Profit With AirBnB
• Melissa Forrest and her husband run 10 Airbnbs in Southern California.
• She says one way to rank well in Airbnb search results is to provide high-quality photos.
• You should also fill out your profile in full and aim to get as many five-star reviews as possible.
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Melissa Forrest, a 33-year-old Airbnb superhost
based in El Segundo, California, and the cofounder of HostLife. IInsider has verified her business's 2021
profit and 2022 sales revenue to date with documentation. The following has been edited for length and
clarity.
My husband, Zev, and I run an AirBnB business together and have taught hundreds of others how to do
the same. We used savings to launch our first two Airbnbs in 2018 in Riverside, California, and we now
run 10 Airbnbs in Southern California.
Our total earnings for 2021 were $407,216, and our total profit was $183,828. We now make about
$35,000 in gross average revenue per month.
1. The Tropical Treehouse in Fern Forest, Hawaii.
Wolfe told Insider she spent practically "all her income" on her first-ever Airbnb property, a 230-square-
foot tree house in Hawaii's Fern Forest.
She built the one-bedroom home on a half-acre plot of land she purchased on Craigslist for $8,000 sight-
unseen. Once the treehouse had a roof, Wolfe said she slept on its floor for the remainder of the
construction.
As Airbnb superhosts over the past four years, we mastered four strategies for ranking high on the
platform that help us keep our calendars booked while charging above our market competitors.
1. Fill in your Airbnb profile in full and update it regularly
Airbnb rewards hosts who keep their profile updated with pictures, amenities, and listing descriptions.
Throughout the years, we've put a lot of thought into developing a photo and copywriting strategy for
our listings that will capture the attention of guests. Here are four strategies we use and recommend:
Have property photos taken and edited by a professional. Photos are the first thing a potential
customer sees and gets hooked on. Not only will they attract more clicks and views, but Airbnb’s
algorithm will rank you higher if your photos are high quality.
1. Write custom photo captions for each photo. Just as getting professional pictures taken for
your property is crucial for highlighting your listing, what you write about them and how you
write it is just as important. Custom photo captions help you describe the place to a potential
customer, and guests will spend more time reading informative, easy-to-read descriptions.
2. Write a compelling title for your listing. After the photo or caption part of your listing, your
listing's title is the next most crucial aspect. The title is meant to highlight your listing's best
aspects and show value to a potential guest.
3. Prioritize your summary description. The space in this section is limited to 500 characters
maximum, and you should aim to use all of them. This is precious marketing space, as the
summary description is displayed as soon as a potential guest clicks on your listing. Write it to
build interest and encourage the guest to read through the rest of the listing's sections. The
description's content should reinforce all key ideas from the title while using extra space to
create an image of a perfect vacation property for a potential guest.
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Here's a profile for one of our ocean-view listings in Los Angeles as an example of how to apply these
tips. We sometimes revisit our profiles to make sure they're up to date with the amenities we include.
It's really about filling out every section that Airbnb has available and making sure that you select every
amenity you'll be providing.Airbnb is always changing and adding more filters to the website — but for the most part, it doesn't
inform the host that they've added more filters or amenities. But sometimes when you click on your
listing on your hosting profile, it will say, "Next Steps for You," with suggestions on amenities that you
should answer like, "Tell us more about your TV," "Does your home have a gym?," or "Does your home
have a pool?" Sometimes we'll see that Airbnb has added the option to search for a specific amenity
that wasn't available to search before, and we'll add it to our listing if it applies.
If we get a new piece of furniture or add something to the design, we'll take a picture and upload it to
the profile. Maybe we just added a pack and play for children, so we'll add a photo of that to the listing,
and we'll make sure to update that in the listing description as well.
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3. Respond quickly to messages from guests
This will ensure you keep your Superhost status and subsequent search ranking. Our rule of thumb is to
respond to requests or messages from guests within three hours during the hours of 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.,
and if a request comes in while we're sleeping, it's OK to respond in the morning.
A tip here is to automate some of your communication with guests. Airbnb has an option where you can
schedule your messages, which we've found can help. Our intention is to get better and better and
create systems that will do a lot of the leg work for us.
4. Avoid cancellations by being upfront
Airbnb punishes hosts who cancel reservations, including imposing fees of up to $1,000. We've never
canceled a reservation, but if a guest breaks our rules and attempts to throw a party, we send the
evidence to Airbnb and Airbnb will cancel the guest's reservation.
When Airbnb cancels a reservation, it doesn't count against us as hosts. But if we canceled on a guest
reservation ourselves, it will hurt us in obtaining Superhost status — which would ding our ranking.
While there isn't a foolproof way to pick guests who won't require a cancellation, we do have a strict
cancellation policy, which we recommend hosts have for protection.
We also try to vet guests carefully using our "red-flags framework." Some red flags we look for include
guests who don't have a verified identity, booking requests full of spelling and grammar issues, and one
person booking a larger home, which may indicate that they're looking to sneak people in or throw a
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