Ep 68: How to Make Money in the Airbnb Ecosystem Even if You Don’t Have a Short-Term Rental
Did you know you DON’T need to own a short-term rental to create great revenue streams in the Airbnb ecosystem?
It’s true! And today, I’m going to unpack 4 different methods I’m either already using or bringing into my business early in 2021.
Enjoy and I hope you take undistracted action!
Also… I’ve added a previously unannounced bonus to my early buyers… It’s called the Vacation Rentals Labs
In it, I’ll unpack exactly how we’re adding properties to our portfolio in 2021.
And… I’ll be showing you how I have brought and am bringing online the additional revenue streams that I mention in today’s episode!
This is an insane bonus!
Head over to ginnytownsend.com/rental right now to secure your place at the top of the early bird list and I’ll let you know when it’s LIVE this month!
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/estimate to claim access to this powerful free tool!
Thanks for joining me, and until next time, continue to be up and to the right.
EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION
What’s up, Podcast Nation! Ginny Townsend here and I am so thankful that you’ve joined me today how to make money in the air B&B ecosystem. Even if you don’t have a short-term rental now killer, is that right? But before we dive in I have something important I want to share with you, you know, did you want to create some income diversification? Right? You know that being involved in the air?
B&B economy is an important way to build income to build cash flow to even build net worth in 2021 and Beyond, you know, you want a vacation rental to create that revenue and like I said have that long-term cash flow coming in but you don’t know where to start. What does the whole process look like? What do you even do? How expensive is it? How can time consuming is it right? Let me tell you what I actually did.
Did it on accident? That’s right. I am an accidental six-figure Airbnb host. I figured it out as I was doing it as I needed to do it and you know what? I’m even more in love with this ecosystem with this model than ever before. So this is exactly why I created the program the six-figure vacation rental roadmap how to find furnish and fill a profitable short-term rental it.
All about giving you the step by step instructions simplifying the process on like I said finding Furnishing and filling a profitable profitable vacation rental. These are the things I would have loved. Oh my gosh to have had back when I started. Oh my gosh, I would have loved it. And you know what? I can’t wait to share it all with you and if you’ve heard in previous episodes, I recently added a before then unannounced bonus to my
early buyers and it is called the vacation rental labs in it. I’ll unpack exactly how we’re adding properties to our portfolio in 2021. So nothing outdated obviously all very real very right now. Also I will be showing you how I have brought and am bringing online the additional revenue streams that I mentioned in today’s episodes. Those will also be included in the rental Labs. So even if you don’t want to actually own,
Own a short-term rental, these Labs can still help you create multiple streams of Revenue in the air B&B ecosystem. Yeah and insane bonus, huh? So head on over to Jenny townsend.com rental right now to secure your place at the top of the early bird list and I’ll let you know when it is live and it is going to go live this month. I am so excited about it because I am I am putting on the finishing touches going back and making sure that all of the resources all of the
Check lists, all of the Google spreadsheets and stuff that I’ve used in becoming a six-figure host. I want to make sure it’s all really straightforward and all present in that course. So again head over to Jenny townsend.com to rental today to get started. Okay, let’s go ahead and dig into today’s episode.
Yeah, so the air B&B ecosystem if that phrase is a little puzzling to you. It’s interesting. So most category Kings and that is another phrase. Whereas like if someone kind of owns the industry, you know how like their names are synonymous with the industry there in so like Kleenex, right? They own the facial tissue market, right and
And kind of a little bit older of an example like that Xerox. Maybe I’m just not quite in that world anymore like in the I’m obviously not more in the corporate world right now, but it was, you know, people wanted to make a copy like all just Xerox that versus like I’ll just copy that so Air B&B those are category Kings right Air. B&B is a category came to like, oh, do you have an air B&B like that technically doesn’t make sense.
Or like oh, I’ll just Google it right that’s another example are being an Airbnb is synonymous with a short-term rental with a vacation rental, you know, whatever the term you want to use and oftentimes these category Kings. They create their own ecosystem around it. So it’s almost like they become a planet and different businesses are kind of drawn into their orbital rotation like little moons and in this system in the air B&B ecosystem.
That looks like software for sure like managing the property optimizing the pricing all of that. There’s even lenders that specialize in short-term rentals. So they understand the market. They it’s very very interesting research tools. So actually finding property totally. I mean, they were developed around Airbnb things cleaning services specialty services that are needed specifically for this ecosystem, right and many many more but those are just you know, so just to sum to give you an idea.
Dia and there is a way to take part in this ecosystem and kind of ride the coattails of Air B&B. Even if you don’t have a short-term rental, how cool is that? So these what I’m mentioning to you today are things that I’m either already doing or am in plans to bring this online into our business like this quarter right like pretty much immediately and and ongoing
Right. Okay, so I have four ideas for you that again, you don’t need to own or have control over a property to be able to make a decent revenue from the air B&B ecosystem. The first one is I mean, it’s I think the most obtainable the most achievable with least amount of work is refer a host. So you actually do have to have some kind of a Hosting account too.
Able to do this, but once you have that Hosting account when you refer a host and they put a place online and secure their first booking. So what within 24 hours after their first guest checks in you will receive six hundred dollars for referring and it’s not just a one-sided game either Airbnb will give the new host a forty dollar bonus as well. So just a couple of those
A couple of thousand dollars extra each month right easy-peasy. Okay, and so on that line of needing to be a host, like I said to be able to give that refer a host bonus, you don’t have to have a place or have control of a place to do. I’m calling it Place Management. So it’s not quite Property Management because this could be like a mother-in-law Suite it’s not
Ali a full property management but managing someone’s place and managing their listing on Air B&B so having the communication with potential guests confirming their bookings making sure they have what they need answering their questions communicating with owner if there are any issues that that you as the place manager can’t solve even you know up you could even
Take care of things. Like if there’s a clogged toilet calling someone to take care of that that is added value obviously like that. Those are all the things that when I talk to people that they don’t want to deal with with having a short-term rental. It’s it’s really having to do anything at all. Once you have the the property live. So if you can take those things off of someone’s hands.
Amazing people will pay you to do the work. They don’t want to do right and there are a couple of different approaches to earning revenue for Place Management and that could be either a flat fee. So a flat monthly fee or a percentage of earnings. So the traditional longer term rental strategy is a flat fee, but I think a percentage of earnings is a much better suit much better fit it suits.
Short-term rentals much better because there’s a lower risk to the owner. Right? It’s not like if you don’t bring in bookings, they don’t pay you right? So it’s easier to get to a yes, but then also it doesn’t cap here upside either so you could I’d if you had just a flat fee of I don’t know like 250 bucks something like that. That’s like a long-term rental maybe amount and you brought.
Brought them like $10,000 worth of bookings. You would just get paid 250 bucks, but you would always get paid to and 50 bucks if you brought in 0 so, I don’t know. I don’t like capping my upside and I also like it any kind of a situation that I’m in any kind of a business relationship. I’m in I love for it to be a win-win. So for all those reasons, I think percentage of earnings is the most business savvy approach for this type of a revenue stream in the air B&B ecosystem.
Thirdly and kind of similarly is listing optimization. So if you see other Airbnb listings in your area, or you know what it doesn’t technically have to be in your area. But as I explained it, you’ll see why it might be easier if it’s in your area helping them optimize their listing like, you know, if they’re if they’re listing isn’t optimized they’re probably not bringing in the amount of money that they
Thought they could or that they want to or maybe even that they need to and so what listing optimization is not is necessarily project management or Place Management, right? You’re not necessarily saying hey, I’m going to interact with potential guests. I’ll secure bookings all answer their questions. That’s not what this is at all.
Listing optimization is saying okay. Let’s get some real photos taken. You know, it’s probably photos photos right? There is a book that I will link to in the show notes about optimizing your Airbnb listing and it was actually written by someone who worked at Airbnb in their kind of search algorithm type of department. So he knows what he’s talking about and he mentioned how important photos actually are.
Because I guess I had the Airbnb algorithm can kind of pick up if a photo is not really professional and and and you might be like wait, why would they do that? Because they are wanting to make sure that their guests have a great experience that their users have a great experience. And so they want the first listings that you know on that first page. They want them to be beautiful options because Airbnb once the guests to book that’s the only way that they get paid so photos are really important. So even just offering to say
hey, okay, you know photos will cost x amount and then you can obviously maybe build in a small percentage kind of a little bit like a contractor model there to have a photographer come in and these this isn’t very expensive. It really isn’t like a real having them like real estate photos taken between a hundred and two hundred fifty dollars. I’d say between like depending on the actual listing but it’s very like the ROI is insane because often times depending on their place that could
Recouped in one night stay right and then another way to help someone optimize their listing is through pricing. So they may be leaving a ton of money on the table by way undercharging but they could also be alienating guests by charging too much so and yeah, so there’s yeah there’s there is a decent amount of strategy to pricing and offering homeowners a way like a road map.
You know arranged as strategy for optimizing their pricing will help them and then also things like the description etcetera all of that will help their listing get optimized and will help them make more money. So that would be more of like not necessarily an ongoing like the place management. That would be more transactional. So you get you know, paid per project.
Okay, and then the fourth Revenue model, I like and M adding into my business in the air B&B ecosystem is Furnishing others listings. So this may either sound like a dream or a nightmare but depending on whether or not you like the idea of Furnishing, but I really do I think I have a knack for it, you know just a little bit of a personal note, but this is often.
Times a barrier to entry someone may have a rental property there like a man. I could probably really make a lot more money. If this was on Airbnb versus a long-term rental, but I don’t want to furnish this whole thing. Like, I don’t know where to start that would be so much work. So again along with the place management if you can offer to do something that someone doesn’t want to do that has value in it for them. You can make some decent money, right? And again, this is also like the listing optimization idea. It’s kind of like a
Model you would build in a margin for yourself on top of the expenses of the Furnishings very simple, right? So again, it is refer a host Place Management listing optimization and Furnishing others listings. Yeah. Those are really good. There’s a lot of gold in there. And I know this is high level but this is what this is a podcast. This is how we do it on a podcast, right? So again, if you want to learn how I’ve brought an am bringing these revenue streams into my business
This in 2021. Even if you don’t actually have or want to have a short-term rental go put your name on the early bird waitlist and I will let you know exactly when the program and the vacation rental Labs were all unpack. All of these revenue streams for you is live. So hop over to Jenny townsend.com to rental. Again. That’s Jenny townsend.com to rental to sign up today. I thank
You so much for joining me. And you know what until next time continue to be up into the right?