Rentoid blog

A few bits and pieces I have lying around the house…

Books - don’t read them every day (and hard to read more than one at a time.)

DVDs - I’ve already watched the.

Clothes & shoes - can’t wear them all at once.

Backpacks - I have 2. I might use one in a day, but almost never need to use both at once.

Musical instruments and gear - that guitar has been sitting in the corner for quite a while now. But I’m still very attached to it and don’t want to sell it.

Bubble machine - bought it for a party but I don’t have parties very often.

Hard drive space - I while back my external hard drive was having some problems and needed to be reformatted. The problem was I didn’t have anywhere to put all my files so I had to go out and buy another one just so I could copy over the files and fix it. Crazy right?! I hope I can help someone else avoid this conundrum by listing my own hard drive space on rentoid.

Dumbells - These are something that many people have, but think about it, if you’re like me, most people don’t use them every day and the days I do use them it will only be for 15 minutes or so.

Suit - what do I need this for? Weddings and funerals. Do these come around often? Nope.

TVs - Sure, it might turn out that nobody wants to rent your old TV but you never know, and it certainly doesn’t hurt trying.

I’ll be listing these on rentoid in the next few days. What items do you have lying around the house that could be out there making you easy money?

Geordie - rentoid team.

Trying to make some extra dough? Want to do work that feels meaningful? Rent yourself out on rentoid! (No we don’t mean it like THAT)

Rentoid is all about creating value from things that aren’t being used as much as they could be. The stuff we own is a classic example of this, but something else that isn’t being used as much as it could be is us - or more specifically, our labour, time, skills etc

• Do you have any skills that someone in your community might need?
• Can you can make a good curry? Put yourself up on rentoid and I’ll hire you to cook for me one night!
• Can you speak a Chinese? I’ll hire you to be my tutor!
• Can you play jazz guitar? I’m having a dinner party and it would be SO cool to have some live music!

People often have many special talents they have acquired over the years, and they don’t have to be things you have learnt during your formal education or in your professional life either!

If you don’t have any skills that’s fine too! Want to earn some extra cash and do some good? Rent out your physical labour to the older lady next door who needs some furniture moved. Go and baby sit for the family down the road. Come over to my place and I’ll pay you a few bucks to do the washing up because I had a long day at work and just don’t feel like it!

So list yourself on rentoid to make some extra cash, help your community and hey, you might even have some fun doing it!

Geordie - rentoid team.

We had a rentoid customer asking for advice on how to get more rentals. We sent him the information below and thought it was worth sharing here on our blog. Our little bag of tricks!

We get many thousands of rentals every week. There are however some keys to getting your items rented out and they are as follows. I guarantee if you follow these rules you will get rental income:

1. Make sure your pricing is right. We recommend the following pricing structure (that is rental fee on your items).

• Charge 1% of the items value for 1 day rental.
• Charge 2% of items value for a weekend.
• Charge 5% for a weekly rate. and
• Charge 10% of items value for a months rental.

Check your pricing.

2. Write a long and detailed description of your rental items. People want detail so they don’t waste their time. Give your item the full description.

3. Have many photos. You can upload many photos for each item. Make sure you have pictures which show what they are renting so there are ‘no surprises.

4. Share your rental listings. Once you have listed an item on rentoid.com - make sure you share it on your facebook account and twitter (if you have one). You can also like your own items on rentoid… so your friends will see your stuff for rent. You’ll notice every item on rentoid has the ability to “like” it on facebook and also twitter. Just click it - it is very easy. This also adds your Google ranking of your item.

5. Share rentoid - the more people that use / know about rentoid the more they share it - which equals renters for you. So share the goodness. Post it on your facebook page…. tell / email to friends. Favourite the rentoid facebook page - share it:

6. List items people want. Like all businesses it is about 20% of the itms that get 80% of all the rental transactions. So make sure you are renting stuff people need / want. The most popular items are those things that people only use temporarily. eg A Lawn mower, A caravan, a tent, A nintendo Wii, a jetski. Stuff we love to use on a weekend or for an event / party or for a project. These are the things that people need and want, and would rather rent than buy. If you want to know what people want. Then a good trick is to check the catalogs from retail stores. People generally rent the same things that people buy…. items in demand.

7. Trial - A lot of people rent things as a try before you buy. I personally rented out my iPad and had it ‘paid off’ in 5 weeks because so many people wanted to rent it before they bought one…

8. Send us a list of the items you want to list. We’ll give you some advice on their demand (how often they are searched) and some pricing / promo advice.

9. Have a ‘reasonable’ bond & terms on conditions which are ‘fair’. If your bond price is crazy people will say ‘too hard’ and rent the next thing…. Just make it like 20-40% of the items retail value.

Let us know if you would like any further advice - also send me some links to your items and I’ll put them on the blog to promote them for you which will help for sure.

Cheers, the rentoid team.

We are continuing our Exploding Rental Myths series today, busting the often held “myth” that people only rent our their old junk…

This really is an easy one to squash.  You don’t even need to look too hard for the evidence.

How old do you think these ipads are?   Old junk? Hardly.

What about this Porsche? Can’t be more than a few years old.

This ‘ol Technika Washing Machine.  Not what you call a clapped out piece of junk, hey.

In fact, spend a few minutes searching for anything on rentoid and you will find very few items that are old, or junk.

Sure some folks out there will try and rent out some stuff that belongs on the kerb awaiting hard-rubbish collection, and you will stumble across them from time to time.  But they don’t last for long.  One, because no-one rents their stuff and two, because even if they do rent it they can’t get the rental fees they want for it, so they don’t bother.  Basic supply and demand rules- even in rental.

Successful rentreprenuers rent out quality items, at a fair price.  To suggest anything else is just a myth.

Rent it out. Why would you want to do this? Simple, you’ll get your shiny new ipad for free.

Here’s how: Rent out your ipad for the first 5 weeks you own it. Rental fee of up to $100 per week. 5 rentals later, and other people have paid for your ipad.

You might ask - who would rent an ipad for $100? People who are curious about it and want to test the functionality before they buy it. people who are prepared to wait a few weeks or months before they dive in. In fact: real people like these below who tweeted directly to me that they would rent one as soon as we have it available.

So here’s what I will be doing. Buying one as soon as they are available in Australia and renting it out. We all win.

Get smart, and get yours listed on rentoid.com today - and be sure to tell us when you list it so we can promote it for you.

Steve.

Vanessa is a rentoid member whose used the site a few times. last night she rented my old Toshiba laptop. I asked her if she’d say a few words to the camera about her rentoid experience. Lucky for us Vanessa agreed to do it totally improv at my doorstep. This was when she came to pick up the laptop, which is really cool.

Thanks for sharing the love Vanessa.

Renault has wowed the crowd at the Fankfurt International Motor Show with 4 new uber futurist electric cars. All of which they claim to be in production by 2012. We can only hope to see them on rentoid.com. If they become available here in Australia I’ll be the first person to buy one… and of course I’ll list it on rentoid for rent. Maybe our friends a flexicar will embrace them too….

The sooner the world works out we don’t need to own cars, but share them, the better off we’ll all be.  Have you thought about renting your spare car on rentoid? It’s a $10,000 plus idle asset 90% of its life. ….

There’s some nice pics below and you can read the full story here.

Moore’s law in simple to understand terms states the following:

“Computing power will double every two years, for approxiamtely the same cost.”

Moore’s law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. What it means for us is simple.

Anything we form of technology we buy (Cameras, Video Cameras, Computers, Mobile Phones, Printers, Televisions, ipods….) will be virtually worthless in a year or two.

Which is why we should all be outsourcing risk of obsolescence to rentoid.com

In fact we should do the following becuase all technological equipment is outdated so quickly.

Rent out all the tech equipment we own on rentoid. This helps pay for the inevitable depreciation costs. It’s also not worth worrying about things being damaged, because things are outdated so quickly anyway, and we can protect our items with a bond on rentoid.com

Rent tech equipment we need temporarily. Knowing how quick this stuff degenerates, we should try and rent rather than buy where ever possible. Think twice before buying.

The point is this: Some things we have to own and some we don’t. Now with rentoid we can work around Moores Law by renting our tech stuff to and from each other to reduce the total cost of technology for all rentoid members.

Spread the word.

The rentoid team.

In the top 20 search terms which leads people to our super terrific website is the following search tmer on Google:

Rent my stuff

And the answer is… Yes, Absolutely you can rent your stuff on rentoid.com. Not only can you, but you should for the following reasons:

1. You’ll make money out of idle assets you have.

2. You’ll save people money who rent your stuff and be a good ‘Netizen’

3. You don’t have to sell stuff you want for when you need it again.

4. You set the terms and prizes of your rentals.

5. Rentoid is not just making you money, but saving the world from over consumption.

Yep - these reasons and more are why you should “rent my stuff”.

Cheers, rentoid team.

What we need more of on rentoid is creative descriptions of the items people have for rent. Here’s a coupl;e of ideas of what would be a cool way to describe the following items:

Nintendo Wii - As played by the current local champion of the Brunswick Virtual Gaming Society (me) of which there are 5 members (the people who live in our share flat)….

iphone - As invented by Steve Jobs and very similar to the one he used in his recent key note address….

Mountain Bike - as used in a recent jump where I cleared 2 semi-trailor Kenworth trucks after getting towed in by my brothers Datsun 120Y….

You get the picture - and believe me creative descriptions get items rented more frequently - simply because people send fun stuff to their friends… and next thing you know Zap! - Someone who needs your item stumbles upon it and rents it.

It’s a crazy old world out there.

Cheers, rentoid team.