# Free Camera Equipment Rental Service - Your Thoughts plz



## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

I'm thinking of making a service where amateur and professional photographers can rent free high end equipment if they agree to shoot a session of real estate photography. 

*Example:* 3 days free use of a D3 or a wide angle lens for one 1-hr home shoot session and 10 photographs

Think lensrental.com or borrowlenses.com but instead of paying you agree to do a local real estate photo shoot. After 1 hr of shooting, you have the rest of the time to use the camera/equipment as you wish. Also, do two photo shoots and your shipping is free?

There are a couple more details but that is the main gist of it. Would any photographers be interested in a service like this?


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## 480sparky (Aug 27, 2013)

I think you'll end up with nothing but a ton of mediocre images.


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## tirediron (Aug 27, 2013)

480sparky said:


> I think you'll end up with nothing but a ton of mediocre images.


IF you're lucky!


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## Designer (Aug 27, 2013)

I'm wondering who would pay for the pictures?  Even if the pictures turn out good, the typical RE agent does his own "photography" and considers it "good enough".  Besides, he also gets to deduct the expense of his camera.  Which he then uses for family pics.


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## KmH (Aug 27, 2013)

". . . Money for nothing, and your chicks for free. . .
. . . Look at that mama, she got it stickin' in the camera. . ."


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## amolitor (Aug 27, 2013)

I think what you want to do is turn it around.

The real estate agent pays actual money for the rentals, and gets rights to the photos. Make it incumbent on the client to find a suitable photographer, and offer up gear to execute the assignment in exchange for real money. You could represent photographers on the side, as well, and help to connect clients to photographers. But, ultimately, someone pays you actual money, and you're not responsible for the quality of the work. Without those two features in place, your business with die an abrupt unmourned death.


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## Tamgerine (Aug 27, 2013)

Yeah, I really don't understand how you expect to cover your equipment investment. No real estate agent is going to pay hundreds of dollars for photography they could do themselves. What if the photos are terrible and you can't sell them? What if the customer damagers or just keeps the equipment? What if you have more photographers wanting equipment than you have homes to photograph?


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## ronlane (Aug 27, 2013)

Tamgerine said:


> Yeah, I really don't understand how you expect to cover your equipment investment. No real estate agent is going to pay hundreds of dollars for photography they could do themselves. What if the photos are terrible and you can't sell them? What if the customer damagers or just keeps the equipment? What if you have more photographers wanting equipment than you have homes to photograph?



I disagree, I've been approached by a couple of real estate agents about photographing houses for them. The ones that I talk to realize that the time they save not having to shoot houses themselves, is time they could use to grow their business. It's all about how they value their time.


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## KmH (Aug 27, 2013)

Tamgerine said:


> What if you have more photographers wanting equipment than you have homes to photograph?


Great point!


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## Buckster (Aug 27, 2013)

To the OP: The many potential problems, logistics, business plan, quality, how, why, when, etc. that  others are concerning themselves with mean nothing to me, so I'll simply leave them to you, and address the question you _*actually*_ asked:



forchunet said:


> Would any photographers be interested in a service like this?


Yes.


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## amolitor (Aug 27, 2013)

Buckster said:


> To the OP: The many potential problems, logistics, business plan, quality, how, why, when, etc. that  others are concerning themselves with mean nothing to me, so I'll simply leave them to you, and address the question you _*actually*_ asked:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Ouch  Good one, Buckster!


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## vintagesnaps (Aug 27, 2013)

People with cameras might be interested, I don't know that professional photographers would want to do this. I'd rather just rent equipment as needed and then get paid for doing the work and providing the photographs at the going rate for real estate photography.


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## Vautrin (Aug 27, 2013)

What do you consider professional equiptment?

There are PRO cameras that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.  How many shoots will you need to do to recoup your investment?  

Then, there are pro cameras that cost thousands of dollars.  How many shoots will you need to do to recoup your investment?

Realistically I'm not sure this is a good business concept.  If I want to do a modeling shoot, I'll want a long lens.  If I want to do a real estate shoot, I'll want a short lens.

If you lend me a short lens, what do I do with it?  

PLUS on top of just a nice camera you need flashes, etc.

Maybe you can retool your business idea for connecting photogs and real estate agents.

But it's not like you can just buy some fancy camera equiptment and get unlimited free photos.

Lastly, a real photog will own a good camera in the low pro range.  THe people you'll find who would want to rent one may be very entry level, which will contribute to crappiness of photos.

You'll get lots of people like me who have a nice camera but would love to do something like this for a chance to play with a 100k hasselblad.  But such an investment isn't reasonable as a) you'll never recoup costs and b) you have the chance someone will break and will have to deal with breakage.


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## Designer (Aug 27, 2013)

You're raining on his parade.


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## Derrel (Aug 27, 2013)

Sign me up! Please send me a D800, a new 70-200/2.8 VR-II, a 14-24 F-S, and a 400/2.8. I'll send you back a bunch of real estate pics! Put me down for two weeks' free use of the aforementioned gear this coming October.


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## 480sparky (Aug 27, 2013)

I will take a pair of D800s and a Trinity for three weeks this spring.  Now you'll need to find 50 homes for me to photograph.  My travel time will be included in the 1-hour shooting allowances.


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## Designer (Aug 27, 2013)

You guys.


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## Derrel (Aug 27, 2013)

Designer said:


> You guys.



Me and 480sparky are just tryinna' help the OP out, you know, get some business drummed up and all...


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## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

The business model does not revolve around the equipment rental. If I can break even with the equipment rental then it has exceeded my expectations. My original model was to provide free real estate photography and just pay photographers out of pocket. My money is made when homeowners who use the free photography are upsold on other services that help them sell their homes (staging, home repair, inspections, painting, etc.) 

The only reason I came up with the equipment rental is to help reduce my overhead hiring photographers. If I can reduce that by enticing professional photographers to shoot quality photos then I widen my profit margins.

Forget logistics, start up costs, business plan, etc. The question is: Will professional photographers be motivated to take quality real estate photos in exchange for free equipment rentals.


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## Overread (Aug 27, 2013)

Companies prepared to pay for high end photography on a more than one off basis are often going to want not just a quality product, but also a standard quality and look. Each time they get a different pro under your scheme they'd get a different look and quality and that is assuming the hired photographer can do a landscape shot of a building. 

You'd have to hire out a single setup each time to all rentals so that they've got the gear to work with, because someone who wants to rent a 500mm might well not even have any good lenses for a shot of a building.


And all that ignores the massive logistical aspect of trying to find people willing to pay for professional quality photography who are in the same area as the people hiring your gear. You'd end up having to build a whole hiring service on the back of your free rentals. In the end it would just be simpler to build yourself a company that hires out professional photographers for photographic jobs, with a focus on real estate work. You'd likely get more chance to earn a profit and build a business without trying to do some random equipment hire service that could likely end up backfiring all too easily.


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## Overread (Aug 27, 2013)

forchunet said:


> The question is: Will professional photographers be motivated to take quality real estate photos in exchange for free equipment rentals.



Yes - but will they be any good at it? A landscape photographer might, a portrait or wildlife or sports tog might be an utter disaster


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## runnah (Aug 27, 2013)

I guess I don't understand the point.


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## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

It's funny that you guys mock me. In actuality my real estate marketing business is already working with our without the rental equipment service. As a business man this idea sprung up on me last night and from my initial calculations it may help me reduce my costs in hiring professional photographers as it is. 

A lot of you seem to underestimate the value in free rental equipment. Say you wanted to test out a new lens or a new camera. You sign up on the website and are then emailed a list of 5 potential homes to shoot. You pick the closest one, schedule a time that works for you and the homeowner. You get the equipment in the mail. You finish the shoot and upload the photos. Then you can have fun with the equipment, then ship it back after the rental period.

What's so funny about that?


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## runnah (Aug 27, 2013)

With a little more background it makes more sense.

The idea is one of those ideas that sounds like a good one until you factor in human nature.


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## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

Thanks a lot for the comments. I truly appreciate the critiques and it is quite obvious that the model needs some smoothing out. 

My initial idea was to contract photographers to a certain amount of shoots so that they can keep the equipment. 

*Example:* You want to upgrade to a newer camera or buy a new lens. You pick it out and it is worth X amount of shoots. We ship it to you and it's yours but you have to complete the shoots in X amount of months. We will continue to email you available jobs in your area until you complete the X amount of shoots. Homeowners will grade you from 1-5 and the higher grades reduce your shoot count by more. SO, do quality photos and your shoot count reduces faster. Do ****ty photos and you'll be contracted to shoots for a long time.

Worse idea?


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## runnah (Aug 27, 2013)

I hope you have one hell of a water tight contract.


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## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

Thanks Runnah - I know there will be a certain percentage of users who don't keep their end of the bargain. There are collections agencies that can help with that. And I have a few business lawyers that I've worked with in the past to draft such contracts. It's really not that different from how a rent-a-center or car rental works, although cameras might be more fragile.


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## Overread (Aug 27, 2013)

forchunet said:


> It's funny that you guys mock me. In actuality my real estate marketing business is already working with our without the rental equipment service. As a business man this idea sprung up on me last night and from my initial calculations it may help me reduce my costs in hiring professional photographers as it is.
> 
> A lot of you seem to underestimate the value in free rental equipment. Say you wanted to test out a new lens or a new camera. You sign up on the website and are then emailed a list of 5 potential homes to shoot. You pick the closest one, schedule a time that works for you and the homeowner. You get the equipment in the mail. You finish the shoot and upload the photos. Then you can have fun with the equipment, then ship it back after the rental period.
> 
> What's so funny about that?



It's not so much the free rental, that part we very much understand. The problem is that we're thinking about the quality of the product side of things and the limited nature of the product you want (real estate photos). I think that if you were to expand to other potential markets you could increase the chances of it working. 

It's an interesting idea, but the biggest problem is that you're likely to end up with a lot of units on hire to people who are not good photographers and who might produce low quality products. This could seriously hamper the ability to get more clients wanting your service as the quality they'd get would be so variable. If you were to validate the photographers before going into the process you would cut your potential market down a lot but at the same time at least try to ensure a higher quality product.


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## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

Yes, photographers will be validated and one of my ideas was that you would have to be invited by an existing member. We're giving out free equipment rentals here guys! If you know how to shoot a decent landscape photo and better yet, can do HDR on the fly, you will be better than 90% of the real estate listings out on the market now. 

I shoot my own real estate photography using a D90 and a tripod on a sunny day and my results are amazing. 

Everything will be small and slow at first as I expand into other markets. In my current market I've shot over 200 homes the past 8 months using just me, my business partner, and a few amateurs I found on craigslist.


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## KmH (Aug 27, 2013)

forchunet said:


> The question is: Will professional photographers be motivated to take quality real estate photos in exchange for free equipment rentals.


Some pro shooters will, but it's not likely you will be able to recoup your costs for the rental gear.

You will need to stock several different brands of gear.
A majority of pros will use Canon or Nikon.

Professional grade 24-70 mm f/2.8 lenses retails for about $2000 each.
How many do you think you'll need to have on hand for free rentals?
10 of each Nikon and Canon 24/70 mm - or $40,000 worth of just 24-70 mm f/2.8 lenses.
You'll need other pro grade lenses of each brand.

Add in 10 each of Canon's $7000 1Dx and Nikon's $6500 D4 - That's another $135,000, but you'll likely also need to have some Nikon D800's ($3000) and Canon 5D MKIII's ($3800) too.

I think you'll need a lot more than 10 of each.

It usually takes more than 1 hour to make professional quality real estate photos. Heck, an hour can go by just setting up the lighting for 5 shots, let alone 10 shots.

Lens Rentals.com charges just $56 for a Nikon 24-70 mm f/2.8 - 3 day rental.


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## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

Also, I understand that companies expect a certain level of quality and predictability when they pay for their shoots. Difference here is that they are now getting FREE shoots and might still retain 70-80% of the quality that they originally had. 

Let's face it. If you're shooting with a dslr+tripod and can get focused shots with half way decent lighting, you're 10x ahead of the game as compared to realtors using phones cameras and crappy point and shoots.


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## Overread (Aug 27, 2013)

Wait sorry I've lost track of the money flow. If the rental is free and the real-estate agents are getting free photos where is the money flowing in this plan? I was under the impression that the photographers got free equipment rental in exchange for paying for it by performing work, which would then be paid for by those who the work was for (in this specific case the real estate agents).


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## forchunet (Aug 27, 2013)

KmH said:


> forchunet said:
> 
> 
> > The question is: Will professional photographers be motivated to take quality real estate photos in exchange for free equipment rentals.
> ...



Thanks for the reply KmH.

The money is not the issue. With how the business scales right now without the rental equipment - we will be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring photographers to shoot free photography as it stands. If we spend that money instead on equipment that we can exchange for a potentially unlimited amount of shoots (and sell as they become outdated), our profit margins widen considerably. Only question is, will photographers do it and will they be motivated to take quality shots. Thanks for the feedback guys.


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## Designer (Aug 27, 2013)

forchunet said:


> The business model does not revolve around the equipment rental. If I can break even with the equipment rental then it has exceeded my expectations. My original model was to provide free real estate photography and just pay photographers out of pocket. My money is made when homeowners who use the free photography are upsold on other services that help them sell their homes (staging, home repair, inspections, painting, etc.)
> 
> The only reason I came up with the equipment rental is to help reduce my overhead hiring photographers. If I can reduce that by enticing professional photographers to shoot quality photos then I widen my profit margins.
> 
> Forget logistics, start up costs, business plan, etc. The question is: Will professional photographers be motivated to take quality real estate photos in exchange for free equipment rentals.



Buckster has answered in the affirmative, and I imagine that there would be other pros who would be interested in the plan.

Having the entire business plan laid out helps people understand how it works.  My first post was somewhat skeptical, and there have been others in a similar vein.  Seems to me that if you want to get this going nation-wide, you're going to have to make the business model readily understandable to lots of individuals from all sorts of background.

When I first read this idea, and even after reading more of how it works, I still have many questions, but then I'm kinda dense.

So if hiring photographers is too expensive, what do you do when the painter asks for more money?  What do you do when the stagers want to strike out on their own, to undercut your price?  What happens when your tradesmen aren't quite as good at home repairs as you had hoped?


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## vintagesnaps (Aug 27, 2013)

That's what I'm wondering, if you aren't going to pay photographers are you paying those who do staging, home repairs, etc.? When you talk about wanting photos somewhat better than cell phone pictures that realtors might do themselves or 70% quality that doesn't seem as if you have very high standards, but yet you seem to be trying to get photographers to provide quality photos (or if their photos aren't great they'll have to shoot more houses...??).

This seems like it's more beneficial to prospective customers - if they use your service to provide staging and home repairs you'll throw in some free photos. I would say no, I don't think it seems like what professional photographers would typically be willing to do.


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## amolitor (Aug 28, 2013)

I'm gonna assume the OP is in the USA.

I'm not seeing the math on spending 100s of thousands of dollars on hiring photographers here, to upsell some percentage of homeowners on other services. That suggests that millions of dollars are being made on the upsold services. Poking around at the numbers a bit, this doesn't make sense unless the OP has somehow captured something like 100% of the total US market for such services. Which, I suppose, is possible.


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## marc.christoffel (Aug 28, 2013)

This could never work. 
What if, now this is a hypothetical what if, but what if the pictures are awful? Free camera rentals are fine and dandy. Some pictures may be good, some may be passable, some may be bad. When someone wants quality work, they hire a professional who specializes in something.
If I'm going in for heart surgery, I don't want a my family doctor to do it so he can "try out" the latest scalpel on me and then do whatever else with it. I want a heart surgeon. Same goes for photography.
I usually just skim through threads and have no opinion or have nothing worth saying. I don't like to criticize, no one likes to be on the receiving end of it. But come on, camera/lens rentals in exchange for real estate photography? Too many variables, what ifs, etc. A real estate agent is better off to spend a bit of time and build a relationship with a local photographer and work with them. 
Is there some sort of screening process as to who is able to rent? Can my sister request some equipment who has 0 knowledge of photography in the slightest. How many employees will you need to keep up with the apparent massive demand? I wouldn't think insurance on 200k of equipment would be cheap.
I shoot weddings and portraits. IF I want to rent something, I'd just go with CPS. It's dirt cheap, like $40-60 for a weekend for a lens. At my charge out rates I'd already be in the hole driving to and from the house/location, and then I need to colour adjust and upload the pictures? No thank you. 
Any professional would spend a minimum of 2-3 hours at a given location, which is probably $250 on the low end to $750 on the higher end of just shooting.
I can't think of anyone who would ever want to do a real estate shoot in exchange for equipment, only Craigslist photographers would actually do this, because for the most part they don't know how to put a price to their time. They'd do it once, give the real estate crap images and then the agent would need a real photographer to do the job, which would add cost to the original savings.

I'm sorry if this is harsh, but please don't spend anymore time on this, it's really not worth your time. It will never work.


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## Gavjenks (Aug 28, 2013)

> A lot of you seem to underestimate the value in free rental equipment. Say you wanted to test out a new lens or a new camera. You sign up on the website and are then emailed a list of 5 potential homes to shoot. You pick the closest one, schedule a time that works for you and the homeowner. You get the equipment in the mail. You finish the shoot and upload the photos. Then you can have fun with the equipment, then ship it back after the rental period.



I don't think this would work as explained. I'm NOT underestimating the value of free equipment. I think that photographers would JUMP. ALL. OVER. THIS.

The reason i think it won't work is because there's no control at all over how good the pictures are. What is stopping me from renting the equipment I want, picking the closest property, scheduling a time, walking around the house snapping terrible photos *on purpose* from the hip and just not giving a crap at all purely so that I can leave as soon as humanly possible with the least effort, and then shipping the equipment back?

You have halfheartedly waved your hands in the vague direction of some solutions to this, but it doesn't seem like you've thought about it nearly enough. That's THE lynchpin to this thing, and you need to be worrying way more about that than about whether photographers would be interested in getting hundreds of dollars of equipment for an hour's work (duh).

So how *exactly *are you going to vet your photographers?

1) By invitation only - How does that help? Photog just invites any and all photog friends who ask, and it accomplishes nothing other than to slow down the number of photographers you get, but without changing the ratio of good to bad ones.
2) You could make the free-ness of the rentals contingent upon the real estate client (homeowner or otherwise) accepting the photos they take.  This guarantees quality work. However, it eliminates the guarantee of free equipment, which obviously decreases your pool of photographers interested and makes your marketing way less interesting.
3) Do #2, make the rates you pay if you fail to take good photos add up to significantly less than competitors' rates (if lensrentals charged $56, you charge $40 for the rental fee if you fail), but going above a 25% failure rate at any point = being blacklisted from the rental service for 6 months or something. Second offense = permanent ban.


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## Gavjenks (Aug 28, 2013)

Also, how do you determine amount of equipment one is allowed to rent in exchange for one shoot?

If it's just "however much stuff you want for 3 days for one shoot" then I would absolutely take one of everything you offered, even if I didn't really need to for any particular reason, just to play around with it, thus tying up huge amounts of equipment for a week+, racking up large shipping costs, and almost certainly making you lose money in comparison to your opportunity costs of simply renting that same equipment directly for profit at going rates.



Edit: Finally, it seems unlikely for you to make enough money upselling to make this worthwhile (versus the alternative of just renting the same equipment for profit). What sort of perosn would be too cheap to hire a real estate agent, ALSO cheap enough to seek out free photo services for their property, and yet would be perfectly willing to splurge hundreds of dollars on staging and professional painting out of the blue?

If I were the sort of person selling my own home and hunting for free photographs, I would probably also be the sort of person who would paint my OWN home, and shop MYSELF for the cheapest decent contractors for repairs (or do them myself as well), etc.


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## amolitor (Aug 28, 2013)

I'm pretty sure the OP is mostly making stuff up.

On the one hand he or she is going on about what is clearly a pretty high end business involving millions of dollars, and on the other hand is going on about real estate agents taking their own pictures with cell phones, and how pretty much anything would be better than that. I don't know what universe the OP lives in, but in this one existing real estate photography is actually pretty good, even at the mid levels, and it's outstanding at the higher end where there might actually BE millions of dollars of potential revenue.

Maybe this is all in India or something, though. There's buckets of money sloshing around in countries that are not the USA, and maybe the real estate photography in some of those places is a bunch of blurry cell phone pictures, I dunno.

None of it smells right, though. Your reward for taking terrible pictures is apparently that you have to work longer, which means you keep the gear for longer. The plan seems to call for incentivizing people to do terrible work?


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## forchunet (Aug 28, 2013)

Thanks for the feedback guys - it has helped a lot. I'm in business so I know a thing or two about having thick skin. And I didn't come on this forum thinking it was going to be all roses. I actually prefer it when people tear up my ideas, it helps me identify what needs work and what doesn't.

A couple things I want to clear up before I rest my case (I've gathered enough feedback to get started at the moment):

1) Motivation to shoot quality pictures is an issue. A lot of photographers will scoff at the idea and frankly a few will look at it as an opportunity to scam me and the homeowners. These people will be weeded out early. Frankly, if you as a professional are putting your name on something and have agreed to perform in a certain manner, then it would be in your best interest to do so. I believe there are enough real photography professionals out there who will take the job seriously and understand that they've agreed to trade their time in for free rentals, while putting their name on the line. The vetting process to identify honest professionals will be something that I will work on. IMO, the bad marketing you receive, the banning from the service, and some sort of monetary recourse will be enough motivators to do quality work. The professional photographer will see it as an opportunity to bolster their portfolio, market their services while getting free equipment rentals - I can only hope there are a few out there.

2) The business model has multiple revenue sources although I admit only a third have been implemented as it sits right now. There will be a mix of upsells, affiliate fees, premium marketing services (videos/websites/etc), listing subscriptions, as well as fees for leads to realtors.

3) I admit real estate photography is getting better. The bulk of it, however, is crap. Believe me or not its ok, I'm around real estate every day.  

4) FSBO's aren't necessarily cheap people - I know this as fact. They are, however, people who see value as it sits. Some realtors are not worth their weight in paper, let alone 3-6% commission. On a $500k home, $30k is a steep price to pay considering what little some realtors do. There is an opportunity to provide marketing services for FSBO's that actually help them prepare and sell their homes - and all this for a fraction of the cost that a realtor would charge. FSBO's need marketing services and from my initial tests of the model, a small percentage are willing to pay for premium services (~10%). This is pretty good for the biz model.

5) I never said this was a million dollar business as it sits, so please don't put words in my mouth.

Again, thanks for allowing me to jump into this community and ask my questions. The feedback has helped tremendously.


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## marc.christoffel (Aug 28, 2013)

I'll reiterate something I touched on earlier, for a professional to do the pictures. Their time will not be worth the free rental. They can easily rent the same equipment for a price that is much less than their time.


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## forchunet (Aug 28, 2013)

There are countless talented photographers out there who do not do photography for a living - me being one of them. Maybe I need to take the word professional out of the equation and focus on amateurs. Thanks for the thought.


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## o hey tyler (Aug 28, 2013)

Why try to set up this service when you could throw money directly in the toilet right now?


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## Overread (Aug 28, 2013)

forchunet said:


> There are countless talented photographers out there who do not do photography for a living - me being one of them. Maybe I need to take the word professional out of the equation and focus on amateurs. Thanks for the thought.



Take professional out and all professional ethics, work method, etc.. goes out the window as well. You'll be left with a lot of people who are going to have a massive range of variable skills and work ethics. You'll have your work cut out adding a validation system to ensure that the people renting are at least of a suitable skill level and work ethic to do the work that they are supposed to.

Furthermore what about finding the work to do? I can very much see that you'd end up with a service where a customer would phone up to rent and could then spend ages waiting to see if they can rent whilst you're hunting around for someone who wants them to do some work on the  clients time (Client being the photographer hiring the free rental gear). Sometimes it will work and other times you'll earn yourself a bad reputation as an unreliable rental service because there won't be anyone in the clients local area - or they'll have to travel long distance (what about all those hiring who live in country or small towns). 

Free rental is something that would used; the problem is the whole rest of the setup where you attempt to get payment from them in exchange for services. At least if you kept it limited to working professionals you'd retain some level of work ethic and quality - however as mentioned many working pros could end up costing it up as being cheaper to just hire normally than to jump through the hoops and cut time out of their directly paying clients to shoot for free for you. Time is money to the working pro. 

Either way you'll have to take some deposit or payment info from the clients hiring your gear otherwise many might hire and run off without leaving you much if any solid form of reference. 

There might be a good idea buried in this but I think you've really got to go back and re-think the whole structure of how to put this together and consider that there might be simpler and more profitable ways to approach this than the way you currently are.


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## marc.christoffel (Aug 28, 2013)

I think a "call service" for local real estate photographers would be a better idea.


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## forchunet (Aug 28, 2013)

o hey tyler said:


> Why try to set up this service when you could throw money directly in the toilet right now?



Sure, because Airbnb, who provides free photography for their listings, is only worth like $2.5 billion right now. In fact, they have over 400,000 listings that were shot by amateur and professional photographers for the measly fee of $50/shoot + 0.50cents/mile. 

With equipment rentals, if I can squeeze out 25+ shoots out of every $2,000 piece of equipment, my overhead costs would be drastically lower than airbnb's (not including the fact that with rentals I acquire a hard asset that has tangible value even at the end of its life period). Sorry if my mind is a little bit more creative than yours. You obviously fail at seeing bigger pictures.


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## amolitor (Aug 28, 2013)

Valuation isn't revenue.


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## astroNikon (Aug 28, 2013)

This is an interesting concept but it lacks complete information to determine what exactly the business plan is. (edit: the OPs last posting wasn't there when I was writing this, and I just realized I missed pg 3 ... so more info)
I only say this because I actually do startup business planning, turnaround planning and stuff like that.

As a (budding) photographer, the concept is very enticing.  
I would love to get a Nikon 14-24mm lens, and a D4/D800/D600/something FF camera. 
As the photographer, who cares who is paying if I get it for free.  
As a business owner it's all about making money on the "rental to own" business OR creating identifiable downstream revenue.

And real estate actually was one of my first forays years ago.  Before the Internet became wide spread I tried to get Remax to use me to develop a website (on Compuserve at the time).  Instead I worked with a few large Remax branches and improved their brochures which included color pictures of the house, rooms.  The real early days of desktop publishing. Stuff that would get scoffed at today for crudeness, but was kind of ground breaking back then.  Remax thought the internet was just a fad at the time so nothing ever became of that.

In my area, there are some pros that do this exactly, including stitching to do a panorama picture for web use.
But one part of the concept I don't understand is .. okay ... I get a lens in the mail.  now what?

contact a real estate place and offer free photos ?  (something I actually was contemplating on doing anyways)
or would the real estate people be lined up before hand ?

I read through this thread (albeit somewhat quickly) and that question wasn't answered in my mind completely


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## astroNikon (Aug 28, 2013)

After copying over forchunet's posts now I understand his operating model better.



> Forget logistics, start up costs, business plan, etc. The question is: Will professional photographers be motivated to take quality real estate photos in exchange for free equipment rentals.


I would think so, but as some have mentioned you may get people not used to doing architectural/real estate photography getting in for the equipment.
I certainly would want to but I'm not a "pro" by my perspective compared to "real pros" that I know and have seen work from.



> The only reason I came up with the equipment rental is to help reduce my overhead hiring photographers. If I can reduce that by enticing professional photographers to shoot quality photos then I widen my profit margins.


I think you would.  But vetting the "pro" from the amatuer looking to "score" some high end gear is an issue, as previously mentioned.

but I see you also answered that ...


> Yes, photographers will be validated and one of my ideas was that you would have to be invited by an existing member. We're giving out free equipment rentals here guys! If you know how to shoot a decent landscape photo and better yet, can do HDR on the fly, you will be better than 90% of the real estate listings out on the market now.



reading the rest it looks like you have your basic ducks in a row, per say.
and you are working the operating model right now with it feeding your other services.
So it looks good from a high level view, and per your info it is working, just have to make sure the vetting process doesn't get out of hand.


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## amolitor (Aug 28, 2013)

The model has the property that it actually filters out the people who are good at this.

If you're good at something:


You'll prefer to do it for money rather than for barter. Especially not for barter that cannot be easily converted into stuff you actually need.
You tend to already have the gear you need to do the job.


So you're specifically targeting people who don't have the gear they need to do the job, and who are looking for a "deal". These guys are not the best of the best. They might be guys like me, but you don't want me taking your real estate pictures. And, in fact, it's not even guys like me.

The original question was 'would photographers be interested' and the answer is 'yes, but not the photographers you want'


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## marc.christoffel (Aug 28, 2013)

amolitor said:


> The model has the property that it actually filters out the people who are good at this.
> 
> If you're good at something:
> 
> ...



Well put.


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## amolitor (Aug 28, 2013)

forchunet said:


> Sure, because Airbnb, who provides free photography for their listings, is only worth like $2.5 billion right now. In fact, they have over 400,000 listings that were shot by amateur and professional photographers for the measly fee of $50/shoot + 0.50cents/mile.



This argues against your model, actually. A shoot is only worth about $75. You want to spend a bunch of money on gear, packing, shipping, receiving, unpacking, inventory management, repair management, essentially a whole business on the side, to shave a few bucks off what is already a cheap commodity. Unless you're really running some volume through this thing, it'll actually wind up costing you more than simply paying $50 + 0.50/mile.


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## Gavjenks (Aug 28, 2013)

> Maybe I need to take the word professional out of the equation and focus on amateurs.





> Frankly, if you as a professional are putting your name on something and have agreed to perform in a certain manner, then it would be in your best interest to do so.



So you're relying entirely on people's professional work ethic for your business, however you've given up on marketing to professionals...

Sounds like a great plan shaping up here to me.






I agree with Amolitor in general that the people who will take good photos will be the ones who want to work for *money*.  Also, even people like him or myself who could probably take decent pictures but are not professionals... we might do the rental thing once or twice to try out some gear we are thinking about buying, or whatever.  But we won't do it 15 times. Complete noobs would do it even more (because they are less familiar with gear than long time amateurs, and thus have more to learn from rentals).  But even then, no more than 4 or 5 probably.  And in general, the number of times people will rent from you will go down proportionally to their skill level, ending at about zero for true pros.

However, if I were getting *paid *a sufficient amount, I WOULD do it 15, 20, 30 times in a row for your business. Rentals are enticing, but money is vastly more enticing.

*Additionally, the fact that I'm only ever going to do it once or twice means it's almost impossible to "weed me out" if I do poorly.* If 80% of your shoots are by first time renters, then weeding out doesn't solve anything. They are all going to weed THEMSELVES out soon anyway, after they've rented everything they were curious about.


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## Vautrin (Aug 28, 2013)

making this profitable is easy!  introduce money laundering into the equation

then they wont care if the photos are crap pictures


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## Buckster (Aug 28, 2013)

Honestly, reading the responses in this thread is pretty funny to me, in a sad clown kind of way.

If the guy who started lensrentals.com had presented his initial idea to this group, I have absolutely no doubt that they'd have posted very similar piles of negativity, concluding that it's a crap idea with no potential and focusing on every negative thing they could pull out of their butts, real or imagined, just *LOOKING* for ways to naysay it into the dust. 

 It's what they call "helping" around here, and they'll gladly explain that to you if it comes up.  Seen it at least a hundred times over the years I've been here, so it's not much of a surprise, unfortunately.

But take heart OP, because that's just what they do.  It's the personality of this forum, overall.  It's the same with most every idea that's presented around here, along with most photo "critiques", where these internet armchair wannabe professors of photography (and business, and pretty much everything else, frankly) focus on nitpicking individual pixels and never seem to actually see the image as a whole, unless of course you're in the cool kid's club, in which case you're a genius with vision every time you post anything at all. 

 In the end however, it's been my experience that armchair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen, and their constant negativity and "advice" usually isn't worth a nickel.

Maybe it will fail, maybe it will succeed, but as is the case with most businesses, that depends more on how it's handled as you work through setbacks and solutions.  You can take the best idea in the world and fail at making it a success, or you can make a million dollars selling pet rocks - if you do it right.


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## Overread (Aug 28, 2013)

Buck doesn't like people finding or trying to identify potential flaws in things


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## amolitor (Aug 28, 2013)

lensrentals has an actual business model. It's actually a very straightforward call on whether it's a functioning business or not, the only unknown being whether there's sufficient demand. A little market research and it's a slam-dunk, you could probably get bank funding for it in a suitable financial climate. Assuming the market research pans out.

this guy is proposing some sort of weird sideline with well understood expenses and a revenue stream dependent only on loosely related demand. The market research required to validate this model is much much harder, and there has to be a whole lot more gross revenue on the table to make it viable, than lensrentals.com. It might still be viable, but demonstrating that it is to potential sources of funding -- just as a for instance -- is much much more difficult.

Sometimes you've really got the inside track, Buckster, but this one is an apples to oranges comparison, and it's not valid.


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## Vautrin (Aug 28, 2013)

Buckster said:


> Honestly, reading the responses in this thread is pretty funny to me, in a sad clown kind of way.
> 
> If the guy who started lensrentals.com had presented his initial idea to this group, I have absolutely no doubt that they'd have posted very similar piles of negativity, concluding that it's a crap idea with no potential and focusing on every negative thing they could pull out of their butts, real or imagined, just *LOOKING* for ways to naysay it into the dust.
> 
> ...



Having actually started my own company during the dot com boom, and had to close the doors after the bust (most painful day of my life) let me point out:

Planning is important!  It will make you or break you.  
On this note, you should seek out negativity.  Maybe all the posts wont make sense, but you need to evaluate and plan.  Plan, plan, plan!  Make sure you have plenty of capital, and some buffer

Its funny, these days people think all you need is a good idea and you should get rich from it.   So, to prove how
wrong this was, a harvard prof wrote a book about great business ideas (i forget the title, but google knows all)

These were ideas his brilliant students had come up with.  And they were all big. One i remember is you have a designated "chopper stand" at supermarkets.  People could do their
produce shoppinh first, drop off the chopper, and get sliced vegetables any way they wanted by the time their shopping was done.  It was brilliant as a) people already pay a premium for preselected cuts at a grocery store and b) cost of a stand & employee isquite  cheap compared to what you charge

all of these ventures bombed when tried.  because, actually, execution is key.  a crap idea with good execution (mafiawars or farmville anyone) will beats the pants off. great business idea any dy


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## Derrel (Aug 28, 2013)

I think it is totally ridiculous to start a business that would require, quite easily, $200,000 in equipment costs ALONE, in order to be able to barter for what are essentially a number of $50-a-pop quickie photo shoots. Has ANYBODY here payed attention to the cost of shipping heavy pro camera gear all over the USA? Then add in the warehousing, staffing, inventory control, insurance, legal fees for contracts and bad debt collection, collections, repair, shipping and receiving, rents, insurance, and so on...and ALL in order to obtain $50 shoots of real estate? zOMG...and Buckster says we're being negative. Oh. My. God. Stop. Me. From. Laughing. So. Much. That. I. Die. From. Guilt. For. Having. Expressed. Doubts. This. Dude's. Idea. Is. A. Sure-fire.WINNER!.

The song from the band LMFAO comes to mind. No, wait, how about a spoof on it, a comedic riff on the original. A good idea, but twerked. No, I mean tweaked. Something sort of like the original good idea, but made less-bettter. As in worse. The OP asked for "our thoughts, plz". Those are my thoughts. Sorry if they offend the Buckster. We should all be more positive about crackpot ideas.


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## Buckster (Aug 28, 2013)

Overread said:


> Buck doesn't like people finding or trying to identify potential flaws in things


It's not that at all.  It's the overwhelming amount of bandwagon negativity witnessed around here on these kinds of threads.  Any "I'm thinking of/want to start a business thread, or would like to build/invent this type of thing threads are met with just the biggest loads of negativity I've ever seen anywhere.  And there's very little in the way of supportive ideas in such threads.

It's the mindset of those who are the ever-present responders to such threads.

Oh, and thanks for supporting my note that it's always framed as: "we're kicking the living crap out of you and your idea because we're "helping" you".  Yeah, that's all it's about - an overwhelming desire to "help".  It's like a gang of bullies beating the crap out of someone to make them "tougher" and to help them see why they should cover their face while punching them in it - because the bullies are trying to "help" them.


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## amolitor (Aug 28, 2013)

Normally I'm one of the ones saying to cut some slack to the wanna-bee business owner.

Most people who want to launch businesses here are looking for small businesses that follow an established model. These are just pure execution, anyone can do it, if they put the work in. Those people get slammed a lot because of an unpleasant assumption that the poster won't bother with the homework, and will fail. That's an assumption, which as we know makes an Ass out of U and M. Ption, whoever he is.

This OP is quite different and is presenting a business model with clear antecedents suggesting that it flatly won't work. This isn't about execution, this is about "as far as we can tell this business is dramatically cash flow negative at the end of.. every quarter, um, good luck bro". It doesn't matter how hard you work if the business model contains cash outlays but not revenues. Also, there are some hints that the OP might be blowing smoke, which tends to cause people like me to look very very closely at the financials.


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## Vautrin (Aug 28, 2013)

amolitor said:


> Normally I'm one of the ones saying to cut some slack to the wanna-bee business owner.
> 
> Most people who want to launch businesses here are looking for small businesses that follow an established model. These are just pure execution, anyone can do it, if they put the work in. Those people get slammed a lot because of an unpleasant assumption that the poster won't bother with the homework, and will fail. That's an assumption, which as we know makes an Ass out of U and M. Ption, whoever he is.
> 
> This OP is quite different and is presenting a business model with clear antecedents suggesting that it flatly won't work. This isn't about execution, this is about "as far as we can tell this business is dramatically cash flow negative at the end of.. every quarter, um, good luck bro". It doesn't matter how hard you work if the business model contains cash outlays but not revenues. Also, there are some hints that the OP might be blowing smoke, which tends to cause people like me to look very very closely at the financials.



key problem being he cites that "itll all work out due to
upselling _____." but no
clear formation of the business plan


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## pixmedic (Aug 28, 2013)

forchunet said:


> I'm thinking of making a service where amateur and professional photographers can rent free high end equipment if they agree to shoot a session of real estate photography.
> 
> *Example:* 3 days free use of a D3 or a wide angle lens for one 1-hr home shoot session and 10 photographs
> 
> ...



sorry I got in on this discussion late...few questions though. 

"two shoots and your shipping is free?"   does the "renter" have to pay shipping TO them, RETURN shipping, or both?
you are looking at lending out some pretty expensive equipment, even if you go with slightly older, used gear. do you have an idea for dealing with someone that does not return the equipment on time? or at all? fees for returning gear late? how will you collect?

what if the days the renter whats to use the equipment does not coincide with any days you need shoots done? will you allow someone to do the shoot and take a voucher for the equipment rental? if so , this means shipping twice. who will cover that additional cost?

have you looked into what insurance will cost to cover the large amount of photographic equipment you will need? depending on how much gear you actually need to cover the amount of houses to be photographed, the monthly premium on replacement insurance could be pretty significant. 

what will you do if the pictures come back not good enough for you to use in your marketing?

Honestly, I am not sure If i see this appealing to actual professional photographers. there is a higher chance that a pro already has the gear they need/want. 
It seems like a service like this might appeal to someone wanting to try out pro gear before they upgrade, or someone that needs some higher end equipment for one job, so there might be some market for it if it doesn't cost the person close or more in shipping costs than it would be to just outright rent the equipment.  however, the problem i see is that if you have a lot of houses that need shooting, and you don't have enough people that want to barter for the rental, you will have invested a lot of time and money into equipment, but have to hire someone to photograph the real estate anyway. 

I think you need some hard facts to supplement this idea before it can be determined if it is valid or not, depending of course, on whether there is a market for it in your area. 
#1 how many houses per week/month do you expect to need photographed. 
#2 how much equipment will you need to cover those houses. 
#3 how much will the equipment cost, and how much will it cost to insure?
#4 how much time will you have to spend dealing with this? will you have to hire anyone?
#5 calculate whatever shipping costs you are covering x how many shoots each month you anticipate doing.  

take the total equipment cost, and break it down to a monthly cost, then add in your monthly insurance/shipping/time (salary) cost. 
if that number is larger than what you will expect it to cost to outsource the photography, then this isn't a good business move. 
if the number is smaller than outsourcing, you can start really looking into who you want to market this idea to, and work out a good advertising strategy. 
This idea  COULD work marketed to the right people, but i would definitely work out all the numbers first before i invested TOO much if my time on it.


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## sm4him (Aug 28, 2013)

forchunet said:


> The business model does not revolve around the equipment rental. If I can break even with the equipment rental then it has exceeded my expectations. My original model was to provide free real estate photography and just pay photographers out of pocket. My money is made when homeowners who use the free photography are upsold on other services that help them sell their homes (staging, home repair, inspections, painting, etc.)
> 
> The only reason I came up with the equipment rental is to help reduce my overhead hiring photographers. If I can reduce that by enticing professional photographers to shoot quality photos then I widen my profit margins.
> 
> Forget logistics, start up costs, business plan, etc. The question is:* Will professional photographers be motivated to take quality real estate photos in exchange for free equipment rentals.*



For the most part, I'd say NO, *because* of your two qualifying conditions:
Professional
Quality

I'd think that professional photographers who are going to be consistently capable of producing QUALITY real estate photos are, generally, already going to have their OWN high-end gear, thus they won't be as interested in getting yours as a barter.
The ones who WILL be interested will be are going to be folks more like me--hobbyists or serious amateurs who'd LOVE to get their hands on some high-end gear for nothing but an hour's worth of shooting time.  Trouble is, MANY of those, while they might be quite skilled at SOME photography, will have little to no experience in real estate photography, and presuming that you are talking about interior room shots, from everything I've read, getting good real-estate shots is HARD. Harder than the average amateur may realize until they try it.



forchunet said:


> It's funny that you guys mock me. In actuality my real estate marketing business is already working with our without the rental equipment service. As a business man this idea sprung up on me last night and from my initial calculations it may help me reduce my costs in hiring professional photographers as it is.
> 
> A lot of you seem to underestimate the value in free rental equipment. Say you wanted to test out a new lens or a new camera. You sign up on the website and are then emailed a list of 5 potential homes to shoot. You pick the closest one, schedule a time that works for you and the homeowner. You get the equipment in the mail. You finish the shoot and upload the photos. Then you can have fun with the equipment, then ship it back after the rental period.
> 
> What's so funny about that?



I don't know that anyone is questioning the value of free rental equipment or the attraction that it will generate. I think what they are questioning is the VALUE of the photos you are going to end up with in return.

Personally, I'd jump on this in a heartbeat. Three days use of, say, a D800, a 70-200 f/2.8 and maybe a nice wide angle for nothing but an hours' worth of my time shooting someone's property?? Heck, YES, I'll take half a dozen, thank you.
But--while I take a pretty decent bird shot, some cool abstracts, and heck I've even got a PHOTO ON A FREAKIN' BILLBOARD (had to throw that in there...if you've seen my last thread, you'll get that. If not, chances are you don't care anyway...  )--my real-estate photos would, in all likelihood, be mediocre at best. Because I wouldn't know what in the blue blazes I was doing.

EDIT: Oops. Somehow, when I got to the bottom of Page 2 of this thread, I thought it was done and posted this comment. THEN I saw that it went on...for THREE MORE PAGES...saying the same thing, over and over again. Things which *I* have now repeated.  

I'm sorry, poor horsie...I didn't MEAN to beat you when you were already dead.


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## vintagesnaps (Aug 28, 2013)

I have questions similar to Jason's (pixmedic) and would want specific information; I don't know who the OP is or where this business is located and the OP just joined this site. Actually, I'm not clear on what part of this business is already up and running - if some of this is already in place are those providing staging and repair services being paid?? If so why not photographers?

A company named airbnb was mentioned; I did a quick search and before I'd finished typing, what was coming up was airbnb scam, airbnb apologizes (which referred to a 2011 CNN report about significant widespread complaints). What concerns me is a company with that reputation being used as a reference in developing this business plan. 

The OP said he'd gotten enough marketing info., that made me wonder if maybe he also got enough PMs - was at least part of the purpose of posting on this website to find photographers? I would want to know how far a photographer would travel, how often jobs would be assigned, if the client is prospective or already signed up for the service, if the photographer has to cover travel expenses, if the photographer's name/signature would be used in leasing equipment, etc. 

Too many red flags/questions in my mind, and I can't see doing this when you could contract directly with realtors as clients if you wanted to do real estate photography.


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## Derrel (Aug 28, 2013)

Buckster said:


> Overread said:
> 
> 
> > Buck doesn't like people finding or trying to identify potential flaws in things
> ...




What Buckster is calling "*bandwagon negativity*" seems to be what others call exercising their collective, common business sense. Let's see. Why would the entire collective here express doubts about a scheme that's 1)Cash flow negative,and based upon 2)HUGE cash outlays, and 3)below-market pricing, with 4)dubious fundamentals at best, and a 5)process that almost guarantees participants will be less-than-capable newbies and wanna-bees looking to get a lot for the barest minimum of work? Oh, wait, that's just one,single handful of dubious qualities. There's still another hand and two feet left...

Let's see a quick CODB on this scheme, for the first MONTH. If this kind of scheme is going to work, it's gonna have to be capitalized up the ying-yang, or it's gonna fail as soon as even a minor bout of the hiccups hits. Sorry, but the idea of a "*free camera equipment rental service*" is ridiculous...real estate agents world-wide have had a full decade to get their photography equipment, workflow, and image shooting networks in place, and fine-tuned. This is akin to an entirely new service model attempting to displace an *entrenched, industry-wide, world-wide model*, and as we know, the chances of a new business, pushing a radically unproven, new model, with negative cash flow AND huuuuuge startup costs, just sound like, well...


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## runnah (Aug 28, 2013)

This reminds me of the show kitchen nightmares. You have a world famous chef coming in to help a failing restaurant and yet the owners of the place refuse to take his advice.

It's not negative when folks with more knowledge and experience are telling a beginner that their ideas are not the best. What is negative is when the beginner flat out refuses to hear and appreciate any of the feedback.


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## forchunet (Aug 29, 2013)

Derrel said:


> Buckster said:
> 
> 
> > Overread said:
> ...



You know nothing about business. First off, to start this I would NEVER go all out and buy HUGE amounts of equipment. No one starts a business like that. You start a business by crystallizing the most basic of models and then SCALING it. To start this I would need nothing more than maybe 2 or 3 camera bodies and a simple website. I would then advertise on craigslist, attend photography meetings, cold call photographers, etc. etc. etc. If I get a list of interested photographers who I have vetted, then I start to email them possible shoots. From there I acquire feedback and tweak the model for future transactions. If it fails outright then I am out only a few thousand of dollars and a few days of my time (don't forget I can always resale the equipment and recoup a big chunk of my investment). 

Most likely I will encounter a few problems that will require me to change the model a bit. The goal is to fix the problems when the operation is small and to find a model that is scalable in other locations and eventually nationwide. So, when you talk about entrenched industries, and huge cash outlays, and dubious fundamentals, and etc. All I see is a business illiterate who spouts about concepts he himself knows very little about. 




			
				runnah said:
			
		

> It's not negative when folks with more knowledge and experience are telling a beginner that their ideas are not the best. What is negative is when the beginner flat out refuses to hear and appreciate any of the feedback.



I've said time and time again that I appreciate the feedback. I've actually learned quite a lot. One being that established professional photographers will not go for this as they value their time more and could probably command more money by just doing a job. Two, there needs to be some sort of quick training or video that teaches the amateur or non real estate photographer a few tips on actually shooting real estate photography. Three, some photographers have very little business sense.

And please don't make any comparisons with world famous chefs and failing restaurants. For one, I've been around long enough that I know that when you open up yourself for "advice" from everyone you will receive a gamut of responses from a range of nobodies to the most experienced of professionals. It is my job to sift out the junk from the nuggets of gold that are spewed on public forums. I think I've done a good job of that.

Thanks again to everyone who has contributed.


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## Vautrin (Aug 29, 2013)

you should look at what level of "pro camera" you want to be at....  there are "pro" cameras that cost $100k and "prosumer" cameras that cost $1k...

the more expensive the camera the more likely a 'tog will want to borrow it...  but you wont want to hit the &#8364;100k mark (or need to)

also, consider buying used equiptment.  if youdo
have to liquidate itll be more likely that you recoup close to what youve paid (although as anyone who has sold a camera can tell you there may be quite a bit of mark up between what youre paid and what the used camera broker sells it for)


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## amolitor (Aug 29, 2013)

Yeah, start small and scale it. Good idea. The trouble with that approach is that this business model hemorrhages money at an incredible pace until it gets pretty big.

Good luck, bro!


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## Derrel (Aug 29, 2013)

Indeed, rotsa ruck ruddy! Undercapitalization is one of the key causes of small business failures. Happy scaling. I love buzzwords!


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## forchunet (Aug 29, 2013)

Actually, no. Capitalization is available if your model is proven and has potential to scale. Overcapitalization prior to identifying the correct model is what leads to failures and investor disappointment.


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