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Hi, Francisco here! Today, I’m happy to publish a guest post from Rowan Clifford from airbnbsmart.com. Rowan is an expert in Airbnb stuff and he will be sharing with you how to make money with Airbnb it ina practical and easy manner.
Owning your own home can be a blessing and a curse. The comfort and security of owning your own home, followed by the struggle to make repayments. Borrowed to the max we find ourselves with:
“More Month at the end of your Money, Than Money at the end of your Month”.
Sound familiar? This used to be me 🙂 Until I struck gold with the rise of Airbnb.
My house was an awful residential let, wouldn’t cut it as a holiday let, but was a freaking goldmine when it came to Airbnb.
With my passion for all things automated and an obsession for efficient systems, I turned my Airbnb business into an automated money making machine.
Here are my Airbnb Host Tips for making passive income
Guest access
Every guest that checks into your property will need a key for access. The done thing is to arrange to meet the guest to transfer the keys at a specified time. This sucks! Why?
Well, for starters I have a lifeand have got better things to be doing than waiting around all day to hand someone a set of keys.
Plus, there are so many things that can go wrong; Delayed trains, traffic, got lost, or just plain bad communication. Your free time is valuable, and you are better than this.
What you need is a secure key lock box. With a secure key lock box, your guests can arrive at any time and let themselves into the property. All you have to do is message them the code (which will all be automated, more on that later…), and that’s it.
I am not going to go into too much detail here, because this subject is boring as F*#K (apologies to all you lock enthusiasts out there), but if you can just bear with me on this one you will be thanking me in the long run.
A secure key lock box will set you back anywhere from about $50-$300.
For less than $50you will get a lock box with a swivel code that you can attach to the wall outside your house.
Some good examples are:
$150 – $300 will get you a secure adeadly lock with accompanying mobile app that records all exits and entries, you can set unique codes for each new guest, and basically everything else you can think of in a smart lock.
Some good ones are:
- Kwikset SmartCode 916 Touchscreen
- Kwikset 99140-003 SmartCode 914
- Smartphone Managed Keyless Door Lock
- LockState RemoteLock 5i WiFi Electronic
Which one should you choose? Your budget, your choice.
The main point is not what lock you have, just that you have a system set up to avoid the need for you to be physically present to hand over the keys.
Automate communication to make passive income on Airbnb
Answering guest inquiries is a big part of running a successful Airbnb property. If you’ve read any of my other posts (you have, haven’t you?) then I’m sure your bookings are going through the roof.
All these extra bookings meanmore time glued to your phone responding to new enquiries, sending check-in reminders, parking info etc. etc. This sh*t takes up a lot of time. At least it used to!
I now use Smartbnb to automate over 80% of all communication with my guests. I have it set up to send the following messages to my guests:
- Booking Confirmation – Thank you and touch base message.
- 72 Hours Before Check-In – Parking and access instructions.
- 12 Hours Before Check-In – House Manual.
- 16 Hours Before Check-out – Reminder of Check-out time and procedure.
- 3 Hours After Check-out – Thank you message and bum lick.
With this level of guest care, you are virtually guaranteed to get 5 Star Airbnb Reviews. I’ve spent a heap of time perfecting the content in my automated messages, if you’d like to steal my message templates, you can do that here.
I can’t tell you how much time, effort and stress I’ve saved by using Smartbnb App. It has had the single biggest impact in my pursuit to creating passive income through Airbnb.
Cleaner reminders
This might well be the reason for my receding hairline. These cleaner reminders are the bane of my life.
Running my Airbnb business from the other side of the world gives me constant stress in the event that a forgotten cleaner reminderwould result in my house looking like a sh*t hole for my next check-in.
Needless to say, I’ve forgotten on more than one occasion. Oops!
But that neverever happens anymore. I now employ a robot to do it for me 🙂
I use the Smartbnb App. It’s super easy to set up, and unlike me, the robot will never forget to send the reminders again. Hooray!
Sync Airbnb Calendar with your cleaner
Your cleaner needs to know when your property is booked to organise their time for changeovers. Now, you could be old school and export your Airbnb Calendar to a spreadsheet and then email it to your cleaner every time a new booking comes in.
But quite frankly, this is too much like hard work. Instead, sync your Airbnb Calendar with your Google Calendar and share the calendar with your cleaner.
Not sure how to set this up? Find out how here.
Airbnb Reviews
For every booking you get, you must leave a review. When you get 100+ bookings a year, this soon turns into a chore. As a default, I always give my guests 5 Star reviews.
Why?
- I’ve never meet them.
- I never see the property when they leave.
- I’m a nice guy 😉
So in all honesty, I really have virtually no information to construct a valid review, so why not give them 5 Stars.
I have my Airbnb reviews automated to send out 2 days after check-out. I automate my Airbnb reviews with the help of these guys. I rotate x3 generic reviews to keep things fresh.
You can copy my Airbnb review templates here if you like.
So, to round all this up…
This used to be a full-time job for me, now it takes me about 10mins a week. I make money no matter where I am in the world from trekking in the Himalayas to surfing in Bali. And long may it continue.
If you’d like to find out more on how to maximise your income through Airbnb, check out my site airbnbsmart.comHave any questions? Hit me up in the comments.I’ll be answering everyone.
