Having an entrepreneur mindset means seeing opportunities to create value for others in exchange of a remuneration. Since a couple of years, I decided to take control over my life and setup an online business that will suit with my lifestyle. Therefore, I needed to find ways to make it happen.

I started a travel blog to learn the basics of creating a website, buying a domain, content creation, writing... But also to be on a quest of discovering myself and figure out what I did NOT want to do in my life.

The next step was to learn more about social media marketing. I joined a company called Facebook and worked as campaign manager, setting up advertising campaigns for agencies and then as an advertising targeting consultant helping businesses target the right audience online.

In parallel, I invested thousand of euros in online training in order to educate myself on what is working right now in the social media world from a business point of view.

It is great to be a consultant and tell people what to do. BUT if you have never tried it yourself, how can I be certain you are reliable.

Am I Right?

Early 2017 I started monetising my travel blog using affiliate marketing and started to earn my first dollar online. Then those dollars transform into hundreds of dollars and then thousand of dollars after a few months.

Why am I telling you this you may wonder?

It is not to brag at all. But rather to show you that it is not impossible and that anyone can do it. All you need is to have the right education to leverage about a specific topic of your interests and know how to use a few tools to your advantage.

And that is what Airbnb is offering right now if you decide to become a host.

Earn money with Airbnb as a host

There are two types of hosting on Airbnb:

1. Host a home

2. Host an experience

Host a Home

Do you have a spare room accumulating dust in your house? You don’t mind having visitors from time to time in your house? Do you want to earn some money and put this room to use? This is exactly what Airbnb can help you with.

When you decide to become a host, Airbnb will ask you the city where you live and how many nights per month would you like to make your house or spare room available. Once you provided all these information, Airbnb will calculate your average earning potential.

As you can see from the example below. If I decided to become a host in Dublin and make my whole place available for up to 4 guests maximum, I would be able to potentially earn €2,528!!!

Not bad, knowing that the average monthly rent for a two bedroom apartment is about €1,600. That is nearly €1,000 profit!

Airbnb average earning potential for hosting

How to become aN Home host

Becoming a host is a straightforward process. There are 3 steps you will need to complete.

Step 1: What kind of place are you listing?

You will be asked to fill up an online form to provide details regarding your listing like:

the kind of place it is
the number of guests allowed
the type of amenities available
the number of bathroom(s)
where is the listing located

Step 2: Set The Scene

Then you will need to write a description of your listing. You will notice on the right hand a box providing you with tips to help you fill the online form. Those Airbnb tips are here to help you set the ideal listing and optimise it to put it in front of as many eyes as possible, so make sure to follow them.

You will also need to give your listing a name and upload a few photos to give your future guests an idea of what to expect.

Step 3: Get Ready For Guests

This step is all about the house rules you would like your guests to follow once they check-in, pricing your listing, setting up your booking calendar and the minimum and maximum length of stay for your guests.

Finally, make sure to review your local laws and Airbnb Nondiscriminatory policy before submitting your listing.

Once approved, you will be able to preview your listing as your future guests will, and set it live. Now all you have to do is let Airbnb do the work for you! You do not need to hustle to market your listing online.

How cool is that?

When I set up my listing, I kid you not, a full month was booked overnight by travelers!!! I was shocked by how simple and quick it was.

Then all I needed to do is welcome my guests, do their check-ins and my job was done. They were able to stay at my place for the length of their stay and check out on their own leaving the keys behind them on the way out.

There are obviously some tips to follow to be a good host but that is something you can have a look at on Airbnb hosting resource centre where they share valuable information.

The aim is to make your guests comfortable and leave with a great experience so that you can get your 5 star rating. The more 5 star ratings you get, the more chances you have your listing to be booked by future guests.

Interested in becoming a host for home on Airbnb? Just click here to get started and publish your first listing.

Host an experience

Hosting experiences are my favorite things lately. I started doing it a couple months ago and I just love it. From a freelancer point of view, just imagine being able to provide a service to people during their holidays and put it on Airbnb. You will be getting leads on automation as Airbnb takes care of the marketing for you and you will be able to test your service and figure out if it is a great idea to scale up or not. That is the whole idea of The Lean Start Up approach. If you haven’t read that book yet, I highly recommend it. Also check out my blog post My Top 10 Must Read Books For Entrepreneurs if you are still thinking to get started or are looking for inspiration.

What are experiences?

Airbnb Experiences are activities designed and led by inspiring locals. They go beyond typical tours or classes by immersing guests in each host’s unique world. It’s an opportunity for anyone to share their hobbies, skills, or expertise without needing an extra room.

You are able to share something that you love doing with other people, earn money from it, collect direct feedback and build your brand credibility without having to invest a penny and just leverage Airbnb as your business platform to find clients!

This is incredible!

As a host you will also be able to join local Airbnb host communities. They often have their own Facebook groups, arrange some monthly meet-ups and you also get invited once every semester to your local Airbnb office to attend a conference where Airbnb representatives will share their last updates and insights.

How To Become An Experience Host

The process to become a host for experience is also very straightforward. Firstly, they will want to know if you have already hosted any experiences before and what are their Airbnb guidelines in terms of hosting an experience.

You will need to fill up an online form to become a host for experience. The form is just to provide more insights into the type of experience you will offer, who is it for, what you will do, what guests can expect and should bring with them, what would be provided and also how much it would cost.

The steps are very clear, you just need to follow them.

Once you submitted your experience, it will be reviewed by Airbnb team and approved or declined within 48 hours. You will receive a notification via email.

If it is declined that means, something is missing and is not matching with the Airbnb guidelines. You will need to apply a few changes and submit it again for review. If it is approved, well done, you are now in business! Just wait for your first client to book you and enjoy the ride!

You will be able to schedule your experience in the calendar provided and see the dates where your experience are booked or not.

Also, as I mentioned earlier make sure to leverage their resource centre that provides very helpful tips on how to get started and attract more bookings. And again, make sure to tailor your experience to your guests so that they spend a delightful time with you, they learn something new and leave happy so that you get your 5 star review to attract more guests to your experience.

The more 5 star reviews you get, the better!

My Personal Experience

I host two experiences here in Dublin focus on photography. One related to learning how to take better travel photos with only your smartphone and another one to teach beginners my complete photography workflow and how to take better photos with your DSLRs or mirrorless cameras using the manual mode.

The Airbnb experiences have been really helpful for me to test an idea I had in mind for a few months: being able to share my photography knowledge with beginner photographers. Being able to run these experiences have allowed me to collect direct feedback from my guests and lay down the biggest obstacles beginner photographers are facing. I am now in the process of creating an online course related to photography for beginners to help them take better photos and learn how to better use their cameras.

If you are interested and would like to be notified once the course is published, just click here to submit your email. If you register today, you will be able to enjoy an early bird discount once the course will be released! :)

Without Airbnb experiences, it would have been very difficult for me to collect this type of information and test different ways of teaching that would suit with my students needs. Unless, I’d have spent hundreds of euros in advertising and shoot in the dark hoping to target the right people. Airbnb is a really powerful marketing tool for freelancers and aspiring entrepreneurs.

So are you ready to become an Airbnb Experience Host yet? Just click here to get started and set your first experience live.

Did you know that you could earn money from becoming a host on Airbnb? Have you already tried it? How was your experience? Let me know in the comment below.

That was my ultimate Airbnb Hosting guide. I hope that you found it helpful. If you did, make sure to like it, it actually makes a difference. And if you believe this could help someone else you know, feel free to share this post with them.

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