hello everyone this is Richard founder of short-term rentals secrets.com and
Airbnb super host in the first segment we went and we actually drove up to
Windham New York and we took a bunch of photos and this second segment here I'm
actually going to go on Airbnb and list it and walk you through sort of the
methodology what's on my mind how I'm going to sequence the photos so I'm
going to touch up some of the photos and hopefully some of these tips that I'm
doing in real time will help you not only improve your listing because we
constantly want to go back and refresh and improve but also if you get a second
or third listing some of these ideas might help so without further ado I'm
going to get started right now I'm listing the entire place it's eat it
sleeps a total of 15 and it's in Windham New York so here I can upload photos and
I've already gone through and selected about 50 which is too many but I'm going
to go ahead and upload them now and then I'm going to sort them and get rid of
them so for the interest of this video I'm going to go ahead and just upload
what I have so while we're waiting for the photos to upload I thought what I
would share with you is a really quick and simple color correction and things
that really will enhance your images without making them seem fake but in
this particular case I have a photo that I took from my drone and the photo
doesn't quite look as properly exposed and the colors are a little bit off so
click on this little suitcase in the upper right hand corner that says show
the mark-up tool and it's ever so subtle but you'll see it change colors to blue
and then here's the toolbar that we're actually going to use and this little
prism over here that looks like a pyramid says adjust color so if you
click on that you'll get this adjust color over here there's really three
that I think are going to work best in most instances and again this is really
quick and easy but if you change on the slider here the exposure you'll see how
much brighter it'll get and you want to do it to look
natural again we're not trying to mislead anybody but we're trying to make
it look good to the natural eye the way you would see it and I just thought that
this photo which i think is a really nice photo from the drone was
little too dark and so I'm just going to brighten it up a little bit to there the
other thing that you can play with is saturation and I think that this color
is a little oversaturated so you can go to the left and you see it gets really
cool all the way to blue and then black or all the way to the right and it will
start to turn you know red and green and so on so just find a place that makes it
look the way you think it actually looks and I think it's somewhere about right
there at this time of the season and then also the temperature you can change
the temperature and you can see all the way to the right versus all the way to
the left and again just find a place that you think sort of looks best to
your natural eye and I think it's somewhere right around there and then
once you do that it's saved you don't have to save anything but what you can
do if you want it as a JPEG is you can export it and then you can select that
you want it not as a PNG but as a JPEG and just name it whatever you'd like and
it'll save it as well too in this particular case I'm saving it to my
download folder and then I'll import this into airbnb so in the interest of
full disclosure I am NOT an expert Photoshop or photo editor or anything
like that and that's probably you know a very simple approach but that's all you
really need to do because it'll take a very dark image that has no appeal and
actually make it look really good so I definitely recommend you do that now
I've uploaded all the different photos and it says show travelers what your
space will look like and you can see at the top here the cover photo that
they've selected is you know just awful so you want to definitely go through
these now delete the ones that you don't need or you think are duplicate 'iv and
then go ahead and drag and drop and you can change the order the other thing
that's really important is add a caption here and you want to describe again what
it is that they're looking at but try and set the scene so instead of just
saying you know dining room table say enjoy a feast after a hard hike or
whatever it is with your family and friends right and so like people say wow
this is great is exactly what I'm looking for
so I'm going to go ahead and do all of that
right now and I've actually seen a tip from somebody that I thought was really
helpful in the caption if you have listings obviously I don't this is a
brand new place but if you have five-star reviews from guests that have
stayed at your place you can go ahead and put those here so instead of just
saying something like this is the kitchen if somebody comments about a
fabulous meal that they made in your kitchen and it was wonderful go ahead
and attribute it to them and say you know quote my family had unbelievable
Thanksgiving feast we prepared it here this is a great kitchen thanks so very
much for your hospitality end quote Chris right and again now that builds
trust so use that the example I'm going to give here on this yoga photo I've
taken it intentionally the light is shining through the the windows and so
while it may not show the room as well it shows all sorts of brightness and it
shows a yoga mats laid out and here I'm going to paint the picture by saying
imagine morning yoga as the Sun rises or imagine evening yoga as the Sun sets I'm
not exactly sure what I'm going to say but the point is instead of just saying
here's a gym or here's an open space where you can lay some mats down I'm
going to paint the picture you and your friends have a private yoga retreat
after a hard day hiking or whatever so let me figure out exactly what it is
that I'm going to say but that's the point of the caption okay so now the
cover photo I think is critical because that's the one that everybody's going to
look at and I'm just going to show you a couple that I think could work just so
that you can see the logic so obviously the exterior of the house
is an obvious one here they have their own little adjust brightness tools so
let's just play with that for a second and you can see that it you know adjusts
it and then also the contrast and the way that I see the contrast here is in
the sky and then also in the shingles themselves the roof and so on but I
don't think this is the best photo so let's get out of there I think that
this is a nice potential photo somebody's coming out there to be in the
wilderness and in the mountains this is a nice beautiful shot the challenge I
have as I mentioned in part one is that this is a ski-in ski-out house and so
the reason we built it where we did build it is so that we could ski and it
has unbelievable location and appeal for the winter months during ski season
we're also going to be hosting guests during the offseason like the summer and
so the challenge that I'm going to have is making a listing that has appeal both
in the summer and in the winter without changing the entire listing although I
will be going in and changing the headline and even the cover photo
once there's some snow on the ground I'll come back and take more aerial
shots and more photos and you should do the same to the extent that you have
seasonality of course people can book far in advance
so somebody could be looking at it in July and looking for ski season in
December but that's just a challenge that I will have so I think that that
was an interesting potential shot this drone shot I think is an interesting
cover shot they're probably not used to seeing too many drone shots so it might
stand out right so from like an SEO perspective when Airbnb puts up the
whole tile page of all these thumbnails this aerial shot even though may not be
the best shot of my house might get people's interest to get them to click
and that's really what we're trying to do so that might be an interesting
approach and then I thought that there might be a shot of the interior of the
house that often people will use is sort of like that best living room shot and
that might be this to just sort of show how wide open house patients who
and all of the different glass and so on so I'm going to look at all these a
little bit more carefully and pick one okay so I've selected my cover shot and
I'm going to put it up here right now and the reason I've done this is to
highlight sort of the wilderness and the natural beauty in the summer season
which is when I'm trying to rent it it's a big deck it's got a grill it's
got unbelievable views okay so I've gone through and I now have
all the captions in place and everything ordered one thing I just want to note on
the upper right hand corner here it says it was saved five minutes ago but
there's also a button it says save and exit so as you go along you may want to
save your work so you don't lose anything so let's just take a look at
the few shot that I want to point out the cover photo here I wrote private
deck and grill to enjoy magnificent unobstructed views with family and
friends a perfect way to start and end a day of hiking or skiing see again I'm
setting the sort of the fact that it's not only private and magnificent but
you're there with your family and your friends and it's a great way to start
the day or end the day and to sort of straddle both seasons I'm saying hiking
or skiing the other one that I want to point out to you is this one which is
the artistic shot of just the coffee mug what I've written so far is imagine
waking up and enjoying a cup of coffee and your favorite magazine as the Sun
rises whoops as the Sun rises over your private deck
I mean you're going on vacation you're going away for the weekend
paint the picture imagine doing this the other one that I'd like to show you is
the yoga enjoy yoga with your family and friends in the sun-filled Oh ASA it just
seems really inviting oh there's one more that I want to just point out in
this particular actually there's two more there's two more that I'd like to
point out one here is the kids slumber party dream bedroom two bunk beds four
twin beds and to pull out trundle beds which sleep six total and what I've done
on the next photo here is say this is the first bed in the slumber party dream
bedroom so I like just named this thing the slumber party dream bedroom I don't
know sounds pretty good to me if I was a family and I was trying to visit a place
and my kids would love to have a slumber party dream bedroom and so I said bunk
bed number one in the slumber party dream bedroom plus you have your kids
bed friends sleep over in the trundle bed I
mean that's just amazing if you're selling this to your kids and you say
you can have a friend come and stay also that's great
the second thing I wrote here was a second massive entertainment living room
with seating for 24 everyone to watch movies or sporting events and surround
sound it doesn't get any better so just think about what you're showing them and
why they would use it how they would use it and paint that picture because
although the pictures worth a million words they don't know what they're
looking at they've never seen this before right they may not even speak
English particularly well so the image may not be very clear but when you
describe to them how they might use it ah now I know what I'm looking at and
then when I laid out the order there's those visual details that I talked about
so in the corner you'll see the throw or the same color couch and then in the
next image you'll see that same couch in the very corner and then you lead you up
the stairs and so just think of this as a story and I've put transition shots of
exterior shots or others between sort of these scenes or the acts if you will and
I know there's been a long video I hope you enjoyed it I hope you've learned
from it and I hope it's been helpful so if it has please go ahead and like the
video leave any comments or feedback or suggestions that you may have this is
about a community and we're all learning from one another so I'm really
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