9 Viral Airbnbs: Ranked and Roasted

What if millions saw your Airbnb listing but nobody booked it? That's what's happening exactly right now with Ryan Trahan's 50 state series. He's just put seven new hosts in the spotlight this week. Most completely blew it. Some of them actually have an online presence, and I'm going to break it down and show you how. I'm Maximson. Over the past 10 years, I've helped more than 2,000 hosts with over 10,000 listings generate over $250 million in direct bookings. That's not on Airbnb. That's not on booking.com, that's not on the Expedia group. This is direct bookings. I've even published two books showing exactly how to do it. So in this video, I'm going to break down who capitalized and who missed out and the proven moves you can use to stand out and get real results. And if you would like me to roast your marketing in a future video, there's a link in the description below. And if you would like to help me fix your marketing and get more direct bookings, click the other link and book a free call with my team. This is going to be about 30 to 40 minutes, but we're going to dig into everything that they're doing right and what they're doing wrong, and let me show you how. Okay, so as you can see, I've got all these listings up here. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And we've got the tier ranking. And I'm going to put them into what I feel like they took the most advantage of going super viral. And if I'm just going to show you exactly what we're talking about when we say super viral on this one, I'm going to show you the View stats page for Ryan Trahan's account. If you have a quick look, you will see that over the last 28 days, he's had 170 million views, he's gained 700 subs. Estimated revenue from Google Ads and from the premium account is nearly a million. A million dollars, which is insane. This is what they're doing it for. They're doing it for St. Jude's as you can see, they've nearly raised US$4 million, which is pretty cool. What they're doing and what we've been doing, we've been following the series. This is the last one I'm going to do for a while. What I'm going to do instead is once they've completed this series in Another month's time, I'm going to take a proper chance to look at every single listing and I'm going to break it down and I'm going to rank it on who the most advantage and who did the best out of it in terms of the way that their Airbnb listing is structured, how their direct marketing and structured and all that good stuff that comes with it. But this week, we're going to look at the last seven or eight places that they've stayed. Some, like I said, have got a massive following already on social media. Some of them have got a direct booking website. Some of them haven't even got a clue that I think that they were featured on what is going to go down as a legendary series on YouTube. So let's go and break into it in full, shall we? We're going to start off. Let me just go and just pick somebody at random. I've put them this week all into different areas. We're going to start off with the A. So this is the Ava A frame, which has got a hot tub, theater, hidden stair, EV charge. Now, obviously they've done this via chat GPT and it does look good. The title does stand out. And again, the pictures back up what they are seeing on here. Before we go and break it down, let's just go have a look. So we've got Amro is the host. What started as a quick way to save money for our wedding became a passion. Dina and I started hosting in 2021, two years after missed interactions due to the pandemic. We became obsessed with meeting faces all over the world, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. AM is here, Dino is here. If you look at their listing, they've got the main cabin, the A frame here, and they've got an apartment as well. That's got 20 reviews. That looks a little bit newer. But this is obviously the main one and this is the one that Ryan and Haley went to go and stay in. A quick little Google search shows that they have got a website which we'll go have a look at a section in a second. They're listed on Journey, which is a pretty cool listing site. You should go and check out. Um, actually, let's just open up here. So Journey is part of Zach Boozy Cruise, good friend of the show. Again, go and check it all out. All there, which is all good. But obviously they've got a little bit of a presence, so they've got their own Instagram account. They're listed on other OTAs. They're on the TikTok. They've got people that have come and stayed that. They are definitely, as you can see on their Instagram, I've got 62, 000 followers. They do know what that. They do know what they're doing when it comes to social media. Obviously, beautiful, beautiful pictures, lovely drone shots. And obviously they do reels as well. There was one reel that I saw that. Well, there's a couple of reels that has absolutely taken off 2.8 million views. 1.8 million views. 2.6 million views. And again, if you. You can look at that and you can see why, again, they know what they're doing. But let's have a quick look at what they're not doing. Well, if we go and look at the website, for example, that is their website. I feel like it's a logify site, but that is awful. I think as. As much as they've put into everything else, they have truly, truly let them down on the website. And one of the biggest things that stands out to me in why and how they're not doing their website correctly is that if you, if you look at it, they are sending you back to Airbnb. Obviously you can, you can click that Book now button, which, yeah, it does take you to logify, but this could be so much better. And you know what I did, and I do this everywhere when I'm doing this series and just places that I. I hear about, what I'd go and do is this is obviously in the fantastic Sendoa Valley. So. So I went on there, I Google searched it and just put in Boostly, because every website that we do has got like a GL OK next to it. And the fantastic Lindsey Stewart's website came up and I was like, guys, if you want a website done properly, then you want to match it up to this. You want to have 80% of the information of your website on the homepage. You want to make that booking process, that scrolling process, as simple as possible. Now, with this, when it loads up, let's get rid of Journey for a second. It's just the homepage. There's nothing about it. It's a nice picture, yes, but that is literally it. They don't say anything. You have to go and click going through these. And again, why would you send people back to Airbnb? You get a little bit of bonus marks for putting your Instagram on there, but there is nothing you need to. Again, Lodgeify, it's a free website, guys. Truly come and book a call with Us, we can show you exactly what it would look like properly. We integrate with. So, again, your website would be a lot more better. It will do you justice. Your website needs to be your online business card, and that is a shit business card. I'm sorry, but this, I mean, you've put all the effort in. You spent all this money on such an amazing place, the theater, all the things. I mean, if you've watched the episode on the show, it just looks absolutely stunning. And you've got the private theater. You've got everything going on, from the archery to everything. And it truly, truly gets let down with, with your. With your website. The one thing that I would say here, yes, it's an A frame, but you don't need to state it on the first three images. These two here are wasted. I would put in on this one, the hot tub image, that the private theater looks awesome, the view stunning. Maybe get the hot tub in there. What else would I take from that one? You got to maybe show off the living area. I would say the pool table. Actually, that one with the pool table. That would be the second image in the pool table here, the hot tub in there. And I feel like you've got your first five. You basically got to give them a virtual tour with your pictures of the first five images here. Again, what I would be looking to do here is, is I would be looking to give you a. Well, you've got the Ava Sendoa. Sendoa Senan Senandoa. Again, I don't know how to pronounce it. Sorry, I'm British. But I would be making that your business name, the Ava Sendoa. So welcome to the Ava Sendoa in Sendoa Valley. Check out our online reviews. They're really good, right? Something like that. Because what you want to do is you want to be able to billboard this. So they go from your OTA listing and they want to find you direct. So if I go and Google the Ava Sendoa. So, Ava. Sendoha. Let's see what comes up. So the Ava Sendoa A frame does come up, which is good. So the website is there. Again, it goes back to that crap website. But this is like, you got to treat this like it's your first page of. Of. You've got to treat this like the first page of Google is like your homepage. Look at Airbnb, they are using your name, right, to sponsor it, to get Google Ads, to get that there. But you've obviously got the. The. The website link, the Google business place here, which I'm amazed That it's still there, to be honest, because obviously we know Google are trying to take this that down. You've got Instagram, you've got your website, Airbnb, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram, Instagram. Social media. Social media. So, yeah, again, just go and claim this listing. It. It looks like you haven't done from what I can see here. Go and claim it. Just so you need to. Just so nobody else does go get your website sorted. But again, I didn't see on your Instagram, you talking about the fact that Ryan and Haley have come and stayed here. Now, if you don't want to have it as a main image, then again you can sort of do it as a carousel and put it in there. But I feel like you need to be sort of drawing attention to the fact that they've come and stayed there. There is so much good SEO that you can do on the back of this. And you can make like. Like Treetopia. Like Treetopia. Keep talking about it. Which is. Which is awesome. What's it called? No, it's not Truetopia. It's Okie Dokie Cabins. Again, just the fact that I know that I know that is testament to Okie Dokie Cabins. Okie Cabins. Because they were the ones that are the ones right from the very start. Yeah, I can't find it. All right, bad example. We'll make sure. I'll edit out. But Okie Dokie Cabins were really good. The Tree Topia they keep talking about on social media. So again, for use, you've done. You've done well. It's a fantastic listing. I mean, you can talk to me and say, hey, Mark, you know, all well and good, but we haven't got a lot of availability coming up until September, until October, to be perfectly honest. So, again, you've obviously done well. I think you could take so much more advantage of this personally. But A, have you got a website? Yes. Have you got a good social media? Yes. Your listing's good. Yes. Can you do a bit of billboarding to get people direct to your site? 100%. But all in all, if we were to go and look at this and just put it on the ranking system, which is here, I would put our A frame at a B at the moment. I feel like there might be one that's better. I'm gonna put you at B. Okay, so that's the first one done. Nice and simple. Let me know your feedback on the A frame. I'm always inquisitive to know what you think of this as we move on to the, to the next one. And again, I'm not doing this in any order but let's jump into the next one. I'm going to go for Bearwood car. That's the next one that literally comes up. Let's go and find it on my screen. Okay, it's right here. So this was in West Virginia. This was a pretty cool one. If you've watched the video you'll know that when they arrived it was raining so they weren't able to take full advantage of the facilities. But it did look very, very cool. I feel like by leading with the sports car is a very good move because it's the outdoor facilities that sells your property. I'm not saying that the house itself isn't very good, but it is the experience in and around it that truly, truly makes it. If this was just the house, I don't feel like you would get as good of feedback here. Now having a quick look, have these. Number one, what do we look for? Professional pitches. 100%. Yes, they are professional pitches. Done. The games room looks great. Again you've got some really, really cool features on the outside but you've, you've. The experience is everything with this and you are definitely selling an experience. I love that you've got the workstation because again we know that a lot of people are doing the work cations so they will potentially somebody in the party because you do sleep quite a lot of people. From what I remember 12 people. There will be somebody who want to do a bit of work. That's absolutely cool. Let's look at availability super quick. July, fully booked. August up until the end. September, there's a little bit but for the most part you're doing good. Now I know that you're using chat GPT for the sheer fact. You've got all the emojis going on, you've got V stars going on. My one thing that I would say to you would be keep the sports emojis but get rid of everything else. It just over overbears it to be perfectly honest. I love that you're putting your five star reviews in here. That's awesome. That's great. Keep that up. You're using the little spaces here to separate the lines, which is good. I really do enjoy and really do like to see when they break down the sleeping quarters and just say what the beds are, the situations are because again if you can't see it, it makes it very confusing. So when you do that it's all it really does help, to be perfectly honest. We've talked about this before on this series that we're doing, but I feel like it would really benefit your listing seeing that you're so good with Chat GPT. Take it up a notch. Get the floor plan of the property, put it into chat GPT and ask for it to draw a 3D Airbnb floor plan. And I would put that here just so that they can visualize what the floor plan would be like at the property. The sport car is a great shout. The pool table is a good shout. The hot tub is a good show. But I would be using that image or that image. I wouldn't be using both because I feel like what you can be doing is you can be using one of these drone shots or nighttime shots to be properly really emphasizing the property. That's not a very good drone. That's not a very good drone shot. That's not a very good drone shot. I feel like you've got a better one in you. If not, that's a pretty cool bed shot. Potential. No? Which one stands out to me just from looking at this, I think you've got to got the basketball shot. Okay. The drone shot. I think a drone shot will be good just to sort of show it is secluded. I think I'm going to keep going back to this one. Then you've got the mountains in the background, the woods there. That's all obvious. That's your property that's there. I feel keep coming back to that one. To be perfectly honest, you could replace one of these just to show how secluded that it is, because it is so many people as well. I feel like lifestyle shots could be a good opportunity. Once you get the opportunity to do it, get some people in the shots. Again, don't use the faces, use the back of the head so people can. Again, it's weird. If you show faces, people don't resonate. But if you show back of heads and then like sort of, you know, maybe it could be shooting some hoops right here. Maybe it could be back of head looking out over the view of a glass of wine. Not glass, but you know. You know what I mean? Those sort of things, people can envision them being at the place. I don't know if you have this, but obviously your summer will be different to your winter. I don't know what the situation is like in the winter, but I assume that you're open. Actually, let me look at your calendar. That'll tell me everything that I need to know if I come and put. Let's just look at Christmas. So you are open at Christmas. You will. So if that is the case, you will have to, at some point start to think about the winter shots, because the winter shots will not be the same as this. You need to have the summer and the spring and the autumn, the fall and the winter. And you need to be differentiating between the two. So instead of this being blue skies, you know, you'd be going. You wouldn't maybe be showing this off. You'd be showing the hot tub with the snow, with the. Whatever you've got going on with the fire, the log fireplace. So look, log fireplace. Maybe not in the summer because it's going to be boiling hot there, but have that for the winter shot. Again, a bit more moody, a bit more higgy. Higgy is the word. So go in and remove these. Keep these emojis. These are pretty cool. But again, you've done it. Well, the big blocks of text is what we don't want to see. And we do see big blocks of text. But this is the thing. Did you take advantage of the fact that you've got all this attention? I did a super quick Google search, and I'll be honest with you, I couldn't find you. I typed in Bear Wood Cabin, West Virginia. We could even break it down a little bit. Berkeley. Berkeley Springs. Let me try to do this. Let me add that to the end. That's obviously your Airbnb listing. Oh, we've got a Facebook page. Berkeley vacationstays.com. what is vacation Stays? Let's have a quick look. Okay, that's interesting. So this is here. Vacation Stays. What is Vacation Stays? About us. Welcome to our boutique shirt. We are specialized in providing. Oh, okay. So let's have a little look here, Eric. Ah, here we go. Eric has got a business, but it is not clear any way, shape or form that this is a business. So this is where you've gone wrong, sir. I do not see vacationstays co mentioned anywhere on this listing or any of your other listings. What's this? I don't think that's the same place. And even worse, you've got the free website again. Eric Kaz, let's have a little look at your email here. Dolphin. That's the same. Same one. All right, Eric. I'm afraid, sir, you've not. You've not done this right in any way, shape or form. You've got beautiful properties. You've spent all this money. Don't think that's the same one. But you've let it down here. So the first thing that you need to be doing, sir, when you see this, if you see this, you need to be giving us a brand name. So let's just call this the. What are we calling this? This is in Berkeley Springs. Call it the Bearwood Cabin. I think this may be what is. Is it is called at Burwood Cabin. Let me see if you have got an Instagram for this because it's not clear. Again, when you confuse, you lose, sir. And at the moment you're losing, well, not losing in terms of bookings, but you're losing out in terms of revenue and building a brand. Yeah, you're doing that all wrong. So let's just call this Bearwood Cabin. We're going to call it Bearwood Cabin. The way you would start off this would be welcome to Burwood Cabin, brought to you by vacation stays.com. could you get away with.com if you put Vacation Stays co, would you get away with it? I don't know, but let's just say welcome to Bearwood. Bearwood Cabin. Introducing Bearward Cabin, brought to you by Vacant VacationStays.com don't put HTTPs or www. I'm even on the fence about if you put.co in because you don't want to flag it to Airbnb. Second thing, come into your profile. I'm the owner and founder. This is. Welcome to my world of wanderlust. Nobody cares. I'm the owner and founder of VacationStays co. Check out our online reviews. We're really good. Something like that, right? And then you can add in all the other fancy stuff that they want you to add in. But you need to state that you are a professional. You are a business owner. You have got a brand. You have got more than just this spot. You here, which again is amazing. But this is the brand. Vacation Stays. Your website is shocking. Honestly, nothing against Logify. They're amazing. Do really good free websites. But this doesn't mean anything to anybody. Again, if we come back to look at the example of Sedona. Can I bring that back? Sedona. Sedona. There we go. You have all of the information on the homepage, 80% of the information. They know who you are, what you do, how you can buy. Again. Book a call. Please book a call. I would love to help you because your properties are amazing. This website's letting it down. There is no way that you are building a business. There is no way that you are building email list. There's no way that you have got things going on behind the scenes where you can fill out all of these amazing locations. West Virginia, Washington state, Oregon, Georgia. You've got them spread all over Oklahoma. It's a shame because you've got such a beautiful, beautiful spot. Instagram account didn't find it, obviously. I don't think you realize that Ryan Trahan has just sent 3 million people your direction. Again, you probably come back to me and just go, mark, I'm booked out. But again, I could be saving you tons of money in fees here, so please do get in contact now if we're going to put this on our ranking system. Number one, do we have a good listing? Yes. Do we have an Instagram? No. Do we have a website? Yes. But it is awful. And it wasn't even clear where vacation stays came into it. So we're gonna take our sports car again. My kids, when they watched that, they were like, I want to go stay there. I'm gonna put it at D at the moment. It's not the worst, it's not the best, but let's see where we get in with the next one. Okay, again, I would love your opinions on that one. The Bearwood Cabin. Let me know. Let me know. Okay, so let me go back in. We're going to share our screen again and again. If you've been enjoying this series, go back and watch the other three that we've done. Just click on the link, go back, go check them out as we move on to the next one. So this is going to be. We're going to go over to New Jersey. The entire home in New Jersey. Let me go find this one. Here we go. Right? I found it. So this is hosted by Izzy and Joe. If we come down and look at Izzy and Joe, this is what they had to say on their listing. 7.4.76. 199 reviews. 13 years hosting. Not the best rating. I don't know why this is a guest favorite. Is this a guest favorite? I think he's staying in. Just guest favorites. I see this property is a guest favorite, but they're overall, that means I've got a couple of properties. I'm excited to check this out again. I've not done much research into this one. Izzy and Joe, we're after spending several years in New York City, we purchased our dream Lake House in 2020. Went all in for the country life. For the past two, three years, we've been here full time while updating the house, doing our best to make it special. Now that we've done that. We'd like to share a little oasis and when we're not here. So this looks like they live in this one by the looks of it. So a super quick look. Dogs in charge. Oh, I've only got this one. I'm not entirely sure why. Overall, They've got a 4.76. They must have had other listings maybe that they've not now got. I don't know. But Isabelle is here, So maybe they've had other listings. Who knows? But they're listing their overall reviews 4.76, which is interesting. But this property, really good. All right. Now, this stood out because of the private island. This is something that they talked about. Obviously, when they did this, Dr. Mike came to visit. If you've seen the series, he donated $70,000. He got to spin the wheel. They did the big SPL split. So Haley and. Haley and Ryan had to split to get to the next destination, which was a ton of fun. Made YouTube really good. The episode was fantastic. But did they take advantage? I'll give you a short answer. No. I cannot find this anywhere. But if they're living here, they're hobbyist hosts. They don't care. Is the listing good? Now, that's the thing that they obviously care about. They're booked out July, August, pretty much September. There's a ton of availability. But the list in itself, professional pictures does look pretty cool. I do love this where they go, hey, that's a private island. Then they showcase it. That's not needed. I don't know what that is. That's a good shot. It does marry up well. The front. Who cares? So let's go and see how we can help them get better images. I feel like this hundred percent needs to be one of the first five. And this one as well. Again, I still don't understand to this day why photographers want this to be a messy bed. But hey ho with the view like that. So I feel like we've got two pictures here instantly that can replace these two pictures here. And I think even maybe that third one we could potentially do with removing. If there's anything else that super stands out. That's a really cool drone shot. No. Oh, there you go. Models in there. Lifestyle shot. Day bed, full bed. Okay, so this is. This is cool. Let's take this. Let's see what we can do with our friend Chat GPT on this one. Oh, but again, look at that high Highland Island. Is that a little cl. Highland Island. No. Isn't the clue. I'm afraid I Should be able to do that and go and Google it and find your website. So take this and turn it into a beautiful hand drawn floor plan in 3D for my Airbnb listing. Colorful black and white. We don't like black. So what I'm going to do is I've uploaded this tract families. Just do it. All right. Just do it. So again, it's going to go ahead and do that. So again, having floor plans are great because again, it helps the future potential guest get a better feeling of the layout because obviously it's a bigger property. Right. You're going to have six guests. Right. This is basically my family. I want to know where the bedrooms are in relation to each other. You know this as the host because you've been in it. This is your home. But me looking at it as a stranger, I haven't got a clue. I want to know where Rosie, my two year old's going to be. I want to know where the boys are going to be. I want to know where the six year old's going to be. I want to know where mine, Laura's room is. Again, this looks cool. That looks cool. But where is it? Right, and we don't get to see that because we don't have a video. So you get around that with floor plans. All right, let's see. That's not ready quite yet. But again, if we're going to go back to that again, you've got to be consistent. That is a winter shot, that's a autumn, spring shot. You can't have all of them at once. You've got to be able to get several types of shots. So then your listing will evolve over time. You are fully booked until the autumn. So what you should be now doing is replacing these shots now while you're fully booked with more autumnal shots. And, and again, I'm probably speaking to you and you're like, mark, I live in here. I don't really care if it's booked out or not. You're an Airbnb, you want to get bookings. So you might as well start doing the groundwork in here. So start getting your, your autumnal and winter shots in now because you're pretty much fully booked out. Okay? So this is what Airbnb have done. Let me just go and marry that up to what they've got, what I put in. So what did I put in here? 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. What did I, what did I do here? Bedroom. Bedroom. Okay, Chad, GPT. You failed. You failed on this One, I'm afraid normally does a lot better, but it failed on that one. That's probably my bad. With the prompt I put in again, I couldn't find it online. Again, they probably don't care. The actual list in itself. Big blocks of text, we don't like that. Big blocks of text, we don't like that. Use the example from Bearwood on how to separate your. Your listing out here. And again, didn't really see anything online. Nothing. Posts on social media. So they probably don't even realize they've had 3 million views of their property. Do they care? Probably not. But again, with all this being said, let's give it a ranking. Come back into our ranking system here. And it was this one. I'm going to pop them obviously below because I haven't got a website. In fact, I'm going to put them at F for now. There will be a couple of these that won't even make it onto the list because I only had spots for six, as you can see. But we're not gonna, we're not gonna dwell on that one. Okay, so let's move on, shall we? We're gonna go to the next one, which. This one, personally, as in the ones that I saw and I was like, wow, this is really cool. I would love to come and stay here. Was this. So this that you are looking at right now, Again, it said 3 million listings. This is a farm stay experience in Kentucky. As you will know. If you know anything about me, I am from the farm stay experience. My kids watch this and my 2 year old was going mental and crazy when she saw this. And Frankie was loving this, the boys loving this. Laura was loving this, this as well. So this is the view from your bedroom when you come and stay on the farm. And I think this is such a great idea. So you're staying in a stable, so it's obviously two guests. So it's a small living experience, like a tiny house almost. But that is the view from the room. Now the one thing that I would say to the owners, and I believe the owner is called Nick. Laura and Nick, please get professional pictures done. That looks professional. That looks professional. That's not. That is an awful picture. You get away with it because it's a cute one. But again, I would message you on your phone because you've got it literally and you can see the reflection. So a little bit of tweaks will make a heck of a lot of difference. And how you were doing for availability. There's a lot of availability. So you can obviously do with the bookings. So I would definitely do that. Looking at this big blocks of text. Again, if you need help with something like this, just whack this all into chat GPT and just say, there's actually a GPT for Airbnb which is help you with your listing description, listing enhancer. So paste this in and say, break this up so it's easier to read. Use emojis if you like. And then what it will do is it will take all of this. And it will make it a bit better. So the space, one bedroom suite. And again, you don't have to just blatantly copy and paste this in, but look at the bullet points. People don't read big blocks of text, they look at bullet points and emojis is icons telling the story. And again, I feel like this is so much better than just seeing big blocks of text. So do use chat GPT and there's an actual GPT, which basically is a specific thing it's trained on, which is Airbnb listings. To go and make it. To go and make it better. I love all of this. I love all of this. So all the things that you offer is phenomenal. You've got the bedroom shot, you've got all of that, you've got wi, you've got tons of availability, you've got great reviews and really tap into that farm stay experience. So did you take advantage of it? All right, so Nicora Ranch in Kentucky. So I did the Google search. Nakura Ranch in Kentucky. Yes.