In the last post I told you that Key Component #5 for earning a full-time income managing other people’s properties on Airbnb was Optimization.
So many people get so caught up in how to get clients that they often forget that it’s even more important that you know how to serve clients.
Getting clients will grow the number of properties that you manage. Your door-count.
Door-count is a vanity metric.
You could be managing 50 properties, but if you suck at optimizing their performance and each one only brings in $1,000/mo then you’re wasting your time.
What would you rather manage?
50 properties or 10?
If you can earn the same level of income in either scenario, you’d be crazy to manage 50.
It all comes back to working SMART before working HARD.
Optimizing your listing’s performance can seem like a big undertaking. You may have read articles, researched online, maybe even consulted with someone before on this very topic.
The reality is that there are a wide variety of things that you can do to boost the numbers on a property and like anything else, you’ll got 80% of your results from 20% of your efforts.
So the question is really what 20% of inputs will generate that 80% of output?
I can tell you from experience that it comes down to 2 things:
The first is relatively intuitive: photos.
Most people understand that you need great photos if you want to get booked.
Unfortunately, the large majority of hosts (and even BNB managers) overlook the second…
Without great data and the right strategy to leverage it, you can kiss thousands of dollars goodbye.
Time and time again, I see hosts using the “gut feeling” strategy to determine their pricing.
Even worse are those who use the wrong data. Those who think they’ve “done their homework” by looking at what other listings are priced at in their area and based their pricing off of that.
Talk about the blind leading the blind…
If either one of these sounds like you, it’s not your fault.
Unfortunately, there’s a whole lot of bad information out there when it comes to the topic of optimizing your returns and I’m sure a lot of you have fallen victim to it.
The worst part about that is that most hosts who suck at optimizing don’t even know it!
They’re getting $4,000/mo on a property that used to earn $3,000/mo on long-term rental.
What they don’t know is that that property could and should be bringing in $5,000/mo with the right optimization strategy…
Knowing this though and having the right strategy, gives us a MASSIVE edge.
It allows us to, in most cases, completely pay for ourselves by offsetting our management fee with improved performance…
Meaning that the property that was bringing in $4,000/mo managing everything themselves is now making $5,000/mo and we get $1,000 (20%) leaving the property owner with the same $4,000 paycheck.
Sorry for the surprise math-attack…
How would you like to have someone offer to manage your property for FREE?
Well, the beauty of our business is that that’s what we get to do!
And it’s all because of DATA!
If just thinking about the word “data” freaks you out and brings you back to many-a-failed high school math exams, don’t worry.
The way we use data is super simple. It’s completely plug-and-play.
All you need to do is know where to look and have the right tools in your tool belt.
In the next post we’re covering the sixth and final Key Component, and it’s a glorious one.
Component #6 is my favorite one of all…
And my lips are sealed until next time on what it is!
It’s a beautiful life!
James
