The money making scheme which launched a thousand other ideas…or something like that, anyway. As promised, here is an update on my money making exploits via Fat Lama. For those of you new to themoneymountain.com, here is my opening gambit from a few weeks ago.
I was lured to Fat Lama (www.fatlama.com) from an article (let’s face it, it was pretty much a brochure for the website) in The Daily Telegraph which detailed people making £000’s from renting out possessions which otherwise spent most of their time in cupboards and generally sitting idle. “What a fantastic way to make a few quid,” I thought. I discussed it with Chris and Dave and so it was decided; we’d give it a go.
I listed a few items in the first week (a petrol strimmer, a chainsaw, a log horse and my Dyson). I figured that as I live in the middle of knowhere, I need to appeal to my local market as anyone local to me also lives in the middle of knowhere. They will surely have need of the same things I need for keeping gardens in check and chopping fire wood.
It turns out that was well wide of the mark. Since the original post I have had one sniff of interest in the strimmer from a chap who subsequently decided against renting it. Other than that, not a sausage.
New Listings
A few more items have been added to the portfolio to try and spice things up a bit and hopefully draw people to the listings:
– Pressure washer
– 8m Ladder
– Decorators steps
– 30m Extension lead
– Dog crate
…but none of these have proved tempting enough to lure any potential renters out of the woodwork.
Fat Lama suggested dropping the price on a couple of items, advice which I took but that hasn’t yielded a single new enquiry to date
Garden tools which were sat unused, were briefly loved and photographed and have now gone back to being idle in sheds and cupboards waiting for the call to fulfill their duty.
Why has there been no demand?
As I said above, I live in the middle of knowhere. There are a few items listed in the next town over which might be taking any potential customers away from me, I am priced competitively and the items are all in full working order with (what I think) is a pretty good offer (full fuel tanks etc).
It could be that my geographical target market already has all these items and so has no need to rent them.
It could be that Fat Lama has yet to gain much of a following in rural England.
In the case of the strimmer, I am certain the weather has played a part. Lawns etc are simply not growing so not as much cutting and strimming is needed.
Holiday time (I’m scraping the barrel now, I know)
One thing which has become clear is that my calculation of what to charge per rental needs looking at. Originally I worked on the principle of allowing £2 per rental to assist with servicing costs of the strimmer. Given that a service would cost around £75, I was assuming the strimmer would be rented at least 38 times; seeing as we’ve not had massive interest in the last 3 weeks, I think it’s safe to say that this calculation was ambitious to say the least.
I will persevere with Fat Lama and see what comes of it; I am unsure about what to do with the product range I’m offering and whether I need to update the appeal of the items through a more jazzy collection of pictures or whether I relist them using Chris or Dave’s address (they don’t know about this idea yet) as they live in more suburban settings where the knowledge of Fat Lama may be greater but there would almost certainly be larger population to create potential demand. Either way, I am pretty convinced that it is time to go back to the drawing board on Fat Lama and find a new way to promote and create interest.
On the plus side, there have been no new expenses related to this little experiment so at least we haven’t got anymore red numbers to add to the balance sheet.