have made will be transparent to most users, but carries the biggest impact. We have optimized the site to make it easier for search engines like Google to crawl our site. What does this mean for you? Simply put, more exposure. Potential renters will have an easier time finding you and your property than ever before.

Easier-to-use Control Panel
The most apparent change is a slightly redesigned control panel. We have aimed to eliminate some of the confusion surrounding managing your property listings, most notably, “activating” and “deactivating” properties.

We’ve also added a new “preview” button so you can view your property listing directly from the control panel. This eliminates the hassle of doing a search to view your property listing.

Lastly, we have changed the security deposit field to allow text, in addition to dollar figures. Many users expressed the need to display security deposit information as text, as in, “One Month’s Rent” instead of dollar amounts. You spoke, we listened.

More to Come
That’s all for now, but there is more to come. We have some great new features debuting in the coming months that we can’t wait to show you. Until then –

Brian Daley

on behalf of:

The MyCTRentals.com Team

Brian & Dave

First off, I just want to take a chance to wish you all a Happy New Year; hopefully it has been just that only a few weeks into 2008! We’re glad to have you aboard.

I have recently noticed quite a few property owners who are creating their listings, but not activating them for renters to find on the site. I can’t be sure if this accidental or on purpose, but in many cases I am assuming it is accidental. If this has happened to you, I would love to get your feedback if you were unaware of the “activation” feature of the listing. Please send me an email at dave@myctrentals.com. To ensure your listing can be found in the search results, after you create or edit the property, you can use the left hand navigation to go to the “Manage All Listings” page. From this page, you will be able to activate your listing, add or change photos, and edit any details of the property. Your listing must be present under the “Active Listings” section of this page before it can be found by the site’s visitors.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Dave Pagini

on behalf of:

The MyCTRentals.com Team

Brian & Dave

To our friends and customers:

Each year during this time, it’s important to us to take a few minutes off from regular work to send our heartfelt wishes out to you and your family for a happy and safe holiday season. With the weeks leading up to Christmas being hectic for so many, it’s easy to forget what’s important during this time of year. We here at MyCTRentals.com just want to extend our gratitude to you because it is good friends and customers like you that make our site worth running.

May your holiday be filled with joy, and may the coming year be overflowing with all the good things in life!

Dave Pagini

on behalf of:

The MyCTRentals.com Team

Brian & Dave

We just wanted to take a chance and thank you for taking the time to join the MyCTRentals.com community, we sincerely appreciate it! If you like the site, and happen to know anyone else who could benefit by listing here for free, please let them know about us.

One trend we have noticed in the current listings is a lack of photos. Just to be sure you can find the photo upload section, if you click on “Manage All Listings” in the left hand navigation, above each listing there is a blue bar with a link to “add/change photos” for that particular listing. Photos are a proven method to increase traffic to your listings from the search results page, so help yourself out and upload a photo. Please contact us if you are having any problems, or need assistance.

Once again, it’s great to have you aboard!

Dave

on behalf of:

The MyCTRentals.com Team

Barry, Brian and Dave

Many of you may know that for the past few years, I have been working on an apartment rental site in the state of Connecticut that seemed to be moving no where. The amount of times I answered the question “How’s that rental business coming along?” is uncountable. To some of you, this may be news you were unaware of, but now you know. Well, the day has finally come, and MyCTRentals.com has launched officially. Basically, I’m writing this email to everyone I have in my address book looking for any help I can get. Some of you may not want to, or may not be able to help, but for anyone willing to give us a hand, you can use the various methods listed in this email.

Let me just give you a very quick background on the site before I get into anything else. The site has been created to allow property owners to list their ads, and allow renters to find places to live within the state of Connecticut (Apartments, Condos, Houses, Rooms for Rent, etc.). Right now, and for the immediate future, it is a completely free service to use. We’re committed to provide our visitors with the best experience possible, and would bend over backwards to cater to any questions, concerns or requests. We are aiming to provide a very personalized, friendly service, on a corporate, quality website.

First off, and easiest of all, click this link and visit the site for us. We don’t have very many listings yet, but feel free to look around the site and give us any feedback or suggestions you may have. Also, go to Google and do a search for “myctrentals” and then click the link, or just click here to view the results. If you have your own website of any kind, even if it’s a myspace page, and could put up a link to our site, I can’t even describe how much that can help drive traffic to our site. If you need any help doing that, please feel free to ask me about it! We have a media page where you can use our logos, banners and avatars wherever you can, and it even has HTML code right in it to help you put them on a webpage of your own. If you have an AIM profile, throw in a link that says “check out my friend Dave’s site: www.myctrentals.com“. If you post on any message boards, throw in a link at the end of a post. There are a bunch of ways to help out.

One of the biggest tasks I can put to you is spread our site by word of mouth (or email). Forward this message, or any of the info in it, to as many people as you know. If you know anyone who actually owns properties, tell them to check us out and list their rentals for free! Just as I told you, any traffic you can drive to our site will help us out. If you’re casually talking to someone who mentions looking for a place to live, or moving out of mom and dad’s house, let them know to try out our site. If anyone has a serious interest in putting up a few posters, or leaving some advertising materials at local businesses, get in touch with me and I would love to have you help me out.  Also, if anyone owns their own business, and would like to do any type of “ad-sharing” (you advertise for us, we’ll advertise for you), we could certainly talk out details of that, so feel free to contact me about that.

MyCTRentals.com is also into the social networking scene. We have our own page on MySpace.com (myspace.com/myctrentals), and are looking for all the friends we can get! If you’re on facebook, we have a group called “ Friends of MyCTRentals.com” that you can join as well. If you want to be the coolest person on your block, we have some great merchandise you can buy from CafePress.com as well. My personal favorite is the 3/4 sleeve baseball shirt! One important thing to note about CafePress.com merchandise though, is we are not making any profit on selling any of the items on there, so don’t feel pressured to buy them to support us, we would only gain an advertising advantage by making you look as cool as possible.

If you do not want to hear about our website, or don’t care about it, just let me know and I’ll be sure to leave you out of any future correspondence. Thanks for listening!!

Thanks,

Dave Pagini
MyCTRentals Owner
http://www.MyCTRentals.com/
c: (203) 804-7197
e: dave@myctrentals.com

MyCTRentals.com Team
voicemail: (203) 886-1007
general email: info@myctrentals.com

=> List your property today for FREE!!!!!
http://www.myctrentals.com/create.php

Welcome to the MyCTRentals.com Owner’s Control Panel. If you haven’t done so already, feel free to take our quick tour to ensure you understand all the features available to you here at MyCTRentals. We’re so happy to have you as part of our online community, and we will do everything we can to make you feel welcome. Our customers are very important to us, and we want to be sure that everyone who wants to make a difference here has that opportunity. We hope you find that our customer service is both prompt, and personal, and that any opinions or problems you have are addressed immediately. We cherish all the feedback received from you, so feel free to drop us a line with any suggestions you have on how we can make the site better. If you don’t have anything to say now, you can always use the “Contact & Support” link at the bottom of every page to reach us.

The area you’re reading now is our way to reach out to you, the property owners, with any new features, tutorials, promotions, or changes we make to the site. Check back often to ensure you’re up-to-date on everything happening!

Dave

on behalf of:

The MyCTRentals.com Team

Barry, Brian and Dave