Dec 22 2008
Make money by renting your goods out
If you are short of cash, you can make some handy money by renting your stuff out. What kind of stuff? Anything, campervans, powerdrills, barbecues, I even saw a request to rent a dehumidifier.
How do you go about it? There is a company called RentNotBuy, which has two websites -RentNotBuy.com for the USA and Canada, and RentNotBuy.co.uk for the UK and Ireland. They are free to join, and do not have any referral systems.
You simply join the site and then list the item you want to rent out. Their software estimates the amount you should rent it out for, but it’s up to you to confirm this with the person renting (who can always negotiate with you). If someone wants to rent, they book it, the booking is confirmed by email, the renter goes to collect item, presents ID, pays upfront, plus a deposit, and then when the item is returned, they get their deposit back.
The websites are operated on a community basis, so they do not charge any fees for use of their site.
And if you need something, instead of rushing out and buying the item, consider whether you only need the item for a short while (say you need to video a wedding), and rent. There are many commercial organisations who will rent out stuff to you, but you should be able to rent more cheaply using a community website like RentNotBuy.
