Right now, if you sign up for Airbnb through this link, you’ll get $50 off your first qualifying booking.

Many moons ago, Airbnb started as a home sharing platform and turned into a full-fledged hospitality behemoth. Sure, you can still get a room in someone’s house, or even a bed in a shared room, but most travelers are now using Airbnb as an alternative to a hotel stay.

You get more space, a kitchen, a separate living space and whatever amenities your pocketbook can afford.

Airbnb can be a fantastic way to stay at a unique property or save money compared to staying at a hotel. Be sure to check out our previous article where we discussed details such as filtering the search results and strategies for saving money and earning points and miles.

Part I: Key Things You Need To Know About Booking An Airbnb. This post goes over the foundations of booking an Airbnb.

Part II: How to be an Airbnb Ninja - Ready for Anything. Today's post dives into more advanced search strategies and crisis avoidance/management.

In our previous article we discussed some tools, tips, and tricks to help you navigate booking air travel. In this article we’ll tackle accommodation. Specifically we’ll look at one of the biggest movers and shakers in the industry – Airbnb. Let’s move about the cabin and discuss accommodation on the ground.

Airbnb Basics

Airbnb has left VRBO and HomeAway in the dust while also overtaking some hotel chains based on US sales. There are over 7 million Airbnb listings worldwide and some 2 million people are staying in an Airbnb on a given night according to recent statistics.

At the Chicago Seminars last weekend, Scott gave two presentations:

Airbnb Mastery
Sweetspots 2017

I will publish a post tomorrow with the slides from the Sweetspots 2017 presentation.

Right now, if you sign up for Airbnb through my referral link, you’ll get $50 off your first stay, and I’ll get money towards my next stay. Feel free to leave your referral link in the comments.

I've booked myself many stays on Airbnb, a website that lets you rent rooms, apartment, and houses from locals around the world.

The majority of us earn heaps of miles through sign up bonuses, maximizing category bonuses on credit cards, and flying. And at the end of the day, credit cards are the bread and butter that enable most of us to fly free in First Class.

But there are lots of other ways to earn miles, many of which are passive and all of which require little effort.

I spend a lot of my time in Airbnb apartments, so saving money on each rentals adds up for me. I've discussed tips to save money on Airbnb before including:

Right now, if you sign up for Airbnb through my referral link, you’ll get $27 off your first stay, and I’ll get $27 off my next stay.

My friend, Sarah Page, recently took a trip to Brazil to escape the dismal winter weather in Buenos Aires that drove me to Brazil and then Europe myself. She and her friends used tips they learned from this blog to save money and earn extra travel rewards on the trip.

I will go through those tips below so you can learn from their experience. (Ignore the fact that she started in Buenos Aires.

I stayed two weeks at an Airbnb in Santiago, Chile at the start of the month. That's not uncommon for me, since I am a nomad. Here's where I slept every night of 2015 for reference.

When your Airbnb stay ends, you and the host have two weeks to review each other. The first review is hidden until the two weeks are over or both reviews are made.

I travel full time. FAQ:

“OK, but where do you live?” It’s equally true that I live wherever I am at that moment and that I live nowhere.
“Where’s your home base?” Nowhere.

I’ve learned that I like to stay in a place for at least several weeks to figure out its rhythms, my favorite restaurants, and meet new friends before I move on.