One of the best kept secrets that I am going to share with you is that renting a room for the night to vacation guests can generate two to three times more income than a regular monthly renter. It’s simple math. If you rent a room in your house for, say, $500 per month, and for the sake of argument, we say there are thirty days in a month, then that works out to just $16.67 per night. However, a really great nightly rate for a vacation guest of just $49 equates to an income of $1,470 per month for you. This is a simple yet powerful secret that you can use to create a steady stream of passive income and ultimately financial freedom.
“But does it really only take ten hours per month?” You can ask. Yes, it does and I’ll show you how.
Get started by setting up your online ad with images, a description, and your desired price. This is a case of “if you build it, they will come” because all the marketing is done for you. So sit back, relax, have a cup of coffee and watch the questions roll in. Or, better yet, receive email notifications on your smartphone while you play tennis and keep your new business running from the courts, or even the beach or spa if you prefer.
When you get an inquiry, you decide if you want these lovely people to stay in your room.
Your new guest or potential guests provide a photo of themselves. You read why they come to town; whether for business or pleasure.
You read the reviews that other hosts have left for that guest to determine if they were good or not.
You then decide whether to approve their stay, deny their stay, or ask a few more questions before making your decision. You are in full control of who you allow into your home.
Answering emails throughout the month can take a total of 1 hour of your time.
The guest finally books their stay and you prepare their room. This includes things like cleaning the bathroom, putting clean sheets on the bed, and leaving a mint on the pillow.
If each guest stayed for a week, you would have 4 guests in a month and spend about an hour each time preparing the room for the next guest.
Cleaning and preparing the room totals about 4 hours a month.
And now I’m going to share secret number two with you. Cleaning the bathrooms and making the beds is probably something you’ve done before, just because you had to, right? Well now you can charge an extra cleaning fee and get paid for doing it!
Secret number three: If you charge a fee to clean the rooms, you can also pay someone else to clean the rooms with that money, which frees you up to 4 hours a month to do other things, whatever your heart desires.
Is that cool or cool?
The next step is to greet the guests. When they arrive at your door you give them a warm welcome, like family… the part of the family you really like. Since you’ve already been in contact with them via email, you feel like they’ve known each other for years and when they finally arrive, you shake their hands, smile, maybe even give them a hug and welcome them by name.
Even though they have been traveling, often from the other side of the world, arriving at your home makes your new guests feel safe, secure and completely at ease.
Now give them a quick tour, show them their room, and help them settle in.
Warm welcomes and the installation process takes about 1 hour per month.
So far you have put in about 6 hours of work, if you can call it that.
The rest is completely optional. Meeting your guests, chatting over coffee, discussing your plans while in town, and wishing them well as they head out exploring your city throughout the day can take around 3 hours. After that, they’re out and about so much, often coming in after you’re asleep, that you may not see them at all.
Bonus: The morning after your guests check in, the payment is automatically deposited into your online bank account. No need to harass the guest to pay. No need to purchase a merchant account or accept credit cards. You don’t have to worry about the current conversion rate from Euros to US dollars. It’s all handled for you through your free website. Easy quiet.
Having the money transferred electronically by a third party is also very powerful because it takes the sales aspect of the hosting process out of your relationship with the guest and lets you build a solid friendship. Another benefit of having money electronically deposited in your bank is that you can now work anywhere, even from a beach in Aruba. In fact, you can have multiple properties around the world that you rent out and never have to be there. It all depends on how you set it up and I’m here to help you.