A lot of people have been asking me like,
Sean, what does it take to be an Airbnb host?
How hard is it? And my answer is never really straight.
It's not that it's simple.
It's definitely not. It's complex.
There's a lot to learn and a lot to know,
and a lot of moving parts in an Airbnb business.
But at the same time, it's not hard either.
There's not one thing that makes it super difficult to run an Airbnb business
that'll keep an average person from being successful.
So in this video, I want to talk to you
about what it takes to be successful on Airbnb.
So that way you can do it, too.
By the end of this video, you'll be ready to host.
I guarantee it.
Okay,
line, let's start with the obvious.
Airbnb is a software.
It's a piece of technology.
They have a website, they have an app, and it gives you the opportunity to make
millions of dollars, even per year, on their platform.
And the way that people make money on Airbnb is by putting property on Airbnb.
So that way someone else can stay there.
You can either be the owner of the property.
You could represent the owner,
or you could be a tenant of the property with permission from the owner in order
to put it on Airbnb, then advertise the space.
Now the spaces are typically furnished.
They're ready for somebody to check in, much like a hotel.
Then someone stays the night stays
the week stays the month, and then they check out and move on their way later.
And you make however much money the guest is willing to pay you when they travel.
And if you do what I do,
which is where you pay your rent first and then you do this.
You get to keep whatever is in the middle.
So if your rent is one $500 a month, then you make $4,000 a month.
An Airbnb, you get to keep roughly that $2,500 in the middle.
So that's how people make money in Airbnb.
Simple enough, right?
Get a house, put it in an Airbnb, someone moves in.
But because it's not a typical real estate venture, right?
You don't just buy a property,
find a yearlong tenant, and they write you a monthly check, and it's pretty passive.
There's more to Airbnb than just having and listing a property.
You're going to need some skills.
You're gonna need to know really what it takes in here in order for you to be
successful, because the more you know, the better you'll do.
In a past video, I talked about the seven parts of an Airbnb business.
You know, it's funny, those seven parts are pretty much
the seven parts of any other business just the same.
So you'll have things like marketing and sales and operations and human
resources and all this other stuff that goes into it.
So let's break down how those kind of affect your future Airbnb business
and kind of what you want to have to be prepared to host on Airbnb.
As an Airbnb host, you'll have the the opportunity to like list of space.
And in order to list of space,
you're going to need to have photos of your space.
That's probably one of the biggest things I have a home and then have some photos.
And those photos have to be good.
So you need to understand what looks attractive to a traveler.
So somebody's going to be going through Airbnb listings and they may find your
space, and when they find your space, they're going to go through your photos.
Did you know that six out of every ten travelers on Airbnb?
Their first action when looking at an Airbnb listing is to skip any
reading and just go through the photo real ad.
Look through all the photos and see what they like.
A lot of people will make their decisions solely on the photos.
Reviews are close.
Second, I think when people like,
consider a space, they'll do photos reviews and then read the descriptions.
So in order to take good photos, you're going to have to know a couple things.
So there's a lot that goes to the point
that you actually have your space ready for photography.
So you'll have to take an empty home.
You'll have to decide what furniture goes in the home.
You'll have to decide what you think looks good.
So you'll want to do a little bit
of research on interior design, the basic best practices on interior design.
You don't have to be awesome.
My first Airbnb listings were very, very basic.
I just like, hey, here's a couch, coffee table, TV stand, TV,
here's a little bit of artwork and they looked, I guess,
as well as some man in his mid twenties without any education on design can do.
And for Airbnb at the time, that definitely did the trick.
It's getting more competitive.
Now I'm going to be honest.
So you have to do a better job.
You can still make money just taking your home as is and placing it on Airbnb.
But in order to get the best photos,
you're going to want to work on the aesthetic or the look of your space.
So aspects of interior design should be the size of your furniture as they scale
inside of your home and fully utilizing your space.
So that way it flows.
Well, you kind of walk into the living room and walk out another way,
and just the general flow of the living room looks good.
You don't want to have what's called like a Baron or a stark looking home.
That's probably when I got that reviews for my listings.
When people stayed, they would say, Well, this was a great home.
Overall.
I like the location and everything, but there's just was no artwork
on the walls and it looks very plain and so it wasn't really inviting.
So you're going to add some decor, you're going to add some greenery,
you're going to buy a couple more pieces of furniture than you would like to,
and you'll build out that home to look like pretty.
And when you take photos, you're gonna take what is good now because
you designed it better because you cared for the design.
And now you're going to use photography best practices.
And I have other videos, of course, on how to take photography.
But essentially you want to shoot low and across the room.
You're not going to shoot down at your furniture.
That's just like number one.
And also you want to be mindful
of lighting one like window with a bunch of light and then no light.
Anywhere else in the house can look very much poor.
And even if you don't have a professional to do your first photography,
as long as you just get the lighting down and you get the angle of your photo down,
you can pretty much get a good eight out of ten on your photos.
And as long as you do better than
the average Joe, you'll get a better performance, especially your main photo.
Airbnb calls it a hero photo.
We all call it a thumbnail.
It's going to be the first photo that anybody sees.
When you're listing is advertised.
You would have a good, colorful, bright photo in order to attract guests.
So it will take the ability to design a space to be ready for photography
and to do a good basic job of taking photos.
That is like the biggest first part of being an Airbnb host is marketing, right?
Design the home and then market the home well through photography.
Next is your follow through.
You've sold a bill of goods to a traveler per se.
Somebody's going to reach out to you on Airbnb and ask you about your space.
You're going to need to be available.
This is not passive, so it's going to take your effort and your care and your
attention for a while until you hire other people to run your business for you.
Just like me.
I have dozens of housekeepers and multiple managers, and now they run everything.
But they are all available.
And that allows me to work on the business
from the outside instead of being stuck in the business.
But they are fast.
They are fast when guests send messages or send requests.
And so you're going to have to be available for your future guests.
You're going to have to be friendly.
Don't be short with your guests, right?
Well, don't use that short.
Like what are you doing?
The R and then the you kind of text you want to use full proper grammar.
You are a customer service person at this moment in time, and by being pleasant
and available, people will book your space and then when they arrive,
they're going to need to have a generally easy check in.
Now this takes a little bit of intuition and a little bit of empathy.
So that's another thing that you're going
to want to make sure that you kind of check the box for is you want to put
yourself in your guests shoes when they come in and they arrive at your space.
I did a video way way back on how to be the best host ever.
And one of the things that I talk about
in that video is that you need to put everything in good, intuitive order.
So, for example, if your fridge has a water filter, where should the cups be?
You've got twelve cabinets to put cups in.
Well, you should probably put the cups in the cabinet closest to the water filter.
Your coffee cups should be in the cabinet closest to your coffee machine, etcetera.
Right.
So everything should be in, like, an intuitive layout.
And so this means that when you design your space, when you're planning for your
guests to check in, when you're ready to host these guests,
you are thinking about just a little details that are going to matter to them.
So empathy, really at the core of it is
going to be what really allows you to give your guests a positive guest experience.
You'll also have to be pretty darn
organized, especially if you have multiple Airbnbs, because what's funny about
an Airbnb and this is what also especially separates it from being a landlord is
you're going to be responsible for inventory.
We're talking about shampoo, toilet paper,
paper towels, other consumables that people will use, like coffee and stuff.
And these things will start to run out in your Airbnb as people use them naturally.
Right.
So you'll need to be on top of restocking things in these homes.
Now, we at scale with 100 properties.
We have everything in reserve. Right.
We've got a big amount of storage.
And then we also have
closets inside of our apartment buildings that have a little bit of storage.
So that way, when an apartment is running out, we have a local storage inside
the building that we can get all the extra stuff.
But then centrally, we have tons of stuff,
and we can get things cheaper by buying in bulk in we have this I guess this
process for you could say even logistics for our inventory control,
but at the very basic in the beginning, even if you have one apartment,
you're going to want to make sure that you've got a good attention to detail.
So you don't miss restocking things and you're going to want to stay organized.
So that way you never forget about a part of your listing, and you can even write
this all out and have it, like on an Excel spreadsheet and track
these types of things, especially when you're new.
I'll tell you that when you're new, a lot of this will be overwhelming.
This is natural.
When something's new, you're going to be overwhelmed.
So you're going to look at things a lot more than somebody like me.
A lot of stuff is just like wallpaper to me now, but every new detail
of a business you're like, did I do the coffee? Did I fold the bed?
Right? Is the guest going to be cool? There's all these things that you're going
to wonder when you're new, you don't know if it matters or not.
You don't know what the consequences are in the back end.
If not doing a good job by being organized, keeping good notes,
then keeping track of these little things, you won't let the little things slip up,
and it'll save you from having a stressful day as a host.
And stress is probably the key cause of mistakes.
When you're stressed,
you forget stuff for you behave improperly or you're short with people.
And I'll tell you that the only time
that I've ever been short with my guests and didn't like it.
Five star reviews for guest communication was I was stressed out of my mind about
something, and I just didn't give the guests the time that they deserved.
You know what?
That actually leads me to another big important one.
You're going to need to have some patience, right?
Building a business is not something that anybody can do.
It's not for everyone.
You're not entitled to success.
Nobody owes you success.
You're going to have to work for it,
and you're going to have to build through people and with people.
So you're going to have hard guests.
You're gonna have good guests.
You're gonna have hard housekeeper when
you start hiring housekeepers, sometimes they're not gonna do a good job,
and it's going to be wonderful when it's easy.
But you need to to make sure you do just
as good of a job when it's not easy, right?
It's on you as a business owner to make sure that everything goes well for your
guests, you owe them that you're also going to need to like this video.
It's super important for your success as an Airbnb host to give it a like.
And of course, subscribe because there's
tons of stuff that you're going to learn in depth here on this channel.
And if you're not yet subscribed, this is your opportunity to.
So I welcome you to this channel.
If you're a new Hoster looking to be a host, welcome.
This one is funny because it may seem like
we don't need to talk about it, because right now you're doing a great job.
You're watching this channel, but you need to stay open minded
and willing to learn if you're going to be an Airbnb host now, right now, you're new.
So you're such a sponge.
You're soaking up all of this information and you want to learn at all.
And you're gonna binge watch these videos.
But I notice professionals as they get more tenured in whatever it is
that they're good at, they start to crystallize their
experiences and start to solidify their perspective on whatever it is that they
are good at, and they're less willing to adept and less willing to change.
And they stop searching for new information and people when they become
good and they peak and then they stop reinvesting in themselves intellectually,
they become slowly, worse and worse at what they do.
And the rest of the world continues
to learn and grow and innervate because there's always new information.
And if you're unwilling to pick up that new information or you just stop
making that action of learning, you become less competitive.
And so if you want to stay good at this,
well, after you get good, you want to stay good at this.
You need to constantly learn and you need
to constantly challenge the way that you look at the business that you do.
As general as this last 1 may sound,
it's probably the most important and I cannot speak enough on this topic,
which is you need to treat Airbnb like a business.
So we talked about the fact that you need
to market your space and there's customer service before the guest arrives.
And there's organization like tracking
inventory and restocking, toilet paper and little things like that.
But there's so much more to running
a business because you'll be hiring housekeepers.
So having an interview process and HR will
pop up, you're going to be controlling your costs.
Are you spending too much on furniture?
Are you spending too much on your shampoo? Are you losing things or guests taking
things and you're not billing those guests for the losses that you're incurring
and you're taking little mini losses along the way that affects your long term
profitability? Are you not monitoring your competition's price points and making sure
that your price effective? So that way your calendar fills up?
Are you not looking at those market forces like increased demand or decrease demand
for seasonality in your market? Are you not trying to control consumer behavior
with your pricing strategy? I mean, pricing strategy is my absolute favorite
topic because running at an Airbnb the only couple big, big ways that running
an Airbnb is different than running a hotel? Is there's a one to one
relationship with the way you market the property and the availability or
the inventory? So to give you, like, a better example, there's a hotel that has
200 rooms and a hundred of those rooms are like generic King bed suites, right?
Or generic double Queen suites.
And they can do a bunch of marketing.
And as 50 60 people book, they haven't assigned a room to those guests yet.
When the guest checks in,
they'll start handing off room keys and say, okay, you're in room 240.
You're room 270.
They don't have to create this one to one relationship.
They just have to generically know that they have enough inventory.
So that way they don't accidentally double book people.
But you your address.
Apartment number ten.
When you sell apartment number ten off obviously, you can't continue to market
apartment number ten those days, and so it becomes harder and harder
to fill an Airbnb after it has some bookings.
When your calendar is wide open, you can have any bookings in the world.
Somebody could say for a day, they could say for 30 days.
But if every single weekend is booked
on your calendar and then all you have is like Sunday through Thursday, available.
People have to stay five days or less in order to fit into those remaining days.
So treating your Airbnb
with the same kind of just generic blast approach that a hotel would have is
actually going to cause you to Underperform.
You will make less money.
So you need to think about all these little things.
Being an Airbnb host isn't inherently hard.
There's just a lot that goes into it, so there's a lot to learn.
This is a broad topic and this channel.
Of course, there's a couple of hundred
videos on how to host on Airbnb, so you're in the right spot, but stay open minded.
Don't look at it like a real estate play.
Don't look at it as one little thing.
If you're good at sales, you're good at copywriting, good at photography.
Get a customer service. Great.
Be good at that one thing.
But understand that that's not going to be
the only thing that you're going to come and build your Airbnb business with.
So thanks for watching Airbnb Automated.
I hope you all have a killer.
2020 hosting at Airbnb.
If you need me put in the comments, ask some questions for now and then.
Otherwise. I'll see you on the other side.