Fastlane Idea? Need your feedback.

[tua79610]

Hey Guys,

So I have been thinking of numerous fastlane ideas and feel that I may have found something with some potential. However, I really want to get other opinions on the idea before I spend the next few months pursuing this idea. I have asked a few friends and they like the concept, but mentioned the same problems I have listed below. Therefore, please be honest and give me your opinions. Tear it apart, I value your feedback.

So, last week my nephew broke a wooden cabinet door and my parents asked me to fix it. In order to fix it I would need some glue and clamps. I soon realized I didn’t have large enough clamps to hold the door together while the glue set. However, lucky for me, my friend is a carpenter and has numerous clamps and I was able to borrow one. But this got me thinking, what would I do if I didn't know anyone? This then lead me to the idea of creating a rental website.

The website would be very similar to craigslist, but instead of individuals selling and buying, they would be renting items in which they didn’t use every day. I have done a few quick searches and found a few websites that are currently doing this. However, they don’t seem to be very big and there is no dominant website, like craigslist, at least that I have found.

I also found some depressing information on this one site, Rentanything.com which was started in 2000. The site/company was able to raise $3M from venture capitalists and it still failed. This then lead me to the possible problems with the concept of the site.

For one, there is the possibility that when someone comes to rent your item, he may never return it, or he may break it. The only solution to these problems is to charge a deposit, but I feel this would greatly reduce the amount of transactions. Another possible problem is there will not be any trusted loaners and renters at first. I figure this would just be a hurdle I would have to overcome. One idea I had to diminish this problem would be to create a feedback page for each user, similar to eBay. This would then lead to more trusted loaners and renters, again just like eBay has with their sellers and buyers.

Any feedback would be appreciated. And please be honest, tear it apart.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[johnp]

In seeing that you are a fellow Philly person, I will respond. I'm not going to tear it apart because I don't believe in tearing apart people's ideas.

I'll start with this:

How do you make money off of this? Are you going to charge per listing? I'm not sure if people would pay to list their items. You could probably make some sort of subscription system where users who pay 'x' dollars per month get advanced features - maybe the ability to create more listings and/or rent more things? Or are you planning on making money off of Ads?

Then there are of course some of the issues that you raised

 

[tua79610]

Thanks for the feedback John.

As far as making money I think the best way would be to go with advertisements. I think by charging people to list their items would discourage many, especially in the beginning when there is little traffic. Also, I think if you tried to charge people based on transactions that it would also complicate things as well. I want it to be as simple as possible. If the site ever took off, I would consider charging those who advertised high end items, like a vacation rental, etc.

 

[johnp]

Okay, when you say advertisements what do you mean? do you mean AdSense? or a Built Out in-house advertising system? it wouldn't really make sense to create an advertising feature on your site without the traffic. That would come in the future enhancement. The downside to AdSense is that you don't have control, you need high traffic which you may not get for a site like this, and you probably will not get approved right away. I have a massive site in terms of pages, not users and I didn't get approved yet. But I don't really care because AdSense is not really part of my revenue plan.

And yea charging people per transition does not really make sense for this. To be honest, I'm not sure what does make sense. If you can't find solid revenue stream (AdSense is not solid enough for a start-up) then it is really worth going through with an idea that will be hard to execute?

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[theBiz]

As far as making money I think the best way would be to go with advertisements. I think by charging people to list their items would discourage many, especially in the beginning when there is little traffic. Also, I think if you tried to charge people based on transactions that it would also complicate things as well. I want it to be as simple as possible. If the site ever took off, I would consider charging those who advertised high end items, like a vacation rental, etc.

I will be alittle more harsh than John. To be perfectly honest this is not a business its a hobby. Advertising it not a business model, its just another thing to do. Advertising is becoming more and more abundant. People need to understand...

There are businesses you can go into that there are two sided equations.... people need something and other people can solve it. One way or another you need to connect them and you as the middle man can make a ton of money but one side of the equation needs to be dying to get the other side. These are real businesses with real demand. What is your demand? What are you creating? Who really cares? These are the questions you should be asking yourself, building a listing site is not a good enough reason to go into business, have many made millions with listings sites YES but again people have won lotto also but its not something you would put down as a retirement strategy.

Image day one of your business you got a customer that joined with you and said i need X. Then you called up the other side of the equation and said have i have Y do you want to provide X and pay for the opportunity to? Image they jumped at the opportunity.... and payed you for it...that is a real business, or a lot easier atleast, and they are realistic.

 

[johnp]

I will be alittle more harsh than John.

I like the way you said it. I guess being harsh works better sometimes haha

Tua - Listen to what theBiz is saying. Take notes. He knows his shit.

 

[tua79610]

Thanks for the feedback guys. After doing some more research and reviewing your responses, I agree with both of you. I agree with you guys that creating a website the only generates income from advertisements is not the way to go, especially when several others have already tried creating similar sites and have failed with a lot more resources.

Again, thank you for the feedback. I wanted to hear what others, especially fastlaners, thought about the whole idea. You guys have made great points and proven to me that this is not the best idea to run with. On to the next...

Also, I noticed both of you guys are from the tri-state area. Would you guys ever want to have a fastlaners meetup? I know Slobra is also from Philly and we discussed about possibly meeting up.

 

Dislike ads? Remove them and support the forum: Subscribe to Fastlane Insiders.

[NaPal]

this concept could work. I read a thread on somebody renting our their photography camera and they had success. I have an industrial power washer and was thinking i could rent it out by posting an add on Craigslist and locally.

Problem i saw with this; whose to say they're going to return it? Yea you could charge a large deposit, but that's going to turn off 99% of your customers.