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[00:00:01] Sarah: Hello. Welcome back to another great episode. My name is Sarah Karakaian.

[00:00:05] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:00:07] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.

[00:00:08] Sarah: And this is the–

[00:00:09] Both Annette & Sarah: Hosting Hotline.

[00:00:10] Sarah: If you want to get your hosting question answered here in the Hosting Hotline, all you have to do is go to hostinghotline.com. Ask your question. We’ll help you here on the podcast, and you will help so many other hosts in the process. Today, Heather has a great question about the beginning stages of her hosting business.

[00:00:25] Question: Hi. My name’s Heather. I’m in Bellingham, Washington. We’ve got a small guest room, a studio apartment almost that’s attached to our house that we’ve had on Airbnb since May of this year. And just realizing that it probably makes sense for it to have its own email address and potentially a domain name and the bank account and all that stuff.

[00:00:58] But what I’m working on right now is the email address and just wondering your advice on that, whether I need to have a Gmail business email, which seems to cost money, $21 a month, or just create another free Gmail account and potentially that domain name. All right. Any advice would be super awesome. And maybe just point me in the direction if you have a podcast about it. Thanks so much.

[00:01:33] Sarah: Heather, you are the podcast about this.

[00:01:35] Annette: Yeah. We’re going to make a podcast right now about it.

[00:01:38] Sarah: And actually, shamefully, creating Gmail accounts and connecting all the things for new businesses is one of my favorite things to do. I really enjoy it. Organizing a Google Drive on a Friday night, here for it.

[00:01:51] Annette: I just called you yesterday and you helped me organize my Gmail Calendar.

[00:01:55] Sarah: I did. I did.

[00:01:57] Annette: And Sarah will take you in the depths of the settings area of Gmail– areas I didn’t know existed, the core settings of Gmail. Heather, these are great questions though, and we’re just excited for you because this is how you should be thinking.

[00:02:17] This spare room, this studio, this is a business. It deserves its own email. It definitely deserves its own bank account for sure. So we’re going to give you some options here on how we would proceed. But the best thing that you are doing is you have that mindset that it is a business. It is bringing revenue into your family, and therefore it deserves that respect and maybe a domain name, maybe a Gmail, and absolutely a bank account.

[00:02:47] Sarah: Let’s get the easy one off the plate, Annette. Let’s talk about the bank account because, no matter what, Heather, we believe that you should do this.

[00:02:53] Annette: Yes. And there is an easy option. We use Relay. It is online, and you can set your bank account up. You will need a EIN, but you’re going to want this too, Heather. I would talk to your CPA about this, but definitely separating your income into a separate account we think is an absolute must. Because you’re never really going to know the true success of your property until you have those not being clouded or muddied up in your normal day to day.

[00:03:25] And that’s something that you can set up online and just have those deposits from, if you’re on Airbnb, just redirect from whatever checking account it’s going into now into that separate bank account. So we would absolutely do that ASAP.

[00:03:38] Sarah: Relay’s cool, Heather, because you don’t have to go into a bank. It does work in partnership with Thread Bank. So Relay is technically a financial platform. It works with Thread Bank, which is FDIC. Annette and I have been using it for years now. And it’s so cool because I don’t know if you own this property with someone else or if you want both people to be on the account, but you both don’t have to go to a physical bank to set it up.

[00:04:01] You can both do it online. It’s free for you. And you can also set up a bunch of different checking if you want. If you want to have a little account for future maintenance that you want to do on the property, if you want to have an operating account, if you want to have a little cashflow account that you pull out of and actually live off of, or put into your personal funds, you can do that, and all that’s free. And it’s super easy and quick to do, unlike some of those bigger banks that make it such a hurdle or you have to keep minimums in there.

[00:04:28] Annette: Yeah, there’s no minimums is the biggest part there. Because sometimes when you open up a business banking account elsewhere, they require thousands and thousands of dollars every month, or they’re going to ding you for account maintenance.

[00:04:38] Sarah: Which is so silly. This sounds like a Relay ad, and it’s totally not. Annette and I really do use Relay. They are a partner of ours, Heather, but we can say in good faith that we use them. We definitely recommend that. So that’s a no brainer. That’s easy. There’s one answer for you. Okay, great. Let’s move on to your next question.

[00:04:56] What Annette and I don’t know is, are you planning to buy more property? I also don’t know how much this studio brings in. I don’t know your market. So it might be this popping off business is actually–

[00:05:09] Annette: Cash flowing your whole mortgage.

[00:05:11] Sarah: Yeah. I don’t know. So we’re going to have two different options that you can pick your own path. And the first option is going to be the lower-cost option. And the first step there would be to– don’t worry about the name right now. Just use the Airbnb platform. Then if you want a Gmail account, you can make an alias. So it could be studioapartment@Gmail.com.

[00:05:38] It can even be its own account on Gmail with its own login, or you can make an alias so your guests can email you there. It’ll go to your Heather email account, but you can create so it goes into its own folder. So it separates itself from the rest of your inbox. That’s totally free. So you could do that. So free business banking. Don’t worry about the domain name right now. Just use the Airbnb platform, and the Gmail is also free. Now you can have your own login or you can make it an alias of your Heather Gmail account, but have it go into its own folder.

[00:06:13] Annette: That way you’re not having to log into accounts. And then the third option is purchasing the domain name, like you said. Maybe it’s Bellingham studio or whatnot, but a domain name, we buy ours on Squarespace normally less than $20 for the entire year. They’re normally running some deal.

[00:06:31] Like right now they’re $14, but under 20 bucks, and you can have that domain name for the entire year. And then that’s what you would hook up to your Google business. And that starts as low as $6 a month. So it would be heather@bellinghamstudio.com. I will say it does absolutely give a little bit more air of a professional business.

[00:06:54] I know when people want to do business with Sarah and I, and then it’s just like their name in Gmail, I’m like, wait, they haven’t even sprung to buy a domain name? Are they a business or not? I’m just saying it does absolutely give that look of professionalism there.

[00:07:10] But again, that’s six bucks a month. So the six bucks a month plus the domain, I think you’re saying for around a hundred bucks, you could have that really professional look. You don’t even need to have a website yet if you don’t want to, but you could just have a landing page with your Airbnb link.

[00:07:28] I think that’s great because Heather, what I love about that is if you– again, I’m just using this Bellingham Studio. If you go to it and there’s a landing page there, which you could build on Squarespace, you could give your friends, your family that site super easy, and they could book, even if they’re booking through Airbnb. But it’s a really nice experience for them.

[00:07:44] They’re not having to fish through all of the listings on Airbnb. You can give that to them to book, and it just gives you some digital real estate also. And then like Sarah said, if you are wanting to grow, we’re hoping that this is helping you offset your mortgage. And then maybe if you buy another home, you’re like, well, we can just Airbnb the main home too. Maybe you could do some parent-child listings if you’re out of town on vacation.

[00:08:10] We’ll go on and on about how you could build out this business. So again, for around a hundred bucks, you could have the domain and your email. And what we love about that is then your bank account could have that email attached to it. Your Airbnb account, that email could be attached to it, and then everything would be clean as to where the correspondence for your studio is going.

[00:08:35] We really like that packaging of that. But again, you can go the free route if you want to get started with that in the beginning and see what– also, inch by inch, it’s a sinch, go one thing at a time. See if it’s helpful to have that alias, and you’re like, “Oh, I really like having this alias.” And then upgrade to the Gmail if you want.

[00:08:52] Sarah: The cool thing with the landing page, Heather, if you end up getting the domain, first of all, I don’t know if you said this, Annette, but the domain is something you pay for once a year. So that’s a pretty low buy in. And when you create the landing page, Heather, if you want it to not only be listed on Airbnb but also VRBO, and then within Airbnb, you can connect those two calendars, but on your landing page, guests can pick whether they want to choose to book through Airbnb, VRBO, or maybe they email you directly, and you do it the old-fashioned way and do “direct booking” without a PMS behind you. Because I don’t think that you need all that just yet.

[00:09:25] Annette: The next step I’m going to go to because, again, this the most fun for us, is when you’re thinking about that domain name, Heather. I’m not sure if you have any social media presence for your studio, but think about that ahead of time. If you don’t have maybe an Instagram handle or a Tik Tok or Facebook, see whatever domain you want to purchase, if that’s also available on those social media platforms. So if you’re going to get the domain, maybe it could match up with your social media handles also, if you want to go the next step there.

[00:10:02] Sarah: That’s a great idea. Heather, we want to come stay.

[00:10:05] Annette: And as of right now, with Relay, we have, I’m pretty sure a sign up bonus of $50, so you could slash all that in half. Just putting it out there.

[00:10:13] Sarah: Oh, yeah. You have to fund your account. But if you fund your account within a period of time, I think it’s probably like three months, something like that, they will put $50 back into your account, which is cool, Heather. Yeah, you could offset your expenses for the year for the domain.

[00:10:26] Annette: And for those of you out there listening that are not host hacking yet, that’s what we like to call what Heather is doing, take this as a seed of inspiration for you. And if it’s not you, do you know a family member or friend that has the same type of studio setup? This is how Sarah got started.

[00:10:44] We encourage anybody that has this opportunity at their primary residence, this is the way that you can absolutely get started and see quick success. And as we tell with Heather, I feel like the wheels are spinning here, and she is getting a little hooked on hosting.

[00:11:03] Sarah: Just a little, right, Heather? It’s addictive. All right. Heather, thanks so much for calling in to the Hosting Hotline. Again, if you’re out there, if you’ve got questions, you want to see maybe our feedback, our insight, go to hostinghotline.com. Ask your question. We’ll share it here on the podcast. And with that, I am Sarah Karakaian.

[00:11:20] Annette: I am Annette Grant. And together we are–

[00:11:21] Both Annette & Sarah: Thanks for Visiting.