The first thing you'll want to do when you join People Like Us is set up your home listing. There are lots of excellent tips for doing so on our Tips page https://peoplelikeus.world/tips.
Go to My listings https://peoplelikeus.world/properties and edit your existing listing or create a new one. All the details for your home can be edited here: title, address, descriptions, accommodation, photos and much more. Mandatory sections are indicated by a red cross or green tick. Once all the mandatory sections are filled in, you may activate your home and it will be available for searching on the website immediately.
When you're looking for an exchange, there are two main ways to go about it:
1. Search for places you want to go and send direct enquiries via the People Like Us site. This is very targeted and has a high likelihood of response.
2. Post your home to our Facebook group. When you do this and use the direct link to your home, it will present the cover photo and title with a link directly back to your listing. It's an excellent way to put your home in front of thousands and thousands of people. You never know what you might find!
You can always do both. Facebook is particularly useful if you are flexible on dates and location as you'll likely attract offers from all over the world.
Absolutely! You can have as many as you want, and your community will thank you for offering more than one home.
Click My Home on the menu. You'll find a button to create a new profile (New Home Profile) at the top of the page.
No! 😀
List with what you have ready and then improve them as you have time. It takes a little time to prepare your home for photography so it's very easy to put off, but as soon as you list you can start joining in to the community and start getting to know people. The more people know you, the easier it will be to find an exchange.
Refer to our Tips page: https://peoplelikeus.world/tips. You'll find loads of good information for things that should be in your listing.
Our Facebook page is only there to support the website and make communication easier. If you want to exchange, you must list your home on our website.
Desired destinations are used for reverse search. They let other members know where you want to go so they can find you in a search if that's where they live.
To add desired destinations, go to the main navigation menu, click on Exchanging, and select Desired destinations. Then search for each destination, select it from the dropdown list and add it. You need to do one destination at a time.
LGBTQ+ is an acronym for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer/Questioning plus other variants of gender/sexual diversity. While we would hope that everyone in the world would be friendly toward all people, it's not always the case and some people are less comfortable with people who are different from them.
The flag was requested and is supported by our PLU LGBTQ+ community. In requesting the flag, we were told of an incident on another site, prior to PLU's formation, where a gay member and his husband were turned away from an exchange home upon arrival when the host learned they were gay.
We have the flag and display it prominently on listings so that the LGBTQ+ community is supported and welcomed. We strongly encourage all PLU members to tick the box, and we look forward to a world one day where the flag isn't necessary.
- Go to PLU's website and then click My listings. Then, click on your own property.
- Once the property shows up, you highlight the url address on the top (it should start with https://). With your curser on the highlighted address, right click on your mouse to bring up a menu. Now you can select Copy (alternatively, you can hit Ctrl+C on your keyboard).
- Once you've done this, you can go to your post or comment on FB. Then, right click on your mouse to bring up a menu again. This time select Paste (alternatively, you can hit Ctrl+V on your keyboard).
- Your link (which starts with https://) should show up on your post or comment. And you're good to go!
There's also a Facebook Share button at the top of your listing which allows you to post directly to anywhere in Facebook.
We use a Google service for translation and, yes, it's odd that there's no option for your own language.
Click on translate and choose any language. Then click translate again and English will be the first option.
If you use Chrome, it will usually offer a page translation if it's not in your native language.
There are lots of excellent tips for doing so on our Tips page https://peoplelikeus.world/tips. The quality of your listing will make a huge difference to the number of enquiries that you receive so spend some time on your photos, descriptions and, particularly, things to do in your local area. Talk about it as if you had never visited the area before, as your guests most likely will be there for the first time!
Travel Styles are a part of your home listing and they're used to explain what your home is GREAT for.
If you live near a ski field, tick the skiing box so that people who are looking for a home to stay at when they ski can find you.
A common mistake is that people tick the box if they, themselves, enjoy skiing even if they live by the sea. This has the effect of cluttering the database such that when people are searching for skiing homes, they see a lot of people who happen to just enjoy skiing! 🙂
Photos and all other listing details can be changed by editing your listing details.
Go to My listings, then edit your listing, then click edit next to photos. You can add new ones, rearrange using the buttons, and add individual captions too.
Go to the Login page where you'll find a button Forgot your password?. This will send you a link to reset your password.
One common issue is when people accidentally register with the site twice. Most commonly, this happens when a member registers first with an email address and then logs in with Facebook. If the email address attached to the Facebook account is different from the one used with the site originally, a second account will be created. That second account won't have any access to the listing or messages of the first as we don't know that they are linked.
To fix, log out and log in with the method used to create the listing initially.
Easy! Edit your listing (My listings, Edit button) and then press Edit next to your photos.
Each photo has buttons to move left or right, rotate left and right, and to delete them.
Click on your photo on the menu and select Change Password. You will need to enter the old password, a new password and confirm it by entering it twice.
If you don't know your old password, log out and go to the Login page where you'll find a button Forgot your password?. This will send you a link to reset your password.
You need to be logged out to complete this process. If you try when logged in, when you click on the Reset link in your email, you will be taken directly to the Homes page as you're already logged in.
Photo formats accepted by the site are the universal jpg (also jpeg) and png formats. Some newer phones take photos in either heic or webp formats which can't be displayed by web browsers yet.
The website has a filter so that these photos that can't be displayed cannot be uploaded. Some phones, however, will allow you to upload those formats anyway. If you do, you'll see blank photos on your listing.
The best solution is to still take photos in jpg format. Every phone has a camera setting to take photos in this format, often called most compatible, meaning that the photos can be freely transferred between devices.
If you already have heic or webp photos and want to change them to jpg, there are free numerous online websites which do this. Search for free online heic to jpg or similar.
All People Like Us subscriptions start with a free Trial. As a Trial member, you may view all our listings and make enquiries of Premium members. In order to agree an exchange, you'll need a Premium (paid) membership. All of our membership options are on this page: https://peoplelikeus.world/premium
Captions can be simply added to each of your photos. Click the caption button below the photo (a little pen and notepad) and you'll be taken to the caption screen.
1. Type a caption in your own language, any language.
2. Click Save & Translate.
No, People Like Us does not offer insurance. Quality travel and home insurance is important, and more expensive than that which could be offered within our subscription fee. Members need to organise their own insurance which will cover exchange guests in their home and their travel.
Each Premium Member can nominate one Partner. The Partner must have a membership but no active home profile i.e. classed as a non-Member currently.
The Partner membership is for your partner to be able to see all parts of a home profile. As they inherit your membership level, they'll also be able to see all photos, descriptions, feedback, calendars and desired destinations. They can also save favourites and message other members.
Your Partner can't create exchanges or a new home profile and they can't act on your behalf. You have complete control and can delete the relationship at any time.
Each Member should go to their Member profile: click on your photo on the member, click on My Member Profile or just click here:
https://peoplelikeus.world/users/edit
At the bottom of each Member profile, you'll see a Partners section.
On the Partner screen, you'll see a Partner code you can use.
On the Premium Member screen, you'll see a section to enter that code.
Enter the code and save and the Partner Membership is set up instantly.
Only the Primary Member can delete the Partner.
Go to your membership profile and scroll to the bottom.
In the Partner section, press Delete.
The Partner will be removed instantly.
People Like Us started 1 April 2018 and after three years of building our community and planning, we introduced a fee to make our service sustainable into the future. Our Founders were our first PLU’s to join and we’ll be forever thankful for the support shown to our community. We wouldn’t be here without them.
High Speed Internet is considered 100Mbps and above. This is the connection into the home as opposed to the speed of the WiFi (which would typically be higher).
In some countries, it is typical for 100Mbps to deliver typical speeds a little below this speed. This is still acceptable as High Speed Internet, as long as the package provided is 100Mbps+.
If unsure, it's better to not tick this box as remote workers may require it.
Go to My Home on the main menu (or My Homes if you have more than one and then edit the one you want to change).
Scroll down to the Calendar section and click Edit.
On the calendar, click your start and end dates, then select the applicable exchange types and, optionally, add a comment.
There's extensive documentation for how to use the calendar in our blog: https://peoplelikeus.world/blog/calendar-help-availability.
There are two ways to specify availability on your home profile calendar: Available dates and Unavailable dates.
1. You can specify exactly when your home is explicitly available. By default, all other dates are unavailable. Use this method if you have limited availability, if you want to be specific about when you want to exchange and the type of exchange you want, and/or if you want to appear in Last Minute searches.
2. You can specify when your home is unavailable. By default, other dates are available. Because the lack of unavailability does not necessarily mean your home is available for exchange, your home will not appear in Last Minute searches or searches for explicit availability where the exchange types are specified.
You can, but you probably shouldn't.
If you are marking Available dates, all dates that are not marked as available are automatically unavailable. To mark some of these dates unavailable doesn't make them any less available but it introduces confusion as to what would be meant by dates that are neither available nor unavailable.
No. It doesn't make sense to make a date both available and unavailable, nor to mark it available more than once.
You can use filters to find some cat and dog free homes. In the filters page, click on See more filters at the bottom and scroll down past two other filter categories. You will find an Allergens heading including cat free and dog free filters, as well as other allergy-related filters.
Not everyone completes this section when filling out their home profile, so homes that do not indicate these features may also be pet-free. Ultimately, it would be best if you asked the host about the pet status of their home to assess your personal risk. Some people forget to remove those filters when they obtain pets.
You can view the the number of completed and finalised exchanges and the number of nights hosting guests, and also the number of nights spent as a guest.
Go to any screen that displays your member card, for example your member profile, https://peoplelikeus.world/my-member-profile, and then scroll down to the PLU Experience section. Click on the info button next to the field.
Facebook caches the copy of your page and only refreshes it once a month. It would eventually change over time but you can force it.
Go to https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug, enter the link to your profile and click Debug. It'll show you the existing version, then click Scrape Again and it will get a new version from the website.
Your member profile photo can be changed on your member profile. Click on your photo on the menu and go to My Member Profile.
https://peoplelikeus.world/my-member-profile
Scroll down a little and you'll see a field to select a new profile photo. We accept jpg, png and webp file types.
Auto-renewal is provided to make it easier for you to keep your subscription current and not have to worry about your future exchanges being cancelled from accidentally missing a renewal. If you do want to stop it, go to the member menu (click your photo) and then My Account. There's an option to cancel (or restart) your auto-renewal on this page.
Auto-renewal is provided to make it easier for you to keep your subscription current and not have to worry about your future exchanges being cancelled from accidentally missing a renewal.
If you need to update your payment method, go to the member menu (click your photo) and then My Account. There's an option on this page to update your credit card.
Remember, People Like Us uses the world's biggest payment gateway, Stripe, to handle all payments. People Like Us does not keep credit card information on our site or in our database anywhere.
Cleaning fees are permissible if you have to, but discouraged.
Most exchangers will host as often as they are guests, so cleaning costs become equal on both sides over time. They are, nevertheless, permissible for non-reciprocal exchanges if they are clearly marked on your profile, reasonable, and at the cost price.
Cleaning fees should not be charged for reciprocal exchanges.