The sharing economy is becoming an increasingly popular way to utilise and commodify spare resources. This helps households to gain access to these products and service suppliers, and allow them to simplify and trim what they have at home.
There’s no need for an idle car that’s used only on the weekend, when you can hire one.
No need for a large car for transporting weekend project materials when you can hire a transporter or a trailer.
No need to maintain a swimming pool throughout the year for 10 good days of summer use, when you can hire one in the neighbourhood and so much more
Households can also identify spare capacity in their own homes, and renting them out to raise and diversity income and reduce living costs
The share economy has already grown and disrupted several markets, and will continue to disrupt new markets and offer new opportunities for households. The following is a somwhat convoluted, but plausible “day in the life” take on the sharing economy
Day in the life
Home
Airbnb
We wake up in the morning in a conveniently sourced apartment on Airbnb. We booked online at short notice while our home was being renovated on. Airbnb allowed us to book a place with kitchen facilities which was much better than the local hotels.
Hipages
Our original home was going through final touches of a renovation. The builder has finished most of the work, and we were left to finish directly with the final trades. We needed a painter to sand and paint the skirtings, and made a project request on Hipages. Within 30 minutes, we had calls from three painters who were willing to do the work in the afternoon. We accepted one, and sms’ed the rest to thank them for their instant quotations
Work
Uber
After breakfast we booked an Uber to get to work. We were in a laneway which was hard to find, but the Uber knew where we were exactly from our booking location.
Spacer
Work were in between archive locations, and to make space for some new staff, we packed boxes and placed through through Spacer in a garage in the building next door. Spacer has lots of options for space hire including for storage and car spaces.
RateSetter
To pay for the renovation, we had parked some funds in a short term investment through RateSetter. This was a convenient, and high yielding short term investment that funded businesses that required short term lending, bypassing the big 4 banks.
BrickX
While on morning tea we also checked our other property investment on BrickX. We had issues getting lending on a whole property, and found BrickX a good entry point that allowed partial investment in a property
Ebay
We needed a tap for the renovation. Looking through the caroma site, we saw taps all well over $100. We were able to source on Ebay a good alternative and get it delivered by Zoom2U
Zoom2U
The great thing about Zoom2U was that we could share delivery costs with others from the local community, and fill in time for the couriers that had space between jobs.
Freelancer
At work we needed a programmer to make adjustments to the work intranet. We sourced one on Freelancer, that spoke English and was able to complete the work overnight in their timezone, which was great for the company as we didn’t have much downtime.
99designs
The company embraced the sharing economy and we often made little refinements to the brand at shorter notice, than if we had hired a full time graphic designer. We put up a brief on 99 designs to design a new logo for the company conference, and were able to pick between 3 acceptable designs
Upwork
From the previous conference there were many recordings banked up which were not accessible to the rest of the staff. They would be good training material for anyone that entered the company. We were able to source someone on Upwork to edit the recordings, and publish them into the company intranet, as well as transcribe them into the company website.
Gumtree
On the wall home we picked up a free esky on Gumtree, that someone had advertised along the way. It was a free item, and left out the front door for easy pickup.
Dinner
Food By Us
When we arrived at home, we opened a Food By Us home cooked meal from the fridge. This was our healthy quick alternative to take out, as we wanted to prepare for the night ahead
Seat Geek
Earlier in the month we had tried to get tickets to a popular show. We found that Seat Geek rounded all the best tickets on the secondary market and was very intelligent in rating the tickets value and proximity to the performers.
The Volte
We took out outfits that we picked on The Volte, which was a great service that put clothes and accessories onto the secondary market. We were able to wear appropriate clothing, without going into our long term storage cages.
Car next door
We made a booking on Car next door to go to the show and back
Late Evening
Camplify
On return we rested up and made some plans for the public holiday weekend a month ahead. We made a booking on Camplify to take a caravan from a person that wasn’t using theirs for the rest of Summer.
Mad Paws
We made a booking at Mad Paws for our dog to be well looked after during this stay. We had used Mad Paws before, and were happy that we received daily updates on where the dog was walking and exploring
Facebook marketplace
Finally, we remembered that in our last trip our roof rack basket was a bit limiting, and decided to find a cheap 2nd hand roof basket on Facebook marketplace. We found someone that was willing to sell theirs for a good price, and was just in the next suburb.
References
The top 30 sharing economy sites – RateCity