How to Launch a Property on Airbnb

What’s up guys, in today’s video, we’re gonna be talking about how to launch a property successfully on Airbnb or VRBO, or another booking platform. But specifically, this is going to work really, really well on Airbnb and VRBO. Airbnb more than any other that I’ve seen. One of the most misunderstood or miss utilised opportunities that I see, in all of Airbnb management investing is not fully leveraging the launch factor with a brand new listing or a listing that you’re creating a new account for and launching newly on Airbnb. And in order to understand this opportunity and understand how to optimise on it, I want to explain why it even exists in the first place. And what it is that I’m talking about, I promise I won’t bore you too much. Basically, if you look at Airbnb as a business in order for them to grow as a company, and you know, increase share price make everybody happy, what they need to do is have more hosts coming into the platform and more guests coming to the platform in order to book pretty simple, right? But what happens is that if a brand new host comes to the platform, and they’re competing against all these other hosts that are really experienced and have great listings, and have all these reviews on their platform on their profile, then naturally those brand new listings are not really going to get many bookings, there’s no real way to compete. And what happens when you launch a property on Airbnb and nobody books it while you’re probably gonna leave Airbnb, eventually, you’re either going to not be able to make money and have to sell the property, or you just don’t want to deal with anymore. And so you ultimately leave Airbnb. So whatever you need to do in this situation, while they can’t just have new hosts coming to the platform, only to fail and leave because then their business was stopped growing. So they need to do is give brand new hosts an unfair advantage over their competition in order to get them some initial traction. The other reason they want to do this is because ultimately Airbnb wants to show properties to guess that those guests are actually going to book. And if they don’t show those properties to guests at all, then how do they find out if it’s a good listing or not? Maybe it could be this incredible listing that everyone wants to book. And if it is they want to show that listing to more and more people, because it means more and more people are going to make bookings. And that’s how Airbnb makes money. And so naturally, the solution here becomes what we’ve got to do is take these brand new listings, and shown to a whole bunch of people when they first launched, let’s just get as many eyes on them as we can. And that will accomplish two things. Number one, it allows us to see if those eyeballs actually convert into dollars as Airbnb, right? If Airbnb is able to see that. And they can then determine, Well, should we take this property and put it really high up in the search results because people love to book it? Or should we throw it down deep in the search results because people don’t really care about or like to see it. Number two is it allows them to get those brand new hosts some initial traffic, right and some initial bookings. So you have a much lot higher likelihood of succeeding on Airbnb when you launch a brand new listing, because they give you an artificially high amount of traffic when you first launched, generally, it’s for the first two to four weeks. And so what then happens is that a whole bunch of hosts come onto the platform, they launch their listing, they get a whole bunch of bookings, and they’re really excited, and that makes them want to stay. But what happens as well is that a lot of people will have this happen. And then they started to see it fizzle out, they started to see okay, well, I had a bunch of bookings in the first two weeks. So the first month when I launched, I was getting a booking every single day. And now suddenly, I’m hardly getting any bookings, things have really dried up. And that’s a telltale sign that you have really, really messed up and just unfortunately missed out on a really, really big opportunity. With this launch, where you really want to have happen is a flood of bookings initially followed by a consistent flow of bookings into the future. And the only way to do that is by really nailing a lodge because of what I said earlier. Guys just want to take a quick break here to say that for those of you watching, who want to build cashflow, and long term wealth by purchasing Airbnb and short term rental properties, there’s a link in the description right down below for a free training that will walk you through my exact strategy for investing successfully in Airbnb. Now, if you’re not ready to actually buy properties, and you want to get started managing other people’s properties on Airbnb the same way I got started and build a full time income managing other people’s properties. There’s actually another free training linked in the description down below as well. There’ll be a really great fit for you. So whether you want to invest in short term rental properties and actually build amazing cash flow and long term wealth by acquiring the assets, buying the properties themselves, or you’re looking to earn a full time income managing other people’s properties on Airbnb, we’ve got some awesome trainings, they’re linked in the description down below. It’ll definitely help you out. When you sign up for the trainings. We’re also going to send you a few other tools and resources completely for free just to help you get started. Again, the links to sign up are in the description down below. And both trainings and all the tools are completely free. So make sure to register for the trainings, links in the description down below. Remember when I said that when Airbnb launches a new property that allows them to see where they should put it high or low in the search results based on how well it converts traffic? Well, that means that if you see a big flood of bookings, and then suddenly it cuts off, it means that they found that your listing, they showed it to a bunch of people and sure some people booked, but it wasn’t a high enough conversion rate for them to put it high up in the search results. So they threw it down deep. And now you’re in a really sticky situation, what’s happened is that you didn’t get enough bookings to go high in the search results, you went low in the search results. But because you’re low in the search results, you’re gonna get less bookings, because you get less bookings, you’re gonna go lower in the search results. And because you go lower in the search results, you’re gonna get fewer bookings. And because you, you get the point, right, whereas the exact opposite of that happens, if you really nail your launch, think about it, you launch really well, you get that initial flood of bookings, you’re super happy. And it actually converted so well that Airbnb throws your listing up to the top of the search results and keeps it there. Now suddenly, you get more bookings, because you’re at the top of the search results. And you have reviews now, because some people have stayed with you, and they’re super happy, they had a great time, like you five star reviews. So now you get more bookings. And what happens, you cloud the search results, if you’re not already at the top, you go even higher, and then you get more bookings, because you’re higher up in the search results. And then you naturally climb higher and the search results. So it becomes this positive feedback loop instead of a negative one. So hopefully after that, you can see that it’s super, super important that when you first launch a property on Airbnb, you make sure it’s a smash hit. It’s really really worth your while to make it uber successful during that first launch phase. Because it’s not just going to land you some more bookings for the first two weeks, it’s going to land you more bookings for the next number of years, right really propels you up high in the search results, and makes it easier to stay there. Whereas if you go down to the search results, sure, maybe you kept your prices high and you got some a little bit more revenue out of those first two weeks, but now you’re downloading the search results. And not only does that mean you’re gonna get less money and less bookings long term, but it also means you’re fighting an uphill battle it’s really hard to get from low in the search results up to high in the search results. It’s really hard just reinvent a listing that way and so naturally what you want to do is nail that launch. So the question then becomes how do you do it? Well, for starters, this is one that no one loves to hear, but I guarantee you, you will be happy you did this, you need to discount your prices. First off, Airbnb offers a new listing discount, toggle that puppy on, you want to make sure that the first few guests that book with you get an extra special discounts, you get those bookings quickly. Now the next thing you want to do is take whatever pricing you had in mind if you were if you were actually dialled in optimising you know exactly where your pricing should be at, drop it down 1015 20% lower than where you think it should be based on the data, price it their price is lower than that, because again, those first few bookings, you’re not trying to optimise and get the most amount of revenue possible. You’re just trying to get the most bookings possible so that you can tell Airbnb search algorithm, people love this listing, they want to stay here. And that way, you’re gonna go higher up in the search results long term. So that’s a really, really important piece is you want to discount your prices. Now the next thing you do is equally important. You need to dial in your listing, I see too many people that go oh, you know, I just want to launch really quickly on Airbnb, because I know my place isn’t fully ready yet. And I didn’t get a professional photographer in there. But I don’t want to wait an extra week because I’ll be missing out on so much money. So let me just snap some photos of my iPhone. I’ll get it up there and then in a week I’ll update it and I’ll change it once everything’s more in order wrong idea that’s going to ultimately lead to again you tagging and performance long term, you’re going to pay a lot more in the long term than you would have if you just waited an extra week. So my advice to you just wait, do everything. Get the renovation completely done. Get the furnishing completely done. If there’s something missing and it’s important than wait for it. Make sure you get a professional photographer. Do not do not under any circumstances launch your listing with anything less than good high quality professional photos. Don’t launch launch with your iPhone photos. Don’t launch it with some photographer that you found on Craigslist that did a mediocre job of it. Get a professional photographer in there, make the investment and launch it once it’s really dialled in. You also want to optimise your headline optimise your listing description these things take time check all the amenity boxes, put captions on your photos, like do all those things that are going to lead to the listing having a higher conversion rate. Because again, at this point, especially every extra percentage of conversion really makes a big difference long term.

I guarantee you this will land 1000s upon 1000s of dollars more in your pocket if you just do it properly. So you want to launch on the right But don’t do a quick half hearted launch of the property. Now, if you do all that, and you really nail it with your launch, what’s going to happen is you’re going to see a flood of bookings initially, what you want to do is when you launch, how about discounted pricing, get a flood of bookings. And once you start to get the next month to three months starting to really fill up, that’s when you can start increasing your pricing. And you can start getting it more in line with where you want your pricing to be, where optimally should be. And what the result of that is going to be is that yeah, you’re going to miss out on a little bit of revenue compared to where you should be, you’re going to earn a little bit lower revenue than you expect to have anticipated if you’re fully ramped in those first couple of months. But what that’s going to lead to is you being higher up in the search results, and therefore being able to collect more revenue and make up for that little bit of a loss tenfold over the next year. So that’s where you really want to be you should have a launch where in the first 24 to 72 hours, you get a big flood of bookings if you’re not getting bookings initially, when you first launched within those first 24 or 48 hours, then you want to be changing things be updating it dynamically drop your pricing if you need to improve your photos, if you need to improve your headline do what you need to to make sure your property gets buffed, you also want to want to initially launch with as few restrictions on types of stays and whatnot that you possibly can. So I recommend for most people having a two night minimum stay and allowing instant book for verified profiles. But aside from that, just making it easier for people to book don’t be super strict with like a strict cancellation policy. If you don’t need to be don’t be super strict with like a three night or four night minimum stay. Because again, all those things are just going to limit the amount of bookings you get. And so even though it may make a slightly positive impact on revenue in the short term, it’s not going to be beneficial in the long term. So if you do all that, well, now you’re gonna be in a really great place. So I want to know what you guys think I’ve had clients who have done this with that have generated 3040 $50,000 In bookings within the first few days of launching. So I guarantee you this strategy and this process does work incredibly well and it really is a science there’s no art or guesswork involved with it. I want to know your guys’s thoughts as well though if you found this video helpful if this like sparks something for you, and it was helpful valuable, let me know by just hitting that like button down below the video and giving this video a thumbs up. If you’re new to the channel here and you haven’t yet subscribed, make sure you do that now just hit the subscribe button down below this video we post two new videos every single week on the channel here. And last but not least, I’d love to know your thoughts or comments or questions or anything you got for me down in the comment section down below. So thanks so much for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next one.