Free Camera Equipment Rental Service - Your Thoughts plz

[forchunet]

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.

 

[Overread]

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).

 

[forchunet]

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.

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money instead on equipment that we can exchange for a potentially unlimited amount of shoots (and sell as they become outdated), our profit margins widen considerably.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.

 

[Designer]

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?

 

[vintagesnaps]

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.

 

[amolitor]

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.

 

[marc.christoffel]

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.

 

[Gavjenks]

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.

 

[Gavjenks]

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.

 

[amolitor]

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?

 

[forchunet]

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.

 

[marc.christoffel]

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.

 

[forchunet]

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.

 

[o hey tyler]

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

 

[Overread]

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.