Which website lets photographers rent their studios and gear to other shooters?

[rajah sulayman]

A while back I read about a new site that allowed you to list your gear, studios, services, etc for other photographers to rent. A peer-to-peer rental service. Unfortunately, I've since forgotten the name and no matter what I Google, I can't find it. All I remember about the site is it was a pretty nicely-done site, very "Web 2.0" but beyond that, nothing. :(

Ring any bells?

[PhotosGuy]

I found a few googling this: rent gear studios services photography -recording -repair
(Including your thread) ;)

[rajah sulayman]

Haha. Thanks, but sadly I don't see it in the list. It's one of those things where the name is right on the tip of my tongue and I'd recognize it the second I saw it, I just can't remember it off-hand.

The only thing I do remember is it has a short Web 2.0-ish name, like "gearhub" or "studioswap" instead of the a common/boring domain like "productionparadise" or "progearrental."

The search continues...

[rajah sulayman]

FOUND IT (http://studioshare.org/).

Naturally, one of those annoyingly simple-to-remember names that I completely blanked on.

[PhotosGuy]

Crap! I knew that! :D

[rajah sulayman]

I feel a little disappointed that after all the work it took to find the link, there weren't that many listings for SF and NY.

[Csae]

Looks interesting, i'm curious how many entries there are for my area, but i'm not 50$ curious heh.

[rajah sulayman]

You can register a free account to search. I think the $50 membership is only if you plan on actually renting.

That said, I did a search for all studios within 100 miles of Manhattan and it only returned 32 results. So I don't know how many listings they actually have.

[TheBrick3]

It might take a while for the word to get out and perhaps it'll increase then.

[rajah sulayman]

I hope so. The fact that it took me a lot of extensive searching (and this was already knowing exactly what I was trying to find) means that they might not have put much money into SEO or buzz generation. They've been around at least a year, I think. Hopefully one of the big name photographers will catch wind of them and tweet about it some day (that's how Words With Friends (http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/10/a-look-behind-the-words-with-friends-iphone-gaming-phenomenon/) took off), thus helping get the word out. Unless they get more listings I just can't see myself shelling out $50 for the service.

[Csae]

You can register a free account to search. I think the $50 membership is only if you plan on actually renting.

That said, I did a search for all studios within 100 miles of Manhattan and it only returned 32 results. So I don't know how many listings they actually have.

Where do you register for free ? The sign up only has the 49$/79$ options for me.

I like the site/concept, but its more then a year old already i believe.

[rajah sulayman]

Where do you register for free ? The sign up only has the 49$/79$ options for me.
Hrm. Interesting. When I signed up (on Sept 30, 2010, according to my profile), I never had to pay. They must have added that sometime afterward.

If that's the case, it's no surprise they don't have more listings. Paid memberships for crowdsourced sites are monumentally stupid and there's a reason nobody does it anymore. I can understand the need to protect revenues (sites like snapm, that take a cut off of deals, don't fare much better because shooters just circumvent the internal billing services and get paid "under the table"), but it's small wonder they've barely got any listings available.

Yet another great concept shot in the foot by poor execution.

[Csae]

They could fix it, by just allowing non-registered members to actually View the listings, but not allow them to see any contact information or post any of their own.

"NY Studio, 2000sq, Contact: XXXXXXX(Register to see)"

Type thing, i know a few B&S boards that do that. Works fairly well.

[rajah sulayman]

Yeah. There are a lot of ways they could protect their revenue while encouraging membership. Another would be to offer short-term registrations, pay-as-you-go microcharges for each contact initiation ($1 to start a correspondence with the owner, say), etc. The fact that they've defaulted to a flat monthly membership for all subscribers just shows how "Web 1.0" their business model is, no matter how "Web 2.0" the site may appear.

That said, does anyone know of a studio-sharing site like this that actually has a decent database?

[PhotosGuy]

That said, does anyone know of a studio-sharing site like this that actually has a decent database? Maybe the telephone book? ;)

[rajah sulayman]

Maybe the telephone book? ;)
I wish. Being a broke photographer that works out of SF and NY means that I can never afford studios for my personal stuff. It's easy when someone else is footing the bill, but for my personal projects, anything more than $50 an hour is far more than I can afford. :(

[Csae]

Its spring!

Who needs a studio when you got the great outdoors : P

[rajah sulayman]

The girls who are gonna be naked.