If you want to invest in Airbnb for financial freedom, but you're overwhelmed and unsure where to start — this episode could save you thousands of dollars!
Because one of the biggest reasons Airbnbs fail to get bookings has nothing to do with the property itself… it's the photos.
As Airbnb coaches with 14 Airbnbs and hundreds of successful clients, we've seen how the right photos can dramatically increase bookings and cash flow from day one.
In this episode, we break down exactly how to make your listing stand out — from finding the right photographer to a simple listing audit you can do to improve your Airbnb listing in minutes.
Topics discussed in this episode:
- The #1 Beginner Airbnb Mistake
- Why Photos Make or Break an Airbnb Listing
- How to Find a Professional Airbnb Photographer
- Our 4-Step Airbnb Photo Audit to Improve Bookings
- How to Prepare Your Airbnb for a Professional Photo Shoot
Host Coach Airbnb Podcast Episode 125 Show Notes:
Photos are crucial to the success of your Airbnb. Real estate agents pay top dollar for photos that sell a home once. Your Airbnb photos sell your space over and over again. They're the first step in getting and sustaining bookings.
Please, please listen to us, iPhone photos will not work. You need professional HDR photos from a trained real estate photographer. If you're wondering, HDR stands for a high dynamic range. Basically, this is a technique used to capture a wider range of light and color than just a regular photo. Your photographer will take multiple exposures of the same shot at different brightness levels and merge them together to create a single photo with enhanced detail. This really makes your listing stand out from the crowd. If you are scrolling through Airbnb and all of a sudden a listing just pops almost technicolor, but not, not like weirdly AI. It's because someone had HDR photos taken.
Pro Tip: don't let your friends or family take these photos for you, even if you feel kind of obligated or feel guilty or it's, it's a good price. We see this way too often. Way too often where someone, you know, had a friend or family take the photos and they just weren't happy. So leave it to the professionals. This actually happened to two clients that we talked to in the last two days. This is just not the best way to launch your listing for maximum engagement in bookings. It can also be stressful.
Where to Find An Airbnb Photographer
We get asked all the time, where can I find an Airbnb photographer? The good news is that it's become easier and easier to find them. All right, I've got four tips for finding a professional real estate photographer.
HomeVisit.com. This is a company that's been around for a long time. They used to only service real estate agents, but in the last couple of years they've opened their services up to the public. It's like $200 to $300 -they have a couple of different packages and they do this all the time.
Home Visit trains local photographers. I can't think of a place where they haven't been able to fill in, but this is sort of the corporate approach. Easy jump in book with Home Visit... it's professional, high quality output. I've used them several times and been happy every single time. To the point where, because early on we couldn't book them directly. We would work through our real estate agent to have them book Home Visit for our Airbnbs to be shot.
zillow.com and there's a button it says: find an agent. I know you're not looking for an agent, but when you hit find an agent, it'll be a dropdown. And one of the subcategories on Zillow for find an agent is professional photographers. And there's usually a list there. It's going to show the photographer and their website.
What's nice about this is you can go and you can review their exact portfolio. With Home Visit, you're getting kind of a corporate experience. It's quality controlled, it's great. But, with Zillow you can pick a photographer, you can look at their online portfolios and find what really matches, what really speaks to you, what really excites you. I also feel like you get a little bit more art direction with working directly with one of these photographers. We like to be on site, you know, we'll talk about that.
And finally, if that's not working for you, ask your agent? Real estate agents employ photograohers all the time. Everything that they list needs to be photographed. And they'll often have a favorite.
A couple of considerations here. Consider being on site to stage for the photographer's visit. So sometimes we'll leave out fruit baskets or wine or get the hot tub turned on. And ,the one time I didn't go... again, I'm a little bit of a control freak and a detail person... it was fall, it was a beautiful fall day the leaves were falling, and of course, the photographer didn't leaf blow the deck. And so while the pictures were great, there were leaves all over the deck. And that just makes me crazy. We had to re-shoot because I wasn't there to make sure it was to my level of done.
We'll talk about this more, but never, never be ashamed of the re-shoot. So consider being on site to stage and to give art direction. Maybe there's something that needs cleaned up or maybe there's something that you really want to make sure to capture.
Other things to consider when booking a photographer are aerials. These are great for many, many, many properties, right? So with drones, they'll take aerial shots. I know it, it's not for everybody, but aerials are definitely worth investing in.
What Not to Invest In With Airbnb Photos
What you don't need to invest in is the video option from your Airbnb photographer. We can't use it on the Airbnb plaform, and it tends to be expensive. You might be able to use it for social media, but $150 or so for one or two social media posts - I just don't see the value.
Invest In a Spacial Layout For Your Airbnb
The last thing is a good do, right? We had a don't. A do is the spatial layouts. You can do this yourself if you'd like. You don't necessarily have to pay your photographer. If you have access to your property, i'm going to tell you in a second how you can do this yourself. If you don't have access. If you're not there, go ahead and pay for the layout from your Airbnb photographer.
Cubicasa. I know what you're thinking: I've used spatial apps or measuring apps on the phone, and it's going to be janky.
I always hate them. They never work. But CubiCasa isn't jenky at all, I guess it's an AI thing. I'm not sure exactly how they figured it out, but it's magic. Basically you take your phone with the app and you just slowly walk around the house with it and they'll give you some specific instructions. It works really great and it captures the whole inside of your Airbnb property. I had a photographer do it recently, and I never thought to do this. He walked around the outside and CubiCasa picked up the deck area, outbuilding, fire pit, etc and added them to the layout so guests knwo where everything is.
I used sit with the graph paper and try to draw out the rooms and take the measurements... it was a huge headache. WIth CubiCasa it's free and simple. You walk around with your phone and you know you've got this black and white layout with all the dimensions.
The next upgrade is for $15. I think they call their plus tier. This is going to add color and it's going to give you line drawings of the fixtures in the property. So it's going to show you where the countertops are, where the doors are, windows, all that kind of stuff. That's usually what we do. They've added a third option now, which is a 3D option, and I'm kind of in love with this. We haven't done it yet. This is a $65 option. It's full color. It's a full 3D representation of the property with all of the furnishings. So this would be the last step version. Your furniture is going to be shown in real time in three dimension in color. And this is going to be a great addition to the photo section of your photo tour.
Help Airbnb Guests Visualize Your Space to Get the Booking
Our 4 Step Airbnb Listing Audit
Step One: Are you an Airbnb photo tour jail?
If so, you need to get out. Airbnb, just sort of automatically shoves everybody into this photo tour and it doesn't work for me as a user, and it doesn't work for your potential guests. I'm sure you're like, well, how do I get out of this auto tour? Well, you get out by moving all of your listing photos into the additional photo section, and then arranging them with your very best photos at the beginning. So instead of someone seeing you in auto tour and it's like bedroom, bedroom, kitchen. They get to see the five photos that really represent what makes your place special.
Photo tour kind of kills conversions. I've experienced this where we've seen a cover photo and the first three or four photos and oh look at that great outdoor fire pit area or hot tub area, and I click on that and what I get is five pictures of the master bedroom, followed by five pictures of the second bedroom, followed by five pictures of the living room. And now I've lost that piece of the experience that I was excited about - that hot tub or fire pit. It's a conversion killer.
So, again, think of the five photos that you would use if you were limited to using five on a postcard, or you could only text your friend five photos to get them to book your place. Those are the ones that you going to put at the very top of your photos in the new layout of your listing.
Step Three: As Culin covered earlier, do you have a professional layout of your space? If you don't, download Cubi Casa, walk around, upload it and watch your bookings uptick.
Pro Tip: it is important to retake your photos every few years. Take the photos of your Airbnb in different seasons. If you originally took them in the spring, think about taking them in the fall. If you had took them in the fall, think about taking them in the winter.
Photograph New Airbnb Amenities as You Add Them
Airbnb amenities over time. You're going to add a sauna, fire pit, hang basket chairs. You're going to realize what needs to get emphasized based on your guest avatar. Maybe you didn't realize you were going to get so many business travelers, so get in there and get that closeup of the standing desk. Or maybe you didn't realize you were going to get as many families get it, some more closeups of the games, right?
Look at your past reviews and private feedback. What did guests love that you may not have known it was going to be a highlight when you first listed? Don't feel bad about reshooting. You can always better deal a photo, even if you love your photos. There's going to be one. We're just continuously trying to improve this photo visual experience.
How to Prepare Your Airbnb For Photos
Let's talk about how to prepare for photos to be taken by your professional photographer. First up, deep clean. Have your housekeeper come in and pay special attention to windows, mirrors and light fixtures because those are the things that allow light in, and reflect the light. The cleaner they are the more beautiful photos you will have. Turn on every single light in your house. Even the lights in the closets, lights on desks, end tables, as many lights as you can turn on. Turn them all on! Make sure that all of your blinds and curtains are open. Again, we want the natural light, hopefully views of beautiful things coming through.
Make sure all your duvets and pillows are wrinkle-free. Yes. I'm a little bit of a detail person. I bring my steamer and I make sure that everything is hotel perfect, because that's what we all want. None of us have perfectly (at least we don't have) wrinkle-free pillowcases on our bed that we sleep in every night. We want that far, far away - perfect experience.
That's a segue back to the re-shoot. Alot of times we're in a huge rush and I didn't really touch on this. Usually when we're setting up your Airbnb listing, and if you've got one you, I'm sure you can relate, it's just a mad dash, right? You're trying to get all this stuff ready and maybe you didn't have time to turn on all those lights or didn't think to steam those duvets. It's a great reason to come back and reshoot.
The Items to Hide Before Airbnb Photos Are Taken
Also, on the topic of clutter, remove any yard clutter visible through the windows. So many times I can look at people's listings and they have amazing pictures, but if you look out the window of the bedroom or the living room, there's a trash can, there's a wheelbarrow, there's a pile of stuff they're planning to take to the dump after this photoshoot, but they didn't realize you can actually see it through their window.
Airbnb Staging Suggestions
Put some fresh plants on your porch, even if they won't be there year round. Having some greenery on your porch and throughout the house really helps with your pictures and making it organic and welcoming. Culin mentioned earlier, we do stage, not heavily, but we'll put a glass of wine and a cheese plate on our patio or in front of the fireplace. And the reason we do this is, you want people looking at your photos to want to be there in that moment. You're selling the dream. You're giving them the emotional desire that drives booking your place so that they can have that experience. They can drink that glass of wine, looking at that sunset in the hot tub, I mean. That's the dream. That's what everybody wants.
One sort of sidebar here is what you may not get from your professional photographer is that shot around your fire pit 'cause if they're shooting in bright daylight. A trick trick that I do when I shoot our fire pits is build a fire kind of earlier, at dusk and shoot it every 10 or 15 minutes. Why?Because the ambient light you see versus what you get on the camera is different. So, shoot it until it gets completely dark and you'll find just the right exposure. And the same goes for sunrise and sunsets. You can have the world's most amazing photographer. Unless you pay them to sleep there, they're not going to be there to capture the sunrise and sunset, which are some of the most beautiful pictures and aspirational pictures that your guests want to have and want to see.
Post-Photo Tips
Here's some more like hands-on kind of stuff. Once you've got all these photos, are they stored only on your listing? Because that can be a recipe for a headache. Make sure you make a backup off a platform of all of your photos, your photo descriptions, the captions, and a copy of your listing description just in case something happens to the listing. Airbnb could glitch out, or you need to recreate it in a hurry or even go to another platform.
So there you have it, professional photos are the best return on investment you can make in your listing. They're not expensive, usually only about $300 per shoot. So keep in mind that two sets of photographers are better than one. Also, consider this an ongoing investment. You'll always find that better shot with better lighting or time of year highlight listing. Remember, guests don't get to visit your property before booking. So your photo section is the sole visual representation of your offering.
Book a free 30-minute Airbnb coaching call with us, and remember, our joy is in your success.