The rise of the online rental industry has benefited both the product owners and the consumers equally. Renting out things has boosted the model of the sharing economy as it saves a lot of time, money, and effort. This has resulted in an expansion of opportunities for entrepreneurs willing to start their rental businesses. With proper planning of business models and identification of revenue streams, it becomes easy to run an online rental marketplace.
To begin with, you need to narrow down your niche and the products your marketplace will be dealing with. Below are some industry stats that explain the opportunities that explain the growth in the rental economy in multiple sectors:
| Online Rental Market | Projection Year | Estimated Growth |
| Construction equipment rental | 2026 | $170 Billion |
| Car Rental | 2027 | $214 Billion |
| Furniture Rental | 2029 | $139 Billion |
| Truck Rental | 2030 | $204 Billion |
| RV Rental | 2028 | $810 Million |
| Bike Rental | 2028 | $11 Billion |
| Boat Rental | 2028 | $280 million |
| Dress Rental | 2026 | $2.2 Billion |
| Party Rental | 2027 | $29 Billion |
Steps To Create An eCommerce Rental Marketplace
Here are some key points that you should prioritize before entering the e-commerce rental market.
Market Research
It is important to know about your key competitors and the features that customers find helpful while renting a product. A comprehensive market study will help in defining the business objectives and creating a unique selling point for your marketplace.
Additionally, here are a few aspects that should be analyzed:
- Identifying potential customers
- The current state of the industry
- Competitor analysis
- Revenue projections
Revenue Channels
Some eCommerce rental marketplaces offer premium listing services to their renters and rentees. Some display advertisements while others follow hybrid and complex revenue channels to yield profits. Some common and effective revenue practices for the eCommerce rental marketplace are:-
Advertisements
Being a rental marketplace owner, you can reserve space for third-party advertisements from relevant businesses to earn money.
Subscriptions
In this revenue model, marketplace owners charge membership fees from both parties to access the platform. The subscription fee depends upon the traffic and period available for the services.
Sponsored Listings
Rental eCommerce marketplaces charge fees for the product owners to promote their products on top with matching search results. This helps product owners enhance their visibility on the platform in exchange for pre-decided fees.
Commissions
A one-time commission fee from the product owners can be charged after every successful lead is generated. This is the most common revenue model for rental marketplaces, as the fee is justified based on leads generated.
Important Rental Marketplace Features
Real-Time Messaging
Meaningful interaction between both stakeholders through messaging should be facilitated on the platform so that customers can enquire about the exact products and charges. Also, there should be features to facilitate audio and video conversations, as this helps sellers and buyers create trust among each other.
Listings
The platform should allow users to create well-optimized listings with crisp information. Also, a balance should be struck between the images and text formatting to attract user attention and present a better view of the products.
User Profiles
The registered users should be able to create a profile that is rich in information and acts as their portfolio to depict their offerings and requirements.
Some other user-friendly features that an eCommerce rental marketplace should have include push notifications, a search bar, user reviews, video tours, etc.
Choose the Right Development Approach
Selecting a development approach for your rental platform can be confusing. To decide whether you need a ready-made solution or a custom-built platform, you should check your requirements to validate the development methodology.
Readymade Solution
If your requirement is a readymade solution, then you can go with readymade eCommerce marketplace solutions available on the web. Availing of a ready-made solution for building a rental marketplace saves you a lot of time and technical effort.
Software like YoRent is the best option to create a single vendor or multivendor rental marketplace platform where you can start your own online rental business. It comes with a variety of modules such as document verification, tiered pricing, product inspection, and many more.
YoRent is a white-label rental software for entrepreneurs who are looking for a scalable, secure, and fully customizable solution for their rental business. Apart from that, you can start both a renting and selling business with YoRent rental software.
Custom Development
Building a custom solution for the rental eCommerce marketplace can provide you with personalized features and source code for the web application. This development approach makes your platform unique, but the development costs are very high as you need to hire skilled developers to develop and maintain the product. There are numerous software development companies across the globe that you can choose from to build your rental marketplace.
Conclusion
Ready-made software will be a more effective way to materialize your business idea without any technical expertise. Additionally, with ready-made rental software, you can do customization as per your business needs. While building an eCommerce rental marketplace, you should keep the essential features as a priority and add other features once the platform reaches its real potential. As a marketplace owner, it is important to keep the platform secure and prevent users from falling victim to online fraud. So it’s better to choose a fully secure rental software solution instead of any cheap solution.
Saurabh Thakur is an accomplished marketer & analyst. He has been active in online marketing services for the past 7 years. He has written multiple articles about technology, digital marketing, and e-commerce industry.
