Ep 53: Four Powerful Strategies for Finding Your Corner of the Airbnb Marketplace… A Marketer’s Secret to Having a Vacation Rental That’s Profitable Month After Month

Are you considering a vacation rental as an additional revenue stream? (Because despite this oddball year, furnished rentals outside of large cities have SOARED!) If so, this episode was created just for you!

 

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Today, I discuss the Airbnb marketplace from a marketer’s mind… With that field as my background, I talk about the idea of creating “hooks” that catch people’s attention.

In this case, creating a “hook” is having a strategy to let your Airbnb listing get SEEN and BOOKED by potential guests.

In this episode, I discuss 4 specific hooks that have evergreen potential on vacation rental marketplaces like Airbnb, VRBO, and HomeAway.

1. Uniqueness
2. A-Plus
3. Wow-Factor
4. Location

Interested in learning more about qualifying for an A-Plus listing? Here are more details: https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/2188/how-can-my-listing-qualify-for-the-airbnb-plus-program 

And if you’re curious about how much you could potentially earn with an Airbnb in your area, I can send you a free and pretty powerful tool to help you estimate…

Visit GinnyTownsend.com/rental to claim access to this powerful free tool!

  

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

What’s up, Podcast Nation! Ginny Townsend here, and I am so excited that you’ve joined me today. I have a co-worker with me today. She is just shy of 10 months and is very excited to learn about growing her business and developing an Airbnb revenue stream. And you know, I just kind of feel like 2020 has been one big take your daughter to work day or take your second birthday, right?

This is really the only time I’ve had to record a podcast and so I hope you don’t mind that she is here with me learning all about how to stand out on Airbnb. Okay, so really quick my background is in marketing and there’s something about marketing that is really just about catching people’s attention in the first place. And so you can think of marketing as like, what’s the angle or what’s the hook, too?

Catch people’s attention and draw them in. Well, revenue streams like Airbnb are much the same. I mean you can take any kind of an angle or any kind of approach kind of find your corner of Airbnb and create your own “hook” to catch people’s attention. It’s just it’s like any other marketplace, right?

And so as I was thinking about what else you might need to help make an informed decision to move forward in being an Airbnb host, in bringing a vacation rental to your income portfolio, I thought how about I share four different approaches or angles or kind of hooks to finding your corner of Airbnb sound good?

Okay. So the first one is actually – I had, by the way, I had so much fun looking into this and figure out exactly what I wanted to share with you all. So the first one is being unique so like a unique-ness play and there is definitely room in the Airbnb market for some quirkiness. Now, if you go on to the Airbnb site or their app and you take a look at filters, one of the categories that you can filter down is a unique stay and I took a look at all of the different places. I could find are the different types of unique places I could find and

Here’s a list of the unique places people have listed on Airbnb that you can book. So okay, it starts with a barn a boat a camper, or an RV a campsite, castle. Well, hello! If you have a castle anyone listening to me, if you have a castle you better listed on Airbnb right?! A dome house, a farm stay, hut, an igloo, an island, a lighthouse, a nature lodge, a tent, a tiny house, a tipi, a train. Oh my gosh, amazing or a yurt. So why go with the unique angle? Well, obviously, it’s I think I feel like it has its own merits on like the idea of it being unique but I think there is it could also be quite lucrative as well. So to paint a picture of that the average per night stay

Like per night fee in my category in my area in the Northeast is roughly $189 a night. Okay, so there is a tent.

Rather local a tent that charges a hundred and $69 night and the owner is a super host. He has I want to say it’s approaching a hundred and twenty reviews and I want to say it’s five stars of a hundred and twenty reviews five stars for a tent. How amazing is that? Right? And so I actually thought it would be worthwhile listing off the per night charges that are in my rough area and like I said in my category

Three which is a two-bedroom. It’s $189 a night like a two-bedroom Cottage but check out these more unique places. All right. I’m just going to go through and read the per night charge of $509 night. There’s one that’s $102, $390, $344, $169, $275, $225, $395 $273, $225, $169… That’s another tent, by the way… $435, $314, $225, $371, $475, $389 and then get this $1,300 and there’s one that’s $843.

And by the way, these are all highly rated with a lot of reviews. So and those all fall under the unique category in our rough area in the Northeast. So if you are at all interested

In exploring just seeing like what can someone charged $1,300 a night for or even $200 a night that could be pretty like, you know, about $6,000 a month potential. I think that’s really I think quite interesting. I would want to know more about that right as I build our income portfolio and I hope as you build your income portfolio that that’s something like that an additional six thousand a month. Alright, that’s interesting.

So like I said unique can be quite lucrative.

So the second one is the APlus. So what the Airbnb you know their logo “A” Plus and it’s kind of their higher-end offerings. So they have been verified for quality and design and as I was researching I wanted to let you know specifically the different requirements for achieving the APlus status is obviously quality and design but an easy check-in process, so automated, great hosts with like so as a host you would have a 4.8 rating or higher, all of the essentials like some good coffee…

I thought this was interesting fast Wi-Fi. It really is something that’s just so important. Please don’t skimp on it. If you want to have an Airbnb property with a fully equipped kitchen and in their language, they explained it as “All of the comforts of home plus more.”

So that is what that’s actually the hook or the angle that I’m going towards and it’s something that you can’t with a brand-new listing achieve. So it has to have a proven track record. Just so you know and I will list a link to Airbnb’s explanation of how to qualify for their APlus program in the show notes so you can take a look if that interests you but it takes you to have to have a track record with the property.

With the place and so that just so you know is we’ve lived here for less than a year. So we don’t yet qualify for you know, yeah, we’ve only lived on the East Coast for out like listen, well a little less than a year. So we are that’s our goal. That’s just so you know, that’s my angle and I want to let you know just a quick little again read-through of the prices in my area.

So again, it’s just the standard average that I’m working with in this area is $189 a night, but for APlus’es in the area. All right, I’ll read through $363, $169, $277, $279, $267, $169, $184, $507, $429, $302 $235, $754, $359 and it just goes on and on and on…

Are all well above not all but mostly like 90% of them are above the average Airbnb price in our aream, isn’t that fascinating? So, of course, I want to go for the more lucrative right? Why not if you already have the assets, how can you optimize to get more per night or per month or per year and in our case of APlus? This is what we’re working towards. Okay, so that’s the second one.

The third one is what I call the “wow factor.” So this is very place-specific. So you don’t think that’s one of the things about real estate is there really are no two identical houses. So there might be you might say okay, even in a subdivision a brand-new subdivision, you might have two of the same models, but they have different views or they have you know, some like one might be right behind a green belt where another one’s right in the middle of a subdivision. So there really are no two identical properties.

And so taking a look at what your options are for a wow factor and this is something my coworker also likes this one, but this is a wow factor is something that photographs well, and the hook here the strategy. Here is that it stops the scroll. I mean you’re fighting against unique places. You’re fighting against APlus places, but let’s say oh my gosh, you know, maybe your property has a view or maybe it has a pool or hot tub or there’s something really gorgeous maybe stunning windows or a really unique Unique Interior feature that could be used as your primary image that could again stop the scroll and capture the attention which is it’s that’s really the goal here.

If you don’t capture the attention, you don’t get the booking, right? So there are a couple of different ways to capitalize on this because it may sound like okay, the wow factor one that might be more expensive I don’t know if I can whatever, you know to find a house with a view or an infinity pool or something like that, but you can also capitalize on what’s nearby so if you have a nearby wow factor like a waterfall or a lake or maybe even access to a local trail system or a walkable downtown, you know, when everything opens back up again, or if you close to the ocean.

What could you have as your primary photo is your key photo and the scroll that could stop potential guests from scrolling down to see more and I call that strategy or that hook the wow factor like that key image, right?

So that’s the third one.

And the fourth one is it’s similar, but it is location. So it’s not necessarily a wow factor photo like a waterfall nearby or you know, something like that but think about if people are looking to be in a location there, they’ll find your listing. So right now on Airbnb ought well and just in reality there is a

A big move towards obviously keeping socially distant and so Airbnb’s out in the country and in more Rural and more distanced places are having a banner year now, obviously, this will change but I think there will always be a draw to be out in the country. Right? But it’s something to think that’s just an example right now of being, you know, obviously very timely and or like another

This case you could be near a national or a state park. So, you know, there will always be travelers to a national or a state park so that could be a strategy or a hook to get you noticed and help you carve out your corner on Airbnb. So again, those four hooks are being a unique having a unique place and a plus Place having one that has a wow factor or simply based on.

Location so I hope you find those four angles or hooks extremely helpful. I will have these listed again and the show knows with some helpful links for you. So thank you again for being so welcoming of my little coworker today and I can’t wait to share with you more about adding an air B&B source of income and you know build that into your income portfolio in the episodes to come.

So, until next time continue to be up and to the right.