I launched my weekend project 7 months ago on HN – here's CameraLends today | Hacker News Reader

I launched my weekend project 7 months ago on HN – here's CameraLends today

cameralends.com

124 pointsderwiki86 comments

I've been a lender on the site since derwiki first posted. There are still 2 critical pieces missing.

1) No insurance. I've talked to derwiki about this via email and he gave a personal guarantee that anything broken or stolen would be replaced. That was well-meant but not really the kind of guarantee I need to let random people rent my $3k equipment.

2) At least 2 days notice before someone makes a request. I've had 3 inquiries in the last 7 months to rent either my camera or my lenses. All 3 have been same-day, "can I pick that up in an hour" kinds of things. That model works for cars but not for cameras. Cars are easy. They sit in a parking spot and you can hook up remote triggers for them. Easy to rent out on demand. Cameras are pricy delicate devices requiring safe storage and well-padded bags. If someone wants to rent mine, I have to be available to hand it to them and to get it back when they're done. This requires scheduling.

If/when derwiki fixes the insurance and scheduling problems, I'll feel comfortable using his site. It's a great idea and just needs some polish.

Totally right on (1), I think that's a resounding cry from everyone who has checked out the site today. As a follow-up, would you (a) be willing to pay for insurance to hedge your losses or (b) expect that to fall to the renter?

As bobbles suggested, a lot of the rentals that happen are last minute/late notice -- reservations that the bigger rental shops can't do unless they're local (and maybe even then can't do). But you're also right; I should make the messaging clearer on expectations for short notice, and additionally wire up SMS notifications to lenders (like AirBnB does).

Thanks for sticking with me through the early days!

The insurance should probably be handled by you, actually. There's different models though. Car rental services either require renters to pay a 1 time insurance fee like Zipcar or to pay a fee at rental time. AirB&B covers the insurance themselves for housing providers (I think). As a lender, I'm not going to pay anything to you to use your site. I'd guess most lenders like me would be the same way. But on the other hand, requiring an extra fee from customers may be friction in the rental process. That's why I hypothesize you should cover the insurance yourself. Test the idea, I'd love to hear about the results.

SMS notifications would be super helpful.

There should be a calendar system. I should be able to mark availability for my equipment. Rentals should automatically block out time.

Why can't we set the prices?

Also, my stuff is not available for shipping. I have to go back and look but last time I did not see a way to disable that.

Your question RE who pays the insurance - the renter will pay for it in either case, directly or by having the cost passed to them from the lender.

I'd suggest that the lender should decide if he wants insurance or not, and it should be added as a line item on the renters bill. The lender will understand that by adding this cost he is less competitive, so you'll find that only the market for really expensive equipment supports insurance.

It is totally worth your time to implement this because the insurer (or panel of insurers) you work with will offer you a referral fee. I'd enter talks with them directly. You may find a local insurance company (not reseller) easier to work with, as a major one probably won't want to talk to you. They might want a procedure where the equipment is photographed by the lender each time before it is handed to the borrower.

the most obvious would be to split on both. Or allow a deposit kind of thing for the renter's half.

The issue with number 2 might be that 'an hour from now' is when someone realises they need the camera.

Based on the discussion here, I would allow users to express interest in products you don't have available. "Get notified when X is available" and collect an email. This might help you understand 1) what users want 2) if others users may be willing to acquire the product if they know N others would rent it out (eg subsidize the cost). I'm unsure of the economics here, but I would acquire the product myself if I were you. Also, this will give you future access to these visitors who are currently being lost.

Insurance also may be a big issue for your users to list. If I were you I'd want my listers to know feel like there was zero downside and almost like they are wasting money by not listing their gear.

Funny enough, I just cut my "Get Notified when X" module because it didn't get much use. I think a better way might be able to save search criteria and get notified when new gear that matches your criteria is posted. What do you think? Or how do you see this module working?

My observation was mainly that people seem not to be finding what they would like to rent. I don't have a silver bullet for this, but I think you're right by trying to iterate over it and find something that works. Here are a couple thoughts:

I don't know if you show products, or have product pages, other than what is "listed" by lenders. If not, you don't really know what people would gravitate towards. I would want to create a detailed product page for every piece of gear I could think of. You will know what was needed based on traffic stats. You could create a "wait list" or something more desirable sounding.

What about social integration? If you had product which was unavailable, do you allow people to do something like tweet - "anyone have a Canon EF 135mm f/2L lens I can rent? {url} @cameralends" This might trigger some offsite renting/borrowing but you will still benefit from the exposure.

As far as growing traffic, my opinion is if the SERP/SEM/etc methods aren't working. You're going to have to grind it out and start promoting your brand offline. Hosting events seems like a good way to get your brand out there. Sponsoring photography shoots may work well. Hire a model/makeup/etc, rent/find a cool venue, promote it through a local photo group eg. meetup/etc). This could probably cost as low as a few hundred bucks per event. You might even charge for the event (maybe free if they rent something from the site). As you could imagine, this can go many directions...

Best of luck.

The site is down now, congratudolences. :)

I have some experience building a market, although not with consumer goods. Reading about AirBnB's initial work, and also from talking to investors at Rover, getting one side or other of the market together is always where the work is.

For AirBnB, apparently, it was listings. For you, that might be the case as well. Seems like the next step might be to hustle, hustle, hustle and figure out how to get a lot more equipment listed. I know for sure I'd rent a Mamiya 7 or a Leaf or a Leica M-Monochrom in an instant if it were out there.

AirBnB's big secret was siphoning off Craigslist traffic. It really was a bit of marketing genius (note that they sold boxes of cereal all across the country for $50 each using Craigslist; they were experienced Craigslist spammers.)

If you had a rental property up on CL, you got an email asking you to list it. They would often times relist that property on CL with a link back to AirBnB. They had a better product than CL for rental properties, so it worked like a charm.

> that they sold boxes of cereal all across the country for $50 each using Craigslist; they were experienced Craigslist spammers.

Could you expand on this? I haven't heard about it.

http://www.quora.com/Airbnb/Whats-the-story-behind-the-Obama...

You can always rent a Leica M-Monochrom from LensRentals. In stock now...

http://www.lensrentals.com/rent/leica/cameras/leica-m-monoch...

They don't do Mamiya, but they do rent the medium format Pentax 645D.

They're a very good company to deal with.

Back up. First time I've ever needed more than one dyno :)

Interesting that you'd like to rent more arcane gear; almost everything that has rented has just been "nice camera" or "nice lens".

The Leica Monochrome is insane awesome. However, If I owned that camera, I would be almost excessively paranoid to lend that camera out.

I recently discovered this also. Was going crazy debugging my site, trying to figure out why it took so damn long to load the page...only to discover that with 1 free dyno, the entire app is just dead and then spins up when a request is made.

Very cool! For what it's worth, my frustration with borrowlenses/lensrentals isn't their pricing, which seems reasonable, but their lack of selection -- I'd love to rent out film cameras like an old Leica or a Mamiya medium format, and no-one seems interested in letting me do that. Maybe this site could? What's the reason you've limited it to Canon/Nikon digital so far? Seems like this could be a real differentiator to get your brand out there. (Oh, there are more options for searching than header buttons for posting. Weird.)

As for getting more traffic, have you tried going where the photographers are, places like dpreview/500px/I don't know where else?

If you wanted to put all of your energy into this, you might consider buying some camera gear to rent out to seed the site with renters. That's a large commitment, though.

Just added Leica and Mamiya (I actually had two disparate lists, so you helped my correct a bug!). Canon/Nikon have been the gear of the most interest so far (and high end for both). The headers for "Rent Canon" and "Rent Nikon" are there for the bulk of visitors coming to the site.

I haven't reached out to many photographer communities, as I didn't feel the site was end-to-end enough to bother them. I think it's to a good state though, and will start pursuing this.

I actually bought a 5D Mark II after launching the site that I've rented out more than a few times :) Luckily enough, I'm also a photographer. It's been a pretty good incentive to also be able to earn money as a user of the site.

In January, I posted http://derwiki.tumblr.com/post/40523233923/getting-traffic-f... and got the initial validation I was looking for on my idea to start a peer-to-peer camera rental marketplace. Seven months later, I've had some reservations (<50), grown inventory, and expanded to a few cities. Most of the core flows work. I've been using AdWords attempting to SEO optimize for traffic, but I'm not getting much traffic. What should I be doing differently?

I don't have an answer, but I love the website idea! Have you tried engaging local communities and photographer forums? I once heard AdWords described as lighter fluid: once you have a fire going, it can really help you take off and explode. But it's much less useful when you lack that initial traction, which takes a lot more hustling, often in-person, to get.

Also, I don't know if it's a result of the traffic from this post, but your site is pretty slow right now.

I would do a little keyword research and develop a strategy that would pull people in for searches like DSLR Rental San Francisco etc..

Then create landing pages specifically for that searchhttps://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...

I remember the original thread. I was very sceptical back then and am happy to see the project is alive. The website looks very good on first sight. However, my test search (Canon Body Paris), did not only have not hits, the page looked broken, as the place reserved for results was just empty.

- Just add a short apology "Sorry, we could not find what you looked for. But we have some awesome lenses in Paris, waiting for you to try them!" :)

- I clicked on your blog-link, and got this: "You attempted to reach blog.cameralends.com, but instead you actually reached a server identifying itself as *.herokuapp.com", with a big red exclamation mark.

Great point. For context, I add locations as people request them to post gear (seems silly to turn lenders away). But that means that places like Paris have -one- item (https://www.cameralends.com/items/24mm-3-8-elmar -- in this case, one that's harder to categorize in my system).

Point is well taken -- I'll add a note to work on the experience for non-SF visitors.

On this note, you should also add an option for "Any" for at least the brand and type you are looking for sections. Since you don't have a ton of inventory at this point, it's likely that whatever search I do outside of San Fran is going to fail (and even some there.) Every search I've done failed so far... Let me pick Paris or Cleveland or whatever and show me anything and everything available there.

I think you have 2 markets here:

1. People who are interested in getting a nice camera and want to test out a specific camera or 2 to decide which to get. "Any" doesn't help much here, but if they have a handful they'd be interested in it might be somewhat useful in the early stages where you don't have much inventory.

2. People who aren't interested in buying a nice camera, but would like to use one for a day. These people specifically, likely don't know which one to search for, and they don't care which one they get. All of them are better than their point-and-shoot or phone. Adding an "Any" really helps these people. Click my city and show me what is available.

Good idea, I like this in addition to tagging mentioned in another comment. I've added a ticket for "any" filters. Thanks!

Edit: I just remembered that you can also manually edit the search results query string to remove parameters you don't want. For example, /gear?brand=canon shows all Canon gear, in any location.

Riffing on the deciding which to get part, you might also be able to allow stores to have accounts on there as long as they rent through your service.

I would also recommend photo blogs and forums. Reach out, get reviews of your site/service. Places like http://digital-photography-school.com/ are probably a good place to start.

Also, I think the risk is something that needs to be prominently addressed on the home page. It's been mentioned several times in this thread, and it was the first thing I thought of. As the person getting it out I want to know I'm not liable if I accidentally scratch the lens, and as the person giving it I want to know it is covered if I get it back broken, or don't get it back at all.

Good idea. What about ads/sponsorships on photo related forums/groups?

The number one thing I thought of is lost/stolen. On the front page you should advertise what you do to protect the lender from damages, and borrowers from accusations of damage.

According to your ToS you already 'guarantee' up to 5k, "Maximum Recovery Value within CameraLends is not to exceed $5,000" granted your borrowers are 'verified'.

When you are dealing with expensive equipment, this kind of thing is a must.

One of my biggest concerns around this, speaking about my own cameras would not be the case where someone has obviously dropped my body/lens and it's smashed, but where it has been dropped or treated rough and has intermittent problems.

especially glass - it's high-precision stuff, and even though it may look fine, it could've been very lightly scuffed or bumped around and will never be the same. That's a really hard thing to solve.

Even worse than lost/stolen is damaged, IMO, just because it introduces a much bigger gray area.

Let's say I lend someone my Canon 100-400mm, it comes back looking mostly okay but with a relatively small scratch on the front lens element that I'm sure wasn't there previously. Still works mostly fine, but now when I shoot with the sun in the frame, I get lens flare that didn't previously exhibit.

How do I prove the renter subtly damaged the lens, if it comes down to my word against theirs?

I would need a lot of iron clad assurances that I'm covered in return for renting out my various $1k+ lenses for a few tens of dollars.

Though ultimately, I don't currently live in a covered city (I'm in San Diego) so this is theoretical in my case.

You're not the first to have this concern. So far, my policy has been that if anything happens (the lender is unhappy about his equipment) then CameraLends will send a replacement and take the broken equipment in exchange. Luckily, nothing has gone awry, yet.

Would insurance make you feel better? Also, I just added San Diego to the list of available cities. Feel free to email me at adam@cameralends.com if you have any more questions or ideas.

Looks nice, congrats. First time seeing it and my most obvious question isn't answered on the homepage: what happens if someone smashes my gear I rented out?

You should prominently highlight a protection policy.

I had the exact immediate question from the other side - I'd be renting equipment, not renting it out. I looked at two cameras before I started freaking out about: What if I break a lens? What if I scratch it? What if I lose the charger? Does it come in the right bag to protect it?

How would you guys construct some sort of insurance policy or other damaged gear policy that would put your minds at ease? As I mentioned in other comments, the current policy is for CameraLends to replace the gear if the owner has a problem with it. What kind of policy would be fairly priced yet give the assurances you want? Feel free to email adam@cameralends.com.

Hey! Where's the Micro Four Thirds gear? I'm being oppressed!

I keep slavering over reviews of the Olympus 75 mm f/1.8 and wondering where i can get 650 quid from in a hurry. And then trying to distract myself by trying to decide which of the four decent wide-angle primes i should get. It's not that i want you to take all my money. But basically, take all my money.

I've got a J1 posted in Mountain View (https://www.cameralends.com/items/1-j1-10-1-mp-hd-digital-ca...), but that looks like it. After I get more gear in this category, I'll work on calling it out more. Thanks for the feedback!

Agreed! I'd love to rent some of the more interesting M43 lenses, and I'm sure some people could have a lot of fun with the Panasonic 7-14mm sitting in my drawer at home.

Right with you, I bought a Panasonic GH1 a few years ago because you could hack the firmware and get a video (at least in good light) that rivaled the MKII but at half the cost

First, congrats on getting out there. I was not aware of something like this, and truthfully had never thought of it as an option. As a father of a 17month old, my wife and I have talked a little about a true camera (non-iphone) to take better pictures of our son. My first thought when looking at this website is that this is for a professional photographer to get gear from someone else, am I right? Or if I wanted to see how something like this works, is this a way we could test out a high-definition camera? If so, perhaps you want to experiment running ads directed at new parents to take professional pictures (to the extent I could do that with no training) without hiring a pro. Just a thought.

It's a use case I've pitched to friends who have recently become parents. You could be the first to do it, and then post pictures of your cute kids on the web site! It would be a great way to show off the pics you got at a much lower price than at a studio. Where are you located?

I am in Nashville, TN.

First off, kick ass! It looks like you've found an excellent niche! As someone who's recently gotten into amateur photography, I can see this becoming an excellent resource. You can read tons about the technical parameters of various equipment, but it's hard to see how it all will map to that intuitive "how can I create this look/feel/emotion" until you get it in your hands and have a chance to shoot on it for a while.

All of that said, it sounds like your biggest hinderances are insurance and selection. I think if you solve the insurance problem, the other one will follow. Keep up the kicking ass, and hopefully I can be your customer soon!

So, so many times I have wanted to do something like this—I'm glad someone else already has! Any chance you could add St. Louis, MO to the list? :)

I've rented many cameras both locally and via BorrowLenses and RentGlass, and had a lot of great experiences. But I know there are hundreds of other photographers within a few miles of me that have the same lenses and would love to rent them out when they're not using them.

Unless you're a full-time pro, there's no way to justify more than one or two workhorse lenses like a 70-200 2.8, but there are many times when such a lens would come in handy.

P.S. I'm getting an SSL certificate error when I click the link to your blog page.

Just added St. Louis! You're going to have to sign up and post gear though, if you want to start the community there. The benefit is that you have a monopoly on the local market! Email me at adam@cameralends.com if you have any questions.

I added a ticket to check out the SSL error, thanks for the heads up. For some reason I don't see it in Chrome, but I do see it in Safari.

To author: I had similar idea couple months ago about the peer-to-peer swap for expensive/luxury watch owners... if you own expensive watch you can "exchange" it for couple months or something with someone who has similar valued watch.

Now that you p2p rent expensive equipment, can you share your worst stories as well as crucial experience in terms of rental issues one can run into while operating this sort of startup?

Happy to say that I'm going to disappoint you; I haven't had bad experiences yet. It's worth mentioning that all rentals to date have happened in San Francisco and I've personally emailed with all the lenders. I'm currently looking into insurance options.

I need front page clarification on:

1) What if I rent out my lens and the renter breaks it?

2) What if I rent a lens and I break it?

3) What if I rent a lens and return it safely, but the seller fraudulently claims that I broke it?

These are questions that eBay has answered to a pretty good extent, given the limitations of person-to-person commerce. It's essential for a high-value marketplace like this.

Great idea!

A couple of quick thoughts:

- Add a sign-up form for being notified when new cities come online.

- I did a sample search https://www.cameralends.com/gear?utf8=%E2%9C%93&brand=nikon&... and just got a blank page. No other details on what went wrong.

- A rented "Kit" category option would be helpful. I don't really want to deal with two separate people/pick-ups/etc on the transaction and would rather get a body and lens from one person.

Congrats bro.. You could learn a lot from how AirBnb utilized Craigslist to get some initial traction.

http://davegooden.com/2011/05/how-airbnb-became-a-billion-do...

and

http://andrewchen.co/2012/04/27/how-to-be-a-growth-hacker-an...

You could also leverage Meetup.com's plethora of camera groups for supply side demand.

Does "weekend project" mean a project that you work on when you have free time or does it literally mean "built in one weekend"?

Free time :) Sorry if it was a misleading title.

No problem, I have just never understood what people meant by that on HN. Some "weekend projects", like yours, would be quite humbling if they truly were built in one weekend :)

love the concept. a couple of comments:

1. I would love to post my gear there (I have a bunch of high-end Canon L lenses), but there's no faq or anything about how I'm protected in case my equipment gets dropped by the person I rent to. What happens, for example, if my equipment gets stolen?

2. How do I get paid? Is it a bank deposit? Cash? Bitcoins?

If you want more listings, you should make the process of lending easy and safe.

I was looking for this info as well and I found some answers in the terms + services.

1) You can redeem up to $5000 for your equipment. Basically their credit card will be on file and if something happens you can claim it.

I couldn't find anything on the payout sides of things.

That's a lot of risk to carry as a lendee (lessee?). I'd probably want to insure against that risk if possible.

Also how are you checking that the lendee's CC can cover the amount of the current equipment value?

The policy will probably change soon to be the value of a replacement vs some arbitrary amount. Luckily, most gear on the site isn't super expensive.

But what happens if the $5000 you attempt to charge to their card is declined?

1. As mentioned in other responses, CameraLends will replace your equipment if something goes awry. 2. Paypal currently. Would you prefer something else?

You're right; reducing risk and making everything seem worry-free is going to be key. Thanks for the feedback.

Looks cool! Congrats and good luck.

One issue - site doesn't appear to be rendering properly on an iPad (using Chrome as browser):

http://imgur.com/m6TvEt7

I suggest eschewing the whole responsive thing when it comes to tablets -- just get the desktop version rendering on a tablet and it'll look great.

Keep it up and keep us posted.

Good call, I've just made a ticket to grid the boxes into 2x2 (desktop is 1x4, phone is 4x1).

If I rent to someone will you sell me insurance on the item in case they damage/thieve the camera?

Edit: Can you add Boston too :D

As mentioned in other responses, CameraLends will replace the lender's equipment if anything goes awry. Just added Boston! You'll have to post gear there to kickstart the community though :)

You should look into adding Pentax. There is tons of old Pentax gear out there with unparalleled backwards compatibility. Also, pentaxforums is a great community where I think you could easily pick up a lot of new users and gear.

Added Pentax, thanks for the suggestion!

Glad to see this continuing and growing. I remember making a comment a few months ago. I noticed one thing,that might not be YOU... "Weekend in SF" was priced per week. Is there no weekend pricing?

No SoCal?

Was thinking of renting some gear to try it out before buying. (Might be a cool ad strategy you could eventually work with brands, kind of a try-before-buy approach.)

Canon Professional Services (and Nikon Professional Services) does a similar thing, however to get into CPS, it took me quit a bit of work back in the day (tearsheets, credential letters, etc.) However by looking at using this site as an analog for CPS, but for "normal" people, you might have a hit on your hands, especially with the serious amateurs who don't have the credits to get into CPS (or similar programs.)

Manufacturer partnerships would be the key to blowing this up. The straight peer-to-peer might work, but most pros with decent gear are going to take some serious convincing to loan their gear out. Things like lens alignment for example, are pretty hard to detect, so it isn't as easy as AirBnB to determine "damage." I also suspect the insurance requirements might be pretty difficult.

Good luck! Great idea.

Yeah, for hobbyists with no credentials, the CPS/similar programs are a no-go.

I remember this. Congrats, and keep it up.

I'm wondering: Could something like this work for musical instruments / recording equipment?

I think so… of course not for every instrument (eg. windinstruments). What I think could be the problem is that musicians really "love" their instruments. I am a drummer and I don't even like it if someone I know plays a gig with my drumkit. But that's only my opinion.

Trust me photographer's really love their cameras :-)

How will you verify that the water tight camera case remains water tight after repeated use?

Cop out on this one: it's my girlfriend's, so I'll just have to keep a close eye on it!

This is a very clever idea. But how do you plan to promote/scale the business?

I'd love to see the Triangle (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) added!

Already have gear there! https://www.cameralends.com/gear?utf8=%E2%9C%93&brand=any&co...

Just posted some equipment on there. Keep up the great work!

dude, now this is a great idea. karma karma karma

Still no Seattle? You're breaking my heart.

Just created it. Want to be the first to post gear there?

Absolutely. Will do.

Love it

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