RentLinx: Making Money Off of Free

By Bud on July 18, 2008 TrackBacks (0) Comments (2)

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Rental information is in too many places making it hard to locate. Three years ago, Jeremy Schneider decided to solve this problem by allowing rental agencies to list their information for free and tenants to search the listing for free on the RentLinx web site. RentLinx makes its money by selling value added services on top of this asset.

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Filed under: Ann Arbor, MI | Jeremy Schneider | Network Businesses | RentLinx

RentLinx makes its money by connecting people to information about available rental properties in their market.  You might think this information would be easy to obtain. After all, don't papers have classified listings? Don't rental agencies have web sites? Well, as Jeremy Schneider, founder of RentLinx, explains in this segment, that's exactly the problem. Rental information is in too many places making it hard to locate.

Three years ago, Jeremy decided to solve this problem by allowing rental agencies to list their information for free and tenants to search the listing for free on the RentLinx web site. Landlords have one place to list, and tenants have one place to search. RentLinx makes its money by selling value-added services on top of this asset. Although RentLinx is still under $1 Million in revenue, it has demonstrated some impressive results:

  • It currently lists over 400,000 available rental units. For a point of comparison, the state of Michigan has a total rental units inventory of 500,000, and the US an inventory of 30 Million.
  • 15% of agencies listing rental properties purchase value added services. These services include giving the agency the ability to update its own web site from the RentLinx database and using the agency's own systems to automatically update its RentLinx listings.

The free services RentLinx offers might seem so attractive that agencies would just flock to list on the site on their own, but that's not how it happened. In Jeremy's next segment, he will describe how he used already existing professional associations to market RentLinx.

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2 Comments

Autumn Darr on November 17, 2008 11:14 PM
Hello Bud, I think you have a very interesting website idea. It is beneficial to both landlords and renters. Landlords only have to worry about dealing with one website to update their availability, instead of having to contact multiple websites. I also think that since landlords only have to update one website, they are more likely to have their units listed on more websites. This allows the landlords to reach more people. And renters benefit from this because it is easier to find out what is available in an area. I know that before I moved away to attend college, I had to find an apartment to live in. And since I was moving an hour away the only way for me to find an apartment, was to search on-line. Searching for low cost apartments was harder than I expected. But with website like RentLinx, this makes it easier for renters to find the apartment they are looking for. In your interview you mentioned that medium to large landlords use your services. I was just wondering if this was your intended target market, or if this is just who you noticed was using your services the most. Some other features that I think make your company unique is how much of companies business is actually done for free, and yet your company can run on low costs. I think this shows other companies the benefit to running your business on-line, it allows you to keep cost down. I wouldn’t have thought that a business could have most of their business be free, and still be profitable. But I guess that just goes to show you that if your product or service is good enough, people will be willing to pay for it. Thank you Bud for your interview, it was very informal. Autumn Darr.
Jack Robertson on November 22, 2009 1:36 PM
This idea is very interesting. I agree that finding rental properties is very difficult. When I was in the rental community, it would have been very nice to find a site that lists properties. The idea of finding a rental property as easy as buying an airline ticket is great. It is very hard to leaf through all of the different mediums, knowing that you will most likely settle for a property just because the ideal property’s owner doesn’t know how to advertise effectively. Of course with today’s down-turned market, there are plenty of advertising sites such as Rentlinx out there. My advice to Jeremy would be to start focusing on differentiation. Jeremy needs to look for new ways of standing out from the crowd. Upon conducting some research, I found that it is very hard to find the advertising spots on the national and local sites. If I was not looking for it, I’m sure that I would not have found an ad on a rental site for Rentlinx. I went to Hotpads.com, one of the advertising locations for Rentlinx. I discovered that this site not only lacks a good advertisement for Rentlinx, but it has a sister site that is a direct competitor of Rentlinx! This site is named Rentals.com and features many of the same properties that Rentlinx has. In some cases, I found listings that are much more involved with many more pictures on the main page. This would draw the consumer in much faster than the Rentlinx site. I would suggest that Jeremy do some research on the sites that Rentlinx advertises on to make sure that commitments are being met. Jeremy could also work with his property owners to list better looking ads on his site to rival other sites. The current problem with Rentlinx appears to be support. Another upgrade package could include support to help with ad design. It appears that Rentals.com designs the listings for the property owners. This results in a much more professional looking site. All in all, I would say that the idea of “free” sells, but support needs some attention. Rentlinx should look into differentiating itself from other sites promoting the same idea. This will help with the needed increase in sales and use in today’s market. Jack Robertson

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