My Vacation Rental Lost Money... Here's How I'm Fixing It.

So if you saw my last video about the Palm Springs house, then you know that my short-term rental did not do so hot during the summer. In fact, we sort of lost money. Of course, some of this is due to the seasonality of Palm Springs and the economy right now, but I also think that some of this is due to our listing just not being as strong as it could be. So I'm back in Palm Springs and I am not giving up without a fight. I know this house is amazing. We only have five-star reviews. I realized I need to revamp the listing and showcase just how great this house is. So I'm gonna show you guys the five things that I'm doing to my listing that should help get us some more bookings. But before we get into it, I wanted to thank MailChimp for sponsoring this portion of the video. If you guys haven't heard of MailChimp, it's the number one email marketing and automation platform. So if you have a business like my short-term rental, this can be really helpful. They have over 12 million customers that send over half a billion emails per day. MailChimp is more than just collecting email addresses and pushing them out to people. They have different analytics and AI tools to help you draft your emails and see what's working. MailChimp is all about taking the guesswork out of email marketing. Because if you're like me, I've actually never done email marketing before this. So I'm not really familiar with the strategies that work well in all of that. But it's all good because MailChimp has a lot of tools to help me write these emails and see what's working. So one thing they have is what's called their creative assistant. So with this, you upload some of the assets for your brand. So your logo, some photos you have. You can also write some copy. And then it kind of figures out your brand kit and will instantly design some emails for you. Of course, you can then send them out or schedule when to send them out. And after you can analyze how everything did because it tracks a bunch of different metrics, including how many people actually opened the email. So I think this is gonna be awesome for people who have already stayed at the house. We can email them if we're having promos, if we wanna offer them like free pool heat or something like that, or if it's a little bit slower and we wanna give them a deal, have them book directly and they can save a little bit on all those fees. So thank you to MailChimp for sponsoring this portion of the video. And now let's get into the rest of the video. Okay, first thing that we need to fix are the photos. One thing I've been thinking for a while we can improve on are our photos of the backyard in our listing. The backyard is really what it's all about. That's what people are booking for. And ours are just not it. They're just not. So here is a look at the current photos. They're really not too bad. You can tell they were professionally taken, but they were just in the middle of the day. The lighting is really harsh. The trees are not as full as they are now. And overall, I feel like they just don't really do the backyard justice. When I see the photos we have right now of the backyard, I honestly like don't think I would even book it. Yet when I'm in the backyard, I feel like it's such an oasis. I love it. And it just, it feels so good to be back there. I really just don't think our current photos reflect how great the backyard is. What we really need are photos in the evening when the house looks the best. So I got a recommendation for a photographer that is really good and can do some new evening photos. This is Eric from Barkhurst Studios. I'll have his info linked down below. He stopped by to help me get some new photos. But first I had to get the house staged and ready. So it looked as good as it possibly could. For the photos, I always want it to look really inviting and like you could just picture yourself there chilling by the pool or by the fire pit. So I rolled up some white towels and put them out almost as if it's like a nice hotel I see doing this kind of thing. I also like to put out a champagne bucket. I just think this makes it look really fun and entertaining. I even wanted to sweep these olive tree leaves. I just want it to look as clean as possible. I noticed these in the last photos and I just don't think it looks that great. Olive trees are really cute until their little leaves get everywhere. But I still love this tree. So these little adjustments go a long way in just making the house look more appealing. Okay, so this is what we're working with. This is the backyard. I feel like the pool is just the main focus. It's so big, but the photos just don't really show that. We can definitely get some better angles. The pool is huge. You have an amazing view. I think you need to accentuate the outside. I love the fire pit area. I feel like the photo of it, the fire looks very fake that we have. But I do think it'd be good to get that. I think a real fire is like 100% what you need because you kind of get the glow around it as well. So I let Eric do his thing and get some amazing photos. You guys, I think it's really worth it to actually hire a photographer. I have equipment and I think I'm a pretty good photographer myself, but they just don't compare to a landscape photographer who does this every day, has the attention to detail, and really knows their stuff. So he got a really good variety of photos, some of the living room, but mostly of the backyard. And really what we were going for was that perfect shot of the backyard in the evening. Okay, we got the new photos back and I will show you guys how they turned out. Number one, wow. Wow, this photo is really the new cover photo, in my opinion. This evening shot, we've got the fire going. It just looks so appealing back there. It looks so much better than our old shot of the fire pit area because that one had like fake fire. It was just in the middle of the day. It just, you could see what was in the backyard, but it didn't convey any mood or any feeling. In this one, it just makes you wanna jump into this photo and go be in that backyard, right? So here are some more of the old photos side-by-side with the new photos. As you can see, they just have so much more of a mood and a feeling to them. I feel like they're way more compelling to make you wanna book. The backyard in general just looks better because all the plants are fuller, but also the time of day of these photos are taken really does make a huge difference. Everything just looks more flattering, more appealing, and like you just wanna jump in and be there. So I've gone in and updated the photos on my current listing and I'm also going to use them in the next thing that we're doing to get more bookings, which is creating a direct booking website. So I know a big reason people are annoyed with short-term rentals right now is because there are so many fees. And a lot of the time, the biggest fee is actually the service fee that the platform takes. So I actually checked recently and if I was to book my house for six nights on the main platform that we use, there is a $472 service fee. That is almost an entire night's stay. And on the back end, they take another 3% from me as well. So we can get rid of this altogether by just making my own direct booking website. There are a few different companies that help you set up a direct booking platform and link everything to the existing platforms. Because my property manager mainly manages the listing, it's a little complicated to get mine up and running. So I'm still figuring out which platform is gonna work the best. The direct booking websites do charge a fee. It's usually somewhere from 30 to $100 a month. So that's a much lower fee than the main vacation rental platforms charge people. So this way, if people find the house on my YouTube channel or Instagram, or even just Googling it, they can avoid paying that service fee. And I think that makes my house a little bit more competitive than other houses that don't do this. The next thing I'm doing is making my listing pet-friendly. So the past year, we were technically not pet-friendly. We didn't advertise that we allowed pets, but a couple of people messaged us really, really wanting to bring their dog and we let them and nothing bad happened. This is an actual message that I got. And I mean, how could I not let Sir Bruno stay? They seemed really responsible. They paid $100 pet fee and there was no damage. I've also realized doing so many... Maybe it's a sign. Okay, we're not allowing birds. I've also realized in doing these checked-in episodes and talking with so many hosts that they make a lot more money when they accept pets and there really aren't many damages that happen. It's pretty rare for someone to bring a pet that they know is going to damage a property. You can also charge a $100 pet fee and that's kind of a reserve in case something does happen, you can pay for it. The thing is, Palm Springs is definitely a road trip destination for people living in LA, even San Francisco and San Diego. And to board their pet for a week is hundreds of dollars. So it's a really easy adjustment to make. We're accepting pets now. The next thing I did was added a pretty cool niche amenity, which are these electric bikes. This is something I've seen luxury hotels that I've stayed in and other vacation rentals do where they have bikes available for guests to use. And I think it's a really fun little amenity. So this is a pretty popular thing to do in Palm Springs. A lot of people bike around because it's a pretty small flat city. You can get from one end to the other really on a bike. To rent one of these e-bikes at the rental shop would be like $80 a day. So I know this is kind of a niche thing that not everyone would be interested in, but if somebody was, it might make them wanna book my listing over someone else's. And the last thing I'm doing is optimizing for midterm rentals. Another thing I didn't do last year that I'm really gonna focus on this year is optimizing for midterm rentals. So as you guys know, you're limited on the number of rental contracts you can do, but anything over 28 days or longer doesn't count as a rental contract. So there are two main booking platforms and I'm only on one of them. And I know that the second one that I'm not on is geared towards snowbirds and midterm rentals. So I'm creating a profile on that one and setting up a listing. That way I'll be on everything. I'll be on the main platforms. I'll have my own direct booking site. We'll be good. Really this last summer, my house was basically empty the whole time aside from a few bookings. And what you can do is just lower the rate if someone books it for a whole month. And my plan is just to lower it to just enough to cover the expenses in the summer months. If I could get a travel nurse or someone that's doing a renovation on their home, that would be perfect. This is a pretty popular strategy that people already use. And I think it would be really good if we optimize for this. So those are a few of the things I'm doing to hopefully increase bookings on my property. Although I will say, I think the economy is still going to make the short-term rental market be a little slower in the coming year or two. Let me know in the comments down below if you guys know of anything else I should do to improve my listing or my property. And I will see you guys in my next video. Bye.