Airbnb 123 2. Setting up to host people in your home and make money
Mon 10 Feb 2014As a long term, vastly experienced Couch Surfer, Airbnb is a natural progression from supplying free accommodation in my home to now having people rent rooms on a regular basis. In this second article in the series, we discuss some of the reasons to host with airbnb.com, what you should do with your house and listing.
Hosting with Airbnb should be fun and profitable. Let's see if it is right for you with this quiz:
1. Are you a person that enjoys the company of others, social and/or easy going?
2. Are you relaxed about the upkeep of your house and state of your kitchen?
3. Do you have a reasonable amount of spare time or work from home?
If you answered
Yes to all three then there is a good chance that Hosting with Airbnb will work for you.
I personally think that the desire to host with Airbnb should go beyond income generation and you should want to have people stay with you. Having said that, having a nice place in a nice part of the world would seem to guarantee that will do quite well from hosting. I know of one friend hat has a fabulous house with a great outlook, pool and more that has made excellent amount of income, while my own property is oriented to a lower budget (but the house cost a lot less :).
Ultimately its going to show up in your reviews. My experience with hosting via CouchSurfing.org has definitely improved my hospitality skills. I thus find it easy and enjoyable to service the various needs of guests in small numbers... A recent review praised my ability to find the guest a TV at short notice so he could watch the Tennis. Other reviews note the friendly relaxed style of my house. Inviting people for a glass of wine or be included with dinner to me seems natural.
From what I understand the level of social interaction I offer is a bit of rarity... and I expect that reviews of the more "remote" hosts are more basic.
Setting up your house for hosting people with Airbnb
Here are a couple of tips for setting up for simple hosting
- Put a key lock on the guest door door
- Consider putting a separate bar bridge for the guest to have their food / beverages if they wish
- Consider a bit of a theme - as it happened I was gifted some homewares and linen that gives my guest room a slightly antique feel (and that is not because the gifts are old!)
- Get some tourist maps, brochures and attraction guides to supply
- Your house should generally be neat and tidy
- Pets should be managed around guests and smells avoided
- Don't overspend on setting up in case you work out that its not for you
Extra tips: There is an unlimited number of other suggestions and Airbnb have some very good tutorials to assist you with setting up your place.
IMPORTANT: Before you start - you are going to need a full set of reasonably high quality photos of your place, room, frontage, some pictures from around the area. If you have a friend with a decent SLR and a wide angle lens (18mm - 22mm) its perfectly reasonable to ask them around for a few drinks (after they have taken some photos for you). If possible resize the photos to around 1000 pixels across the top.
Setting up your listings:
1. From the airbnb.com web site and login
2. Click "List your space" from the top right of the web page
3. A very friendly page appears prompting you for the fundamentals of your listing including type of dwelling, type of space available, number of people it accommodates and the location. Click 'List your space".
4. Airbnb will then take you step by step through Calendar, Pricing, Overview, Photos, Address and listing.
Get yourself started on Airbnb.com - do me a favour and create your Airbnb.com account using this link.
You will get a credit and so will I :
Sign up here
Related Links:Sign up to Airbnb.com
