Tentmaking Tips

My family and I have been traveling “nearly” free for years now. We’ve earned tens of thousands of dollars in free travel just by following a simple process.

I’ve written many blogs on the various details of this process, but today I’ll keep it big picture and show you how to get started.

Step 1: Watch and improve your credit score.

• Start by finding your credit score and working to improve it. I’ve written extensively about that here. Even if you have a very low credit score, you can still play the travel rewards game.

• Your credit score will determine what credit cards you can qualify for, and the higher the score, the better the cards you can get.

Step 2: Apply for a Chase credit card with a large welcome bonus.

• The welcome bonuses are the key to accumulating a lot of travel rewards quickly. A welcome bonus is essentially a big chunk of points they give you to incentivize you to apply for their credit card.

• You
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1. You don’t like the process of buying and selling houses.

   It probably goes without saying that if you don’t like real estate, you shouldn’t get into it. To get your license, you will have to take quite a few real estate courses and to keep your license, there will be continuing education every few years.

2. You have a close family member who is an agent.

   Because many of you would get your license mainly to represent close family members and friends on the side, there could be some family conflict if you take business away from the other family member. Of course it doesn’t have to be this way, but if the other close family member derives most of their income this way, they may feel threatened if you get your license. And they may worry that they’ll lose some of the business they would’ve otherwise received from the family. There are ways aroun

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Now, I know what some of you are thinking.

“I don’t have a guest house.”

“I don’t want strangers in my house.”

“I don’t have the time to manage it.”

The truth is, Airbnb is flexible. You can make money on Airbnb in so many different ways. Most of your initial objections could likely be overcome.

Since you already own your property (land and home), you might as well make some money off of it & let it pay its own bills.

Let me give you some different ways people make money on Airbnb using their own property.

1. Rent out a room on Airbnb
   1. Don’t get tripped up here. This is not the only option. But this is a great option for some.
   2. When my parents would drive 5 hours to visit my sister, my Mom would usually stay at her house, but my Dad would find another place to stay to have a bit more room.
   3. One of his favorite place
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Here’s what I told them (and what I’d tell you):

1. Sell it “For Sale By Owner”
   1. In other words, try to avoid real estate agents. Just to clarify, we love real estate agents around this blog. I’m an agent and so is my wife. We also have a brokerage that employees agents. Nothing against agents, but you often won’t make the most money if you use them (especially at full commission on both sides of the transaction). Real estate commissions will eat up a huge chunk of your profits.
   2. The summary of how you sell it by owner is: buy a FSBO (For Sale By Owner) sign at Home Depot and put it in your front yard, post your home for sale on sites like Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, etc, take phone calls, set-up showings, accept an offer on the property, and then close a month or so later. I’ll go into more detail in the following points.

2. Have it staged
   1. I
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I want to start with a crazy one because it highlights the potential of real estate.

Let me give a disclaimer right here at the beginning.

Most deals among our students are not this big. Most students average deal size would be somewhere between $5,000-$20,000 (which is still really good, especially if you do one or a few each month). Several students have had six figure deals like the one I’m highlighting today, but it’s more uncommon. Still, it’s fun to hear the stories when they happen.

This student joined the Flip Hacking Course & Mastermind when he was overseas as a missionary. He was wanting to generate extra income to eventually replace the money he had raised to go overseas.

Here are the details:

Profit

He made $140,874 on this deal! Wow!

The whole Flip Hacking Community was ch

That’s simply not true. Tentmaking is not an all or nothing proposition. Some people want to continue getting paid by their ministry but want to generate some extra income from tentmaking for family vacations or other extra costs that might not fit in the budget. Tentmaking allows you to generate additional streams of income & how much you make in tentmaking is really up to you.

2. Tentmaking will take way too much time.

This is also a myth. I generate full-time income through tentmaking and it takes me a few hours each week. From the beginning of my tentmaking journey, I made sure I never spent so much time that I felt distracted from my ministry. I wanted tentmaking to be like a hobby and I only wanted to spend a few hour

My oldest daughter wanted to go skiing.

Our family loves staying in Hyatt hotels, so we looked for a Hyatt near good ski slopes. We found a Park Hyatt, one of our favorite Hyatt brands, in Beaver Creek, Colorado. My wife and I grew up skiing in Colorado but neither of us had been to Beaver Creek. What we loved about this Park Hyatt was that it was a ski-in/ski-out resort. Meaning, you could basically ski up to the hotel. Often on the ski trips my wife & I took growing up, you’d have to drive 45 minutes down the mountain to where you were staying after you finished skiing for the day. We thought it would be fun to get to stay right on the slopes.

We booked the trip for this upcoming December, right around my

As the kids started growing up, she was interested in finding a way to make some extra spending money without giving up her dream.

We didn’t need the money, but she thought if she could work for herself a few hours on the side, it would be more like a hobby than a job. And it would give her some extra cash.

Her mom was a real estate agent. She was a full-time teacher but became an agent for extra money on the side. Her mom helped friends and family buy and sell houses and she made some great money doing it.

Her mom always told her she wished she had been able to be a stay-at-home mom. That’s probably part of what influenced by wife’s dream.

My wife has always loved house projects and so watching her mom in real estate inspired her to give it a try herself.

She took an in-person class to get her real estate license while our daughters were in school. I think i

Staging is the process of furnishing and decorating a house to appeal to current retail buyers.

One mistake people make when they sell their homes, in my opinion, is selling it vacant or with furnishings/decor that won’t appeal to buyers.

Sometimes people think that moving all of their furniture/decor out & selling it vacant is best because the buyer will see it as a blank slate. In most cases, this isn’t true. Or people think that they have great taste & just leaving their stuff in there should be fine. This can also be untrue.

Most buyers will pay more for a house that is professionally furnished & decorated, also known as being “staged.”

A seller in my neighborhood, who is also a real estate agent, recently had an updated rental property he wanted to sell. The tenant had just moved out, so the house was vacant. He also believed it was not ideal to sell it vacant. He told me he