The only mistake is that you didn't work with me!!!

If I had tried to scale my business before I understood what was required in hiring marketing expertise I would have made the same mistake as my friend of hiring a “generic” on line marketer and probably ended in failure. 

Newbies always want someone to cover their mistakes when things don't go as planned.What have you done to solve YOUR problem?

@Chris Kay to learn to properly DIY manage you have two basic options:1) Trial & fire on your own, hopefully not making a major mistake that costs you tens of thousands of dollars.- Once your time is more impotant to you then the cost of a PMC, you can hire one.2) Hire a PMC to guide you on your first rental and learn from their expertise.- You can buy additional properties and DIY manage those, perhaps leaning on the PMC for any issues you're not sure how to handle on your own.Good luck:)

That was my biggest mistake.

We used to try to offer to comp and cancel right away if they were a pain so their stay would be eliminated, but I don't know if you still can do that.

.#1:  Rules of thumb will eliminate good deals as well as bad. 

With your experience, having sufficient capital to cushion any mistakes is important.

If they are trying to do that, it is only a matter of time before they eliminate STRs all together.

It would be hard to mistake for a light switch.