Personally, I think this is cool and props to the author for pulling it off. However, the thing that strikes the more scrutinous side of me about all this - the elephant in the room, if you will - is that what the author is doing almost certainly conflicts with her rental agreement and were she to be brought to court over it, it would probably be a clear case in the favor of the lessor and she might even have to pay back what she had earned. I feel like this is sort of the dream airbnb sells and here's a model case of someone achieving that dream but at the end of the day it's only possible because she's breaking a legal agreement; this probably wouldn't work if she were responsible for the higher cost of the mortgage and maintenance that comes with owning the property.
In this case, the fan falls from the ceiling and she likely just calls her landlord to fix it. So the landlord assumes the cost to fix it and she continues to profit by subletting the apartment for significantly more than she's paying.
Airbnb is basically facilitating a situation where the tenant gets to double dip. They profit off of an asset they don't own and don't assume much liability for and the owner is ultimately the loser. I wonder how this will all play out for airbnb on a larger scale over time.