How to properly give Airbnb bonuses and avoid getting banned
I recently received an email from Airbnb saying that you are violating the rules for distributing bonuses, and my bonus link has been blocked. Since this case is not an isolated one in recent years, I decided to write my thoughts on this matter and tell how the case ended with me. So to speak, I want to warn my colleagues :)
Looking ahead, I will say that a week later the link was unblocked and I received official approval for its placement on the pages of this blog.
The content of the article
Where can I post bonus links
According to the rules of the company, links can only be given to your friends and they are categorically forbidden to be published openly on such resources as forums, Wikipedia, coupon sites. Moreover, you can publish in social networks, but only on your profile wall, not in groups.
To be honest, I don't understand Airbnb's policy on this matter. Well, someone gets bonuses, what's the difference if there is no cheat option, because the bonus is given not for registration, but for the first booking. I guess the bottom line is that this is how they try to build trust in the brand. After all, it's one thing you will receive a link from a friend who recommended the service and then you address your questions to him, another thing is to find a link in the open spaces and in case of any misunderstandings you will write negative reviews.
My history
They sent me a letter that I violate the rules for posting links, that they are not for commercial use, and that I must remove them within 24 hours. In a reply letter, I wrote that the links were removed, and asked to explain the reason. I will not bother you with the chronicle of all the correspondence, which lasted a week, the point is that I said that I post links exclusively on my personal travel blog (this is really so), where, one might say, I PR the Airbnb service among my friends and subscribers. Moreover, not just PR, but I myself use the service, talking about the apartments where we stay. As a result, tech support looked at my blog and I was allowed to publish links here in the open and said that it is quite justified that I get a reward for the promotion.
Airbnb Bonuses
I did not receive an exact answer as to why the link was blocked. As I understand it, sooner or later all accounts that create a lot of «friendly» clickthrough links. Agree, in ordinary life, you are unlikely to give it to more than 10-20 acquaintances.
I also asked the technical support representative if this was due to the fact that I have two types of links on my blog: bonus links and from Tavelpayouts, but they answered vaguely that no. Let me remind you that the Airbnb affiliate network was closed back in 2012, and in the summer of 2015 Travelpayouts tried to revive it, which I wrote about in another post. Unfortunately, the information about whether something like this will happen when, directly or again as well, was not given to me either..
conclusions
To reduce the number of clicks without registrations, I removed the banners on the blog. Well, those banners that say sign up and get $ 16. Next, I removed gift links from almost all posts and referred to my general post about Airbnb, where I left this link. So, in theory, everything should look as believable as possible, given that I answer all the comments with questions, and I just erase negative stuffing without specifics. I don’t think that support has studied my site in great detail, but just in case I did it like this..
I had other options, I will share. You can place a bonus link in your Vkontakte / Facebook profile, and give a link to that status on the blog. Thus, all transitions will be from the social network, and not from the site. The second option is to place on the site a field for entering an Email and a button «get 16 $», when you click on which, an email with a bonus link will be sent. So, in general, all transitions will be from mail. Although, not everyone wants to indicate their email, and with a large number of clicks, Airbnb may suspect you of mailing lists.
If you have a live travel blog, then there is definitely nothing to be afraid of. If there are any other sites / projects, then I would think about the best way to give a bonus link in order to avoid being banned. At the very least, you shouldn't arbitrate on bonus links, I think they will be banned. True, they did not block the bonuses for me, but who knows. Once they started doing this, it means for some reason they are tightening the policy.
P.S. I communicated with support in English, answered every time during the day. They did not answer with unsubscribes, but normally, so you can write immediately explaining your situation.