Airbnb Hosting Tips: TOP 5 THINGS I WISH I KNEW WHEN STARTING OUT!

Hey guys! This is Richard, founder of Short Term Rental Secrets .com. Today the Top five things I wish I knew before I got started on the Air B&B. I hope you enjoy. Have a lower minimum night stay requirement. When I got started I thought it would be really difficult to have one or two night minimums and I thought it would be a pain and I didn't think that people would book like the Monday Tuesday night so I thought gee I'm going to make this a little bit more convenient and a little bit longer term and that's going to help me fill up the entire month if I have a five night minimum I only need four or five guests to fill up the entire month. But in reality what I found is having a shorter period of time and I typically use two night minimums means that I have more guests, more turnover, I have less concern about those Tuesday, Wednesday periods because believe it or not people want to travel. So don't worry about the number of night minimum unless you're in a resort place and it's only weekends. But if you're anywhere that has any sort of business associated with it or conferences or events and entertainment worry not about the middle of the week as much as you think you might. And what I found is that's actually increased my revenue tremendously. I know I've talked about it a lot is to try dynamic pricing. I happen to use Beyond Pricing. I think it's fabulous and if you click up here you can actually watch an interview that I did with Ian the founder. But changing your prices on a daily basis is really important because there's things that happen that affects supply and demand, like if there was a big event happening in your neck of the woods you wouldn't necessarily know about it you might get picked off and leave money on the table but conversely if there's a big event in your neighborhood and you can double or triple your income for two or three nights that might make your month so using something like beyond pricing is fantastic. You can go ahead and in the comments section will put the affiliate link where you can sign up for a free trial we get a little bit of help it'll help you I highly recommend it. Try dynamic pricing it'll really make a big difference for you. The third thing I wish I knew is just how important reviews are and how to get them so what I've learned over time is to ask for them - it's really easy. Just ask for them. When I send a guest check-in instructions at the very end I say: We really care, we want to earn your 5-star review, please let me know what we can do to make stay better and earn that review. Likewise when they check out we send a follow up that says you know we hope you had a great time please take a moment to leave us a five star review and just being real subtle about like - five star review - it sort of sets their expectations that lets them know what you're hoping for, lets them know what you're striving for, so just ask for it. What we've found is it really makes a huge difference. People are more than happy to do it they just need that little bit of reminder and once you set their expectations that you're looking for a five-star review they actually give it unless there's something that's wrong. Now, five star reviews mean a lot more money in your pocket because of an SEO perspective. Airbnb is going to put you up higher you're going to earn super host status. So you really want that and the best way to do it like anything else in life is asked for it. Airbnb is more than just a booking platform. In fact, it's an entire ecosystem, it's a universe of companies that have built their entire businesses around servicing Airbnb hosts and guests. Go to the Airbnb site, check out the partner links. There's all sorts of companies than services that connect via API to your calendar they know who's coming and who's going and when. So whatever your headache is whether it's check-in and key drop or cleaning after they depart you name it - it's there. The fifth and final tip I wish I'd known when I started my business is the importance of instant book. Make sure that you accept instant bookings. It will drive more revenue and if you're concerned use the setting that I use which limits people the ability to book on instant book they have to be Airbnb current guests and they also have to have favorable reviews so if they've used Airbnb in the past and other hosts have rated them favorably that's good enough for me I automate it. I scale and it saves me so much back and forth and waiting and the user experience is better and I get better placement all that translates into more revenue for me. So I hope you found this video helpful. If you did smash the like button down here and go ahead and subscribe up here! We're going to be filming more content like this that is going to put more revenue in your pocket. Tips, advice, suggestions. Stay tuned. There's a lot more coming. Thanks so very much and have a great day!

Channel: STR University

Views: 294,643

Rating: 4.9589086 out of 5

Keywords: airbnb hosting, airbnb tips, airbnb hosting tips, airbnb help, short term rental secrets, real estate investing, airbnb, shorttermrentalsecrets, airbnb listing tips, short term rental, airbnb host, how to airbnb, getting started airbnb, hosting on airbnb, airbnb secrets

Id: A7Nvz8_ZFz0

Length: 4min 18sec (258 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 06 2017