I make up to $1,500 a month cohosting Airbnb units. It only takes me about 3 hours a week and I can do it from anywhere.

• Seth Sutherland and his wife cohost Airbnb properties for up to 20% of the owner's revenue.
• He says he spends about three hours a week managing admin for the five properties they cohost.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Seth Sutherland, 30, a nurse and Airbnb cohost based in Reykjavík, Iceland. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm an ICU nurse in Reykjavík, Iceland, but I'm originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee. I met my wife, Agnes, in nursing school. We got married in 2019, and we bought one-way tickets to Iceland.

On top of working as nurses here, we cohost Airbnbs in the United States. We make around $1,000 per month, and in June we made $1,500. Here's how we got into it.

We travel a ton and always stay at Airbnbs

I love seeing the different vibes people bring to their Airbnbs, and I had a really great experience with a host at an Airbnb in Italy. I wanted to do that myself.

I rented out my house in Tennessee to some students when I moved to Iceland, but I really wanted to get into the short-term-rental space. Last summer we sold that long-term rental and bought a condo in the Orlando area to rent out.

We learned a lot of lessons, like the market is unpredictable and the cleaner makes or breaks your business.

We sold the Orlando apartment in December because we were only making around $100 in profit each month. It was going to turn into a liability if we kept it, so we decided to cut our losses and move on.

Then I saw a post in a Facebook group from an investor who was looking for a cohost to help him manage his Airbnbs

I didn't know anything about cohosting, but I was interested in learning. I'd been toying with the idea of helping others manage their property for a while using the techniques and systems I'd learned and built with our Florida condo. I decided to give it a go.

The investor has Airbnbs units across the US. He wanted someone to help run his apartments and manage the guest communication.

We had a video chat with him. He really liked me, and we did the digital version of an old-fashioned handshake. We started cohosting three of his apartment units in September. We added a fourth in December and a fifth in February.

We charge a market rate of 20% of his gross revenue

This includes managing all aspects of the short-term rental, but we can customize our pricing based on the owner's needs. For example, we charge 15% for guest and cleaner communication, pricing strategy, and listing updates. For guest and cleaning-team communication only, we charge 7.5%. Setting up a new listing is a one-time fee of $50.

We're making way more cohosting than we did as hosts ourselves. The investor loves it because he's able to step back and focus on other parts of his business.

While we look after communications, he handles anything that needs to be done on the ground. Recently, one apartment had ants coming into the kitchen. I texted the owner, and he went over with traps and took care of it. If the issue is in a city the owner isn't in, he'll have a local guy sort out the problem.

We also work on pricing strategies, where we set the prices for the nights based on the time of year and what the competition is doing.

Finally, we edit the listings to boost them in the algorithm, change the pictures, and create the copy.

I spend about 3 hours a week working as a cohost

Cohosting is integrated into the Airbnb platform, so it makes it really easy. When you sign up as a cohost, you help manage the listing, but you don't have access to the money being exchanged. I'm just working for the owner, and he pays me directly.

Monitoring the app is hardly any work, since it's just like waiting for a text. It's only annoying when you get a message in the middle of the night.

My wife spends around 15 minutes doing it per week when I'm not available, but I do the bulk. Sometimes I just need to send a quick response to guests, but other times there's an issue and we have to get it resolved.

Balancing my personal life and a full-time job with the time difference of cohosting is the hardest part

We're four hours ahead of the East Coast, but we have a 1-year-old, so our schedule is already kind of crazy.

I have the app set up to go through my "do not disturb" filter on my phone so I can hopefully get woken up if something comes up and I'm asleep. So far that's worked fairly well — we get the occasional message at 2 a.m. our time, but not many. A guest having issues at 10 p.m. their time is the most challenging aspect of cohosting.

There was one time we got a message around 2 a.m. our time and I slept right through it. The automatic keypad had stopped working for some reason and our guests couldn't get into the condo. I woke up a few hours later and saw all the messages and panicked a bit. Thankfully a security guard had driven by on his golf cart, verified they were guests in the condo, and let them in.

Sometimes stuff happens that's out of your control and you have to just roll with the punches.

You hear of crazy stories like parties, fights, and rude guests, but we haven't really had any of those issues

We do a lot of screening, including having a conversation with guests on the phone before we let them book our apartments. Sometimes guests will innocuously ask for a discount or for an early check-in, but most of the time those will be problem guests.

We don't cohost in Iceland as the regulations are stricter and taxes are higher. Most people here just rent out their apartments directly if they're going on vacation. As a grassroots operation, it'd be a lot harder for us to break in here. I also know the United States market much better.

I listened to a lot of podcasts and watched YouTube when starting out to get to know the market

I became a huge fan of BiggerPockets after listening to an interview with Rafael Loza discussing rental arbitrage. When I continued my research, I found Robuilt on YouTube and absolutely loved his content. Now I prefer Sean Rakidzich since his videos are straight to the point and packed with valuable information.

Using the systems I have right now, and while working full time, I'd say I could add another 10 units to our portfolio. After about 15 I'd start hiring people to help us manage the properties.

Our goal is to make this our full-time job so we can travel and have the freedom to try the digital-nomad lifestyle for a while. I want the flexibility to spend time with my family without working a set schedule.