Today I'm going to teach you the 10 most important things that you need to
know about in order to run an Airbnb business in 2018.
All right welcome back Airbnb family today I'm in one of my 8 new Dallas
properties that I've been working on they're still not done yet
but these bed frames come tomorrow so we're good to go and with that said I've
realized with this extra reflective time I have waiting on things from Amazon
that over the four years that I've done this I've seen some key changes on
Airbnb and I've learned some hard lessons and you have the benefit
learning from me so I'm gonna give you ten things that aren't talked about as
much as they should be things you need to know in order to run your Airbnb
business so let's get to it and number one is LLC's as all of you have heard me
say many times before you need to have an LLC to have a proper letter being the
business this gives you options and there's a few things one if you do
rental arbitrage like me there's buildings that won't let you do an
Airbnb style business because it is technically subletting if you have a
regular residential lease so you need to have an LLC so you can have corporate
leases that's important to if you ever want to sell your business you need to
have everything in a portfolio in something that can be sold you can't
have everything assigned to your social security number that just doesn't work
out so put an LLC into play and put everything in your portfolio rent or
owned properties everything into that LLC so that way you can sell it later if
you want to keep your homes but sell your Airbnb business and rent out to the
new buyer then you can just put of course your LLC contracts to manage they
are vini properties like the leases and the leases sign to your own LLC and
that's how you separate the home you own from your Airbnb business if you want to
do that third LLC's protect you from liability somebody wants to sue your
company they sue your company they cannot just sue you
there's something you want to learn called it's a phrase called piercing the
veil it's something that they'll do in court if they want to sue you and get
through your LLC and that is really based on how you treat your company and
how you behave as a business owner so do this right and you won't have to worry
about any issues so number two so number two is about the settings on Airbnb and
the custom pricing settings many of you have asked me about this already there
are ways to set up like two ninth or three and I
four-night discounts not just weekly or monthly but in order to have access to
this you need to have at least five active published properties on Airbnb
okay so to get around this if you only have one property what I want you to do
is I want you to make five properties I want you to publish all of them and I
want you to snooze four of them so you have five published active listings and
you snooze for after you get that what would it be the extra discount feature
in your pricing settings and then hopefully by snoozing them get it keep
it and you just snooze your other four listings indefinitely that'll solve your
problem so number three so this is also about a setting it's about your
cancellation policies so you can have either flexible moderate or strict on
instant book but there are extra strictness settings they're super strict
thirty is super strict sixty which is where people don't get refunds it's like
within sixty days this is reserved for non instant book
properties and the reason why I think everybody has this is some luxury
properties that you do extra screening on like mansions and stuff like that if
so many books far in advance holds on to the listing for you know 45 days out and
then cancels on you a luxury property is a hard time getting booked in a short
window most people plan far far ahead for stuff like that so that's why Airbnb
has a super strict 60 is to protect large or luxury properties from having
these problems with turnover so use it if you have super big properties that
nobody else has then turn off instant book and say you're super strict this is
60 you won't regret it so number four speaking of strictness settings if you
want to be listed in the work collection let's say you have a bunch of Studios in
one bedrooms near convention centers you have to have your strictness setting for
your cancellation policy set to moderate it cannot be on strict sorry guys but it
might be worth the trade-off depending on where your listing is maybe set your
strictness down to moderate you might get an extra benefit from being in a
collection you still have to be super hosts but you get the point so number
five Airbnb is API which is basically a fancy word for the way software
communicates with other software if only attaches let's say like that with other
software through the admin account and here's
what I mean let's say you use an automation software like tokete dusty
wheelhouse something like that if any of them advertise like instant
communication which is not the iCal export and import but an instant two-way
communication with Airbnb if you want to link your account to that software you
cannot use a co-host account okay so if you're a co-host or if you've made a
coalesced account like we do we make multiple co-host accounts to manage your
properties and the admin account is only to manage the money and resolutions if
you do that like we do you have to make sure that you link the admin account
with the automation channel management software okay so if your co-host you
want to put this in your contracts with your clients that if they want to use a
channel manager to manage multiple channels they have to do this and then
give you access to the channel manager got it okay that brings us to number 6
so like we just said admin accounts get special things that other accounts don't
get and one big one is resolutions only the admin account can issue refunds or
request money so if you have an automated business through primary
co-hosts and secondary co-hosts you're still gonna have to get on your own
account if you want to request money this means that you still have to be
available to your business and don't overlook this thing is if you don't
accept or decline resolutions and you just let time go by that guests can call
after 72 hours and then they can win a resolution because you were silent so
don't forget this and don't let it pass you by
number 7 super host status has changed as of April 1st it's no longer what it
used to be there were these assessment periods and they'd look at your last six
months and say oK you've got a lot of five-star ratings you didn't cancel on
any guests etc well they've changed this they still do assessments based on
cancellations over the last period of time but instead of this five star over
six months period of time they're doing a lifetime tracking now so you have to
have a 4.8 star average over the lifetime of your account so what I
recommend for you is if you have too many reviews like say 500 plus and you
are under 4.7 like if you're a 4.6 4.5 on
which is you know sad I'm sorry that's your that's your account sorry to hear
that you're going to erase that account what you're gonna do first is set up a
new account make new Airbnb profiles for all of your listings get that thing
ready do an iCal link so that way you import all of your current bookings and
then I want you to shut down your old account and start using your new one but
also only do this if you're finally getting five-star reviews I need you to
fix your review problems whatever's causing under five star ratings you need
to make sure you fix that first then make your new account and start on the
right foot if you want to be super oast you're going to have to do this you will
never reach super house if you have over a thousand reviews and your review
settings like if you review average is four point five you will need over like
two thousand five hundred five star reviews only to get over four point
eight there's no other way and that seems unrealistic okay
so number eight super hosts also gets something else they get an SEO boost so
there's two ways that you can get an SEO boost on Airbnb aside from of course
changing your listing and making it happen so if your listings brand-new
you'll get an SEO boost for the first three months which helps you keep up
with other established listings and that's why they do it but now after your
super host you get an SEO boost - I can't tell you how dramatic that boost
is but it still counts so every little bit counts with SEO guys don't overlook
that it could be important and really mean hundreds of dollars for your
business per month or listing maybe so number nine there are actually coupons
for desks hiding in your account okay let me explain so go to your calendar on
the desktop or go to your calendar icon at the bottom of your app okay so once
you're on it it's phones on take a look get getting your app and take a look so
log in click on the calendar icon at the bottom and you're gonna notice you you
know you're gonna have on the left and right swipe you can see all of your
calendars and then of course your check-ins and check-out well above that
you should see a section that says we have ideas for you you know
actually this might be in the progress section of your app and I'm sorry I'm
using my phone to help me with this video so I'm not gonna look so on your
app you'll see either in the calendar or the progress section at the top it'll
have a left and right swipe words as ideas for your booking click on those
and you're going to notice that some of them say offer 11% or offer 15% off
these couple of dates the 18th through 20th if you do that it'll actually make
a coupon the same exact style coupon that you get when you're a new property
ok that coupon will increase people's action when they click on your listing
and use your listing no increased likelihood that they will act you can
always raise your rates a little bit for those days too to offset how steep the
discount was because you don't get to choose what percent discount they'll
give you a coupon offer and you're stuck with it ok now if you're on a desktop
this is the easier way to find it get on your desktop go to your calendar for
your listing so go to one listing manage the listing calendar for that one
listing and on the right side on that sidebar you'll see the same thing that
I'm talking about that you'll find in the app where you have ideas how to
improve your listings occupancy percentage ignore everything else
because it's gonna tell you to turn on Smart pricing don't it's gonna tell you
to lower your rate by 63 percent don't just use the coupon feature got it ok so
number 10 surprise guys Airbnb is a software and it has bugs
alright this is costing me a lot of time and I'll tell you why so when you make a
new listing you're gonna set everything you're gonna make your house rules and
we'll do a video and what your house rules should be later because you should
put some extra house rules you'll put what time people check in check out how
many days in advance what your prices are everything but sometimes when you
hit that publish button it screws up and it will erase things ok so you need to
go back and double check all of your listings when you publish it because my
house rules have disappeared so I've had somebody booked and they didn't have any
house rules to read so now they weren't aware of certain things maybe they've
they interacted with the building wrong they've brought a pet that they weren't
supposed to they smoked when they weren't told that there should be like a
penalty we do a two hundred dollar per day penalty if somebody smokes in the
unit and if it was not in the house rules when they booked
we can't enforce it so double-check your listings when you publish them because
Airbnb does make mistakes it is not perfect these ten I hope they
help you and of course you have any questions I'll go into more detail in
the comments so leave a message in the comments and by the way guys if you
haven't subscribed to this channel yet it's about time so thank you for
watching air being the automated and I will see you on the other side