How To Make Money From Home If Your A Kid

hey, what up world? this is your boy, the made man. welcome to diary of a made man and today we'regoing to talk about how to make money out of airbnb. this is one of my favorite hustles of alltime and i'm going to break the game down. let's get into it. so how does airbnb work? airbnb is a website that lets anybody who'straveling the world as opposed to staying in a hotel spend the night in somebody else's place.

so, for me, the first time i traveled andspent a night in an airbnb location or property was when i was traveling the world to brazil. this was during the world cup. all the hotels were booked out and there wasnowhere else to stay so i said, "okay, let me try this airbnb thing out," and the restwas history, right? so i basically spent a night in an apartmentin rio de janeiro in brazil for the world cup. i was there for about five days or so andi loved the experience so i was like, "wow, this is pretty cool," right? this was cheaper than a hotel and i had theentire place.

i had the same features i had at home, suchas a kitchen, you know, shower. i felt, i felt like i was a local. i felt like i belonged and that's the missionstatement of airbnb. they want to make people who are travelingthe world as opposed to feeling like tourists, to feel like they're actually there and immersedinside the culture. and in terms of how it works, right? so let's say me, right now, i have a house,i'm traveling the entire time for work, right, i'm going different places and just came backfrom denver, colorado, all right. and let's say while i'm traveling for work, i canlist my property on airbnb and have somebody

basically housed in my place and i get paid for it. so i have a 4-bedroom house. i can either rent out a room and have fourdifferent rooms i'm renting out. i make money that way or i can rent out theentire house. in my personal experience, it's more profitableand better for you to make money renting out your entire house as opposed to just rooms. all right, so what does it take to get startedon airbnb. well, the first thing is you have to havea place available to list on airbnb, so either your house, either a room, and in addition,make sure you check the laws in your region,

for example, places like new york city, veryadamant and have banned airbnb, so if you actually list your listing there, you'll getin a lot of trouble. some places have different requirements suchas you can't put your house or your apartment or whatever on airbnb for more than 30 daysor maybe you had to for more than 30 days, so make sure you check your laws. airbnb's website will guide you as well. in addition to that, make sure you'll alsoget approval from your landlord or your hoa before you put your property on airbnb. now this can be an issue because if theyfind out, they'll tell you to get off the site.

in my personal experience, i've never evergotten permission to put my properties on airbnb and i've never really talked to mylandlords about it, right? the first experience was my apartment. i had an apartment for one year and this wassolely for airbnb and i was doing great. it wasn't until about a year and a half intoit when my neighbors began complaining that all these rental people are coming into theapartment complex and they were asking things such as "where's the hotel," right? so things like that kind of the fault, forme, right, because of the complaint of the complex and the complex gave me a warning.

now, being the hacker that i am, i ignoredthe warning and kept on putting my listing on airbnb. then they gave me a second warning, then eventuallythey kicked me out, but that's just a guidance out there, right? it's probably better to own a house and makesure that you don't have any neighbors nearby, but if you are just there trying to make moneyon the side and trying to do it on the low, just make sure you have a heads up and knowwhat to expect. so, to host an airbnb there are standardsyou have to adhere to, right? things such as being a great guest, hospitality,going out to your end and sharing the same

mission statement of airbnb making sure yourhouse is clean, you have fresh sheets, you clean your house, all right? so all these different things, make sure youadhere to them and airbnb does a great job of giving you a guideline of what job to follow. if you don't follow any of these guidelines,you can be off of airbnb very quickly. is hosting on airbnb safe? in my experience, it's very, very safe. i've been a host for slightly over three yearsnow and i've only had two incidents where guests broke something i had.

so the first one was in my former complex--theone where i get kicked out of. one of the guests broke a lamp i had and ijust simply sent airbnb a receipt of the lamp and they gave me a refund or they reimbursed me. so, in my experience, hosting on airbnb isvery, very safe, especially because of their million dollar host guarantee. so as a host, airbnb will reimburse you upto $1 million of damages. the reason that they did this was becausea while back they had a pr nightmare where somebody basically went to that person's placeand ended up doing a party and broke and damaged so many different things.

and this was a pr nightmare for airbnb toa point where they have to come out with this host guarantee to insure hosts because hostsdrive airbnb's revenue. all right, so you think about making money,you want to go on airbnb, how do you start listing your property? well the first thing that matters and themost important part is your title-- your title and your cover image. so imagine your guest is somebody out therewho's traveling somewhere. let's say you're traveling to berlin, germanyand you go to berlin, you type in your different features you're looking for.

you want a full house, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths,with a pool, whatever, right? and you have all these different results. the things that stick out are the cover imageand the title. so, make sure your cover image and title isbetter than your competition and make your title very catchy, something very catchy suchas cozy house right next to d.c. or amazing house in this historic area downtown. use lots of adjectives to make sure when somebody'slooking at your house, they can see the best features just looking at the title. so, if you're in the best part of town, bragabout it, right?

then, also, the cover image, this also goestowards more of the images in general. airbnb actually comes with a complimentary,in other words, free professional photography service to hosts. so, if you're hosting your property on airbnb,if you go into settings, you can actually contact them and they will send a professionalphotographer, so they'll come to your house and they'll take photos of the entire housefor you for free, then they would go back, edit the pictures. it can take a while depending on where yourlocation is. i've had them take anywhere from a coupleof weeks to even a month, i think.

but, anyway, you'd get a free professionalphotos that you can, then, put on airbnb and this makes your pictures stand out becauseall the pictures that come from the professional photographer provided by airbnb has a littlelogo saying that these are officially verified photos by airbnb, so it gives you kind ofthe social proof stamp of approval. in addition to that, make sure your descriptionis on point. so if this fall basic copywriting principles,imagine you're in the shoes of the renter and walk them through your house. talk about the experience, the emotions theygo through, the vibe in each room, the best features. maybe you'd say, "my place is amazing forcoming back after a long day of work, unwinding,

drinking some wine, watching netflix on mybig screen tv and just falling asleep on my cozy couch. talk about the emotions, the experience. put yourself in the shoes of the renter. also, make sure you list your house rules. this is very, very vital, right, because myhouses, for example, are "no house parties" at all. i've heard about the horror stories on airbnb and i do not want my house being on that list, right? i want to come back to a nice house.

so i have a listing of my rules, such as "leavethe house clean before you leave," so all these different things, all the differentrules you want other people to abide by. make sure you list them in your listings house rules. pricing. how do you pick the perfect price? in general, the way i pick the perfect pricefor a property is i look at my region, then i go and basically change the search parametersto instant booking. this is vital because anybody in airbnb canput a property there and pick any random price, but you don't want to pick a random price.

you want to pick a price that's actually goingto get you bookings, so you filter out the people who aren't really serious about airbnband then only look at people who have instant bookings and who have lots of reviews, sopeople who have lots of reviews and instant booking, those are basically professionalairbnb hosts, so they know the system. so you basically just look at their pricingand find out what the average pricing is. now if this is your first time hosting onairbnb, i would say start off low. make sure you're the lowest in your regionso that way you can get bookings, get lots and lots of bookings because the main thingtoo that will drive the amount of money you make on airbnb are the number of reviews youhave, and ideally, the higher the rank, so

5-star reviews, a ton of 5-star reviews, right? in addition to that, airbnb also has somethingcalled dynamic pricing, which basically, they will use their algorithm to find out the bestprice for you to get bookings in your region based on demand in your region, so based onthe occupancy rate. so if the other neighboring hosts are soldout, they'll increase the price of your listing. if everybody else isn't sold out, your pricingwill decrease. you have the option of picking a minimum priceyou'll stay above and a maximum price, so you can basically pick a pricing range, andthen, the algorithm will automatically adjust for you.

now that's pretty cool, but in my opinion,though, it's not always that accurate because sometimes it's very, very low. so for example, right now i have a 4-bedroomhouse about 20 minutes outside of dc and the lowest price i tipped the list is $299, butsometimes, especially like right now, the algorithm will recommend $180, $230 and i'venever gone that low. right now, i don't want to list that oftenbut my experience, especially during the spring time or summer time, which is peak season indc, i can list my property for almost one and a half times the recommended price bytheir algorithm. so i wouldn't necessarily use it as the singleversion of truth.

experiment around and find out what works best. all right, so you got your first booking,where do you start? so here's a checklist of the different thingsyou're going to work on to make sure you get everything right. setting up the house. make sure your house is set up for the guestto come in and what does that mean? it means all the stuff you have like the thingsin your closet, take that out. what i do is typically i'd get all my differentclothings and things in my room like my personal items and i put them in the room in the basementand this is a room that's not really accessible

to guests, so that's where i basically stashall my stuff. if you have any personal items or valuables,make sure you lock them away or you take them with you, right? or for some reason you can't take them withyou, just make sure you take a note of them in case anything happens you'll notice ifthey're missing and you can contact airbnb and get them reimbursed. in addition to that, make sure your houseis clean, people. and this is basic, basic, basic, right, likebasic, basic stuff, but sometimes things happen, maybe you're traveling and you don't havetime to come back and clean it and maybe your

flight was delayed or whatever, right? so, have somebody clean your house; eitherdo it yourself or hire somebody. so, me, what i do is usually i clean the housemyself or i have a family member help me out clean the house or you can hire somebody orservices like taskrabbit and have them clean your house for you, so there are differentways to clean the house but make sure your house is clean. that means you have things like you changethe sheets, you have paper towels, clean the kitchen, scrub the bathroom. make sure everything is sparkling.

also, make sure you make a second copy andhave a key for guests that's not the actual copy. never give your original house key to the guest. always make a second copy. so, with me, i actually made two copies forguests because i have a big house and usually people who are staying here, i mean, i maybehosting about eight people, sometimes even up to 12 people are staying in my house, right? so i have copies for guests to use but i nevergive them the original key because there are some horror stories of guests basically stealingin somebody's house and everything to leave and the person has no key here.

so anybody out there who watches the showsilicon valley knows there's a joke about airbnb on there where the guy, jared was basicallykicked out of his house because the guy who was staying in his house and based on thelaws in san francisco at the time or when they filmed it, to a point that if somebody staysin your house within 30 days, they can technically claim your house legally. so double check your laws and make sure that'ssomething that can't be violated. for me, i know my place in terms of restrictions. i have a minimum booking of three nightsand a maximum booking. i don't really have a maximum booking perse, but i wouldn't allow anybody to stay in

my house for more than 30 days, just in case, right? but when i was renting out my rooms, justindividual rooms, i had somebody stay in one room for 45 days one time. he was somebody in the air force. he had come here for a project and he's kindof a short-term roommate. all right, so here's some advanced game foryou out there to make sure you go out there and make as much money in airbnb. treat your guests with hospitality. go the extra mile.

go above and beyond. so, for example, create a check in sheet forpeople when they check in that has all the information they would need. if it's their first time they're spending anight in the city at your place, for example, have the wi-fi password. show them where they can, if they have toempty the garbage, where they can do that. talk about the parking spot, so for example,my place, i have two parking spots and if my guests don't park in them and park in myneighbor's they could get towed. i've actually had a story once where a guestgot towed and they complained, and actually,

being the generous host that i am, i paidtheir ticket for them because i don't want to get that bad review and i definitely cameout of pocket. i think it was $100 ticket for towing andi have to reimburse them because i was very concerned about that review--that 5-star review. so things like that, go the extra mile tomake sure your guests are comfortable. give them your number, ideally your cell phonenumber so they can contact you if there are any issues. so with me, on my check in sheet, i have mycell phone number and a guest can call and text me any time if there are any questions.

so i want to make sure that everything goesas smoothly as possible the first night because you don't get paid on airbnb until after the first day. so if your guest comes and he doesn't likeyour place and leaves, you won't get paid, right? you get paid, it takes one day for them toprocess everything, so make sure your guest enjoys and feels welcomed in your place. it doesn't matter how amazing of a host youare you'll end up getting a bad review. that's just life, right? you can't please everybody and that's onething i learned on airbnb. there's some guests on there that are totallydelusional where they don't want to stay in

a budget place but get 5-star service. they think this thing in the web is _ whenthey're out here kind of go on a budget. so it doesn't matter who you are, you'll eventuallyencounter bad reviews. how do you deal with them? you always want to be respectful but at thesame time, you don't want people to take advantage of you. so, with me, the way i've worked with badreviews, you know, i obviously had bad reviews just being on airbnb a lot, right? i had my fair share of bad reviews.

the way i avoid them is the first day checkin and make sure that things go smoothly as possible. either i check in my guest, so if i'm travelingand not there, i have my brother check them in. they have my phone numbers so i'll text themto make sure everything's okay. if they have any questions, they can contact me. i want to make sure the first day goes smoothlyas possible because if there are any issues the first day, you want to take care of themand throughout their stay, make sure everything's going good, right? tell them, make sure you come from the checktimes to check in, the times to check out

and if they have any questions. but let's say you get a bad review, how doyou deal with it? you can respond probably to it, so i wouldsuggest you respond publicly telling people that if there's an issue, maybe the placewasn't as clean as the person would have liked, sometimes you have people who are very ocdor people who have kids, especially kids and babies, to a point that i can't, i can't,me, as a single guy, i can't really clean a place to satisfy people with kids or babies,young babies, to a point i don't even host them, i mean, usually, because i know thatcan we live up to that standard. but, anyway, i would respond publicly tellingthem, "hey, i've taken care of this issue.

this should no longer be an issue. i'm sorry i didn't live up to your standards,blah, blah, blah. hopefully, things will be better in the futurefor future guests." this has been solved or resolved, right? but, here's how you can hack getting bad reviews, right? i kind of discovered this by accident. so the way airbnb works is when somebody booksa place and they cancel a booking, so let's say they come to your place, they're bookedfor six nights, and two nights in until they tell you they don't like your place and they cancel.

when they cancel their booking, they can'tleave you a review because based on their guidelines on airbnb, somebody has to completea booking in order to leave you a review. so i noticed one time, i had a guest who camein, didn't like my place because apparently, something was smelling somewhere and theycanceled it. i thought i was going to get a bad reviewlike a 1-star review, but when they canceled it, i never got that 1-star review, so myaverage stayed up, right? so i didn't really get hit with that bad reviewand i was like, "okay, interesting." this is pretty interesting, right? so now it's come to a point that if i geta feeling that the guest doesn't like my place,

i'll try to get them to cancel before theirstay is over, so i will say, "hey, you know what, it doesn't seem you like this place. why don't you cancel? i'll reimburse you. you can find a different place." i try to support them to cancel. sometimes i'll egg them on to cancel becausei'm trying to get out of that bad review because i know if they cancel, that's if they cancelafter the first day, maybe they'll only pay the first day or maybe i'll reimburse thefirst day if i'm very, very generous.

i avoid that bad review because they haven'tcompleted the entire reservation stay with me. all right, so how do you handle exchangingkeys with hosts? the way i do it personally is i have a lockbox on my door so when somebody's-- this is very, very efficient for me because i justsimply put in the copies of my keys in there--of my house keys--and i give them the password,the pass code to the lock box via airbnb or via text. so the guest can check in any time they want. i don't have to be there. i can go out there and do my own thing.

i don't have to wait there every single timeto check in a guest because if you do that, guests are almost never on time, right? their flight would be delayed, there willbe traffic coming to your place, they'll get lost. sometimes a guest will say they'll check in at four,but they'll end up coming in at 11 pm, right? but, if you have a lock box, they can checkin any time by just going there, put in the code, get the key. the second way is have your family membersor a friend check them in and hand them the key. this is good sometimes because they get tosee a person, maybe they could give them the tour, ask any questions there in person.

sometimes i have my brother or my dad or momhandle the key exchange for me, sometimes, if they're around. so those are different ways you can handlethe key exchange. now one advanced tip is airbnb is a greatsite to make money on the side, but to maximize that money, you can also list your propertyon other sites. there are other sites similar to airbnb suchas homeaway and vrbo, flipkey. all these different sites are great. i've had my house on a homeaway as well and vrbo. i made some great money on there as well.

now one thing i don't like about those sitesis people on those sites, they have higher standards than airbnb. i feel like airbnb people, they don't have,they don't feel so entitled while homeaway and vrbo, sometimes there'll be people whohave travel agents booking for them, people who have more money and have higherexpectations so sometimes they want that hotel star, hotel 5-star treatment sometimes, right? in addition to that, homeaway and vrbo, theytake a higher percentage of your fees because airbnb and the order sites, they make money. we make money as well as hosts but they takea percentage cut of the profits we make, so

airbnb kind of vary roughly from anywherefrom, i think, 6 to 12%. don't quote me on that, but vrbo or homeawayis a higher number. they have all their different processing feesand stuff like that, so you actually have to have your daily or your nightly priceda lot higher than you do on airbnb because those sites take more fees. but, in general though, if you have your propertyon two or three sites, you can make some good bread to a point that you can list your entireproperty full-time on airbnb. i know that because i've seen other people,especially when i was going to brazil. there was one guy, a host, he had like ninehouses in brazil, in rio, nine properties

in rio on airbnb and there are hosts out therethat are doing this full-time, making six figures. they have multiple properties. my friend in denver has two properties on airbnb. he always goes back and forth, i mean, sohe could end up and make some good bread on airbnb and all these other sites out there. so you have these multiple channels and theybring in different streams of income from your property. in my personal experience, i don't think beinga super host is worth it. now, i myself have never been a super hostbecause i've had some bad reviews here and

there but i've a friend of mine also in thedc region and he's a super host, but he also hasn't really seen that much of a differenceper se, i mean, because as a guest, when you're searching and looking out there to book aplace, you don't really care about somebody who's a super host or who's not. the only thing you really care about are the reviews. do they have a good review? is the price within your range? do they have the different features you want? so i think that's a lot more important, right?

so, getting 5-star reviews or high reviewsis more important than getting your super host. being a super host isn't only going to domuch for you. the thing that does matter though is if youwant to make lots of money on airbnb, make sure you have instant booking on. instant booking is officially that basicallysays this person can book your place without having to wait to talk to you, where you canjust go out there, if you like a place, pull out that credit card, buy, reserve it, and that's it. now i have instant booking turned on as wellbut there's also an option where you can restrict who exactly can instant book so mine havea restriction on only people who have positive

reviews, so only guests with positive reviewscan book my place on airbnb and only guests who have verified id so they'll put in theiremail, their phone, their social security number, things like that, so not just some random person. everybody else who has passed that thresholdcan book instantly; those who have not, i can talk to them and kind of weed them out. now speaking of weeding people out, right,on airbnb, you'll get a bunch of crazy people on there who want to do a bunch of crazy things. for example, you'll have some "young people"who want to book your place and i look at their profile and i'm like, "you're in thesame county as me, you're like 20 minutes

away, why do you need?" this was when i was listing my "room." i'm like, "what is this, a love hotel?" because the message is saying, "hey, me andmy boyfriend or girlfriend want to spend the night or want to have your place for two daysor whatever," and i'm like, "you're 20 minutes away, why do you want my place?" so some people would try to use that placeas a love hotel, so you can screen those people out. usually, they're young people who's textingnear you, maybe they're still staying with the parents or whatever.

and then, you'll also have other people whojust want to use your place for a party. now you can weed those people out by sayingif they're staying nearby as well. usually the issue was people who are stayingnearby aren't really any good. so if people are nearby, that's usually awarning sign, so for example, if somebody is coming in a large group and they live nearby,you don't want to have them staying at your place because they will crash it. all right, so i've given you guys the gameon airbnb and how you can go out there and just do your side hustle and make a wholebunch of money, right? i've been a host on airbnb for over three years.

last year i made almost 27 grand as a sidehustle, right? and that's easy money, man, like straightlayups, so like steph curry layups because i do this when i'm traveling for work so i'mnot even at home anyway and i'm making money, so it's a no-brainer, right? so imagine getting you all that money andhaving that cover your rent, your mortgage, maybe you have a place out there that you're notusing, maybe it's a room, maybe it's a house, right? turn that into money and make that money. so with that being said, if you love thisvideo, i'm actually going to drop an even more in-depth guide on my blog and websitediaryofamademan.com.

so make sure you check that out where i'dbe going through a guide that goes into more detail because there are some parts and nuancesi left out in this video because i want to keep it as short as possible, but make sureyou check that out. i'll be posting that this week as well. so with that being said, holler at me diaryofamademan.com. this is your boy, ian. i'm out.

Just got my check for $500 

Sometimes people don't believe me when I tell them about how much you can make taking paid surveys online...

 So I took a video of myself actually getting paid $500 for paid surveys to finally set the record straight.