30 Sep How I traveled for 4 weeks and made $13,164.44 in passive Airbnb income

This post was written for my students and I haven’t shared it with the public until today. In it, I described how I made over $13,000 in Passive Airbnb Income while I traveled the world. This is the holy grail of Passive Income.

Last year, when the world was open. When a virus didn’t wreak havoc on Homo Sapiens, I was lucky enough to have a business that sustained my travel lifestyle. And I traveled far and wide.

I took a 4-week vacation with my girlfriend. My trip had 3 parts:

1. We took a camper van and drove it from California all the way to Colorado (hiked all the national parks along the way).
2. Spent 4 amazing days in New Orleans doing nothing but eating crawfish and listening to Jazz.
3. Ended the trip in Tulum, Mexico sipping cold coconut juice and cheap beers on the warm sandy beach.

Not a single guest knew I was gone. Yet when I was traveling, I earned tens of thousands of dollars while completely off the grid…

(Our camper van for 10 days. My girlfriend said it best about traveling in a van, “You wake up at a different location every day.”)

In all of those 4 weeks, I never once checked my Airbnb app and yet I earned over $13,000 in passive Airbnb income. And when I came back, I searched in my email inbox for my automated payouts from Airbnb.

Here is a screenshot from my Airbnb Earnings in March 2019.

This is the holy grail of passive income. But here is the THING.

And I’m sorry if what I’m about to say will burst your bubble — it took me 2 years to get to a position where I can take a very long vacation like this one.

In those two years, I built systems, hired people, and systematically tested how far we could push it to remove me from day-to-day guest management.

Would you be willing to do this kind of work in order to take a 4-week vacation and stay completely off the grid?

I’ve made many mistakes in those two years.

After many failures, I had finally built the system to automate everything. I believe that making money without doing work is great, but I know there is no such thing…

A reader recently sent me this article and I’m going to summarize it below (here’s the link if you’re interested in reading the whole thing):

The author (Bill) says and I quote:

“Airbnb style short-term rentals are not really passive. Short term rentals are far more management intensive than annual rentals where tenants may stay 2, 3, 5 years or more. Short-term tenants mean constant cleaning, meeting new tenants, and dealing with high expectations of service.”

Bill has certainly raised some good points, but it seems to me that he’s actually never managed an Airbnb. His concerns are valid, but it’s far from the truth. It does require more work upfront, but then once you set it up, it runs itself, much like a 12-month long term rental.

Here are my 2 cents.

• You can automate cleaning so that you don’t have to touch a single bed sheet if you have the right system in place.
• I met less than a handful of tenants and hosted over 1,000s of people.
• Most people are not prima donnas. They are normal folks that are looking for a clean, comfortable, and quiet place to rest their heads at night.

Airbnb has changed my life and millions of others. I’m confident Airbnb can change your life too.

That’s all I have for now. Stay safe out there. And I’m confident by March of 2021, travel will go back to normal again. And my parting question to you is, what would you do with your new passive Airbnb income?