Airbnb partners no longer
If suddenly someone else is not aware of the bloggers and site owners, then Travelpayouts again launched an affiliate program from Airbnb! Exclusive! I have been waiting for this moment since the summer, as I worked with this offer and it showed pretty good results. So this news is very good for me! I recommend registering (for example, using my link) and try to make money on it. I'll tell you something in this post, both about Airbnb (they have limited bonuses to everyone) and about my earnings.
The content of the article
Offer terms
On April 28, 2016, Airbnb stopped working with Travelpayouts and closed the affiliate program, having worked in total for no more than a few months. Thus, Airbnb threw webmasters and bloggers for the 2nd time.
Registration in Travelpayouts
- 40% off Airbnb booking commission (!)
- Cookie lifetime - 30 days
- Contextual advertising on Google and Yandex is completely prohibited
- Direct links to Airbnb domains are not allowed
- Hard limit on GEO users - RU, UA, CZ, BY
- Pre-moderation of partners is included
Note that 40% is more than Airbnb pays their regular partners directly, they only get 30% off Airbnb's booking fees. That is, it is more profitable to work through Travelpayouts than directly. But this only applies to those who have old accounts, where the affiliate program is still working.
I already wrote about this offer, but something has changed. As you can see, some points have become more stringent, but this is not due to Travelpayouts, but to the fact that Airbnb has some strange policy towards partners. It seems like there is still a partnership, but everything is not so for them, and everything is not like that for them. It seems that they want advertising, but not to pay money for it. First, Airbnb closed the partnership in 2012 (and it may be that old accounts will be closed), making only very large sites with high traffic available to connect, then they began to ban regular accounts and check how the bonuses were received correctly (I wrote about it). And a couple of months ago, they generally set a limit on bonuses, but more on that below..
Bonus limit
From about August-September 2015, Airbnb made a limit of $ 5,000 in bonuses per account. Those who have not yet earned so many bonuses have not been affected. They cut it off pretty well for me, my amount just zeroed out «for consideration». It's good that at least the old bonuses were not taken away (those that have already been credited). So they did their zeroing assholes quietly. People continued to register with me, the amount grew, and then once it was reset to zero. That is, for about six months I was giving out bonuses just like that. Okay, if they had warned about it somehow, they weren't even going to. After correspondence with the support, they bothered to tell me about it.
There is only one way out - to distribute bonuses from different accounts, wife, brother, parents. It is better not to make accounts for one person, although if the full name is written in Russian and in English, then these are two different people. The main thing is that the registration address does not match the bank card details. Even though I wouldn't risk it anyway.
The second way out is not to work with bonuses at all and work through the Travelpayouts affiliate program. The exhaust is better, the more you get money, and not bonuses that can be spent exclusively inside Airbnb. True, this is a slightly different traffic - one thing is registration, another thing is people are already looking for housing and have been registered for a long time.
How to work with Airbnb
First of all, you need to know that everything works only through a redirect (deep links), that is, you need to take links only in the Travelpayouts account (previously you could link to the Airbnb domain by adding a certain marker). But now it is possible, using the link generator, to link to any Airbnb page, both to a specific apartment and to search results. Also Travelpayouts offers ready-made banners and forms.
Probably, you ask, how do I work? :) I make general selections for different cities where I visit, and also describe specific apartments where I live for some time. The last selections were in Russia, but in my opinion, the overseas direction works better. By the way, this also applies to hotels. But maybe my traffic is just not quite the same, since initially I specialized more in foreign countries. Next summer I will find out whether there will be a profit from recent posts about the Krasnodar Territory, whether it made sense to do this at all or not. Now it turns out 10-30 thousand rubles / month.
Of course, a person who is already familiar with Airbnb will search, first of all, inside the service, and read reviews there, but the percentage of those who are looking for some kind of accommodation simply in a search engine (Yandex, Google) is also large. Someone does not know anything about Airbnb and you open their eyes to this way of living, someone knows, but is looking for additional reviews. Agree, if I describe the apartment, take photos, then such a review shows the apartment much better than the advertising description of the owner himself. Also, the selections themselves make sense, because there are very, very many apartments in some cities, eyes run wide. And it's easier to take someone else's wishlist from someone you trust and look at his options first. I myself do this when I go somewhere. For example, I know a blogger who made a selection of apartments in Serbia, it will be very useful to me soon. The main thing is to make selections as for yourself. Mine are exactly like that, I'm looking for myself, I make wishlists on Airbnb and then a post is written on them.
Don't forget about the popular collections that Airbnb itself has:
https://airbnb.ru/wishlists/popular
https://airbnb.ru/wishlists/airbnb_picks
In addition to them, you can search for other collections, just on the Internet. But you need to understand that, after all, when you make them for yourself, for your trip, it's a little different than just taking ready-made items from the Internet. This is more suitable for a website than a blog. Alternatively, initially travel to popular destinations. You can also make TOPs by country or around the world.
P.S. Just in case, I remind you that now you can work with Airbnb only through Travelpayouts, no one else provides such an opportunity. So you have to keep your fingers crossed so that Airbnb doesn't change their minds, otherwise you never know ...