When we were planning to sell some office furniture before our move to the new vFlyer office this week, the first thing we did (of course) was create a flyer, fill it with photos of cubicles and swivel chairs, and post it to Craigslist. Craigslist, as many of you know, is the most popular classifieds website in the country, so it’s an obvious place to post this kind of flyer.

A few days after we posted it, we received an email from “craigslist.org” notifying us that our post had been flagged and removed. We had gotten a few spam emails previously from people who either claimed they wanted to buy our items but needed some personal information from us first, or that had nothing to do with the post at all. When I opened this email, however, I immediately thought that it was an authentic message from Craigslist. It referenced the post, after all, and had all the trappings of an official Craigslist email.

Upon closer inspection, though, I noticed that there was an option to remove the flag from the listing, which Craigslist doesn’t support (why would Craigslist allow people whose posts have been flagged to immediately re-post them?). Also, mousing over the links in this email showed URLs made to look like Craigslist links but that would actually go to a completely different website (“accounts.craigslist.org.user.authentication.login.atlanticaquasport.com” is NOT the same as “craigslist.org”). So, I immediately sent this email to my spam folder where it belongs. Done and done.

I’m relating this rather unremarkable story because so many vFlyer users post their flyers to Craigslist and probably receive these types of “phishing” emails. Here are some tips to remember when you receive an email related to a Craigslist post:

• Be skeptical. Craigslist doesn’t send people a lot of emails. If it’s not an email you were expecting (for instance, the self-publishing or post confirmation email), there’s a good chance it didn’t actually come from Craigslist.
• Don’t believe offers of protection from flagging or restoring a flagged post. They are fake.
• Look at the sender’s email address. The name may say “Craigslist”, but the email address could be a Gmail or AOL address, or an address of some other domain. Even if the email address ends in “craigslist.org”, don’t immediately assume that it’s from Craigslist.
• If there are links in the email, mouse over them without clicking so that you can see the URL (that is, the web address of the link). If the URL doesn’t look right, don’t click the link.
• NEVER give personal information such as your name, address, phone number, or social security number in an email to someone you don’t know.

For more information on avoiding email scams, take a look at this page from the National Consumers League’s Internet Fraud Watch.

In today’s market, building a strong online reputation is increasingly important. So many people begin their search for housing, cars, services, and other products on the web now that your web presence becomes as vital to your brand as the manner in which you conduct business.

The moment you sign up for a vFlyer account, you are instantly given a live, stand-alone website called an Account Profile. This page serves as your listing inventory, displaying links to all of your published vFlyer listings in real time and making it easier to cross-sell your listings to prospective customers. For many vFlyer users, the Account Profile becomes their website, and there are several things that users can do to optimize their Account Profiles:

• adding contact information, a photo, company logo, a description of the business, and (for business subscribers) links to external sites
• applying a custom theme to it (again, only for business subscribers). This is especially effective if you have a custom branded theme such as this one.
• adding search and sort functionality, which enables prospective customers to more easily find listings that fit their criteria
• mapping a domain name to it, made easy through our Domain Plus service

Your Account Profile is, by default, also integrated into your flyers through the “More Listings” or “View Other Flyers” link, another reason to make it look sharp.

So that’s the skinny on the Account Profile. If you want a more detailed tutorial on how to set it up, here’s a new video we added a couple weeks ago:

Setting Up Your Account Profile

If the past decade were a color, it would no doubt be green. Green is everywhere now: in supermarkets, on television, and of course in the auto industry. This week, we’re highlighting an awesome custom theme created by The Green Car Company, an innovative and environmentally responsible auto dealership located in Bellevue, Washington. The GCC specializes in diesel vehicles for biodiesel use, Volkswagen TDI vehicles, smart cars, bikes, and parts and service for eco-friendly cars. They also have one of the coolest dealership websites we’ve seen in a long time.

The GCC’s custom theme matches the branding on its website perfectly. I love their logo and the font they chose for the header text. Also, using different shades of green is a nice touch (and fitting!).

As I’ve said before, branding is key in online marketing. vFlyer’s Theme Editor provides an easy and effective way to incorporate your branding into your listings. Try creating your own branded theme today, or contact us and we can have our in-house designer create one for you.

In our Custom Theme of the Week series, we’ve mostly highlighted themes that have a very different look from the 15 or so standard themes we offer (usually because they match the branding of the company or individual). But what about those users who like the way our standard themes look but also want to add their branding to the theme? This week’s custom theme illustrates how this can be done. It comes to us from Jerry Jennings at Westgate Property Management in Nashville. Jerry’s custom theme looks very similar to our Carrot standard theme: same background, fonts, and colors for the most part, all of which can be achieved through the Theme Editor. It also displays a simple, elegant branded header with the Westgate logo and slogan, a nice integration of an attractive standard theme with the branding capabilities of a custom theme.

Jerry’s flyers also show high-resolution, well-staged photographs, an essential for excellent internet marketing of real estate and rental properties. The vFlyer online marketing service enables you to upload up to 26 photos per flyer, and the better the photos, the better the ad.

As always, keep those custom theme submissions coming. We love seeing all the great custom themes that our users have created. What a talented bunch!

This week’s featured custom theme comes down to us from Hood River, Oregon, where our friend Maui Meyer and Copper West Properties are located. Copper West Properties is a company that’s very much tied to the Hood River area and that connection to the place is a big part of its company identity. They created a wonderful custom theme that not only incorporates the branding from their website but also captures the landscape of Hood River. I especially like the backgoround image of a topographical map of the area they use. It makes perfect sense for a company for which its location plays such an essential role.

Nice work, Copper West!

We’re planning to feature some themes for the summer in the next couple weeks, so if anyone has a summery custom theme they want featured, send them to us at support@vflyer.com. And if you haven’t done so, now’s the time to check out vFlyer’s branded listing tools and create your own custom theme today!

We have another great vacation rental custom theme this week, this one from Northern Shores Vacation Rentals in Traverse City, Michigan. It has an excellent header image that integrates their logo, website address, and a brief description of their business very nicely. They also make good use of one of vFlyer’s stock background images (the wavey blue page background), available to any vFlyer user. And the colors of the theme convey the light, beachy look that they’re going for. Their flyers make me nostalgic for my days in Michigan (go Wolverines!).

We’ll be returning next Friday with another custom theme of the week, so if you have a fantastic custom theme that you want the world to see, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com and you may get your theme on our blog!

I’m excited to announce that vFlyer has integrated with Realty DataTrust’s VaultWare product. The alliance between vFlyer and VaultWare makes it even easier for property managers who use VaultWare to promote their available units on Craigslist as well as other online marketplaces where vFlyer automatically submits listings. Through this partnership, individual flyers will automatically be created for each floor plan offered by the property through a daily content feed from VaultWare. Pricing updates and other content changes made within VaultWare will automatically be applied to the flyers each time the content feed is processed. The flyers and the Craigslist-compatible HTML code generated by vFlyer will also include a link for users to check availability, reserve, and pre-qualify for apartments online via VaultWare directly from Craigslist.

If your company or apartment community is already using VaultWare, the new vFlyer-VaultWare product offers you a comprehensive content management and online marketing solution. By generating content from the data in VaultWare, vFlyer maximizes the efficiency of advertising your available units online.

Realty DataTrust Corporation, located in Scottsdale, Arizona, offers online leasing solutions for the multifamily housing industry that help consumers reserve apartments online and increase a property’s efficiency and occupancy rates. VaultWare is Realty DataTrust’s innovative service that integrates rental data into ILS systems, updates the data on the ILSs automatically, and allows prospective tenants to view available rentals in real time.

If you would like to learn more about the new vFlyer-VaultWare integration, please contact our sales team at 1-800-594-5930 or sales@vflyer.com.

I am please to announce that we are now offering free bi-weekly Webinars for our members. The vFlyer Marketing Service is chock full of features and marketing tools, many of which our users are making good use of. That said, there are probably several that you aren’t aware of. For instance, have you utilized the email flyer list tool, allowing you to send a set of up to 7 listings in one email? Or did you know that you can choose the theme for your Account Profile? We want to do everything we can to help our members optimize their marketing efforts, and our hope is that the Webinars will help achieve this.

We will hold two 30-minute Webinars per week. In general, one will be a general overview of how to use the vFlyer service and the other will focus on a specific feature of the service. The first Webinar will be on Tuesday, March 30, at 11:00 am PDT and will be a general overview. Sign-up for Webinar.

I believe that these Webinars will be informative and hopefully fun. If you have questions about the Webinar program, please let us know by contacting support@vflyer.com.

This week, I decided to do something a little different in our Custom Theme of the Week series and highlight several great holiday custom themes that our property management users have created. As you may know, the vFlyer Theme Editor not only allows you to choose the colors and fonts of your themes but also to upload your own background images. The themes I’ve selected here all utilize holiday-themed background images (some of which are animated GIFs, which add a special twist) to great effect. I hope you enjoy these fun and festive flyers as much as we at vFlyer have!

• Eaton Village Apartments in Chico, CA
• Brookwood Club Apartments in Jacksonville, FL
• Canyon Ridge Apartments in Rockwall, TX
• Richmond Green Apartments in Houston, TX
• Sierra Glen Apartments in Citrus Heights, CA
• Sutter Creek Apartments in Arlington, TX
• The Californian Foutain Apartments In South Coast Metro, CA
• Autumn Chase Apartments in Bothell, WA

Thanks to everyone who made such great holiday custom themes this season. And thanks to all the vFlyer users who made custom themes this past year. 2009 saw the creation of hundreds of custom branded themes, only some of which we showcased in our blog. We’re excited to see even more branded themes in 2010! If you’re interested in having a custom branded theme created for you, contact us at support@vflyer.com.

And finally, Happy Holidays from the vFlyer Team!

Our custom theme of the week comes from Stacie Linka at Big Bear Cabins, a vacation rental company in Big Bear Lake, California. Big Bear Cabins has a stellar website and a well-defined brand that fits perfectly with the Big Bear Lake setting. Stacie’s theme nicely matches the website and works well with the excellent cabin photos she includes in her flyers.

In vacation rentals, you’re selling not just a short stay in a house but the whole idea of a place, and Big Bear Cabins’s theme helps convey the sense of the rustic comfort of Big Bear Lake. Nicely done, Stacie!

As the holidays are almost upon us, I’ll be highlighting some seasonal and holiday themed flyers in next week’s post. If you have a winter or holiday theme that you want showcased, feel free send it to us at support@vflyer.com.

While this post is coming a few days later than usual, I say better late than never. With that, I’m happy to announce that last week’s custom theme of the week goes to Tasha Moss at Urban Omaha in Omaha, Nebraska. Tasha has created a brand for her company that is fantastic. One look at Urban Omaha’s website shows you this. Tasha’s theme uses the same look and feel as her website and fits perfectly the type of listings she specializes in: modern, upmarket condos, lofts, and townhouses in downtown Omaha. And I love the simplicity of her header image: just the company logo, phone number, and website addess (in other words, the really important stuff).

If you’re interested in getting your own custom branded theme, vFlyer can help! We have in-house designers who can create a custom theme for you based on your specifications. If interested, simply email support@vflyer.com. The regular price for this service is $149. There is a special through the end of the 2009 for just $99.

We’ll be back this coming Friday with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you’ve created or seen a custom theme and think it should be spotlighted, by all means, let us know!

It’s been a busy season at vFlyer. One of the recent changes we made was an overhaul of our affiliate program, in which web publishers can earn money by referring people to vFlyer from their websites. We greatly simplified the process of setting up an affiliate account. You’ll now find an Affiliates link on our website that takes you to our affiliates page, where you can sign up to be a vFlyer affiliate. The sign-up process is incredibly easy and takes just a few minutes. Once you are appoved as an affiliate, it’s simple to place banner ads on your website (see the image below for some examples) or a simple text ad. We also provide you with detailed data on the number of conversions that have come from your website and how much you’ve earned. We’re offering a whopping 50% commission for the first four months of a monthly subscription and a 20% commission of an annual subscription for any conversions that come through your affiliate links.

Also, we tag any visitor to your website that clicks an affiliate link with a 60-day cookie, which means that if someone clicks your affiliate link or banner ad and then signs up for vFlyer within 60 days, you’ll still earn a commission.

If you have a website, blog, or other web property and are interested in promoting vFlyer and making some extra money, sign up to be a vFlyer affiliate! If you have any questions, please contact affiliate@vflyer.com.

Seeing as it’s almost Thanksgiving, I want to give thanks to all of our users who have created custom themes over the last year. We’ve seen lots of spectacular themes made with our Theme Editor and have spotlighted just a fraction of them on our blog. To those of you who have created custom themes, thanks for taking advantage of a great feature of the vFlyer service and for making awesome-looking flyers.

WIth that, I’m happy to announce that this week’s Custom Theme of the Week goes to Mike Davis at The Car Store in Everett, Washington. His theme has a really nice header image that he modified from the header on his website and that has a nice balance of text and images. I like it because it provides ample information while looking very professional and well laid out. I also like that the colors in the theme all work well together.

Another great thing Mike does is he uses his custom theme on his Account Profile, making a very nice looking inventory website. This is a very useful feature of vFlyer for auto dealers.

We’ll be back in two weeks with another Custom Theme of the Week, so if you have a custom theme or have seen someone else’s and think it should be celebrated, drop us a line at support@vflyer.com.

After a brief hiatus of the CTOTW series, we’re back in style with a lovely custom theme from Sheldon and Rachel Hart of the Columbia River Gorge area in southern Washington. I love their header image: practically a work of art in itself, it contains a dramatic illustration and only the most important information that the authors want to convey to their potential customers, in this case, their website address. It’s beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness. The rest of the theme, from the color scheme to the fonts they chose, are in perfect harmony with each other. And it’s just a great looking flyer, with high-resolution photos, a handsome logo, and a good amount of information; it’s thorough without being overwhelming.

For a useful introduction to creating and using custom themes, take a look at this series of short video tutorials on our website.

Through the end of this month, we’re offering a free custom branded theme to any auto dealer or service provider with an annual subscription. If you fall under one of these categories, contact support@vflyer.com to claim your free theme. If you have a monthly subscription, we can create a custom theme for you for a discount price of $59.

Again, kudos to Sheldon and Rachel for making such a nice custom theme. If you want your custom theme spotlighted or have come across a custom theme that you think is great, let us know! We love to see the fantastic themes that our users are creating.

Our friend, Ryan Hinricher from Investor Nation in Memphis recently told us that he wanted to be able to email a set of featured listings to his mailing list. We thought it was a great idea, so we introduced the feature for all vFlyer business subscribers. This means that in addition to being able to email a single Flyer through your vFlyer account, you can now create a list of up to seven listings and send the list in a single email. You can choose from four different layouts for the email and apply any standard themes or custom themes in your account to the email. Here’s an example of a featured listings email:

Pretty cool, right? You can access this new feature by clicking the Account tab, then clicking the Email Flyer List sub-tab. To create a list, simply click Create New List and choose the Flyers and/or Teasers that you want to include. Then choose the layout and theme for the email, type a subject line, enter or import the email addresses you are sending to, and send it off.  We even provide the HTML content of the email in case you want to send via another email service. 

We hope you enjoy the new Featured Flyers email option. If you have feedback on it or other feature requests, let us know by emailing support@vflyer.com.